by Anthology
He didn’t understand why he found that so intriguing. Or why it made him want in a way he hadn’t felt in so long, it took him a moment or two to recognize what that particular feeling, sharp and intense and roaring in him so loudly, even was.
“It’s seven thirty in the morning.” She sounded scandalized. Her eyes were a blue to rival the Montana sky, and they widened in what had to be horror, which he felt like a heat wave throughout his body, reminding him how dark and perverse he was compared to an undoubtedly pure, small town sweetheart like this one. “On a Monday.”
“It wouldn’t matter if it was the sweet spot of a Saturday night,” he told her, enjoying himself immensely despite his own twisted soul. It wasn’t like he could do anything about it, could he? “It still wouldn’t work out, unless you’re hiding a honky tonk or two beneath that Head of the PTA outfit of yours.”
“I most certainly am not.” But her hands moved to the ruffled part of her blouse, then her quiet little belt buckle, as if she’d forgotten what she was wearing and had to remind herself by touch. Or make sure it was still there.
Or maybe she was as baffled by these garments, neither of which he’d ever seen on a woman under sixty-five years of age, as he was.
“I’m afraid we’re just not meant to be, darlin’,” he drawled, more Texas in his voice than usual and a fire he couldn’t quite control beneath it.
That rattled her for a moment, he could see it in that intense blue of her eyes, but then she squared her shoulders and tilted that chin of hers back up anyway. Scrappy, he thought again, and with a purely male jolt of approval that boded ill for the both of them, he just knew it.
“What on earth would make you think someone would show up and proposition you at this hour?” she demanded. “What kind of degenerate are you?”
Jasper realized then that she had no idea who he was. He found that notion wildly liberating. And, strangely, arousing. He couldn’t remember the last time someone hadn’t known who he was and acted accordingly. He’d forgotten what it was like—the honest responses that had nothing to do with his net worth, the total lack of artifice or calculation, that look on her face that suggested he was nothing but a man, and a rather unappetizing one at that.
He thought he loved this place already, and he’d been here all of two days.
“The kind of degenerate you appear to be hanging around on the street waiting for,” he replied easily, not at all surprised that he was enjoying himself now. His brows arched up. “At seven-thirty. On a Monday.”
***
This was much worse than Chelsea had imagined.
I heard it from Carol Bingley myself, Mama had said on Saturday, standing in the doorway to the kitchen, her entire small frame radiating tension and fury, which usually made everyone in a six mile radius duck for cover and/or hide.
Everyone except Chelsea, that was, because it was Chelsea’s duty to take care of her. Margot was down in Salt Lake City tending to her ever-expanding family, Nicky had stayed in North Carolina after college and married a woman who had no intention of leaving the area, and Daddy had died almost fifteen years ago now, which left Mama to Chelsea.
Whether she liked it or not. Mostly, of course, she liked it fine. Mostly.
Sometimes I think Carol Bingley makes things up just to feel important, Chelsea had replied in a light tone, pretending to be deeply involved in the preparation of her sandwich, not that she could imagine eating anything with Mama glaring at her like that, so accusingly, like Chelsea had betrayed her in some way. It has to feel like a pretty small life, spending all day in a pharmacy when you’re not even a pharmacist, snooping on people every time they drop off a prescription or pick up an extra tube of toothpaste—
The depot has been sold. Mama had intoned it like a death knell, and it rang through the kitchen like one, then inside of Chelsea, because she knew what it meant. That she’d failed. That she’d let Mama down. That she was as useless as Mama had always told her she was, though she tried very hard not to let that get to her. The new owner—some Texan roughneck—is moving in this weekend. Congratulations, Chelsea. That Wright girl—she meant Chelsea’s best friend Jenny, of whom Mama had never approved, and it pained Chelsea deeply that it was because of where Jenny had lived growing up—is bettering herself by marrying a Monmouth while the Crawford family legacy is lost forever. What do you have to say to that?
