by Luxie Ryder
Misty’s eyes narrowed, glittering with scorn. ‘You sure did.’ Her brittle laugh saddened Aiden. He didn’t know this person. ‘You are sorely mistaken if you think I’m the naïve little fool I once was. What did you think—that you could just roll up to my door and expect me to fall into bed with you again?’
‘Jesus, lady, what in the hell gave you that idea? Seth and I just wanted to stop by and say hello.’ Aiden scrambled for the right words—words to defuse the situation and take the anger out of her eyes. ‘We know you are married, from the stuff we read about you in the newspapers and saw on TV a while back. We weren’t here to try to seduce you.’
‘So what do you want? Money, is that it? Well, you missed the boat on that one too. The days when I had any money, not that I’d have allowed you to blackmail me for it, are long gone.’
Another silence fell over them and Seth looked to be just as stunned as Aiden by her outburst. Again Aiden tried to turn away, at a loss what to say to her in the face of her apparent hatred for them, but Seth didn’t give up as easily.
‘What in the hell has happened to you, Misty?’
Regret clouded her eyes for a moment before she quickly chased it away. ‘What happened to me is that I was fucked over one too many times by one too many cowboys. I’m not the fool I once was.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you.’
‘We were friends once, if nothing else. All we wanted to do was visit with you. I guess Aiden’s right. We made a mistake. The Misty we knew doesn’t exist anymore.’
With that, Seth walked away, punching the wall for good measure. Aiden hoped he hadn’t busted his hand up.
Turning to her, Aiden had so much he wanted to say, but knew it fell on deaf ears. He shook his head in disgust. At least he had the satisfaction of seeing she had some shame over her behavior when she blushed and looked away.
Aiden went to look for Seth before he let loose and did something stupid that would get them fired.
Maybe now they would both forget about her.
Chapter 3
Misty shut the door as Aiden walked away, her hands and knees shaking from a mix of anger and nerves. She sank down onto the hard wooden chair in front of her makeup table, wincing when she caught sight of her reflection. No wonder Aiden and Seth had been so surprised at the change in her. She’d surprised even herself.
The tears came not long after they left. What had happened to her? Did Wade fuck her over so badly, she didn’t even recognize friendship when she saw it? Misty cried for her broken dreams, her lost career—and for the optimistic young woman she’d been when she first met the men she had just insulted.
She owed them an apology. Misty scrubbed the smudge makeup from her eyes with a remover pad, blew her nose, and walked out into the bar, hoping they would still be there. Typical of her luck, they had gone. She returned to her dressing room, packed her small bag and headed home.
She didn’t live on the compound. So she had to use a car she hired locally at an exorbitant rate to get to work and back. It was yet another expense she hadn’t allowed for, along with buying all her own meals and paying rent, due to her not being willing to stay in the lodgings provided by her employer. Sharing a room with a handful of teenage girls working through their summer holiday might have been fun a few years ago, or if her mind had been in a better place, but not right now. Misty didn’t want to have to put on a show for others when she was offstage too.
The small two-room apartment she’d rented gave her what she needed the most—somewhere safe to lay her head at night in blessed peace without the fear of drunken insults from her ex-lover and soon-to-be ex-manager. She ran from him so many times, but he’d always found her. Maybe this time, she’d run far enough. Or hopefully, the ink would be dry on the legal documents before he showed up.
Misty’s new home seemed particularly welcoming after the night she’d had. The sparse, modern interior still seemed cold when she looked around at the modular furniture and minimalist décor, yet it gave her some much needed shelter from the world. She was grateful she had the foresight to rent it, in spite of paying too much rent for what was basically a box with no soul.
Aiden and Seth turning up in the very town she’d chosen to live in as she tried to escape her past seemed cruelly ironic. Sure, they weren’t the problem she was hiding from, but their appearance proved to be a painful reminder that she could never totally forget who she was or where she’d been.
