Part Time Cowboy (Copper Ridge Book 1) (13 page)

He shrugged. “All right. Suit yourself. See you around.”

She climbed out of the truck and tried to ignore the somewhat fuzzy feeling his casual, and not at all hostile, goodbye carved out in the pit of her stomach. Right in the middle of all the warmth.

“Yeah,” she said, “see you.”

She hopped out of the truck and breathed in deep, the air sweet from the flowers and salty from the nearby sea. She looked up and closed her eyes, letting the sunshine wash over her. And even though she wanted to, she didn’t look back at Eli. Not even once.

CHAPTER EIGHT

N
EVER
HAD
E
LI
been so glad for Jack to draw the short straw. That made him the designated driver for the evening, and it meant that Eli could drink some beers. Because he really, really wanted to drink some beer tonight.

Not that he would drink to the point of public drunkenness, since he had a reputation to uphold. And the legacy of being a worthless drunk’s kid. But something to take the edge off the Sadie Miller knife that was digging into his gut would be nice.

Just a little haze. That was all he required.

Jack was still sulking because he had to stay sober, Connor had already gone to the bar to order beer and Eli was leaning back in his chair, enjoying being in town in plainclothes. Enjoying sitting back and watching people do things without feeling like he was on duty at a day care.

The bar was packed, but it was Saturday night and there were a limited amount of activities in town. There were average-quality restaurants, very expensive seafood restaurants, a movie theater with five screens and a local dinner theater. The bar was one of the more popular choices for obvious reasons.

Alcohol, darts and pool being some of the most obvious.

“Don’t sulk, Jack,” Eli said. “It’s not a good look on you.”

“Drunk isn’t a good look on you,” Jack returned, his arms crossed over his chest.

“I haven’t been drunk since I was twenty-one. On my birthday. And never again.”

“You’re such a cliché.”

Since this was the second time he’d been accused of this recently, he was starting to wonder if it was true.

“Aren’t we all?” he asked. “We’re in a bar on Saturday with nothing better to do.”

“Looking to get laid,” Jack said, turning and taking a Coke out of Connor’s hand as he returned to the table with drinks.

“Speak for yourself,” Eli said.

“Oh, right, you don’t shit in your own yard.”

Eli grimaced and took the pale ale Connor was offering him. “Not my favorite way of putting it, but the principle is sound.”

“Liss isn’t coming?” Jack asked Connor.

“Not tonight. She said something about painting her toenails and watching old movies. And that is where having me as her best friend tends to not pay off.”

“You don’t want to put the little toe separators in for her and blow on her feet until the polish dries?” Jack took a drink of soda to disguise his smile.

“I thought I’d come here and see if you wanted to throw darts at my balls instead,” Connor said, tipping his beer bottle back and taking a long drink.

“If I were drinking, I would absolutely take you up on that,” Jack said.

“Remember the time we were hanging out at the house,” Connor asked, “and we thought we’d play darts? But there was nothing to hang the board we found...and you, you put the board in your lap? And told me to hit the bull’s-eye?”

“I still have a scar on my thigh,” Jack said. “So yeah, I remember.”

“We did really dumb stuff.”

“You two did dumb stuff,” Eli corrected. “I mainly watched.”

And told no one because there was no one who would have cared. Jack’s mom was too exhausted from work to look his direction more than once a week, and the Garrett patriarch was usually passed out in his own vomit by 6:00 p.m.

They used to joke that if their parents got married they could be the world’s most fucked-up version of the Brady Bunch.

That hadn’t happened, because their individual parents had been too busy wallowing in their problems, but Jack basically lived at their house anyway, simply by virtue of the fact that it was bigger and there were more places to find trouble.

Jack liked trouble, and trouble liked him. Typically, female trouble.

He had no issue shitting where he lived, so to speak.

“We were badass,” Connor said, a wistful look on his face. He took another sip of beer. “And you,” he said, pointing at Eli, “were not blameless. You’re the one who thought to build a ramp that went off the hayloft. And ride your bike down it.”

“Ah...how did we not die?” Eli asked.

