by Maisey Yates
“You think you’re too good for this job,” he continued, “you think you’re too good for this bar. You’ve manipulated every boyfriend you’ve ever had with your good looks and your charm, with that little bit of superiority you feel. You do it without even trying.”
His words were rapid-fire, like high-velocity gunfire from an automatic rifle. They hit their marks hard, and they left a lot of damage.
Mostly because he was saying things that she’d been grappling with herself over the past few days. He was drawing back the curtain on the facade of her life. Tearing down pieces of the walls that she wasn’t ready to look behind yet. Parts that concerned herself, and not simply the sins of her father.
The little things that were starting to gnaw at her. Innocuous things. Like getting into her truck. Like realizing she’d never apologized before.
She was raw enough, certain enough that what he was saying had truth to it without him actually saying it.
“Oh, congratulations, you read the rich girl stereotype handbook,” she returned, infusing her words with as much bite as she could manage. She might suspect that he had the right end of the stick, but she was never going to let him see that. Because he didn’t say these things to help her, he said them to hurt her. He didn’t deserve validation. Not from her. Maybe this would be the end of her career as a waitress. But as far as she was concerned he could suck it. “Sadly for you, I read the disaffected hipster bartender handbook. You’re so over life. Money is so mainstream. And so is Coors Light. But of course, you want your business to be successful, and you actually need money to live. So you don’t hate it nearly as much as you pretend.”
She took a step toward him, her breathing labored. “You act like you have some big, deep wound that makes you inaccessible to the rest of us mortals, while you remind me and everyone else that we aren’t really special. You think you’re special, don’t you, Ace? You’re certainly more special than me.” She took another step toward him, and another, and she extended her hand, poking him in the chest. “So complicated and manly. How can a featherheaded little lady like myself ever truly understand you?”
Much to her surprise, he laughed. His lips curving up into a half smile, something dark, dangerous, glinting in his eyes. “Don’t be fooled by the flannel, babe. I’m not a hipster. I’m not that complicated, either. I work, I eat, I sleep and I fuck. End of story.”
His words sent a searing rash of heat burning through her veins. She didn’t know why but hearing that word on his lips made her feel things. All kinds of things.
She hung out with plenty of guys who dropped F bombs like they didn’t mean a thing. She’d been known to do the same herself in the right company.
But when they did it, it was a silly kids’ game. A bid to spit out the most naughty words in the fewest sentences.
It wasn’t like that now. The way he used it...it forced her to see it. Something raw, rough and untamed. Something harder, deeper than she’d ever known before. With that one word he made every other man she’d ever known into a boy, and he made sex something unknown and forbidden, something she was sure she’d barely scratched the surface of.
And they were fighting. Something that should underscore how much she didn’t like him. Something that should douse the heat that shimmered between them. Because fighting was not hot. At least, historically, fighting had not been hot. With him, it was.
If that wasn’t some kind of freaky weird magic she didn’t know what was.
She was breathing hard, and she knew he would be able to tell. If there was anything worse than feeling this strange, errant attraction, it was the fact that it was so completely transparent. She took another step toward him, reached out, her fingertips brushing the collar of his shirt.
Her whole face was hot. Her body was hot. Everything was hot. He really needed to adjust the temperature in here. Or find some way not to be attractive when he was being such a dick.
“Was that supposed to shock me?” she asked.
He leaned in, his face inches from hers. “It did, didn’t it?”
She squared her stance, her breasts nearly brushing his chest. “Do I look like I’m shocked to you?”
“You look like something, that’s for sure,” he said, dark eyes raking over her body. “But let me tell you something, Sierra. I’m not that hard up. You want me, that much is obvious. It isn’t like I haven’t noticed you’re a pretty little thing. But things come too easily to you. You think you can manipulate me like you’re used to doing? You’re out of luck. You need to learn to ask for what you want. If you want me, you’re going to have to ask. You’re going to have to beg.”
That should not turn her on. Absolutely not at all. His words should have been like a bucket of cold water over her head. It should not have been gasoline on a lit match. She took a step back, stumbling a bit, knowing she was doing a terrible job of maintaining her composure.
Somehow, in all of this, with him, she did not have her usual command of herself, of the situation. Was that because of all this stuff with her father? The major revelations and changes that had rocked her existence? Or was it just Ace? She couldn’t decide which disturbed her more.
All of it. All of it was disturbing.
She snorted, straightening the hem on her black tank top, even though it didn’t need straightening. “I’m afraid you have the wrong end of the stick, babe,” she said, repeating his earlier endearment back to him. “Maybe other women routinely lose their alcohol-ridden minds over you, but I’m not going to be one of them. All I want from you is a paycheck.”
“Then why are your cheeks so pink?” he asked, reaching out, dragging his thumb over her cheekbone.
