Fall in Love

by Anthology

  Meaning, he was probably the one Jasper had seen behind the bar when he’d wandered in here on Saturday night after moving his meager belongings into the spacious top floor of the depot, which he’d decided to make a kind of loft. He filed away that information, along with the fact that both men carried themselves like ex-military—always a good thing to keep in mind when dealing with other men on their home territory. He waved away Chelsea’s attempt to pay for the drinks, added a beer to the order and a glass of appalling-looking red wine he had the feeling she didn’t even want despite asking for it, and then steered her away from the bar and Jason Grey’s relentless glower.

  She chattered all the way to a booth in the far corner, filling Jasper in on what seemed to be every last member of the Grey family who had ever lived. A cousin in DC. Another in San Francisco. He got the impression of a lot of daughters who cared about as much for their dour father as Jasper did, and a runaway wife. Chelsea either didn’t notice the tension emanating from behind the bar, or was valiantly ignoring it.

  Or, he thought when they sat down and she was clutching her shot glass like it was a life preserver, this was just nerves.

  “I make you nervous,” he said.

  She frowned. “Of course you don’t.”

  He clearly did, and that, perversely, made him feel as relaxed as if he’d just had a full body massage from someone very curvy and morally questionable. He felt lazy and something far darker, far more intent, as he studied her.

  “Is it this bar? Doesn’t look like you come in here much.”

  “For all you know I dance naked on the tables every night of the week,” she snapped at him, and he wasn’t the only one who noticed how the word naked seemed to sit there and spin on the dark wood tabletop between them. She swallowed, hard, like she couldn’t think about anything else. He knew he couldn’t.

  “Every night except the last two, then.”

  “You spent your first two nights in town at the saloon?”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing. I consider it my own, personal welcome wagon. Only without cookies.”

  There was something about the way strands of her blonde hair kept falling out of that twist of hers that made him… edgy. Hungry, maybe, like he wanted to reach over and pull the whole mess of it down just to see it swirl around her shoulders, thick and bright. It was much too hard to keep himself from it. Much, much harder than it should have been.

  “I wouldn’t dream of judging you,” she said, and then her lips twitched as the tone she’d used—the very definition of judgmental—echoed there between them. “Not too openly, anyway.”

  He raised his shot glass and waited. Her face was so open he almost wanted to shield her from the rest of the bar, who surely didn’t deserve to read every last thought she broadcast there. Her alarm, her desire. Her nervousness. Her fascinating resolve. She swallowed hard, then picked up her own shot glass, and he watched her chin rise and her shoulders go back, like she was talking herself into it. Into this.

  His little pugilist.

  “To history,” he said.

  Her blue eyes narrowed.

  “To history,” she replied, and then held her shot glass still while he gently tapped his to the side.

  Jasper tossed the whiskey back, then had the pleasure of watching her do the same. Her eyes watered, her face reddened, but she only coughed once. Then sat there, frozen, staring back at him as if she’d been slapped.

  “Do that a lot, do you?”

  He was mocking her, and she obviously knew it. She blinked until her eyes lost that hectic glitter, then glared at him.

  “I love nothing more than a shot of whiskey at the end of a long school day, thank you,” she retorted.

  “Tell me, Triple C,” he murmured, leaning in close, feeling daggers in his back from across the room but unable to care about anything but that frankly carnal mouth of hers and the way it parted slightly as he took up too much of the space between them. “Is this your big rebellion? Tossing back shots in the middle of town with a stranger?”

  He didn’t know what he expected. Her to laugh, maybe. Or to suggest a more satisfying form of rebellion the way his usual sort of woman would. He certainly didn’t expect that flash of vulnerability in her gaze, or the way she shifted in her seat, then looked down.

  “It sounds so pitiful when you say it.”

  “Not at all, darlin’,” he heard himself say, more drawl than sense. “I’m an excellent way to start a downward spiral. We’ll have you table dancing within the week.”

  He thought he saw the glimmer of a smile in the corner of her mouth.

  “I don’t think multi-billionaires can claim to be anyone’s downward anything,” she said, and it took a moment for him to understand why it got under his skin. It was the brisk, matter-of-fact way she said it.

  She wasn’t flirting with him. She was simply stating the obvious.

  It was remarkably refreshing.

  “A rich bastard’s still a bastard.”

  She looked up then, her gaze solemn. “That’s true. My ancestor Barton Crawford was a very rich man, for his time. And by all accounts, an ass.”

  “Then by all means, let’s make him a museum.”

  Her smile was faint, but there, and it should have alarmed him that he viewed that like his own, personal triumph. But he was too focused on the way her fingers clasped the stem of her wine glass, more elegant than their surroundings, and too obsessed with imagining what she’d look like out of those fussy clothes she wore. Naked, he thought, and spread out across his bed, nothing but heat in her eyes and a smile on that decadent mouth of hers—

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted something like this, so badly and completely. Because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted something he couldn’t snap his fingers and have, just like that.

