Glitter and Grit

by Jessie Evans

  “I can tell,” he said, still holding her gaze. “Do you always come on this strong?”

  Reece lifted one shoulder and let her smile go naughty at the edges. “It depends. I figured the bar would be closing soon and we didn’t have time for bullshit. Besides, I can tell I like you already. So what do you say? You want to drive me home and then…stick around for a while?”

  “How about we have another beer,” the man said as he grabbed the back of her stool and pulled her close with one easy flex of his arm, sending awareness sizzling up her spine and a heavy feeling spreading through her core. “I’d like to talk a little first, see if you’re capable of letting someone else steer a conversation before we think about anything more.”

  “So you’re one of those, are you?” Reece purred, leaning into his chest as the world began to spin lightly around her. “No worries, cowboy. I like a man who knows how to steer.”

  One beer was affecting her more than three shots of bourbon usually did, but Reece wasn’t inclined to worry about it. Her headache was gone, her body aching in ways more pleasant than when she’d been limping down the street, and this night was shaping up to be far more exciting than she’d been expecting. Broody was gorgeous, an excellent flirt, and strongly hinting that he was a man who liked to take control in the bedroom. It was enough to send shivers of anticipation dancing across her skin.

  By the time she finished her first beer, she was pressed tight against his chest while his big hand cupped her bottom beneath the bar. By the time she was halfway through her second, she was in his lap, whispering dirty things into his ear. By the time pint number two was empty, Broody had his arm locked around her, gluing her back to his front while he paid the tab.

  Reece remembered arching her back, rubbing her ass against the bulge in his jeans, and his whispered warning to behave until they got out of the bar. She remembered kissing him in the parking lot and feeling the world whirl as he claimed her mouth with deep strokes of his tongue. She remembered hoping he fucked like he kissed and how turned on she was before they even managed to get into his truck and out onto the road.

  The next morning she would recall scraps of teasing conversation and flashes of images from the road to Broody’s house—a line of cypress trees lit up in the high beams and the moon peeking out from behind dark clouds as the snow showers blew over—but after that…nothing.

  Nothing until she woke up wearing a strange man’s tee shirt, alone in a strange man’s bed, and looked out the window to see a gut-wrenchingly familiar view.

  “Oh, shit,” Reece whispered, clutching her aching head as her eyes scanned the snow-dusted yard, mammoth barn, and impeccably maintained fences stretching out toward the gently rolling hills in the distance.

  She’d been on the property when those fences were first going up, back when she’d still been taking riding lessons from Mr. Parker, before her eighteenth birthday, when the coach she’d respected had shown his true colors. Ugly, fucked up, “you’re not jailbait anymore” colors that had sent a wrecking ball swinging through her entire life.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she repeated, heart racing as her stomach tried to turn itself inside out.

  Neil Parker could be in the house right now. She had no idea who Broody was—a friend visiting for the holidays or one of the men Neil had hired to take over handling his cattle—but she couldn’t stick around to find out.

  Thanks to her stupid decision to mix painkillers and alcohol, she couldn’t remember what she and Broody had done in this bed last night. But whether he’d given her the most exquisite pleasure she’d ever known or proven to be all talk and no action, it didn’t matter. She didn’t have the luxury of waiting for him to come back to bed and refresh her memory. She had to get dressed and get the hell out of here.

  She never wanted to see Neil Parker again. Even nearly twelve years wasn’t long enough to banish the memory of his thick arms pinning her to the wall of the barn or his cold, rough hand shoved up her shirt. It had been so much worse than if he’d been a stranger or one of the losers she’d dated back in high school. She’d trusted Neil, idolized him. He’d been the supportive, indulgent, proud father figure she’d never had and then he’d poisoned every memory with what he’d tried to do.

