by Anthology
She tried to force herself back into the present, where he was thankfully clothed.
“You sold the depot right out from under me. Secretly. You knew what I was trying to do and you sold it anyway, then let me carry on making preparations for the rodeo fundraiser. Were you ever going to tell me, Tod? Or were you planning to let me go ahead and make a fool of myself?”
She couldn’t possibly be the only one with déjà vu, could she?
Tod leaned back in his chair, which creaked loudly, reminding Chelsea that they weren’t alone in the realty office he ran with his mother, the fearsome Elinor, who had told Chelsea in the first week of her relationship that her son was regrettably just like his father: all boy, no man. Chelsea wished she’d listened. Elinor wasn’t in the office today, but Chelsea didn’t have to turn around to know that their secretary, Alisa, would be all pricked ears and flying thumbs, texting every word of this interaction to half of Marietta before it was done. In Alisa’s ear and out like a megaphone, she knew, but at least there was no malice in it. That was how it went.
Sometimes she wished she’d taken her siblings’ lead and moved far, far away, to a place where no one knew her, or her family, or every last scandalous detail of her terrible relationship with Tod, including that she’d foolishly believed it would lead to marriage.
It was that last part that she found the most humiliating now.
“Can I be blunt?” Tod asked, and she could see that he was trying to be kind, which only made the humiliation rage higher.
I’m just not the monogamous type, he’d told her on the front lawn of his house that last, embarrassing night, still buttoning up his khakis, his cheeks no longer quite so bright and his light brown hair messy. Not yet, anyway. That’s for the kind of girl I want to marry, Chels.
Remembering their unfortunate dating history wasn’t helping anything, Chelsea thought then. She stood in front of Tod’s desk, her arms crossed in front of her, ignoring the fact her feet felt swollen from a day spent standing in front of classrooms in her ridiculous shoes. Ignoring how much she’d like to use one of those wickedly high heels to slap that look from his face—if, of course, she was the sort who believed in violence. Which she was not.
“I’ve never known how to stop you,” she replied. If Tod registered the dryness in her tone, he didn’t react to it.
“Flint paid in cash. The full asking price. And let’s face it, you were never going to raise the money for the down payment.” He shrugged. “It was business, Chelsea. Pure and simple.”
“It’s very convenient that your business happened to undermine me, isn’t it?” she asked, not sure if she was angry or sad, and wishing she could rewind everything and never take him up on that initial invitation to dinner. “Or was that just a bonus?”
“I’m sorry if I led you on, Chelsea,” Tod said now, making her feel homicidal and deeply humiliated all at once, which was pretty much how she’d been feeling about the whole thing since that night in July. “I should have made it clear from the start that I wasn’t that interested. I feel bad that your feelings got so involved.”
That was the worst part, she knew, staring at him. Her feelings hadn’t been involved, not that anyone would believe her if she said so. She’d thought Tod was her chance. The answer to her prayers. Her way to stay in Marietta, the place she loved so much, without having to stay forever in that drafty old house on the hill with Mama. Her way to have the things she’d always wanted—her own house, her own man, her own family—without having to turn her back on her responsibilities and in so doing, turn into someone she didn’t want to become. Tod was a local boy, his family going back generations in the area, with the kind of deep roots that matched hers.
And besides, her mother had always spoken, if not highly of the Styles family, then at least without the scorn she reserved for some others. It had seemed like such a perfect solution. And she’d always liked Tod well enough. He’d been a few years above her in school, friendly and nice. Liked by almost everybody. A part of the community.
She should have dated her neighbor’s Labrador retriever instead. Sparky had all of the same qualities she’d liked in Tod, plus an actual sense of loyalty.
“Thank you, Tod,” she said stiffly, when she was sure she could speak without betraying any of her conflicting emotions, or indulging her heretofore unknown lust for violence. “I certainly enjoy as many reminders of our relationship as possible.”
“A word of advice, Chels,” he said, shaking his head sadly, which was one more patronizing gesture closer to her losing her temper, which seemed a lot closer to snapping today than usual. Someone should probably warn him that he was flirting with disaster, she thought, since he seemed so unaware of it himself. “This obsession with the depot isn’t a good idea. You need to let it go before you turn yourself into your mother.”
The fact that Tod, of all people, was voicing the worst of her fears, felt like an indignity too far today. She felt it pulse behind her temples like a headache.
“I don’t think you know my mother well enough to make that determination,” she said frostily. “And I know you don’t know me well enough. Or at all.”
“You’re not doing yourself any favors.” He let his gaze travel from her admittedly raggedy chignon down her neatly buttoned navy and white blouse with the ruffles along the placket to her perfectly serviceable work pants. When Jasper had done the same thing this morning, there’d been heat in it, and amusement. Her whole body had felt like a lantern only he could switch on. Tod’s gaze made her feel itchy and annoyed. “You’re on a fast track to ending up rattling around that old house for the rest of your life, muttering about the Crawford family’s long gone glory days. Just like her.”
“I teach history, Tod,” she bit out. “I don’t have to live it, thank you.”
He sighed, like she was the one trying his patience.
