by S Doyle
No one to watch me, no one to even think about looking at me. Just me and the open space around me. I ran on the road that was alongside the property just because it was a flat surface, but I might think about mapping out some running trails up in the hills behind the house.
Also there was that access road that led west, toward where Clayton’s father lived.
Those two were super confusing, but thankfully Ronnie had come to her senses and put me in charge of the wedding planning. Not only did it give me something to focus on, I could guarantee it would be a fantastic King-like event.
I was heading back now, toward the front of the property, when I saw it. A truck parked outside the gate that led to the driveway. Immediately, I stopped.
I was hot, dripping in sweat, with my unwashed hair in a bad ponytail on top of my head.
In other words, there was no way Garrett could see me like this. And, of course, I knew it would be Garrett. He would have thought about what I said and he probably felt guilty for calling me a liar again. He probably should, but still…
He could NOT see me. Sadly, invisibility was not an option in this moment.
“Hey, Brin,” he said, getting out of the cab of his truck. I could see the stenciling along the side that marked it as a County Sheriff’s vehicle. I hadn’t congratulated him about his promotion from deputy to sheriff. It felt like something the old Sabrina would have done that the new me didn’t want to do.
I started walking toward him, my hands on my hips, taking steady breaths as if this was all just part of my normal routine.
When I reached him I stayed far enough away that he couldn’t smell me.
“Garrett,” I said, not really sure what else to say.
“You run in that?” he asked, pointing at me up and down.
I glanced down. “You mean sneakers, running shorts, and a tank top? Uh, yes.”
“Right. Look, I think we got off to bad start the other day. I’ve been hoping to catch you in town, but I haven’t seen you.”
“I’ve been keeping to myself out here,” I said, purposefully not saying I had wanted to avoid him.
“Look, if you’re expecting trouble…”
“I’m not,” I said, cutting him off. “I’m not expecting anything. I’m home to avoid trouble.”
“Still, I made it seem like anything going on in your life wasn’t real. I didn’t mean to do that. I just…I just assumed…”
“I get it, Garrett,” I told him. He’d just assumed I was up to my old tricks. I, however, didn’t necessarily want to be reminded of what I had done in the past. “You should know, I’m not the same person I was when I left.”
At least, I hoped I wasn’t.
“You need to eat a cheeseburger,” he blurted out.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m just saying I could take you to The Bar and we could grab something to eat. They have some pretty decent food…”
“The Bar? The Bar has pretty decent food? I think I need to know your definition of decent.”
He laughed. “Since Jack took over, trust me, things are better. You’ll see.”
I bit my bottom lip. “I’m not sure.”
“Hey. You’re back and I’m still here, and we can, well, you can let me figure out who you are, Brin. Say yes. Have dinner with me.”
I blinked. Wait, did Garrett Pine just ask me out on a date?
“It’s not a date or anything,” he continued quickly. “I don’t do that anymore. Burgers and reconnecting. That’s it.”
Right. Of course. I thought about telling him to go screw himself, but then I thought he was right. Dusty Creek was a small place. We were both living in it. If I had matured in the last five years, like I hoped I had, then our having a civil conversation wasn’t the worst idea.
He was still technically my closest neighbor.
And the sheriff now. I had no plans to tell him about what had happened in LA or Dallas. Not when I knew how he would react. It would be casual.
“Okay.”
“Good. I’ll come out here and pick you up after my shift.”
“Just tell me what time and I’ll meet you there.”
He frowned. “I can pick you up, Brin. Drop you off after on my way home.”
“It’s not a date, Garrett. I can meet you there.”
I felt like he was about dig in, which would have made me dig in harder. Because the one thing he had to be absolutely certain of was that I no longer had any feelings for him whatsoever.
Even if I wasn’t totally certain of that myself.
But I was done embarrassing myself in front of Garrett Pine.
“Okay. Around six work for you?”
I nodded.
“See you then.”
He made his way back to his truck and I couldn’t not watch him. No formal uniform now that he was the sheriff, just jeans and a chambray shirt with the Dusty Creek Sheriff’s Department logo over the right pocket. But it was the way he moved. Something that told everyone around him that he held the power.
That he was the strongest, the fastest, the bravest.
Damn him for being hot. It made the not having a crush on him thing way more difficult.
Dinner. With. Garrett.
What could go wrong with that?
“Hey Garrett,” I called out to him just as he was about to drive away. His window rolled down. “Congratulations on the promotion.”
“It was an election,” he called back. “But thanks.”
Then I was waving and he was driving off.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Great. I had already run but now I was rattled again because I was going to be having dinner, not a date, with Garrett Pine.
When it came to this level of stress there was only one thing to do…bake. Hate baking, where I created these masterful, sinful treats I could not eat. Feeling like I did today it was going to have to be…
“Cupcakes,” I muttered to myself.
GARRETT
The Bar
This had been a mistake. I sat there sipping my beer, staring at the door like some puppy waiting for his master to come home, and realized I hadn’t been honest with myself this morning.
