by Leslie North
“If I hurt myself…” Her voice wavered, the first chink in her brave armor.
Chase put his hands at her waist to help her down. She landed close, between his boots, her bare feet tangled in the tall prairie grass, and brought with her that heady mix of cultivated flowers and the right amount of feminine complexity. The moment her stare ascended his chest and connected with his, she bolted like a frightened mare. At the passenger door, she laid down the law.
“No peeking.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“No side mirror.”
Chase maneuvered the side mirror flush with the truck.
“I mean it, Chase.” Her threat was more nerves than bluster.
As tempted as he was—and fuck it all, he was not a man given to much restraint of any kind—he knew trust, to Gretchen, didn’t come easy. His distillery depended on making nice with Mayor de Havilland and Gretchen.
“I’ll put my hat brim over my eyes.” Chase kicked back against the front right fender and did as he promised. Couldn’t see a goddamned thing. His nose prickled at the proximity to his sweat ring. He heard the bing-bing-bing of the door chime until she pulled the door closed. Against his back, the truck gyrated. She was either changing fire-drill fast or was making grand use of his back seat in a vastly different way. The thought of her in the throes of self-pleasure challenged the zipper of his Wranglers from the inside.
Jesus, she would think he looked.
Chase shifted himself, tried to think of something non-Gretchen, even went so far as to picture council elder Bettye Lindsey naked, but the spicy sauce he had eaten returned to scald the back of his throat.
Gretchen popped open the truck door.
Chase snatched his hat south to shield his erection and took a good, long look at the redhead in his overalls. She looked a bit like she’d been swallowed by a denim whale with metal clips for eyes. Wisely, she had fastened a hair clip she produced from God-only-knew-where to the excess fabric bowing wide at her hip. Otherwise, Chase would have had a choice view straight down to her religion. She was business up top, with her fancy hair and silk blouse and ivory pearl buttons, and his kind of party on the bottom: denim and bare toes and dirt. The only thing missing was a hat.
He reached inside the cab and pulled out his dress hat. The one-of-a-kind, custom El Toro with a diamond inlay on the ribbon had been a gift from his sponsor the day he signed his contract. No one else had been allowed to try it on—not even his brothers. Somehow, now seemed the perfect time to share it.
She reached up and pulled a long pin from her hair. Like some kind of witchcraft, shiny hair that had once been twisted and cinched all to hell unwound into mesmerizing, thick waves like those he had seen at her temples the previous day. One pin.
He placed the expensive hat on her head.
Against her forehead, the dark gray felt brought out her smoky lashes, shades of gunmetal in her mostly-green irises, a dusting of freckles cresting her cheekbones that he hadn’t noticed before. Cinched beneath the pristine leather hat band, hair the color of blueberry honey poured over her shoulders.
El Toro had never looked better. No words came.
She shrugged her shoulders as if to say what now?
He scrambled for something to say but everything that sparked sounded like a fuck boy line. Bull riding. Stick to bull riding, Chase.
“Gloves.” His vocal cords sounded as if they had been ridden hard and put away wet.
Chase offered her his best work gloves—no tears, reinforced pressure points, a cuff to protect the delicate skin at her wrists from a rope burn. She slid them on then wiggled her bare toes.
“What about shoes?”
“My work boots would slide right off you. You’ll get a better hold on the barrel with your feet. Truer to real bull riding.”
He grabbed her hand and tugged her toward Yancy’s contraption. Though she walked beside him, her resistance telegraphed through the muscles in his hand, his forearm, his shoulder.
“I don’t know about this, Chase.”
Her voice was flat, all her previous bravado squeezed dry. It occurred to him that Gretchen de Havilland had probably not run up against many things in life she was not good at, and her inability to wing it probably left her on the sideline of a great many rodeos.
Chase stopped before her, took her hands in his, and squeezed until her hat brim lifted and her gaze met his. “No surprises this time. I won’t let you fall.”