Don’t worry, Mama, she’d said. Rashly, perhaps, and it wasn’t like her mother listened anyway. Not to her. I’ll fix it. I promise.
Even if she didn’t want to fix it. Even if she secretly thought that Mama was the broken thing, and worried that she was, too, by association.
Even if she wasn’t entirely sure that marrying a Monmouth was the best thing for her best friend, not that she’d shared that unsolicited opinion with Jenny or anyone else, which meant she wasn’t so sure being a Crawford meant much, either.
She shivered now, though the fall morning wasn’t particularly cold, and focused her energy on the strange man before her.
He didn’t look like a roughneck—not that Chelsea had the slightest idea what a roughneck was supposed to look like, only that Mama thought such people were far, far beneath her. Even further beneath her than everybody else, that was.
This man was long and lean, and built out of the kind of smooth muscles that spoke of long hours of hard, manual labor instead of weight machines in the gym. He was wearing a t-shirt with too many holes and a pair of track pants, and wasn’t even breathing heavily, though the t-shirt showed that he’d worked out hard. He had too-long dark hair with hints of gold that spoke of the Texas sun she’d heard in his voice, and that looked as if he’d scraped it back from his face with his fingers. He hadn’t shaved. Possibly not in days, though that rasp of stubble wasn’t yet a beard. It made him look… disconcertingly untamed, and this was Montana, home of untamed things of all kinds.
And the way he looked at her, with that little crook to his mouth and that gleam in his hazel eyes she wasn’t sure she wanted to identify, made her heart turn achy little somersaults in her chest.
Or maybe that was a panic attack. It wouldn’t be her first.
“I’m Chelsea Collier,” she said stiffly, not sure what was happening to her.
He was tall in a way that made her feel tiny and delicate, despite the fact she was wearing her dizzyingly high three inch heels—the ones with the platform bottoms she’d picked up in Bozeman with Jenny while trying on her Maid of Honor’s dress for Jenny’s wedding the following week—and hadn’t been the slightest bit delicate in her whole life. It occurred to her that she hadn’t had to introduce herself to someone new in quite a long while, and that made her feel oddly vulnerable, too.
“Chelsea Crawford Collier,” she amended.
He laughed. It was a gruff, male sound, that worked over her skin and down beneath it, winding around and around the center of her and pulling taut.
“That’s a whole lot of Cs for one woman,” he said, that laughter still rich in his voice, making her feel shivery for no good reason at all. “What were your parents thinking? What was wrong with every other letter in the alphabet?”
Chelsea summoned her best frown, the one she’d perfected in her years containing boisterous history students at the high school. What was one disreputable-looking man next to packs of unruly teenagers?
“You’re new here, so perhaps you don’t know that the Crawford family was one of Marietta’s First Families,” she said reprovingly, aware that she sounded uncomfortably like her mother. That snooty intonation, even the way she was looking at him, as if the name Crawford was branded into the side of Copper Mountain standing in the distance. Was this what she had to look forward to? Slowly becoming Mama? But she couldn’t seem to stop herself, and the sad truth was that she knew the answer to that already. “Barton Dudley Crawford, my ancestor and one of Montana’s great visionaries, brought the railway here in 18—”
“This railway?” he nodded toward the old railway
line that ran behind the depot building, and unlike her history students, didn’t look even slightly cowed when she scowled at him for interrupting her. “My railway?”
She didn’t like his possessiveness, which was another sign she was becoming Mama much faster than she was comfortable with, so she opted to ignore it.
“The very same,” she replied primly. “The Marietta Railway Depot is a symbol of our town’s rich copper rush past, and stands as a monument to Barton Crawford as well as the many contributions of the Crawford family to this town and to this region since.”
A little speech that she was fairly certain she’d heard Mama deliver to the postman only last week, as she was wont to do. You are turning into her even as you speak, that dire voice inside of her warned. It’s already happening.