I’d told myself I just wanted to find out whatever trouble Brin was having in LA.
That I still saw her as the girl I knew growing up.
That I hadn’t been affected by the sight of her in shorts and a tank top with sweat dripping down her tanned, toned body.
Now my foot was tapping on the floor as the minute hand passed ten after six.
Ten minutes wasn’t late. Ten minutes was in the window of normal.
Except when you had been a man who’d stood in the front of a church waiting for his bride to walk down the aisle.
Then ten minutes became ten years.
I was about to get up and leave. Maybe drive out to her place directly to tell her that standing me up had been a shitty thing to do. If she wanted to prove she’d matured, then this spiteful little stunt hadn’t accomplished that.
The door to the bar opened and she walked in. She was wearing jeans, a pink silk shirt, and shoes so high I had no idea how she walked in them. But they made her legs look that much longer.
She sat across from me in the booth I had picked.
“Sorry I’m late. I couldn’t find a parking spot on the street that was close. This place must be more popular than I remember.”
Immediately all the tension I had been feeling left me. I had to unclench my hands from around my beer glass and stop my foot from bouncing. Remind myself that it was perfectly reasonable to be a few minutes late to a dinner meeting, not a date, because of parking.
“I told you—the food is decent.”
Grace, who was a high school senior and worked the night shift, came over to take our order.
“I’ll have a white wine,” Brin told her.
“And two cheeseburgers with everything on them,” I said.
“Actually, I’ll just have a side salad.” Br
in smiled at the girl.
“What’s the matter, you don’t eat meat?” I asked.
She looked at me like I was insane. “Hello, I am a Texan. Of course I eat meat. I just can’t eat cheeseburgers with everything on them.”
“You need to eat a cheeseburger. Grace, bring us the burgers with her salad. We’ll see if I can talk her into it.”
“Yes, sheriff.”
Brin waited until Grace left and then glared at me. “You keep telling me to eat cheeseburgers. If you have a point to make, why don’t you just make it?”
“You’re too thin. There, I said it.” And immediately I realized I had no right to say anything about her body. But I had seen her in the shorts and tank top, and while she was super hot she still looked frail to me. Unprotected. Vulnerable.
“I am not! I’m TV thin and you’re just not used to seeing that in the real world. Trust me, go to LA. You’ll see it everywhere.”
“TV thin,” I snorted. “Translated—you don’t eat enough to keep a rabbit alive. You need some substance in you. Something besides champagne.”
She huffed. “See, there you go again. Making assumptions about me.”
“How is that an assumption when I see you on TV?”
“You’ve watched my show?”
That seemed to startle her. As if it was unthinkable that I would. “My housekeeper likes to watch it. Sometimes it’s just on the TV when I turn it on.”
“Oh. Right. Anyway, what I do on TV is play a character.”
“Hello? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure it’s a reality TV show. Emphasis on the word reality.”
Brin shook her head. “You don’t have a clue. The Cowboy Princess is a role. Of course I don’t drink champagne all day. Of course I don’t faint at the sight of flat shoes. Of course I don’t shriek with horror at the discount shoe rack.”
“I saw that episode. Shrieking was involved.” I peeked under the table. “And those don’t look like discount shoes.”
She shifted, as if she was hiding her shoes from me. “Okay. Fair enough. But people have expectations about me I have to meet. Shoes being one of them. And also…sometimes I can’t help myself.”
She actually looked chagrined, which was adorable. “So you really won’t eat a cheeseburger?”
“I learned that weight is power. And maybe now that I’m leaving the show I can eat one every now and then, but that doesn’t mean I liked to be bullied into it.”
“Fine. I concede to that. Wait, you’re leaving the show? I thought it was popular.”
She shrugged casually. “It is, but I’m ready to move on.”
I leaned back in the booth, assessing her. She was deliberately not meeting my eyes.
“Because of this stalker? The one I saw on TMZ? I figured it was some story to create buzz for you and the show, but you reacted pretty strongly when I suggested as much yesterday.”
“I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“Tell me.”
Slowly she shook her head.
“I don’t think…” She stopped talking when Grace came back with her wine. I watched as Brin smiled at the girl, which made Grace blush. Obviously Grace was aware of Dusty Creek’s most famous citizen.
Brin waited until Grace left and then took a sip of her wine.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing, really,” she said with a shrug of her shoulder.
I couldn’t tell if she was lying, and for some reason that bothered me.
“Then why did you come back? Dusty Creek must seem awfully small after spending years shuttling back and forth between Dallas and LA.”
“Well, I don’t know if you know, but Ronnie and Clayton are officially engaged again. And I’m planning their wedding. Not just any wedding. The wedding of the century! An event like that doesn’t just plan itself. And Ronnie doesn’t know this, but I’m also thinking of throwing another engagement party. Something to remove all the bad memories.”
Yeah. Some pretty fucking bad memories.
“What you told me about that night was true, wasn’t it?” I asked. Because I couldn’t not. It was like running my tongue over a sore tooth. It only made the ache worse, but I couldn’t seem to stop. “You saw them. Together.”
