Firelight at Mustang Ridge (27 page)

“To Ashley!” the others chorused, then clinked and drank, with Shelby giving Ashley's glass an extra tap and adding, “We're here for you, girlfriend.”

“Hello?” The hail came from the stage, where Jolly Roger—the bar owner's name was actually Roger Jolly, but he lived up to the nickname with his long dark hair, grizzled beard, and the patch-and-peg-leg routine he pulled out for special occasions—stood at the mic and did a
tap-tap
. “Is this thing on? Testing, testing. Are we ready for some live music?”

The crowd buzz dimmed for a second; then applause burst out.

“Awesome.” Ashley turned in her chair. “I could dance.”

“I'd like to introduce tonight's performers, who are guar-an-teed”—Jolly drew it out like the three-syllable word had a dozen—“to get your boots tapping and your booties shaking. Let's put them together, folks—your hands, I mean, not your booties—for Chasen Tail!”

The door behind him opened up and a guy came out, giving a big wave to the crowd. “Howdy, folks!” In his mid-twenties, with handsome features and sandy hair that brushed the collar of his shirt, he looked like someone had taken one of the cowboys from the crowd and turned the volume up a couple of notches.

“Oh!” Danny said, “I've seen him before. I like him.”

“Meh.” Shelby shrugged. “If a guy's going to pop the buttons on his shirt halfway through the show, his abs should be required to be seriously ripped. And his stage name sucks. I mean, really? Chasen Tail? Ew.”

“I like his music,” Danny clarified. “I agree that the name is dumb. And the shirt thing doesn't do much for a girl who's got a better set of muscles waiting for her back home.”

“Now, that's just mean.” Ashley turned her back on the stage to complain across the table: “Some of us are living vicariously, you know.”

“I can already see this is going to be a killer crowd,” Chasen said behind her. “How about we give a round of applause to my boys?”

As the crowd whooped and hollered, Krista's eyes went beyond Ashley, and lit. “That's no boy. And speak of the devil. There's my new head wrangler in his very fine flesh!” She waved. “Yoo-hoo, Tyler! Hey, Ty. Over here!”

Ashley froze, the name going through her like a bolt of hot lightning—searing and paralytic.

Wait.

What?

No. It couldn't be.

Setting down the blinky glass with calm precision, she turned in her seat. Looked up at the stage. And stopped breathing as her brain sproinged back and forth between
Oh, hell
and
Oh, my
, with a bit of
Wow
thrown in.

Then back to
Oh, hell
.

A drummer and a guitarist had set up behind the lead singer. The drummer was a cutie—young, flushed, and nervous-looking, as if playing at the Rope Burn was the
high point of his life to date. The guitarist was his exact opposite—thirtysomething, solid, and totally chilled out as he bent his head and strummed a couple of chords that should have gotten lost in the crowd noise, but, thanks to some acoustic quirk of the room, carried straight to Ashley.

She didn't need to see the face beneath the shag of sun-streaked brown hair—she knew him by the mellow undertone and upper twang of the old Martin, and by the way his hands moved on the strings: slow and steady, but with an underlying strength that said here was a man that always hit the note he was going for.

Tyler Reed.

His head came up and his eyes locked on hers, as if she had said his name out loud. His gaze pierced her, brown eyes so dark they were almost black, putting a hot-cold-hot shiver in her belly.

Behind her, the others were talking about how he had come back to Mustang Ridge after spending the past few years touring with a country band, their voices sounding normal, as if the world hadn't just shifted on its axis. As if it hadn't shifted again when she got a good look at his face, with its high Viking cheekbones and the strong slash of a nose, bumped across the bridge, where it had been broken by what he had called “a short dive off a long bucking bull.”

Last fall, at Krista and Wyatt's wedding. Where they had totally hooked up.

Looking for more?
Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.
Discover your next great read!