  “It’s my mother,” she said. Then stopped and looked down, as if biting back whatever she’d been about to say. When she met his gaze again, hers was resigned, filled with a sort of amused love he recognized, and that resolve. “Life hasn’t been as kind as it could have been to my mother. Her father lost all his money and then my father died in a great deal of his own debt. She had to sell off all her family’s land, but kept the old house, because her ancestors built it so long ago it was free. My older sister and brother provided her with grandchildren, but they don’t live here, where she would dedicate herself to educating them on what she has left of her legacy. So what she has is family history.” She shrugged. “As obsessions go, hers is mild.”

  But what Jasper saw were all the things she didn’t say, stuck in between the lines. It was all there on her open, expressive face, not at all hidden by that hint of wariness in her too-blue eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to reach out and touch another person like this, like it was a physical necessity.

  He fought it off.

  “Doesn’t sound like there’s much room for you in there.”

  “This is Big Sky country. There’s always room.” But her chin was up, and he doubted it. “I love teaching and I’m good at it. I’ve lived here all my life and wouldn’t leave if I could. We have a lot going on, though maybe not by your Dallas standards.” She sat too straight, too still. “There’s what will probably be the wedding of the year next Saturday, big and brash and beautiful. Then the rodeo a week after that, and we’ll go all out for both. The wedding is one of our own and the rodeo is tradition.”

  “I never said I didn’t like tradition.”

  “You don’t have to say it.” She looked him up and down. “You are it.” She lifted up her glass then set it down again. “You’re not going to stay here. You know you’re not. You have a whole world to play in, and what’s one small town next to that? You’ll make your microbrewery and then you’ll get bored with it, so you’ll hire someone else to run it or you’ll sell it.”

  There wasn’t a shred of accusation in her tone, not a hint of it in her gaze, and yet he stiffened.
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  “No point in living the next few years of my life for myself if you can decide how it’s all going to go, just like that.”

  His voice was too curt, and he didn’t know why he was tense in the first place. Why he cared what this woman—plain by his usual standards, and why was that so hard to remember when he looked at her?—thought about him. Especially because she was probably right.

  His twin brother Jonah was the magnate, he was the dilettante. Or so Jonah had informed him the last time they’d spoken.

  “But I’ll still be here,” she said, her voice low and easy, but not quite happy, snapping him back from yet another unpleasant contemplation of his strained relationship with his brother. Then she laughed, and he felt it like a rush of something carbonated, washing over him. “I’ll be right here, trading concerned glances with every person who walks by because we’ve all known each other since birth. I’ll learn how to age into my old maid status gracefully, and stop trying to date the few single men left who haven’t already dated my friends. I already dress like my mother, as you so thoughtfully pointed out this morning. I’ll become her sooner rather than later, ranting about the Crawfords and shushing boisterous children like a librarian except in the middle of Main Street, and you know what?”

  He didn’t think she knew that her cheeks were flushed with that tell-tale color, that her eyes were brilliant, that she looked more alive, and more beautiful, than he could have imagined possible. He felt that kick inside, in his gut and high in his chest, and he knew what it meant. What it was. However little he wanted it.

  He’d be damned.

  But she was still talking.

  “This is a good life,” she said quietly, with great conviction, and he believed her. “I might not have everything I want, but I’m happy. And it wouldn’t kill you to let us build that museum, because what do you care, in the end? This is nothing more than a little side project for you to play with between acts of corporate dominance.”

  Jasper forgot about his beer. He saw nothing but Chelsea. He wanted nothing but Chelsea. He couldn’t keep himself from grinning.

  “This is it, Triple C.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  He poked his finger down into the table between them.

  “This moment, right here. This is that pivotal moment where you get to decide what kind of woman you are. What kind of life you want to live.”

  “I’m thirty years old,” she said dryly. “I’m a well-established high school history teacher in the rural community where I was born. I’m pretty sure this is my life.”

  Jasper flipped his hand over and let it lie there, open, and he saw the way her throat moved, how she stared at it, as if she could feel the same pull he did.

  “You can be this old maid creature you keep talking about,” he said. “You can live it the way it is in your head, the way you see it all unfolding. Wearin’ your mama’s clothes and giving a shit what all these people think of you.”

  “Of course I care. I’ve known them all since birth.” Her chin rose higher. “I like them. Most of the time.”

  “Do they get to decide who you are or do you?”

  She stared at him for a long moment, so long he thought he’d read this wrong, read her wrong. But then she shifted slightly, and he was relieved. Maybe too relieved.

  “What’s the other option?” she asked.

  “That’s the fun one.” He grinned. “You can be the woman who gets on the back of the bike of a man she met this morning, and lets whatever happens next, happen. No matter who’s watching, even if they’ve known you since birth.”

  Her hands twitched near her glass, but she still sat there, tight and frozen, as if she was afraid to move.

  “To be clear,” she said, in a very, very prissy voice that he was starting to understand meant Chelsea at her most nervous, “this is you propositioning me?” Her voice squeaked slightly on propositioning, and his grin widened. “At five-fifteen on a Monday evening two tables away from my dentist?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s definitely what this is,” he agreed, and thought he might lose it when her eyes went molten. “All you have to do is decide.”