My feelings for Betty had faded surprisingly quickly. Quickly enough that it made me question what I’d had with her. How could any of it have been real if she’d been lying the whole time?
But the betrayal, the lies, the abuse of trust. That had hit way harder. Much deeper.
“I’m sorry,” Brin said. “I didn’t mean to drag up bad memories.”
I shook it off. “That’s all she is, a memory. So, you’re back for the wedding and then what?”
I had to change topics. She was looking at me. Like she used to when she was a kid. Like I could move the heavens and the earth. Like I was some type of invincible god when I was so far from that. It’s just that there was something to be said for having Sabrina King believe in you.
“Then I don’t know. Everything is on hold until after the wedding.”
“And that’s really the only reason you’re home?”
She didn’t reply, just nodded and sipped her wine. I didn’t push the issue. It was fair to say, though, that I didn’t think she trusted me completely. Probably with good reason.
Grace brought the food and I watched Brin stare down at the cheeseburger. Hard.
“American cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and onion. Mayonnaise and lots of ketchup, too,” I told her. “One bite. For me.”
She smirked. “I don’t owe you anything.”
“Yes, you do. I made those bullies in the cafeteria stand down your freshman year. You totally owe me for that.”
I watched her remove some of the bread from the bun and scrape off some of the mayonnaise. Then she cut the burger into quarters, picked one up, and bit into it. Her eyes nearly rolled back into her head.
“Fuck me, that’s so good!” she groaned after she’d swallowed her first bite. “Oh, my God, I forgot what grease tasted like.”
I wanted to tease her. I wanted to laugh at her. But I couldn’t say a damn thing.
I had an immediate full-on erection. I was so stone hard that if she took another bite of that burger I was going to come in my jeans. Fortunately she set the remainder of the quarter down, wiped her fingers with a napkin, and took a fork to the salad.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” she said, spearing a cherry tomato. “Not having it at all, or having a single bite so that you remember what you’re missing.”
I needed to think of something besides the expression on her face when she’d swallowed, so I focused on what she said earlier.
“What did you mean when you said weight was power?”
She arched her eyebrow like I was asking a stupid question. I suppose I was. Men assessed women by their appearance all the time. I knew that. But I think it was wrong to assume what was attractive to one man was the same for another.
“As a thin woman I had more power than as a fat one,” she said baldly.
“You’re saying only women of a certain size can be attractive? That seems rather harsh on your own sex.”
She blinked. “No, absolutely not. Women are beautiful in every shape and size. And women who believe in themselves are attractive, no matter what other people think. But that wasn’t the case for me growing up. I didn’t set out to lose weight. I just started running because running helped me to cope with…all of it. The more I ran, the thinner I got. The thinner I got, the more power I had in my family. With my mother, with my father. Then, the thinner I got in LA, the more that made me a viable candidate for a reality TV show. The producers sought me out. Do you honestly think there would be a Cowboy Princess if I didn’t look a certain way?”
I hated that she was right so I didn’t reply.
“I should have clarified. Weight was about power for me. I recognize it’s not the same for everyone. But this,” she said casually, waving her hand over
her face and body, “is all I have.”
“You’re more than how you look, Brin,” I said, not happy with her self-assessment.
She tilted her head as if she was considering that. “Am I? Some people who watch Cowboy Princess wouldn’t think so. At best, I’m known as shallow. At worst…I’m considered nothing more than a brainless Barbie doll.”
“You said it yourself. You were playing a role.”
“Hmm. Anyway, that’s my life.”
I watched her eyes dart to it. The quarter of the burger. Ketchup was running down the sides, a piece of bacon was sticking out. It was tempting as fuck, but she didn’t stray from her lettuce.
“I can’t imagine having that kind of willpower,” I said suddenly, feeling guilty for having pushed it on her in the first place.
She shrugged. “I’m used to not getting what I want. It’s easy.”
That didn’t make any sense. Sabrina was rich, beautiful. She could get anything she ever wanted.
“Sabrina, you have everything.” I felt like I had to remind her of that.
She pushed away the burger and the half-eaten salad.
“No, Garrett,” she said with a smile. “I have shoes.”
And it damn near broke my heart.
7
SABRINA
One Week Later
“Hey, Jack,” I called, even as I took a seat at the bar.
He lifted his chin at me and kept wiping down the beer glass in his hand. At this point he knew my wine of choice so I didn’t bother asking for it. I wasn’t sure it had been the best idea to come into town. The whole point was to lay low. But I was going a little stir crazy back at the ranch.
I had thrown myself into the wedding of the century, only to get ambushed by Clayton who’d insisted that it take place at the ranch with a mere one hundred and seventy-five guests. Huh. Those weren’t even wedding of the year numbers.
I supposed it was what they wanted, so I had to defer. And I felt good about the state of things. After all, planning these types of events was my wheelhouse, so much so that I was running out of stuff to do, day in and day out.