No Dreams Allowed: A Billionaire Romance

by Sonora Seldon

  “I’ve never been the victim of Cowboy Interruptus before – I have to say, it kind of sucks.”

  Dave delivered this opinion from where he lay flat on his back on the ground. I was sprawled on top of him, and I agreed that this situation sucked … but I repeat, I had him on his back while I lay on top of him, and from that perspective, the situation was amazing.

  At least it would have been amazing, if it hadn’t been for being on the ground outside my bar at one in the morning, with restless customers waiting and me being wired but nervous as hell about where this could go, and where did I want it to go?

  Dave reached up to brush a frizzly strand of red hair away from my face. “Cassie, I’m not sure what happens next here, but I am sure of one thing.”

  His fingers trailed across my cheek. I pushed myself up onto my elbows, I looked down at his infectious smile, and I was so ready to agree with whatever opinions he had had about all this – right about then, I would have agreed with him if he said the sky was green and the grass was blue. “Tell me, kitchen boy.”

  He stroked my arms and I shivered. “Cassie, what I think we both want is something that shouldn’t happen for us here – not here in the dirt in a hurry, not with minutes to spare and people waiting inside. You deserve better.”

  He trailed his hands back up my arms to my shoulders, his eyes pulled me in, and he added, “You deserve hours, Cassie. Hours and hours.”

  My body agreed, my heart was scared and lost and eager all at the same time, and I made a decision.

  “Dave?”

  “Yes, Cassie?”

  “As an employee of the Jayhawk Tavern, you need to be aware of a change I’ve just made to company policy.”

  His grin barely fit on his face. “Ooh, does it involve naughty cooks being disciplined? Promise to tie me up? Tease me and torment me until I explode with animal passion and –”

  “Shut up, loser – as I was saying, the company policy about the owner not dating employees has been suspended. As of now, Dave Whoever-You-Are, you have been awarded provisional boyfriend status.”

  “I like the sound of this.”

  “Just know that you are on probation until further notice – any macho posturing or throttling of customers, any glancing at any other female in existence, and even one kiss that doesn’t threaten to give me heart failure, and you’ll be busted right back down to lonely-cook status, got it?”

  Flat on his back, he drew his hand up to his forehead and tossed me a salute. “Yes, ma’am – Boyfriend Dave is at your service. From this day forward, my imaginary bimbos will go home alone and unsatisfied, I promise.”

  I sat up, and on impulse decided to take advantage of the fact that I was kneeling over an insanely hot guy whose continuing interest in me was impossible to miss, if you know what I mean.

  “One more thing, Dave.” I dropped my voice low and breathy, and reached down to run my hands over his chest. I looked down at him and did a little move with my hips that made him hiss in a sharp breath as he twisted beneath me.

  Yep, I can be a bad, bad girl when the mood strikes me.

  “Dave, this is important. Are you listening?”

  His voice was strained and he was fighting to control himself. Poor guy.

  “Yeah, baby?”

  I leaned down and whispered into his left ear.

  “Dave, you still have to clean the bathrooms.”

  His laughter pealed into the night, we tumbled apart, and the delicious bastard got his revenge by tickling me until I squealed for mercy.

  During those few moments in the Kansas dirt, life was good and my world was perfect.

  One week later my life turned south, my world blew up, and I left Kansas for good. Have I mentioned that I seem to be God’s favorite chew toy?

  6

  The day after our tangle in the dirt was Sunday, the bar was closed, and should I invite Dave over to my place? But my nerves said no, that felt like maybe a little too much and too soon, so we drove over to Alton instead. We cruised their sorry excuse for a mall, I splurged on a double-scoop butter pecan ice cream cone, and I made the mistake of handing Dave five dollars for “something I really need, and besides, you’ll love it” – and then I found myself strolling around the Alton Mall with Dave walking in front of me brandishing his new foam sword, as he declared to random shoppers his intention to “protect the princess from every lowlife bounty hunter in this wretched hive of scum and villainy!” Ten minutes later, we were booted back out to the parking lot by a low-rent mall cop who had zero sense of humor.