  She licked her lips, he felt it like she’d kicked him, and then she blew out a breath like her lungs hurt.

  “Well,” she said, softly. “That’s not really much of a decision, is it?”

  And he experienced a stabbing moment of perfect fear that he knew he’d have to face later, when his mind worked again the way it was supposed to, when he was free of this spell she’d cast without him even noticing—

  But then she leaned in close and slipped her hand into his.

  Chapter Four

  Out on Main Street again, Jasper climbed on his bike and started it up with a big growl of its powerful engine, then looked over his shoulder at Chelsea with his clever eyebrows raised, daring her.

  He didn’t think she’d do it, she realized.

  And if she was honest, neither did she.

  His eyes were that curious shade of hazel that made her think of sunshine and toffee, caramel and whiskey, sweetness and sin all at once, and they were fixed on her with so much heat. So much intent. And she knew he was right. This was her moment, here and now. She could seize it or she could hide from it, but he’d laid out the consequences of both of those choices on the table between them in the saloon in that stark, matter-of-fact way of his that his grin softened but didn’t sweep away. Like he was her own, personal prophet, straddling a silver motorcycle on a gleaming fall evening, tempting her toward the kind of wickedness she’d only ever dreamed about before.

  She’d dreamed about so many things, and done none of them, because she’d spent her whole life taking the safe route, the expected path, the dutiful road. She’d pretended that being a coward deep down where it counted was a virtue. She’d let the fact she was afraid keep her from, well, everything. She’d never explored the world. She hadn’t applied anywhere but Bozeman for college, even though she kept a private journal filled with dreams about magical, far-off cities: New York. Paris. London. Hell, even Seattle, the nearest big city, had seemed too big and too far for her. She’d only dated boys and then men she’d known would ask nothing of her, who she’d thought she could slot right into the life she already knew so well and help her keep herself safe in the role she’d been handed so long ago. Hadn’t Tod simply been more of the same?

  She’d been hiding all her life.

  But somehow this man—this architect of her mother’s latest despair and she knew she should heed that, or at least care about it more than she did in this moment—saw her. Straight through her, inside of her, to all those things she’d packed away years ago and told herself were for someone else. Those crazy dreams. That wildness she’d thought she couldn’t have. The secret Chelsea Collier no one had ever known existed except her.

  It was as exhilarating as it was terrifying, flashing through her like an electrical storm.

  Chelsea took a deep, shaky breath. Then another. She knew there were eyes on her, approving and judgmental in equal measure, from every part of Main Street. She didn’t look around to confirm it; she knew. She could feel them, just as she was sure she could feel her own mother’s glare from as far away as Crawford House way up in the foothills, trying to bend Chelsea back into obedient shape from all those miles away.

  But instead, Chelsea met Jasper’s 100-proof gaze and told herself it didn’t make her feel the least bit drunk.

  “I’m not getting on that thing without a helmet,” she told him.

  Prim and proper, as if she was discussing a ladies luncheon instead of… all the things that swirled between her and this man—this stranger—and made her feel wild and unmanageable and alive.

  Alive, like she’d been faking it all this time. Every day of her life, until this one.

  Jasper grinned, then reached down into one of the side compartments on his sleek and sexy machine and pulled out a little leather thing that she supposed was a helmet. Technically. Th
ough she couldn’t imagine what good leather would do if they—

  But she wasn’t going to think about consequences. Not tonight.

  “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “But you’re going to have to let your hair down, Rapunzel.”

  Chelsea’s throat was too dry. Her fingers shook. But she reached up and released the clip that held her chignon in place, then let her hair tumble down, aware as she did it that she was trespassing into the kind of feminine territory she’d always thought she was too boring, too responsible, to take part in. She’d watched girls do this all her life, and so, somehow, she couldn’t help herself tonight, given the opportunity to act like someone else. Like the Chelsea he seemed to see, instead of the Chelsea all the other men she’d dated had known perfectly well would never do anything like this.

  As her thick, blonde hair fell down to her shoulders, she shook her head to make it swirl around her, then ran her fingers through it in an age-old gesture she’d never understood the full power of until now.

  Until Jasper Flint sat on a gorgeous bike and watched her with the narrow, hungry focus of a predator, that hard grin of his a threat and a promise, reverberating in her like a chord struck long and deep.

  She buckled the leather helmet beneath her chin, then leaned in when he beckoned and let him check its tightness. Her knees felt wobbly and there was a hunger carving out an empty space in her belly. Lower. She felt his breath on her face, his strong fingers brushing against her skin, and shook, deep inside.

  “Get on,” he said, his voice gravelly, and she didn’t have to be an expert on men to know that meant he was as affected by this as she was. That made her feel small and powerful at once. Almost dizzy. “There’s a lot of carousing yet to do before we lose the light.”

  “I’m not much of a carouser,” she told him, very seriously, because she thought he ought to know the truth before this went too far. “In the sense that I’ve never caroused in my entire life, by any definition of the word. You might want to adjust your expectations.”