  As Reece struggled into her jeans and yanked her sweater back over her head, her traitorous brain replayed scenes of that rainy spring afternoon again and again, until she was shaking all over and felt like she was going to be sick on the Navajo rug spread over the bedroom’s hardwood floors. Her duffel felt like it weighed fifty pounds more than it had yesterday and her knees threatened to buckle as she stepped into the hall and came face-to-face with a portrait of Neil hanging on the wall beside the staircase.

  Cursing beneath her breath, Reece fled down the stairs, clinging to the banister as the world tilted on its axis. She didn’t have time for a dizzy spell; she had to get the hell out of here before it was too late. Heart pounding in her throat, Reece made it through the foyer and out the door without seeing a soul. As soon as she was outside, she aimed her body for the hills in the distance, and the ranch on the other side, and ran.

  The only good thing that had come out of last night was that she was now only a couple of miles as the crow flies from home. Because Neil Parker hadn’t just been her coach, he’d been her closest neighbor and her father’s best friend. Her father, who had believed his old buddy’s side of the story instead of his daughter’s. Her father, who had agreed she should be stripped of her Clayton County Rodeo queen title for fraternizing with a judge.

  Her father, who she was even more grateful was in Montana right now. If she had to look him in his pale green eyes this morning, she didn’t know if she’d be able to keep from confronting him and that wasn’t the way Reece worked. She didn’t dredge up the past. She didn’t hope for the future. She lived for the moment because the past was too messed up and the future too damned scary to look it in the face for too long.

  Until the accident, she’d been able to hold both the past and the future at arm’s length. But as she fled across the snow-covered field, the cold air rasping in her lungs until she tasted blood in her throat, Reece could feel all the things she secretly feared ganging up on her. They chased her through the woods to the home she’d left years ago with nothing but three hundred dollars in her pocket and a suitcase full of anger and dreams.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Grayson

  Grayson Parker told himself he was glad the wild little blonde he’d brought home from the bar had passed out before they made it to the bedroom. If he hadn’t been feeling so low last night—caught up in worries about the future of the ranch and what would happen to his little sister if he lost their childhood home—he wouldn’t have brought Shortstack home in the first place.

  Yes, she was the sexiest woman he’d met in years, and he’d felt an instant connection that went beyond chemistry. But he hadn’t had a one-night stand since he was in his twenties and been too stupid to realize that sex was always better if he waited to get to know the woman he was taking to bed.

  As Grayson filled a tray with toast, coffee, a tumbler full of water, and two aspirin—in case Shortstack woke up with a headache—he told himself this had worked out for the best. Now, they could start over. They could exchange names, he could learn how long she was going to be in town, and they could go out on a real date instead of hooking up outside the bar. And maybe she’d feel comfortable telling him why a spitfire like her had bruises all over her legs: black and blue marks so ugly it looked like she’d been beaten within an inch of her life before moseying into the saloon.

  It had been dark in the bedroom when Grayson had stripped Shortstack’s jeans down her muscled legs. He hadn’t intended to do anything but get her comfortable before tucking her into bed. But when he saw the bruises, he couldn’t keep from staring or imagining all the ways he’d like to damage the man who’d pounded on a woman no more than five feet tall.

  After seeing her legs and hearing s
ome of the things his little sister’s husband had done before Layla finally gathered the courage to leave him, Grayson was beginning to wonder if there were any decent men left. Or any fully-functional people, period. More and more, it seemed like the world was full of monsters and the shattered victims they’d left behind. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been around a happy couple and none of his buddies’ marriages had made it past the ten-year mark.

  Someone always cheated or lied. A wife got tired of waiting for her husband to return from a deployment, or a husband figured he could get away with fucking another woman as long as it happened in a foreign country. Military marriages had a notoriously high divorce rate, but it still seemed like someone close to him should have been able to make it work, one damned couple in the dozens he’d known in his twenty years of service.