She shivered, a flash of lightning shooting down the center of her bones. It rocked her, rattled her, shook her to her core. It was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. The problem with Ace was that he was different. He was nothing like those boys she had dated in the past. The silly frat bros who were barely edging into their twenties and were more interested in the care and keeping of their own biceps than they were in dealing with a girlfriend.
They were shallow, silly, they didn’t have the kind of intensity Ace radiated without even trying. Of course, she wasn’t entirely certain that was a negative. She wasn’t sure she liked Ace’s intensity. But it touched her. Deep, way down deep, in places no one had ever touched before.
With nothing more than a look and a brush of his thumb against her cheek.
It was problematic if nothing else. And she had enough problematic without adding him to the mix.
“Pure, unmitigated fury,” she said, taking a step away from him. “That makes my cheeks pink without any kind of maidenly excitement, or whatever it is you’re imagining I feel for you. News flash, not maidenly. Not excited.”
“I’ll try not to lose any sleep over that. Be here tomorrow, five thirty.”
“I’ll be here. And I’ll work hard for you, I swear it. By the end of the three weeks you’re not going to be able to deny me the job, Ace Thompson. I’ll wait tables, pour drinks, do dishes and mop floors. I’ll do all that with a smile on my face. But I will never beg. You have a good night, now.”
Heart pounding so hard she thought it might beat its way straight through her chest, she turned from him and walked out of the bar.
What had happened in there was nothing. Just her extended bout of celibacy beginning to show. It had been a while since she’d broken up with Mark. Closing in on a year and a half. And even then they’d been hit and miss since he’d lived and worked in Portland and she’d been in Copper Ridge. So yeah, tonight’s bout of hormones was perfectly understandable.
The fact of the matter was, with everything happening in her family, and her having this job, she really didn’t have the energy to go looking for another relationship.
You don’t actually need a rela
tionship.
That was true. But she’d never really been a random hookup girl. Her relationships had never been intense, but they had been monogamous, and pretty long-lasting. When they died, they always died natural deaths. In the case of her and Mark it was all long-distance stuff. She was never going to move to the city to be with him, he was never going to come to Copper Ridge to be with her. And once they’d both realized that, there hadn’t seemed to be much point in continuing on.
She was regretting that now. Because a well-worn relationship would have been nice right about now. She could have driven up to Portland for a while, spent a few nights with him. She could have distracted herself.
She wondered, for a moment, if it was worth calling Mark up to see if he was still single. To see if he wanted her to come visit.
Except she had a job now, so she couldn’t just take off and go wherever she wanted to.
And the bigger problem was, she didn’t want to. Because she didn’t want Mark.
She let out a long breath, then inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of salt and pine. She was attracted to Ace. That didn’t mean she wanted him. Not in a serious, real way. She had one shot at this job. If she could prove that she could do it, then maybe other people in town would take her more seriously. Maybe they would hire her. If she was ever going to be self-sufficient here, then she needed to get some job experience that extended beyond the West family ranch, and she knew it. Moreover, at this point it was about pride. Ace didn’t think she could do this. All of those rejected job applications meant that most people in town didn’t think she could do this. They might like her, they might respect her family name, but they didn’t think she was capable of being anything more than the daughter of Nathan West.
Suddenly, she felt like she was standing on the edge of a hole. A void containing all of her achievements. Or rather, not containing them. She wondered if she had any. She’d gone to college, but her father had paid for it. She’d gotten a job only because it was assured due to her family connections.
She put her hand on the handle of the truck door that wasn’t hers.
She gritted her teeth, tears stinging her eyes, determination lashing her like a whip. The bottom line was, whatever she felt for Ace shouldn’t matter. Because it wasn’t as important as her future. She was going to prove to him that she could do this job, and that she could do it on her own merit. She wasn’t going to let anyone make her feel ashamed.
She wasn’t going to play these games with Ace, wasn’t going to let him touch her again. Wasn’t going to allow herself to touch him.
She was a waitress right now. And that meant that she was determined to be the best damn waitress in all of Copper Ridge.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS JUST about noon by the time Ace got himself out of the house and to the grocery store. He had a few hours before he was going to check in at the bar and he needed to get some things for his house that extended beyond beer and ranch dip. Like, chips for the ranch dip.
He walked slowly through the store aisles, basket in hand as he perused the shelves. He stopped, turning toward the produce, toward the heads of lettuce stacked all bright green and pointless. He supposed he should probably eat vegetables. Going to the store was always weird. Because he saw things in it that were reflective of a life he could hardly remember anymore.
Liar. You remember it perfectly.
For a while, he’d lived in a house that was well stocked with this kind of healthy stuff. Salad and tomatoes, and all manner of stuff that was good for you but tasted like dirt. He supposed that had also been true of his childhood home. His mom had always had things like that around the house, but he’d figured when he grew up he wouldn’t have to eat it anymore.