“Is this what people do for fun around here? Accost newcomers on the sidewalk to give them unsolicited history lessons?” He laughed again, and again, the sound of it did things to her she didn’t understand. Or like. “This is definitely not Dallas.”
“I’m trying to tell you that you need to make the depot into a museum,” she snapped, and even though her little-used temper was flaring, she still caught the way the man before her stilled. He was dangerous, she realized in a sudden flash of insight. Far more dangerous than that easy smile of his let on. “That’s what it’s supposed to be. What’s it’s meant to be. I’ve spent the last year fundraising. The rodeo will be here in two weeks and we’re going to have the final push—”
“I’ll stop you right there,” he said, interrupting again, and she didn’t know why that look in his eyes was so unnerving. Like he could see straight through her, to all those shadowy places where she was never Crawford enough, not for Mama.
You’re a Collier all the way through, Mama had sniffed whenever Chelsea did something she didn’t like—which was more often these days, now that Chelsea’s relationship with Tod Styles was over and she was “without prospects.” Mama preferred prospects. Collier straight down to the bone, and nary a speck of Crawford blood to be seen.
Margot and Nicky, of course, were 100% percent Crawford while they stayed away, though that percentage seemed to dip considerably whenever they visited. Which was probably why they did it so seldom.
There were times, Chelsea reflected, when she found all of this—even Mama’s high opinion of herself—funny. Endearing. But today didn’t seem to be one of those times.
“I’m Jasper Flint,” he said, and then paused, almost as if he expected a reaction to that—but then laughed when Chelsea only continued to scowl at him. “Of course,” he said, shaking his head. “You must be the only woman I’ve met in the past ten years who doesn’t have the slightest idea who I am.”
“Why would I know who you are?” Chelsea demanded, but even as she did, she realized she should have paid more attention to Mama’s very long, very acerbic diatribe about him this weekend. Saturday and Sunday, and so what if Chelsea was trying to grade papers? The trouble was, the only way Chelsea knew how to manage her mother was to very actively not pay attention to the specifics of the things she said, but to let it all wash over her like the weather. It was a survival tactic she’d perfected a long, long time ago.
But she had the sinking feeling that Carol Bingley knew exactly who this man was. Which meant her mother did, too, and had no doubt shared it all with her while she was only pretending to listen. Which meant she should probably have looked into that before showing up on his doorstep this morning on her way to school, all fired up to do… something.
Jasper Flint only shook his head at her again, an unholy amusement moving over his lean, intriguing face, as if she was deeply entertaining.
No one had ever looked at her like that in her life, and Chelsea felt her breath leave her body as something blisteringly hot moved over her, through her. Confusing her and intriguing her at once.
“I can’t say that I care too much about the history of this town, or of your family,” he said, in an amiable tone at complete odds with his words. “Mind you, I can barely stand the sight of my own family, so you shouldn’t feel too insulted.” There was some current there, lurking beneath the seemingly light words, almost a shadow behind his curiously bright gaze, but Chelsea couldn’t name it. “And I’m not particularly interested in museums. I like beer, so I’m building a microbrewery. You can come by when it’s open and have one.” His lips twitched. “On me.”
“A microbrewery?” Chelsea knew she sounded aghast, as if the very idea of beer made her want to swoon, like the prudish schoolmarm he’d already accused her of being—but that was only because she could anticipate her mother’s reaction to this news. It might blow off the top of Copper Mountain. “But the depot is a landmark! A piece of Marietta’s history!”
“Which I’m guessing your hoity-toity First Family couldn’t afford to buy, much less repair, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
He still had all that Texas in his voice, but somehow, that drawl went cool. And it tore her up, though she didn’t know why.
“When did you buy it?” she asked.
“About two months ago.” His hazel gaze narrowed, as if he was turning that question over in his head. “Does that matter?”
“Not to you, I’d imagine.”