Her mom told her much the same last time they spoke on the phone. ‘Tracy, you need to sort this thing out with Wade once and for all. Running away never solved anything.’
She’d grimaced when she’d heard the name that no longer seemed her own. Her mother refused to call her ‘Misty,’ even though she’d been the first to use it. Whenever Tracy Tucker acted a little too uppity for her mother’s liking, she shortened her name to ‘Miss T’ as a joking chastisement. The rest of the family picked it up, and it stuck ever since.
By the time she cleaned up the apartment, did some laundry, and fell into bed, she felt worse than she had earlier. Why had she treated them so badly? In her defense, she hadn’t known until they opened their mouths what they wanted from her. She’d been on the road too long and with Wade for far too many years, to simply believe that they just wanted to rekindle a friendship. Yes, their relationship had become a sexual one, but they’d started out friends. And she missed them for a long time after she’d abandoned them in Nashville. More than once she toyed with the idea of looking them up, but her route never took her close enough to where they’d told her they lived. But then she met Wade, fell in love—or whatever she wanted to call the temporary insanity that had rid her of her senses whenever she got around him.
Misty didn’t want Wade to be the last thing on her mind tonight, as he was so many nights, so she allowed herself to remember her time with Aiden and Seth. Not the sexual part—the part she rarely allowed herself to think about—especially if she wanted to stick to her resolution never to do that again with anyone. No. Misty wanted to think about the fun and feel again the optimism singing in Nashville the first time had given her. She’d been so sure her life was going places back then. Oh yes, it was going places all right. Straight down the pan.
Determined to shake her blues by morning, Misty turned her pillow over to the cool side, gave it a thump, and settled down to sleep.
When she woke, she lay quietly in bed, trying to guess the time by the noises outside of her window, but the street stayed quiet. The thin streak of light crawling across the ceiling, where it seeped in at the edges of the blind, told her the sun hadn’t come up yet, so she closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep. When she gave up on that, Misty tried to put a name to the way she felt.
A little embarrassed? Sure. Maybe even a little sad. But the bubble of excitement she got in the pit of her stomach when she thought of them worried her. What was the point of getting excited about their being here? They probably hated her now anyway.
Despite her belief that staying away from them was for the best, when Misty walked out on stage later that night, she couldn’t help but hope they’d show up and give her a chance to apologize. But they didn’t show. Not that night nor the next two. By the end of the week, she knew she would never see Aiden or Seth again unless she made the effort and reached out to them. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life regretting the way she treated the men who had only ever been kind to her.
The following afternoon, she donned an old pair of boots, a T-shirt, and some jeans. She scraped her hair back off her face before she went down to the stables to find them. The night before, she’d bought some drinks for a few of the guys in the bar, and they’d told her where to find Aiden and Seth. Hearing the ranch hands discuss how strange it was that the pair were doing such menial jobs hadn’t surprised Misty. It was strange. The last time she spoken to them, they were the owners of a struggling, yet still vibrant, ranch. What happened?
Misty skidded to a halt and jumped
back out of sight when she rounded the corner of a barn and found them standing far closer to her than she’d been prepared for. Couldn’t a girl have a moment to pull herself together? She peeked back around at them, hiding behind the building in case they saw her. Aiden had his hat on and shirt off. His face and torso streaked with a mixture of dust and sweat and his jeans torn at the knee. Seth still wore his shirt, albeit open. His hat sat low over his brow, keeping his face in the shade. With his fair hair and light complexion, Misty guessed he couldn’t risk exposing his skin to the sun as much as Aiden did.
A pulse beat harder in Misty’s throat, and she allowed her gaze to roam over Aiden’s taut back when he turned away—from the dimples she could see just above the waistband of his jeans to the bicep muscles stretched taut around the bale of he carried. Seth looked no less tempting. His bare chest gleamed with sweat, the golden hairs curling down his torso catching the sunlight when he sucked in a breath.