She inhaled a deep, fortifying breath and nodded.
Yancy’s contraption consisted of an old oil drum suspended on pressure coils between four points—three Shumard oaks and one stake cemented in place like a fencepost because they lacked a fourth tree. The two rear connectors were secured at a higher elevation to better simulate the bull’s natural, nose-down position while bucking. Holding pins at the barrel’s four welded points gave the rider and instructor ultimate control over movement. A braided, high-strength nylon rope wrapped the barrel to mimic the way bulls were tied.
Chase jostled the parts to ensure the fasteners hadn’t rusted out. When her legs proved too short and his overalls so baggy they kept hanging up on the coils, he eased her onto the barrel’s crest but did not let go of her waist. So that he had a hand free to demonstrate the proper rope grip, he held her firmly against him, her bent hip to his thigh.
Arousal began at their joined bodies but quickly roped his groin.
The grip, Chase. Stick to bull riding.
“Around the hand and wrist, back across the gloved palm, lock the fingers down, arm relaxed and bent.” He instructed as best he could with one hand. “You try.”
As he should have expected, she needed to only see something once to master it.
“I’m gonna step away,” said Chase, “but the pins are in and you won’t move. Grip this part of the rope with your other hand until you feel stable.”
Her expression was every greenhorn’s who had climbed atop Stalin’s Assassin. A little like picturing the making of a body cast. She couldn’t learn to trust herself until she made that leap of faith.
He stepped back.
As predicted, she moved less than a caterpillar, but she was pale, even by redhead standards.
“Breathe, chief.” Never before had he called a girl chief, but it seemed to fit. She was the executive of her destiny, the leader of the Close Call tribe, and master over all social proprieties.
Her chest rose against the overall bibs, her breasts rounding out the space nicely. He was pretty sure it was her first significant pull of oxygen since she had landed between his thighs over by the tailgate. That she had done as he’d asked, nearly commanded, let him know she was fully under his influence. He reminded himself to behave, to be a good steward of that influence, no matter how much his hardness dictated that he move his arms inside those cavernous overalls and pleasure her nearly-naked waist-down far more than a ride on a rusty barrel could.
“When you’re ready, release your free hand and raise it up over your head.”
Gretchen did as asked. Even managed a smile at how much she looked like a bull rider.
Chase gently gripped her free wrist, just beyond the glove, her skin heated against the evening chill. He positioned her raised arm to a natural angle then moved it left then right. “Rules state that this arm can never touch your body, the bull, or any equipment. Think of it like a steering wheel. Whatever direction the arm rotates, your body will follow.”
She nodded. Full concentration.
“I’m gonna take the pins out one at a time. Back first, left then right, so you can learn to absorb the movement where the tension is higher.”
He did as promised. Springs gave a bit of play—not even a foot each way. Enough for her to feel suspended but not out of control.
The corners of her mouth tipped upward, all the smile her nerves dared. After a few test bounces, she became emboldened. Open-mouthed, laughing, with an awkward little wooo she asked for the front pins to be removed.
“Are you sure? They’re not as tight as the back.”
“I’m ready.”
Chase wasn’t convinced. He stepped around the front tension spring so that he was at the barrel’s head. If she fell once the last pins were removed, it would be forward, ass over head. He pulled the pins.
She squealed.
He loved every fucking note of pleasure in it.
To Gretchen’s credit, she was a natural—at first: hips moving in an exaggerated arc, absorbing the push and pull of the coils; free hand relaxed and centered; hell, her thighs even gripped the barrel, giving her some real estate under her ass like the pros. But one motion off balance magnified to two then three. Pretty soon her steering-wheel arm veered sharply off center, and she overcorrected forward. She vaulted off the fake beast, straight into Chase’s arms.
Her landing was more like a bug splattered on a windshield: one knee hooked above his elbow, the other dangerously close to his nuts; chest slung over his shoulder; the crotch of the overalls at a proximity to his face that would have sent Mayor de Havilland scrambling down the front plane of his body in a rapid return to decorum. But the woman who landed in his arms was not the mayor. She was Gretchen, and she was shaking shitless. She body-gripped him as if he were the only thing between her and shark-infested prairie grass.