  Monday, it was back to the alcohol mines. I dreaded what the regulars would say about my having a shiny new boyfriend, particularly one who also played the starring role of cook night after night and so was readily available for teasing – but for once, they showed mercy. The men adopted Dave as one of their own, the women pretended they weren’t jealous, and I was only asked two or three times for the spicy details of the sex we weren’t having.

  Well, maybe five or six times – and sure, Brenda Fayson and her pals Stephanie and Jenna did demand photos, and Randy Carter said we should put the non-existent video of our imaginary sex up on Youtube, but it was a small town and people were starved for entertainment.

  Tuesday looked bad at first, when I turned into the parking lot of the bar an hour before opening time to find a thin and shivering dog tied to the front door. People who knew I was a sucker for anything with four legs and a sad story dumped animals on me all the time – this one looked worse than most, though, since I could count every rib beneath his matted yellow fur, and the scars on his neck said he’d spent a lot of time chained up somewhere. But he licked my hand and quivered his tail, hopeful he’d found a soft heart – and he spent most of the evening glued to Dave’s side, eating scraps of chicken and hamburger as if food would be cancelled tomorrow.

  Later that night, a rancher from about five miles outside of town came in, downed a beer, and said that his kids were heartbroken about their Border Collie who’d just died at age fifteen, and where would he find another dog that was half as good at helping out with the stock? I decided that a half-starved mix of Golden Retriever and something unknown was close enough to a Border Collie, I introduced the two of them, and my latest charity case rode to his new home on the front seat of the rancher’s Ford F-100 pickup, leaning out of the window and barking to the skies while his entire body wiggled with joy.

  Dave watched the dog go and didn’t say a word. I asked if he’d ever had a dog, and his only answer was a silent shrug before he headed back inside.

  Wednesday was pool league night, and we were hopping busy from open to close. Every table and booth and chair was full, the jukebox pounded, beers sold like the end of the world was scheduled for nine the next morning, and for once it looked like I’d turn a decent profit for the night. I thanked the powers ruling the universe for the invention of pool, while Dave cooked oceans of fries, grilled about a metric ton of burgers, and didn’t get a break until I locked the door behind the last customer at 2:05 in the morning.

  We both took a break then – we took a break, we talked beneath the stars out back for a few minutes before getting started on cleanup, and we kissed.

  Lord, that man could kiss. The taste of his mouth, the musky male scent of his body, the rasp of his beard stubble against my skin as he nuzzled my neck, the playful way he nipped at my shoulder while his hands explored my curves, the way he almost but not quite touched my breasts … I hadn’t felt so warm and wanton since, well, ever.

  Thursday afternoon was slow, so I took advantage of the slack time to head back to the walk-in cooler and get started on the dreaded monthly inventory. Somewhere between counting cases of Corona and bags of lettuce, though, I heard laughter echoing from the direction of the bar. Suspicious laughter, my instincts told me, and I noticed that Dave was nowhere in the kitchen.

  Dave was behind the bar. As soon as I appeared at his elbow, he handed me a box of condoms, and what the hell?
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br />   “You’re figuring to get lucky with me right here on the bar? Because if that’s the plan –”

  “Nope, they’re for him.” He nodded at Thaddeus, the whitetail deer whose head was mounted on the wall behind the bar – as in, the glass-eyed deer who now aimed his vacant stare at the dining room while wearing condoms on his antlers. Each tine of his ten-point spread was covered with a different condom; some were fluorescent orange, some sported alarming bumps and knobs, and others were “ribbed for her pleasure,” although Thaddeus didn’t seem to notice.

  “Dave, are you high or just batshit insane?”

  “C’mon, the poor guy seemed lonely – besides, wait until I add the LED lights, he’ll look amazing. Does will come from miles around, I promise.”

  The Jarratt brothers lifted their glasses of Budweiser in a toast to Thaddeus’s new look, the scattered crowd out at the tables clapped and whistled, and Dave took an elaborate bow. I accepted that my new boyfriend was a dead-deer-decorating lunatic and got back to inventory duty.