“I’m sorry about the depot, I really am. But it was never going to happen. And if your mother cared about the town as much as she cared about the Crawford family legacy, she’d understand that what Flint is going to do benefits way more people than some museum ever would. It’s going to be gathering place. Families, local bands. A place for the whole community. People want that. They’re tired of paying homage to the First Families.”
“Spoken like someone who isn’t one of the First Families,” she replied lightly, loud enough for Alisa to hear and transmit to one and all, something she knew at once she’d regret later, when she was less furious and not so easily goaded. “I always forget how jealous you are.”
But after she stormed out of the office with as much dignity as she had left, his words stayed with her as if he’d chased her out into the street himself.
It destroyed any childish satisfaction she might have gotten from getting that last word.
Chelsea stopped for a moment and stood there, letting the fall afternoon seep into her. The sun was still bright and warm, though there was a kick beneath it that whispered summer was already over for another year, and these huge, bright days were nothing but pretty distractions. She remembered running along these sidewalks as a girl, down to the park by the river and then back again. Grey’s Saloon hunkered over the corner opposite her, complete with swinging doors on the front and that balustraded balcony running along the second story, where the prostitutes had displayed their wares back when Marietta was little more than an outpost and Grey’s—the oldest building in town—was as much a bordello as a saloon.
Mama didn’t like the fact that Greys—purveyors of sin going back generations—were actually more original Mariettan than the Crawfords. They make their presence known, don’t they? she always said when forced to acknowledge the existence of the saloon, or even the outdoor adventure outfit one of the other Grey brothers ran from an office above the town’s bookstore.
Crawfords aren’t flashy, Mama had told them over and over again growing up, despite the fact they lived in one of the area’s historic old homes, rich in rambling, V
ictorian splendor up in the hills above the town. Crawfords are genteel.
It had taken Chelsea a long time to understand that what her mother meant was that the Crawfords had once had a great deal more money than anyone else had, and had fancied themselves many social classes above families like the Greys, hence their relocation out of the town proper. And that what they had left now was their heritage. And far too much pride.
Every now and again the weight of that heritage—and what it meant to her mother, and thus to Chelsea because she loved her mother and wanted to make her happy—made Chelsea feel flattened down to the ground beneath it.
But Main Street was like a postcard in the golden light today, a perfect jewel of a western town, and much as she sometimes dreamed of running off and shirking her responsibilities, she knew she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. She was as much a part of this town as Grey’s, her roots almost as deep into the rich Montana soil beneath her feet, and she was a woman who liked to feel connected that way.
She studied the saloon for a moment, considering. She wasn’t much for drinking in the afternoon, and she’d never cared much for surly Jason Grey, the current proprietor, no matter how much she’d liked his daughter, Joey, who’d been in her same class back in high school. But Grey’s looked particularly inviting today. She frowned at it for a moment, then turned her attention to the mountains, instead. Beautiful Copper Mountain loomed there, brooding and impassive, the way it had her whole life. Watching. Waiting.
For what, she still didn’t know.
And the truth was, she was a thirty-year-old woman and she was afraid to go home and face her mother. What did that say about her?
But she knew what it said. Sometimes she thought it was written on her: Lifelong coward. Afraid. Hiding all her life.
Chelsea heard the motor first. It was different from the usual motorcycles that ripped through the town, most of them headed to or from Grey’s, or further east along the highway toward places like Sturgis. This one sounded… sleeker. It purred like a lion, deep-throated and smooth, and she knew. She knew who it was even before it pulled up beside her, silver and gleaming in the afternoon light, then backed up to the curb at an arrogant angle.
There was absolutely no reason her heart should twist in her chest, then clatter so hard against her ribs.
She’d done a little research on Jasper Flint over her lunch period at school today. Meaning she’d typed his name into Google and saw exactly why he’d been so surprised she hadn’t recognized him, or at least his name. And why he’d think it perfectly normal to be propositioned no matter what time of day it was.
Jasper Flint wasn’t simply rich. He was quite literally filthy rich. He and his brother Jonah had taken their family’s small well stimulation company and built it into a major competitor in the oil market, providing hydraulic fracturing services to the oil and gas industry just as the shale boom was blowing up in Texas—before selling it just over a year ago for a rumored four billion.
No wonder he’d bought the depot outright. That was pocket change to a man like him.
She frowned at him as he climbed off his bike, which she didn’t have to know a single thing about motorcycles to know was astonishingly rare and expensive. He didn’t bother with a helmet, which meant she was treated to an uninterrupted view of Jasper Flint in all his considerable glory. Packed into a pair of jeans and grey t-shirt, with a dark blue hooded sweatshirt on top, he should have looked disreputable and even rumpled.
Instead, he looked more like a god sent down from above to tempt her. Casually perfect, windblown and far too good-looking, from that disheveled hair of his to his scuffed boots, and all that smooth, mouthwatering muscle in between.
He pulled off his sunglasses and smirked at her, and Chelsea had the uneasy notion that he could read every single inappropriate thought she had right there on her face, like it was a billboard.
“I’m guessing from that look on your face that you know who I am,” he said, that drawl of his like honey, thick and sweet, confirming her fears.