A commotion behind her as other people approached forced her to make a snap decision about what would be worse—being caught staring at hot, half-naked cowboys or facing those hot half-naked cowboys before she was quite ready. Quickly jumping forward before the others caught her acting weird, Misty ran round the corner.
If Aiden and Seth heard her walking toward them, they didn’t let on. Misty got right up to the fence of the corral, stood in plain view for almost a minute before Aiden raised his eyes from his task and looked in her direction. His head jerked up and he pushed his hat back off his brow, squinting at her while he wiped the sweat from his face. A low whistle, not meant for her but intended to get his friend’s attention, forced Seth to look up at Aiden and then follow his gaze to where Misty stood.
Misty cleared her throat when her voice failed her and succeeded in squeezing out a greeting the second time she tried. ‘Hi.’
Aiden nodded and turned back to his task. Okay, he wasn’t going to make it easy for her. Misty expected no less from him. She turned to Seth, in the hope he was still the easygoing guy he seemed the first time they met. Misty let go of the breath she held when he smiled and made his way over to her.
‘Hi, Misty, what brings you out here?’
When he got closer, she saw a tension in him that twisted the knot of guilt inside her a little tighter. She really offended him, maybe both of them. Aiden’s reluctance to come near to or even look at her made it clear she got under his skin too. The intensity of their reactions confused her—after all, she hadn’t seen them in five years—but she couldn’t deny the fact they seemed genuinely wary of her now.
‘I wanted to talk to you. Both of you.’
Aiden took his time doing so, but finally, he looked her way again. The strain in his eyes matched that in Seth’s. Again, she asked herself why her actions bothered them so much. Maybe she’d find out.
‘Hi,’ Aiden said as he came toward her and his friend.
The pair of them stood only inches apart, separated from her by a high wooden fence almost as tall as she was. They were head and shoulders above it so she doubted they realized how the way they leaned on the rails and looked down at her made her feel like a kid in a playpen.
‘I guess I owe you an apology.’ She blurted out the words before her nerves got the better of her and she ran like her brain was screaming at her to do.
Aiden’s sharp intake of breath surprised her enough, but when Seth’s eyes went a stormy green, she realized she fucked up again.
‘You ‘guess’, huh? Forget it. You don’t owe us a damned thing.’
‘Steady, Seth.’
Aiden put a hand on Seth’s arm, stopping him from walking away. Misty stared from one to the other, more confused than ever.
‘What did I do now? I mean I know I was shitty to you both the other night. I came here to apologize. Turns out I can’t even do that right.’
She dropped her gaze to the floor, determined not to cry in front of them, even as the tears welled up in her eyes and threatened to spill into the dust at her feet.
‘Damn.’
Seth’s voice held a note of regret and she jumped in surprise as he reached over the fence to touch her shoulder. What was it with these guys? They had faster mood swings than any woman she ever met. He lifted her face toward his with a finger under her chin.
‘Don’t go crying on me now. I’m sorry.’
‘Pay us no heed,’ Aiden added gruffly. ‘We’re working like dogs here. We’re both tired, sore, and cranky.’
She sniffed away her tears and took a step back out of Seth’s reach, smiling a little to show them she was okay. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘That’s a long-ass story, for another time.’ Seth gestured over Misty’s shoulder toward someone’s approach.
She turned to see their boss bearing down on them with a face like thunder.
‘You’d best not let Hoagie catch you here,’ Seth warned.
‘Don’t worry, I can handle him.’ She spoke faster all the same. ‘We can talk more later. I came to invite you both to supper at my place tonight. Meet me at the bar after the show?’
‘Orton!’ Hoagie boomed as he drew level with the group. He turned to stare at Aiden. ‘What in God’s name are you two doing standing around here yakking while I am paying you good money to tend these horses?’
Misty moved fast. The muscle clenching in Aiden’s jaw warned anyone who had the sense to notice that he didn’t take kindly to being spoken to that way. If either of them acted on the anger making them stare the older man down, they’d lose their jobs and it would be her fault.