  Friday night around eight, the lights wavered and dipped for the millionth time since I’d been running the Jayhawk Tavern. I wondered if I might be able to dig up some incriminating blackmail material on any of the two or three electricians I knew, so I could afford to have them fix Dad’s improvised wiring system – and then it turned out that I knew an electrician who’d do it for free. Sort of.

  Yeah, I caught Dave tinkering with the fuse box.

  “Dave, are you trying to kill us all?”

  “You’re lucky this power setup hasn’t already killed everybody. Hang on, I have to cut everything off for a few minutes –”

  The bar went dark. I kicked Dave in the shins, went out front to assure everybody the lights would be back up shortly, and hoped I wasn’t lying.

  Back at the fuse box, Dave was shining a flashlight into its innards while making thoughtful noises.

  “Dave, do you get that since you can’t even change a tire, I’m not optimistic about your ability to fix this place’s wiring? Do you even have any idea what you’re doing?”

  Surprise, surprise, he did. He wouldn’t reveal the exact source of his expertise with fuses and wires and relays, just that he’d done “a little residential electrical work, here and there” – but wherever he’d learned it, by Saturday afternoon he’d used Dad’s old tools and supplies to turn the wiring from a rat’s-nest nightmare into something that delivered steady, reliable power and looked like it belonged in the 21st century.

  Saturday night, it all came crashing down.

  Just before midnight on Saturday, Shana stuck her head into my tiny office.

  “Some guy out front’s asking for you – he seems kind of unhappy about the quality of our nachos or something, wants to see the manager?”

  I didn’t look up. I was busy staring down at my latest unpaid bills, which I’d arranged in a neat stack on top of the older unpaid bills. “And you couldn’t handle it? Swap out his nachos for something else, comp him a beer, you know the drill –”

  “This guy creeps me out, Cassie.”

  Now I looked up. A man that Shana couldn’t deal with? A guy who rattled the Unstoppable Kansas Sex Machine?

  “Are you okay? Did he put his hands on you, get mouthy, what?” I didn’t wait for her answer, I just got to my feet and headed out through the kitchen on my way to the bar and the dining room, as Shana trailed behind me.

  “No, he just looked at me. He looked at me like I was road kill he’d found smeared all over his tire or something, it was weird – and then he smiled, and he asked for you. By name.”

  Shit. Well, two minutes of my time should be enough to straighten this guy out – and boot him out, if necessary – and then I could get back to being depressed about my empty bank account.

  I hollered at Dave as he headed out the back door with a bag of trash for the dumpster. “Are you poisoning people with your nachos, Dave? Again?”

  He flashed that smile that made me go all weak in the knees. “Nah, I decided to dial back on the strychnine today, boss.”

  Just short of the doorway between the kitchen and the bar, Shana nodded toward a corner table that was lost in the shadows – not that my trouble of the moment needed pointing out, since he was the only customer left on this slow excuse for a Saturday night. “He’s got an accent I’ve never heard before, like he’s from … I don’t know, Europe somewhere?”

  Shana probably had only a hazy grade-school education idea of where Europe even was, but I took her word for it. “Got it – go ahead and get an early start on cleaning up, while I deal with this guy.”

  “Cassie, be careful.”

  “No, he’s the one who needs to be careful.” That was the gospel truth – anybody who gave Cassie Hamilton’s employees a hard time was someone who had a short and unpromising future, unless he pissed all over himself apologizing for his ill-mannered ways, bought something expensive, and left an extravagant tip.

  I walked across the deserted dining room to where the smallest table in the place huddled in a forgotten corner.

  It was Dad’s old table, where he’d sat like a living ghost in the months between Mom’s death and the day his truck was crushed at a railroad crossing. People usually avoided it.

  Man up, Cassie. It’s a table, and Mr. Europe can sit there if he wants. Now get him taken care of so you can get back to your bookkeeping – that money isn’t going to lose itself, after all.