  But Grayson couldn’t pull up a single example and his own marriage was no exception…though he didn’t like to compare apples and oranges. Deep down, he’d always known that he and Kimber weren’t going to go the distance. He’d realized he was making a mistake from the day he’d slipped the engagement ring on her finger, but he’d let loneliness convince him otherwise. Now, he knew better and had come to peace with the possibility of spending the rest of his life alone.

  Still, he couldn’t help hoping that Shortstack was going to stick around town for a while. There was something about her that made his heart—and other parts of his body—sit up and take notice in a way they hadn’t in a damned long time.

  “Grayson!” Layla called out, his sister’s strangled cry breaking into his thoughts. “Come in here! Hurry!”

  Grayson abandoned the tray on the counter and sprinted through the living room toward the dining room. He’d been on guard since Layla moved back home two weeks ago, ready to defend his sister in case her abusive husband showed up to make good on his threat to kill Layla before he allowed her to file for divorce.

  Grayson already had his cell out of his pocket when he rushed into the dining room to find Layla standing by the bay windows, staring out into the yard, making an easy target of herself.

  “Get away from the window, I’m calling 911,” Grayson said. “Where’s Wayne? Is he alone or—”

  “It’s not Wayne.” Layla pointed a finger to the snow-dusted world outside. “It’s Reece Hearst! She just stumbled down our front steps and did the run of shame past the barn.”

  His sister turned, her pale blue eyes wide in her thin face. “Tell me you didn’t sleep with the girl who ruined Daddy’s life, Grayson. Please tell me that was some other trashy blonde with big hair and that my eyes are playing tricks on me.”

  Grayson let out a strained breath as he searched the yard between the house and the barn. But there was no sign of the blonde he’d brought home last night except a trail of boot prints leading through the snow.

  “She’s the reason Daddy got kicked off the rodeo judging committee and lost half his clients the year after I graduated from high school.” Layla rushed on before Grayson could get a word in. “The poor man could barely hold his head up in town for years. Sleeping with that girl is not only disgusting, it’s a betrayal of Daddy’s memory and I can’t believe—”

  “Now hold up a second.” Grayson ran a hand through his hair as he shoved his cell back into his jeans pocket. “Reece was nine years old when I left town. I had no idea what she grew up to look like.”

  “But that woman’s name was Reece, wasn’t it?” Layla crossed her arms and pinned him with a glare, clearly not inclined to let him off the hook so easily. “Seems like you could have put two and two together.”

  “I could have. Maybe.” Grayson let out a long sigh, before continuing in a softer voice, “If she’d told me her name.”

  “If she’d…” Layla broke off with a grimace. “Oh, wow. Classy, Grayson. You didn’t even bother to get her name? I just hope you were safe, because God only knows what kind of cooties that woman has.”

  “We didn’t sleep together,” Grayson said, not liking the derision in Layla’s tone and liking talking about his sex life with his sister even less. “But if we had, it would be between me and her. Dad’s dead, Layla, and that part of my life is none of your business.”

  Layla’s outraged expression transformed to a hurt one. “Well, excuse me for being concerned that my only brother is hopping into bed with a woman who’s slept her way through half the cowboys in pro rodeo.”

  “So she didn’t marry her high school sweetheart,” Grayson said, his voice rising with frustration. “Maybe she has the right idea. It’s not like marriage and until death do you part worked out so well for either of us.”

  Layla’s eyes began to shimmer. A moment later her face crumpled.

  Grayson cursed beneath his breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be an asshole. I didn’t sleep well last night and—”

  “No, it’s fine,” Layla choked out. “You’re right. My marriage was a joke. A sad, scary, pathetic joke.”

  “Layla, please,” Grayson said, his arms lifting helplessly at his sides.

  He wished he could go to his sister, give her a hug, and say something to make her feel better, but he hardly knew her. She’d been a kid when he’d enlisted and there had been so little time to come home during his first few years in the Air Force. And then he’d been married and she’d been married and in between deployments and limited vacation time and all the demands of his job he’d lost touch with his family.

