Part Time Cowboy (Copper Ridge Book 1) (14 page)

She drew back, her breasts pitching sharply with the harsh breath she drew in. “I’m not sure how something like that could be inevitable. I mean, either you want to kiss someone or you don’t. If you do, you do. If you don’t, you don’t.”

“I thought it was that simple. Until you. You’ve completely screwed up my kissing theory.” Damn, maybe he
was
drunk.

“That’s more than thirty years of kissing theory messed up by one woman,” she said, her voice sounding lower, thicker all of a sudden. “That’s...a lot of power.”

“It is,” he said, his own voice following the same path hers had.

“Are you drunk?” she asked.

“I wish.”

“Wow. You really, really know how to turn a girl on.” Sarcasm tinged her tone, but the huskiness in her voice told him that he actually was turning her on, and he had no idea how to feel about that. “Telling me you don’t want to kiss me and you wish you could excuse your being over here with your being drunk.”

“That’s because I’m not trying to turn you on,” he said. And that at least was true.

“I wish I could say it was working.”

“Me not turning you on?”

“Yes,” she said, looking down at the bar.

“Are we flirting?”

She looked back at him, her pulse beating hard at the base of her throat, hard enough that he could see it. “I don’t think so.”

“You’re probably right. I don’t think I know how to flirt.”

“You’re just trying to keep me from getting flirted with.”

“Sounds about right.”

Ace came back over to their end of the bar and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “He’s not bothering you, is he, Sadie?”

Oh, for God’s sake.

Sadie looked at Ace, her lips quirked into a funny smile. “You know he’s a deputy sheriff, right?”

“I know who he is,” Ace said.

Oh, great, the jackass was in the mood to be tough, and Eli wasn’t in the mood to compete for Sadie because he didn’t even want Sadie. Or at least, he didn’t want to want her.

But there was no way he was going to be able to let it slide. He knew that there was no way because he’d crossed the room to stake a claim on a woman he shouldn’t want just because she’d put her hand on another man’s arm.

He already knew he was too far gone for common sense. He already knew his head wasn’t in charge of this one.

“Then you know that I’m more likely to protect her than drag her off and throw her into my trunk,” Eli said.

“What is it they say about cops and the domestic abuse rate?” Ace asked.

“Cute. Did you take an online class?” Eli asked.

Sadie giggled and they both looked at her. “I’m sorry,” she said, her smile barely suppressed. “Please go on. I’m enjoying the novelty of two men warring for my affections.”

“Outside,” Eli said.

“I’m sorry, are you ordering me around? Do you honestly think I’m going to obey like a lapdog? I, sir, am a cat person, and I’ll probably just bite your hand.”

“Out. Side,” he repeated.

She arched a brow but slid away from the bar and started to walk toward the exit. He turned to Ace and shot him a look before he dared glance at Jack and Connor, who were staring at him openly. Connor looking a little annoyed. Jack looking annoyingly impressed.

Bastard.

He turned away from them and followed her out the front door, rounding on her as soon as it swung shut behind them. It was dark outside, the waves crashing against the shore nearby the only sound, the moon glinting on the water like silver fish swimming over the surface. Every pitch of the surf casting white light over Sadie’s face.

She was so beautiful it hurt. A real ache that started in his head and pulsed through his teeth, all the way down through his gut and to his cock. Just from a little light across the bridge of her nose. The bridge of her
nose
. He needed his head examined.

But not by Sadie. Because the little therapist was the person causing all of his mental and physical unrest.

“What is going on?” she asked.

“I’m...not sure,” he answered, pacing the sidewalk in front of her. “I’m really not sure. I came out to drink and maybe eat some fish-and-chips and definitely not to talk to you, or see you, or think about kissing you.”

“Hey, I came down here to talk microbrews, not to deal with you and your chest-beating, rawr rawr, he-man routine!”

“Then why are you dealing with it?” he asked.

“Why are you talking to me?”

“Hell if I know,” he said.

“Then consider that
my
answer. Hell if I know!”

He moved toward her and she backed up, the wood-shingled wall of the bar stopping her. Eli took a breath and pressed his palm flat to the wall, just by her head, his eyes locked with hers, heat arching between them. He couldn’t have looked away if he wanted to. And he didn’t want to. He wanted to keep looking at her. He wanted to kiss her.

And then some.

He wanted her more than he could remember ever wanting any woman. More even than his first, on a spring night after prom.

Right now he was beyond himself. Beyond control. And Eli Garrett was never beyond control.

Somewhere, in the depths of his thoroughly bent brain, it registered that that was a problem. That he shouldn’t have ever let it get this far. That he needed to get a grip on things and stop it before it went further.

Dammit. He didn’t want to.

He gritted his teeth against the rising tide of arousal. So intense it just hurt.

He took a breath through his nose and closed his eyes, lowering his head. If he just didn’t look at her for a second...he could get a handle on things. On himself.

He breathed in again, slowly, and let it out through his mouth. Then he opened his eyes and looked back up at her. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said, his voice almost unrecognizable.

“What?”

“We’re going to go back in the bar. And you’re going to go back and talk to Ace about local beer. And if he asks you on a date? I think you should go on it.”

“What?”

“Yep. I’m going to go back to my table and drink at least two more beers, eat something fried and play darts. And I’m not going to look at you. I’m not going to talk to you. I’m not going to kiss you. We’re going to start this night over, like I never walked over to you and opened my mouth.”