His nine-thousand-dollar hat lay in the dirt ten feet away. Chase didn’t give a damn. He would have backed over it with his tires if he thought it would keep her gripping him like a life preserver.
He slid her lower, into a more natural hug. Near his ear, he heard her shuddering exhale, felt it press her chest against his repeatedly like the quake from a jackhammer.
“Breathe, chief,” he whispered against her ear. God, she smelled like expensive flowers and his laundry soap and everything in the moment that was right with the world. She still had a death-grip around his neck, so he buried his face in her velvety hair and decided, right then and there, if she choked him, he would die a satisfied man.
With each reach for breath, her breasts swelled against him. This time, he didn’t fight his erection. He owned it. His hand slid beneath her bottom, altruistically, to support her weight, selfishly because his cock hurt so fucking much he needed her body, right there, right then, to counter the ache.
Gretchen’s lips began a slow, skimming path from his ear—half exhaling, half stalled kisses—along his cheek, toward his lips. Her wild tangle of russet strands snagged on his late-day beard growth, a little like walking into a spider web to kiss someone, but she deftly scooped the offending hair free before reaching his lips. Once she did, it was an all-out, chute-open, prairie wildfire mixture of bucking tongues and ragged breaths and hot, hot slashes of lips. Forget chief of propriety. When properly lit, Gretchen was eight-point-one seconds of heaven.
She loosened her choke hold. Her fingernails parted his hair to his scalp, raising gooseflesh all over his head and chest and weakening his knees. The kiss softened and settled into a hungry exploration. Neither of them wanted to end it; when he thought his adrenaline might not settle for a kiss, when she was likely questioning the civility of devouring her enemy, who happened to have an erection the size of an oil derrick, the other flicked another new probing switch of lust. His control threatened to shatter.
The last thing he needed was to get involved—really involved, the kind of involved that a woman of principle entertained—with a woman who held the deciding vote on his entire future.
Whistle blown. Rider bucked.
“Gretchen,” he whispered past her lips.
She mewed against his tongue, somewhere between a whimper and an articulate answer that revved his libido to the verge of saying fuck it and carrying her over to his truck bed.
Two days ago, he would have used sex to get his way. But that was when Gretchen was a pageant-ready, dragon-woman politician who ate little boys who littered in her town park for dinner. Not now, after she had reminded him of this special place that he had almost forgotten. Not after he found her to be a do-gooder, in government and life, right down to her inability to curse. And certainly not after she’d listened to him, closely enough to write down all his ideas about the event, to cross her arms in that thoughtful way of hers and consider everything he had to say about the distillery.
He extracted himself from her kiss, a little like an old rodeo star mourning his final ride. “It’s getting late.”
Gretchen’s gaze skittered to the grass, not daring to meet his. She blinked as if awakening from an intoxicating haze. Her fingertips brushed their glistening mix of saliva from her swollen bottom lip.
And her cheeks turned Chase red.
Chase felt like a heel for pumping the brakes. It wasn’t at all what she must have thought—that after all the women he must have had, she didn’t measure up. Nothing was further from the truth. When she turned to walk away, he snagged her hand and pulled her close.
“Don’t misunderstand this. I want nothing more than to spend the entire night convincing you that I was lying about bull riding, that it isn’t better than sex, and teasing your senses so mindless that you’ll have to list it in your journal to remember it all. But you know as well as me, one more complication between us might just ruin us both.”
She nodded and pressed her lips together as if she didn’t trust herself to speak.
“Besides, you’re the first politician I’ve ever respected. I can’t go ruining that by allowing you to grope me naked.”
A smile threatened but never quite materialized on her beautiful face.
He pulled her into a sweet embrace and kissed her forehead. “Come on, I’ll take you home so you don’t show up at Tanner’s in my overalls.”