  Because you wanted to lose touch, because you made the choice to run after Mom died and you never stopped.

  “So go ahead and sleep with whoever you want,” Layla continued, wiping the tears from her cheeks with the sleeve of her flannel pajama shirt. “You’re right, I don’t know shit about love. And Merry Christmas, by the way. I put your presents under the tree. You can open them whenever you want.”

  “Layla, wait,” Grayson called out as she hurried across the room and through the doorway into the foyer. “Please wait. I’m sorry, okay?”

  He was answered by the sound of Layla’s footsteps pounding up the stairs and her bedroom door slamming closed. He cursed again, fighting the urge to slam his fist into the heavy oak of the dining room table. He wasn’t any better at communicating with Layla than he had been with his dad.

  Grayson had always been closer to his mom, preferring to go hunting with her and his uncles than to spend extra time in the barn with Dad. He loved horses and riding lessons with his father, but he was passionate about the ranching side of the family business, not the rodeo competitions. Grayson had always been a practical person, even when he was a kid. He liked to get his hands dirty, put in an honest day’s work, and go to bed worn out.

  After nearly twenty years in the Air Force, he’d been eager to get back to the land and the life he’d loved being a part of when he was younger. But so far all he’d inherited from Neil Parker was unpaid debt, a ranching operation stuck twenty years in the past, and a little sister terrified that her abusive husband was going to end her life before he allowed her to move on.

  Grayson sat down hard, rubbing the backs of his eyes with his fingers.

  He couldn’t believe his dad hadn’t noticed any warning signs in Layla’s decade-long marriage to Wayne Higgins. Domestic abuse happened behind closed doors, but it left marks the outside world could see. Their father should have noticed that his daughter was becoming withdrawn and isolated, that she rarely came to town and even more rarely laughed. He should have paid attention and protected Layla. Instead, Neil had spent his time bemoaning his loss of status in the local rodeo community and sleeping with women half his age.

  Neil had always been self-absorbed and seeing him hit on girls in their early twenties, only months after his wife died, was part of the reason Grayson had enlisted straight out of high school. He’d had good grades and could have gone the officer route, but he’d been so bitter and angry that he’d wanted to jump straight into a fight, not waste four years studying. At eighteen, he’d been desperate to
get out of Lonesome Point and hated his father with every fiber of his being.

  The years had gradually dulled his hatred to distaste and finally pity, but as Grayson studied the trail of boot prints Reece Hearst had left behind, he felt anger rise inside of him again. He’d been overseas in Korea when the scandal broke, but he remembered the year his father had been accused of sleeping with one of his students, a girl he’d helped vote into a title in the rodeo circuit. Grayson remembered thinking the accusations could be founded, no matter how vehemently Neil had insisted it was a case of the girl having a crush on her teacher and telling lies that she wished were the truth. But Neil had always liked them young—the younger, the better—and had a way with girls looking for a father figure.

  Grayson’s stomach churned as he realized he might have narrowly avoided sleeping with a woman his father had slept with before him. The thought made him ill, but not as ill as the bruises on Reece’s legs or the pained whimpers she’d made as he covered her with his quilt last night.

  As he’d stood there beside the bed, watching her angel face twist in fear and pain as her dreams became nightmares, all he’d wanted to do was ease her suffering. Shortstack was an undeniably sexy woman, but there was more to her than that. She had a quick wit and confidence that was as attractive as her curvy body. She had a twinkle in her eye that said she’d learned to laugh at the bullshit in the world and a sadness in her smile that made it clear she’d been hurt along the way.

  And judging from the way she’d run from the house this morning it was pretty clear she hadn’t been happy to wake up on Parker land. It made Grayson wonder what had gone down twelve years ago and if his own father had contributed to the pain he’d seen in Reece’s eyes. Neil had certainly broken his share of hearts, and it would have been just like his father to turn his back on Reece as soon as the going got tough, no matter what promises he might have made to his much younger lover.