But it meant a great deal to her. It meant she’d been lied to, repeatedly, again—but she couldn’t do anything about that now. Here.
“I don’t have much use for monuments, Triple C,” Jasper said quietly. “I don’t like history lessons and I don’t care for preaching.” His eyes remained curiously intent on hers. “I think this is the prettiest spot in Montana, which is why I’m here. And as I said, I like beer. I don’t see this conversation getting any more productive than that, do you?”
Chelsea fought to keep her panic under control. To say nothing of her temper.
“What can I do to convince you of the error of your ways?” she asked, desperately. “You only just moved here. Maybe if I take you on a tour, if I show you why this is all so important, you’ll change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s my mind, Triple C. I’m pretty well-acquainted with it.”
“An inflexible mind is a sign of weakness. Weakness and fear.”
“Do you think reverse psychology is going to work?” But he was smiling. “You have an interesting approach to the sales pitch. And I won’t lie, I think it’s cute.”
“There has to be something I can do,” she blurted out, too panicked to register the fact he’d called her cute. “To at least make you listen.”
She watched his marvelous eyes light up then, with a fire that sang in her in ways that made her feel weak, like she’d forgotten to eat for a week. His head tilted to one side as he regarded her, and Chelsea had never felt anything like it before. That slow perusal, that terrible intensity in his hazel gaze, that small crook to his lips that hit her like a punch in the belly. She felt stripped naked right there on the street, where anyone could see and, judging from the number of cars that had gone by throughout this conversation, quite a few people had seen and were no doubt even now reporting back to her mother that she was consorting with the enemy.
“Come back here dressed like a woman your actual age,” he suggested. “You look like you’re trying to pretend you’re at least sixty-five. My guess? You’re thirty. Maybe.”
She frowned down at herself, then at him.
“I’m a schoolteacher. This is a perfectly appropriate outfit.”
“Let me guess. History?”
She didn’t know why his amusement pricked at her. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Is it dress like an octogenarian day? I suspect you’ll win first prize.”
“You don’t have to play games with me,” she said, furious, and something else unfamiliar that she was afraid to look at too closely. “Or does it amuse you to insult complete strangers within five minutes of meeting them?”
“Only the
pretty ones,” he said, looking wholly unrepentant. “Come back in a pair of jeans that show off that ass and I promise I’ll listen to you. If that’s what you want.”
He nodded in some parody of good manners, then, as if he hadn’t said something heinous, the kind of thing that absolutely nobody said to someone like her. Ever.
And Chelsea stood there, stunned, and watched Jasper Flint saunter away like the glorious male animal he was, confident and lazy and totally unbothered by what had happened between them. What he’d said.
Into the depot building which should never have been his.
Which she was going to have to find a way to reclaim, despite him.
Chapter Two
“You lied to me,” Chelsea said in as measured a tone as she could manage.
Which possibly wasn’t very measured at all, she could admit to herself.
“Lied is a pretty strong word, Chels,” Tod Styles replied, all bluster and those bright red spots in his cute, boyish cheeks, which, she knew perfectly well, meant he was lying through his teeth.
She’d discovered that the hard way, when she’d accused him of cheating on her during their ill-advised eighteen months of dating and he’d vociferously denied it, every time.
Including that last time, when she’d walked in to find him in the act. His cheeks had been red that night, too. Like twin flags of dishonesty painted right there on his face.
“Please don’t call me that,” Chelsea said, trying to stay cool. Calm. Trying to remind herself that Tod was actually a perfectly nice man, except if you happened to date him.
Nothing at all like the woman who had screamed bloody murder when she’d seen him thrashing around on top of Leona Markham on his back deck on July 4th. As if he’d stabbed her in the heart when the truth was, she’d never loved him as much as she thought she should have. Calm down, Chels, was what he’d said them in the same tone he’d just used now. Still naked, like her reaction to what he was doing was the problem.