“Would be in tomorrow’s paper for sure.”
“You do look pretty cute. I think I have a crush on you.”
Finally, a laugh.
They walked back to his truck, his arm around her, stopping only long enough to swipe his hat from the field. Come sun up, he’d still be the whiskey rebel with the fuck-off reputation, and she’d be the one trying to run him out of town.
Chase put the hat back on her. “Keep it. Makes my head look like the broad side of a barn.”
He was fresh out of honesty. Truth was, it would never look as good on anyone but her. Ever. And it would only serve as a reminder of this evening—an evening he’d best forget.
8
Chase drove into town, headed to the property on Main. He planned to spend most of the day meeting with potential designers. Though he was unable to give them an idea when the distillery would award the project, collecting proposals to jump on construction the first minute after the city council vote seemed like the most efficient use of time.
One week had passed since Gretchen had driven him out of his mind, and nearly his clothes, in the far north pasture. Largely, Mayor de Havilland laid low, put on her polite, bipartisan expression, and stayed inside the brick and mortar fortress of city hall. Never was he surer that she was purposely avoiding him than when she cut out her jelly donut routine.
To distract himself, he advanced the Gretchen-and-Chase-approved events for the town celebration. He had a few surprises up his chambray sleeve guaranteed to drive even the most devout women of Close Call stampeding the main stage and tossing their underwear in a moment of euphoria—though the only woman he wanted to see reach that level of horny was Gretchen, as long as it was somewhere private. And because Mona and January knew a creepy amount of detail about Close Call, he put them in charge of organizing a scavenger hunt around town—a little like the reality television show but without the exotic locales and sexy tourists. His idea to draw a younger crowd and teamwork called for a celebration of the alcohol variety. Gretchen agreed because it was an activity that families could do together, and it highlighted the town’s rich history. Chase also dropped calls and pulled favors all over town for a classic car show out near Wes’s garage, and—to draw people in the night before—a celebrity softball game that inclu
ded a PGA player, a few NFL cheerleaders, a couple of bull rider friends, a Formula One driver who happened to be in Houston that week, and of course, the mayor.
She just didn’t know it yet.
Overall, he had nailed his distillery’s demographic enough to justify the hundred-grand investment and calm the investors. The movement on social media was tremendous. He hoped his sleepy hometown could handle such an influx of people. Not his problem.
One thing that was still his problem was the family-friendly angle to the distillery. Once he got past the absurdity—which made about as much sense to him as kegger parties at the nursing home—he put the best minds he knew to work. Pizza and cold beer on the ranch’s back deck produced ideas from a beer-garden-like outdoor space to a ride-share framework tailor-made for rural living. The best idea, however, came from Wes’s wife Livie, who had spent her childhood among the wealthiest classes in Europe. They were the kind of people who thought nothing of dropping a premium to drink herb-infused water.
“Who wants water that tastes like a plant?” Chase had asked.
“People predisposed to fads,” said Livie. “People with too much money. Parents who want their kids to drink healthy.”
Chase’s heart skipped a beat. His brain rewound the conversation, but the notion hadn’t yet wormed into his thoughts. “Wait…say that last part again?”
“Parents who want their kids to drink healthy.”
Family-friendly. “That’s it. Distilled flavored water.” At which point, Chase launched from his deck chair, gave Livie a peck on the cheek, and excused himself from his own party to retreat to his room and laptop to do research.
That had been four days ago.
In town, Chase took a detour to the post office to pick up a package: a case of six bottles, one of every flavor, made by a distillery in Holland and overnighted from a specialty store in New York. He was fully prepared for it to taste like coffin dirt—which is exactly how far underground their company would be if they embraced this direction and it backfired. Part of him genuinely wanted to offer something unique to the domestic market; part of him simply wanted to pay it lip service—for now. He was in the sixth second of an eight-second run. No one watched the cowboy after the buzzer, anyway.