‘Now, now Mr. Dunshaw. It’s me you should be angry at, not them,’ she said, smiling up at him as she looped an arm through his and turned him around. ‘The boys were just helping me out. I’ve been thinking about doing some riding while I am here and I didn’t know who to ask.’
Hoagie’s anger melted away instantly. ‘Well then why didn’t you come and see me, little lady? I told you when you first got here I’d help you in any way I could.’
Misty remembered all too well the kind of ‘help’ Hoagie Dunshaw made it plain what he had in mind. It didn’t bother her none. She’d gotten used to fending off the attentions of amorous employers. Five years of working every bar, roadhouse, and dive in Tennessee made her immune to their sexist assumptions about her. If they wanted to treat every young attractive woman who crossed their paths like whores, it said more about men like Hoagie than it did about her.
With a last look over her shoulder, and a wink at Aiden, who stood watching her leave, she allowed the boss to take her over to his office. She wouldn’t go into it with him, of course, but he didn’t know that yet.
After she’d blown him off on the pretense of having a prior appointment, she’d gone shopping for supplies. The local store didn’t have very much. After finding something to give the guys for supper that even she couldn’t ruin, she headed home to get ready for work.
For the first time since she started singing at the resort, Misty hated having to wear the cheap polyester outfits Hoagie provided. She had a choice of three, all garishly bright and covered in sequins, and all of them cowgirl style. If she had to pick a favorite it would be the white one, so she slipped it on. Not that she cared what Aiden and Seth thought of her appearance, she reminded herself. She’d have made just as much effort if she were meeting her girlfriends.
But try as she might, Misty couldn’t shake her excitement at the thought of spending time with them again. So when Seth and Aiden walked into the bar later that night, her pulse raced and her heart felt like it wanted to burst out of her chest. She smiled in their direction when they nodded at her as they walked by, and then had to hide her blushes when she played the wrong chord on her guitar. If anyone noticed, no one let on.
When she launched into her final song, Misty played one she wrote many years ago. She never performed it in front of anyone, but the words had danced around in her head all day. The first few notes flowed from her fingers to the guitar and she began to
sing. The crowd fell silent after the first few lines, and she couldn’t be sure if it was because they liked it or just that they never heard it before. Misty looked around the room at the faces watching her, stopping when her gaze landed on Aiden and Seth. She shut her eyes so she could sing the next part. She didn’t need them thinking the song was for them—even though she hadn’t been able to forget one particular lyric since she laid eyes on them earlier.
‘I don’t want you to know the real me, but you take me to a place I cannot hide. You see through my soul and make me reveal, the secrets I’ve locked inside.’
Polite applause followed, and Misty knew the words had been too personal to make sense to anyone but her. It was one of the things she loved about performing her own compositions. She could vent her feelings, purge her soul, and nobody ever would know. Even the lukewarm reception it got didn’t make her regret bringing the song to light.
When she joined Aiden and Seth at the bar, it seemed like she’d stepped back in time. An empty stool appeared between them and a drink waited for her on the bar. Déjà vu couldn’t explain the feeling washing over her and she suddenly got scared that she’d given them the wrong impression. Maybe they did think she was offering more than a simple meal? But when she looked into their faces, the earlier wariness lingered. They were as nervous as her, luckily, they seemed just as determined to move past what happened.
‘I don’t remember you wearing that kind of get up before,’ Seth said, smiling as he took in the polyester and sequins wrapped around her.
‘Hoagie,’ she said in explanation. ‘I hate it. I’d much rather wear my own clothes.’
Aiden chuckled. ‘You mean you don’t want to look like a female Elvis impersonator?’
Misty punched him in the arm, smiling despite her embarrassment. She was grateful they had broken the ice. After that, she found herself relaxing and genuinely enjoying their company, much like five years ago. By the time she let them into her tiny apartment, she all but forgot her worries over their motives.