“Hell if I know,” Connor said, tapping the side of his beer bottle. “But then, I’m sort of mystified by how those decisions are made.” And just like that, the brief light on his face dimmed again.

Dammit. It was way too easy to say the wrong thing when someone had a ghost following them around.

“We all are,” Jack said, slapping Connor twice on the back. “And when we’re too mystified, we drink and talk crap at the bar.”

“Damn straight,” Eli agreed, knocking back another drink.

“With friends like you guys...I’ll have a hangover in the morning,” Connor said, making a weak attempt at a smile.

“You could have been painting Liss’s toenails. You’re paying for your own awesome choices,” Jack told him.

“And you could have had beer,” Connor said. “But you drew the short straw.”

“It’s a stupid tradition. We should just take turns.”

“And you’d bail every time it was your turn,” Eli said.

Jack smiled and shrugged in the boyish manner that got him out of situations that would have seen lesser men castrated. “Probably.”

“And that’s why we draw straws. Because one out of three men at this table is a piss-poor friend,” Connor said.

“Guilty.” Jack looked over Connor’s shoulder and frowned. “Isn’t that your hot new tenant?”

“What?” Connor asked, turning around completely unsubtly. The motion would have made a bull look graceful.

Eli looked up and saw that it was definitely Sadie, blonde, petite and, yeah, very hot, walking into the room and over to the bar. She leaned in, and he couldn’t help but look, really look, at the way her jeans fit her rather fantastic ass.

“She really is hot,” Jack said, his eyes getting that keen, focused look that he got when he was on the hunt.

“Not in this lifetime, Monaghan,” Eli said, the words coming out a whole lot more threatening than he’d intended them to.

Jack sat back, dark brows shooting up. “Oh, really?”

“Damn straight,” Eli said, hooking his hand around his beer and tugging it back, holding it against his chest.

“You’re not for real,” Jack said. “Sleeping with a woman who lives on your property is almost the same as marriage.”

Marriage. That was the last thing he wanted. A little sex on the other hand...

Heat streaked through Eli’s gut. He hated that his desire was that transparent, especially when he was still trying to pretend that he wasn’t attracted to her at all.

He looked over at Sadie again. “I wasn’t even thinking of it.”

“Liar.”

Connor was noticeably silent during the exchange. Eli managed to tear his eyes away from the view to look at his brother.

Connor looked up, his expression hostile. “What?”

Jack looked at him, too. “You’re not commenting.”

“Didn’t notice she was hot,” Connor said. “I was thinking about it, trying to decide if she was or not. Then I realized my dick is fucking broken.”

Hell, maybe Eli’s was, too. Because this was a total departure from his usual rules. He hadn’t fully realized it until Sadie had pointed out the sheer volume of sexual innuendo he missed on a daily basis when he was with her, but his normal course of action was to just shut his libido down until he was ready to do something about it.

He had great luck with women—when he was pursuing one. Otherwise...otherwise he lived his life with blinders on. And it wasn’t by accident.

He kept his life classified in very careful segments. And maybe the problem now was he’d left one segment neglected for too long. And now things were...intertwining that definitely shouldn’t be intertwining.

And beyond the intersection of his personal life and his love life, the fact that it was Sadie whom he wanted when she was the most infuriating, irritating woman...well, that just proved that his dry spell had reached Saharan proportions.

“She is hot,” Jack said. “But I have a feeling Eli is marking his territory.”

“I am not,” he said.

“You don’t like her,” Connor pointed out. “She’s a criminal. You arrested her.”

“She’s not a criminal,” Eli said, gritting his teeth. “And it was ten years ago.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Marking his territory.”

“Don’t say it like that. She’s a woman, not territory. And she’s definitely not mine. You sound like a jerk.”

“I
am
a jerk,” Jack said. “It’s like you haven’t known me since I was twelve.”

“As you so eloquently put it, or...as you should have put it, I keep my sex life away from here. Far, far away. I’m not going to pursue a woman who has a five-year contract to live on my property. That’s a degree too close to marriage for my taste.”