“Your twin brother is busy buying up ranchland north of Flathead Lake, apparently,” she said by way of a reply, afraid that if she looked directly into his hazel eyes she’d go blind, like he was the sun. “Why are you opening microbreweries out here in the middle of nowhere? I’d think your tastes ran more to empire building and the wholesale destruction of natural environments in a cynical bid to line your own pockets.”
And then she aimed her best prim schoolteacher smile at him, deliberately. His smirk turned into something more dangerous.
“Look at that. It’s like we’re old friends.”
“I hope you’re happy,” she said, meaning to maintain her almost believably light tone but losing it somewhere as she spoke. “History is important. Just because you don’t have any of your own doesn’t mean you should stamp all over other people’s.”
“I wasn’t planning to stamp, necessarily.” He eyed her, sending that curious heat stampeding through her again, then jerked his head toward the saloon. “Thought I might walk calmly into Grey’s and enjoy a little bit of Marietta history first hand. Feel free to join me.” That quirk of his lips shouldn’t affect her like that, surely. “We can talk about the many and varied reasons women proposition me, at any time of the day or night.”
Chelsea opened her mouth to say no, automatically, because of course she wasn’t the type of woman who went into bars with strange men in the middle of the afternoon.
But the mountain was behind him, still waiting, and the light was so thick and golden it made him look like he was made of the stuff, like the kind of man sculptors tried to capture in bronze. She didn’t have to turn around to know that Tod was likely looking out the window of his office at this interaction, that Alisa was probably texting it to anyone within a hundred miles who wasn’t around to witness it, and that Carol Bingley herself was either pressed to her own window down at the pharmacy or letting one of her spies do it for her. Because the good news and the bad news of life in a place like Marietta was that everyone knew everyone else’s business.
Mama’s phone would be ringing right now, if it hadn’t rung already. She’d be peering down toward town from her lofty, disapproving perch high in the foothills, and Chelsea would start paying for this indiscretion the moment she walked in the door. Why not make it worth the bother?
And the truth was, no one else in Marietta looked at her like she was edible and he was very, very hungry.
No one else looked at her much at all—and why should they? She’d been exactly the same since birth. Dependable. Dutiful. The standard bearer for what was left of the once-mighty Crawford family, just as her mother wanted, and some part of her had even enjoyed that. She’d babysat for half the town and tutored for the rest, and they all treated her with the same mix of affably mild interest and polite support. She’d lived at home while she’d taken classes at Montana State over in Bozeman because it was easier and cheaper, and she’d settled into her life right here in Marietta without a hitch, like she might as well be one of the cottonwood trees down by the river, rooted in deep to this place. Immovable.
She’d wanted all of that. She still wanted it.
But you’re thirty, not sixty-five, a voice inside of her whispered. You deserve a few interesting afternoons, don’t you?
The only exciting thing that had ever happened to her had actually been happening between Tod and Leona. She’d only witnessed it, and had been patronized about it every day since.
So because it was the last thing anyone would ever expect her do—because she couldn’t believe she’d do such a thing and he looked like he expected her to make the sign of the cross and run for safety and holy water, Chelsea smiled up at Jasper Flint as if he really was the sun and it was still the height of summer.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’d love to join you.”
Chapter Three
That Miss Triple C was not a regular in Grey’s Saloon was obvious by the way she walked inside, ginge
rly, as if she expected a pack of hellhounds to descend upon her the moment she set foot in the comfortably dim interior.
Jasper’s impression was confirmed by the way she looked around wildly, gulped, then strode with more determination than enthusiasm toward the long, wide bar, straight up to the unsmiling older man who stood there, glowering. A glower which turned thunderous as he looked from Chelsea to Jasper and then back again.
“Are you lost?” the man asked, his voice gruff and rude.
“Hello, Mr. Grey,” she chirped, because of course Triple C was polite to the scariest son of a bitch bartender Jasper had seen in a while. She was wearing ruffles, for God’s sake. Ruffles and that perky voice, and why the hell was he hard? Rock hard, like he might die from it.
Unbelievable, he thought, and followed her to the bar.
“Thought I told you to call me Jason a decade back,” the man growled, but his ferocious glare was on Jasper now. “Mr. Grey is my father, and I can’t say I’m particularly close with him.”
“Your father is a lovely man,” Chelsea said staunchly, which made it perfectly clear to Jasper that whatever the man was, he certainly wasn’t lovely. Jason’s snort confirmed it. “My friend and I would like two whiskeys,” she continued, and if he wasn’t mistaken, that was pure bravado in her voice then, pushing back the perkiness and taking on a hint of huskiness when she looked at him. “Right?”
“I won’t decline,” he said, all drawl and no bravado, only need.
The look the bartender shot him was about as unfriendly as it was possible to get without involving fists. Jasper grinned, in a manner he knew perfectly well could only be described as shit-eating.
“Where’s Reese?” Chelsea asked, then turned to Jasper as if she didn’t expect the surly older man to answer her, which he didn’t. “Reese is like a surrogate member of the Grey family. He helps run this place.”