  Arms crossed and feet spread wide, I projected my best ‘woman you do not want to mess with’ vibe. “I understand you have a complaint?”

  The man stared at me with the blank eyes of a dead fish. He said nothing. The overhead lights glinted off his shaved head, and I wondered where he’d gotten the faded white scar that slashed down the left side of his face.

  He tilted his head to one side, crossed his arms to match my own, and kept staring. Well, this wasn’t going to get us anywhere.

  “I’ve got an idea – you hang on for a bit while I go find another ratty little leather jacket like yours, I’ll throw it on and grow some pepper-and-salt beard stubble while I’m at it, and then I’ll come back and we can do an even better job of playing the mirror game, okay? Or, I don’t know, maybe you could just tell me what’s wrong with your nachos instead?”

  He smiled, and it was like a corpse smiling. “I like you. I like your spirit and I have no wish to trouble you, truly, but I do have a question.”

  His voice was quiet and considered, his words clipped and precise, and Shana was right about the accent – the man sounded like one of those vaguely Eastern European movie villains who always get their asses handed to them by Liam Neeson or whoever. Only … he couldn’t be an inch over five-eight but somehow looked twice that size, and I had a feeling that in a fight with this guy, Liam Neeson would the one to limp away.

  If he got up at all.

  I raised an eyebrow, waiting.

  He set his nearly full bottle of Heineken to one side and then waved a hand at his plate of nachos. “The young woman with the impossible breasts said this was popular and inexpensive, but please, what is it?”

  “I believe we’ve already established that those are nachos.”

  “Yes, but I speak of this yellow … material, this sauce that is like nothing found in nature. What is it?”

  European bad-ass or not, my patience with this clown was running thin. “In America, we call that ‘cheese.’ Did you even try it?”

  “In my country, we would call it an abomination in the eyes of God – not that God and I are on speaking terms, not for many years, but still.”

  My fuse was getting shorter by the second. “I’m very damn sorry if Kansas bar food doesn’t measure up to the standards of fine restaurants in Romania or Bosnia or wherever it is you come from, but it is what it is – now, would you like your nachos to be replaced with something else, would you like your money back, or would you like to haul your ass out the door? Because those are your only options, and I have othe
r –”

  “I would like very much to speak to your young man David. I have a message for him.”

  “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

  His deathly smile never wavered. “You are a brave woman, but you are also a terrible liar. Two nights ago I was in a bar much like this one, in the city of Wichita. I spoke to a number of gentlemen with motorcycles, among them a man called Pinky. He and his friends remember David well – they remember that he works here and that he claims you as his woman. I watched as you both came in the front door this afternoon to begin your day of work, and he has not since left. I will speak with David, please. Now.”

  This freak had been spying on my bar? Watching us for hours, after spending days and miles roaming the roads of Kansas, looking for my new boyfriend? What was Dave running from, that some poisonous crazy guy like this was hunting him down?

  I stared into his dead eyes, I fought back panic, and I amped my voice up nice and loud. “Shana, call the sheriff. Tell him I’ve got a stranger here who’s threatening my staff and refuses to leave. He’s probably wanted for something, I’m willing to lie and say I saw a gun on him, and mention the accent, too – Sheriff Good Ol’ Boy will love the chance to bust a ‘gen-yew-ine furriner.’ Do it now, Shana.”

  I turned back to face my imported problem. “Do you have any idea how many laws you’re breaking right now? Trespassing, invasion of privacy, stalking, threat of bodily harm, disturbing the peace, and generally being an obnoxious asshole?”

  “Am I such a terrible creature as that? This is so strange, I thought that I only wished to sample the humble food enjoyed by the hard-working people of rural America, and also have a conversation with someone I have known since he was a boy.”

  The idea of law enforcement being on the way didn’t seem to trouble him. Calm as a summer afternoon, he leaned forward to sample the nachos. One eyebrow went up, he made a face as he chewed, and he reached for his Heineken. One swallow of Dutch piss-water later, he looked up at me again.