At that stage of his life, he hadn’t factored a wife into the equation.
He turned away from the lettuce. He didn’t have a wife anymore. Therefore, he didn’t have salad.
“Ace?”
He turned around, the impact of recognition hitting him like a punch to the gut when he saw the person behind him. “Hayley,” he said, shock being worn away by a rush of guilt the moment he spoke his little sister’s name.
“I haven’t seen you in... It’s been way too long.”
“You know where I work,” he said.
She smiled. “You know where I work, too.”
“Not really interested in paying the church a visit,” he said, shoving one hand into his pocket, tightening his grip on his basket with the other.
“Well, I don’t drink.”
“We serve hamburgers.”
“I know. We should get together, is my point. And not to fight about places neither of us really want to go.”
Hayley was nine years younger than he was, a late-in-life surprise for his parents who had long given up hope on ever having another child. She had been nine when he’d left Copper Ridge for Texas, seventeen when he’d come back.
He had been distant from his family all those years he’d spent away, sporadic phone calls his only real contact. He had always stopped in to visit when the rodeo had passed nearby, but when he’d settled in Austin with Denise his life had just wrapped itself around her, and it had become impossible to do anything but pour himself into that relationship.
“How have you been?” he asked.
She lifted her shoulder, a half smile curving her lips. In some ways, she looked sixteen, instead of twenty-six. Either that or she looked closer to sixty-five. Her dark hair lay flat and limp against her head, restrained by a headband. She was wearing a dark blue sweater set and a long skirt. She was every church secretary stereotype imaginable. Though he supposed he was every stereotype of a pastor’s son.
“Fine,” she said, “nothing really new.”
“Mom and Dad?” That stab of guilt went deeper, drawing blood inside.
“Also fine.” She looked down. “Well, Dad had a bit of a health scare. A little chest pain. But everything was okay. They’re just having him monitor his cholesterol, and all that.”
He thought about his dad, tall, lean. He had a hard time imagining the older man might have issues with his heart. It worried him. It also made him think twice about the lettuce.
“He didn’t have a heart attack?”
Hayley shook her head. “No. Like I said, he’s fine. Ace, if anything serious happened, you know I would call you.”
And he knew that he should call them and try to get updates more often. He should go over for dinner more often than every few months. But what was he supposed to tell them about his life? His father wouldn’t even go into the bar because of appearances in the small town. Hayley and his mother basically had the same policy. And he couldn’t even get upset about that because he had been well aware of how they would feel about him running a bar before he had ever done it. To their credit, no one ever made him feel guilty about his choice; they asked him about how things were going, expressed interest in the place. They just didn’t come in.
There were no relationships for him to tell them about. He was hardly going to confess to the endless array of women whose names he couldn’t even remember that passed through his bed on any given weekend.
That was the real problem. Sometimes it was just hard to sit across from his father and look him in the eye.
“Good to see you,” he said, reaching out and pulling his sister in for a hug. He should have done that right at the first. There was something wrong with him that he hadn’t thought to hug her until now.
But that was hardly a revelation.
“Good to see you, too,” she said, her voice muffled against his shoulder.
He released his hold on her. “Tell Mom and Dad I said hi. If anything... If they need help with anything around the house, see that you give me a call.”
“Usually, the youth group takes care of any work that
Dad needs around the house. They do a good job of saying thank you for everything he does.”
Hayley was too sweet to imply that they had to do it because Ace didn’t, but it hit him that way anyway. And fair enough.
“Still. He can call me.”
“I’ll tell him.” She rocked back on her heels, holding onto her basket with both hands, awkwardness that should never exist between siblings settling between them. “Well, I have to go. I’m just on lunch break.”
“See you around, kiddo.” The old nickname didn’t help ease any of the weirdness between them.
She ducked her head, turning away and walking over towards the checkout lines, and Ace continued to stroll down the aisles. He did not get lettuce. He waited to pay for his various assortment of frozen dinners until he was sure that Hayley was gone, which was a jackass move, but he was kind of a jackass.
He walked out of the grocery store, loading up his truck and pausing for a moment, looking across the cracked, mostly empty parking lot and toward the mountain view beyond. It was a strange thing, realizing that the near decade spent away, and the decade he’d been back home had changed him into the kind of person who would never fit into his own family. It was his own decisions that had done that. That had reshaped him in such a way that sitting down at the dinner table he’d grown up eating around now felt nearly impossible.
Of course, the fact that he lived in Copper Ridge meant that he had to contend with running into his family at the grocery store. It meant that he felt guilty for not coming over more often, even if coming over only resulted in him sitting there feeling too large in his seat. As though he were being held beneath the magnifying glass, his every sin conspicuous in the eyes of his parents.
He could have stayed away. When he had left Austin, there had been no real reason to come back to Copper Ridge. Except that it was home. Home in a way no other place ever had been.