Jack laughed. “Okay, I get that. So does that mean I can...?”

“No,” Eli growled. “You can’t. Mainly because I don’t want to catch sight of your bare ass through any open windows. That is guaranteed to get you shot.”

“You’re not allowed to shoot my friend, Eli,” Connor said. “I only have two of them. I can’t afford to lose any.”

Eli looked at Sadie and watched as she cocked her head to the side, blond hair spilling over her shoulder, the fluorescent lights from the Mirror Pond Ale sign behind the bar casting a yellow-and-blue glow over the pale strands.

Ace was behind the bar, big and bearded and wearing flannel, which women seemed to be giddy over these days. And Sadie was obviously no exception, with the way she was giggling and smiling and...dammit, touching the guy’s forearm with her delicate hands. Hands that were, incidentally, not covered with soil from planting an azalea.

Annoyance coursed through him. She’d just kissed him last week, and now she was in here flirting with Ace.

And so what?

So, it pissed him off. Which made him even angrier. Because he shouldn’t care. He wasn’t jealous. He was never jealous because jealousy implied that he cared, and he never cared.

Not that he didn’t like the women he had relationships with, but he didn’t quite care what they did when he wasn’t around.

This Sadie thing was messing with his head. Not only was wanting her simply a bad idea, he was sitting here pondering ways to remove Ace’s arm.

“Excuse me,” he said, getting up and pushing his chair back, leaving his beer on the table. He could feel Connor and Jack staring after him, and he knew that they were probably ready to discuss conspiracy theories about whether or not he’d been brainwashed or body-snatched.

And he didn’t really care. Because right now he had Sadie in his sights and he was going to walk over to her and do...something. He would figure it out when he got there.

Hopefully.

His feet hit the wooden floor harder than necessary with each step and he knew that people were looking at him, because he was Eli Garrett, current candidate for county sheriff, walking across a bar like he had sex and murder on his mind.

Both of which were strictly true.

“What brings you into town, Sadie?” he asked, leaning against the bar next to her.

She jumped and turned, blue eyes wide. “What brings you here to talk to me voluntarily, Eli?” she asked, her expression schooled into something casual now, covering up the moment of shock.

Ace looked at them both and turned away from Sadie, pulling a drink from the tap and walking down to the other end of the bar.

“Curiosity,” Eli said.

“It’s not that weird that I’m at the bar,” she said.

“But you’re alone.”

“Who would I be with? Anyway, I was just stopping by because I wanted to feel out the best local brews and find out if Ace had any contact info for me. For the Fourth of July thing.”

“Right,” he said. “You’re on a first-name basis with Ace?”

“I remember him vaguely from school. Also, I called in earlier.”

“Okay,” he said, sounding a lot more uptight than he would like.

“Why do you care?” she asked, tilting her head to the side like he’d watched her do earlier.

“Honestly? I don’t know,” he said.
Honestly?
Why had he been honest? Honesty in this situation was a terrible idea. Because it was ceding the upper hand. It was admitting he was out of his depth and that was not acceptable.

Her expression changed. Not wide-eyed shock or practiced casualness. She lowered her lashes, her lips more relaxed, her gaze falling to his mouth. Each shift almost imperceptible, and quick. And yet, he saw it. Was so painfully aware of it, as if he could hear each change like the cocking of a gun. It was clear, it was intentional. And the only thing he wasn’t sure of yet was if she was shooting to kill.

“Is it because you want to kiss me again?” she asked.

She was shooting to kill. This shot had hit square in his gut, radiating down to his groin. He’d only had a half a beer, so he couldn’t even blame that.

“It’s more because I don’t want
him
to kiss you,” he said, leaning in, his palm flat on the bar. “I don’t want to kiss you. I wish I hadn’t kissed you the first time and trust me, Sadie Miller, I sure as hell don’t want to do it again.” He angled his head and moved in closer, conscious that they were being watched by almost everyone in the bar. Aware that he had to be close enough to make his point, but far enough away that no one would be planning their wedding by tomorrow. “But I’m starting to wonder if I will. If it’s inevitable.”