“Eli...”

“And when we interact on the ranch it’s going to be because we have tenant-landlord type business to deal with that Connor’s pawning off onto me.”

She bit her lip and nodded, a crease appearing between her eyebrows. “I’m even more confused now,” she said.

“This ends one of two ways,” he said, his throat getting tighter. “Either we keep this up,” he said, thinking the
this
in the statement was fairly obvious, “and it goes too far. Or we stop it now. But I have a feeling if we keep it all accidental, then...”

“Right. And what would...be so bad about that?” she asked.

Her simple, nonexplicit words sent a slug of lust through him that was so intense he could hardly breathe around it. “Let me tell you something about me, Sadie. I’m a good man. I pride myself on that. But I’m not a very nice man. And I’m not the kind of man who does relationships. This is my town and I care about the people in it. When I want sex, I go outside the city limits for it because I know before I ever get in a woman’s bed how it will end. Quickly. I don’t want to bring that here. I don’t want to run into old lovers while I’m crossing the street or when I’m making routine stops. And I sure as hell don’t want to run into an old lover every time I cross my driveway.” The very thought offended his sense of order in every way.

“I see,” she said. “But...what makes you think I want any more than a little harmless sex?”

“Because sex is never harmless when it’s this complicated. It’s like setting fire in a barn instead of a fireplace.”

She blinked and nodded. “Great. Fine. Whatever. I don’t even see the point of banging a guy who wouldn’t know fun if it got on its knees and sucked his...” She looked down, so pointedly that he felt it. “Well, you get the idea. Ace seems like he might be more the type I’m after. So I’ll go in before you. I’ll talk to him. Maybe I’ll leave with him. We’ll see.”

You will not.
His inner he-man, as she’d called it, growled.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said instead. Because this was crazy. And it had to be stopped.

She forced a smile, her eyes meeting his quickly, a brief flash of electricity shooting straight through him before she turned away.

He watched Sadie walk back into the bar and waited for the tightness in his stomach to recede, for the ache to go away.

He had a feeling he was going to be waiting for a long time.

CHAPTER NINE

D
RIVING
INTO
C
OPPER
R
IDGE
the next day, Sadie decided to take a left instead of a right at the last minute. She’d been headed toward the main street of Old Town to visit Rona’s Diner and see about pie, and something had pulled her the other way.

A ghost, maybe. The same one she’d been afraid she might find in a clearing. Or maybe just what normal people would call memories. She obviously wasn’t normal.

But here she was, driving on the road that led away from the ocean. Away from the picturesque portion of the little town. This was where the other half lived. The poor half. The half who worked in the logging industry and at the mill, or didn’t work at all.

The half she came from.

And on this road was her childhood home. Her throat tightened as she shifted her suddenly slick hands on the steering wheel.

She’d never imagined, ever, that she would come back here. In fact, she’d actively intended not to. What the hell was all this? Why was she here?

Who knew why she did anything these days? Coming back here, kissing Eli, almost kissing Eli again last night...

There was no point in thinking about that right now.

She took a deep breath and eased her car to the side of the road as she stopped in front of a blue house with shingle siding.

She took her hands off the wheel and looked out the window. The knot in her stomach eased. It looked different.

It was cleaner. The grass was cut. There was grass. When she’d been there, it had been nothing but a carpet of dandelions punctuated by groups of star thistle.

It was smaller, too. Brighter. She was sure it wasn’t actually smaller, but it seemed that way.

A white minivan drove by her car and turned into the driveway of her old house. She watched as it parked and a woman got out. Gently taking her toddler from the backseat, along with a brown grocery bag.

They opened the front door and a small dog ran out to greet them. Sadie hadn’t been allowed to have a pet.

Maybe this was what they meant when they said you couldn’t go home again. The home that loomed large in her mind,
her
home, didn’t exist. It hadn’t since the Miller family moved out.

She thought of her patient Maryann, and how much she’d loved her home. How losing it had devastated her, because her memories had sunk into the wood. The love her family shared.

It wasn’t like that for Sadie. Not for her family. Nothing of them was still here.

And thank God.

There was no power in this place.

She put her car in Drive and turned back around, shaking her hair out of her face. She felt like maybe things should seem momentous, but instead she just felt deflated.

Whatever she’d thought she might find there, she hadn’t. Good or bad, really.

“You’re getting weird,” she said to herself as she turned onto Old Town’s main street and drove to the far end, pulling into the driveway at Rona’s Diner before killing the engine.

She didn’t have time to be sentimental about a pile of wood, bolts and insulation. She had a pie mission to see to.

Sadie took a deep breath and wrapped her sweater tightly around herself. It was June, but the Oregon Coast had no respect for summer. Even when the sun was shining, the wind had to undermine it with a chill that cut straight through the warmth, and her sweaters, apparently.

She clutched her paper coffee cup a little bit tighter and walked into the diner at the end of the main drag, out near the jetty. She’d been informed that they had the best pies in the county, and she wanted the best for the barbecue.

It was two in the afternoon and the diner wasn’t very crowded, the lunch crowd long since dissipated, the dinner crowd not yet arrived. There were some middle-aged men sitting in the corner with cake and pie on plates and coffee all around. Fishermen, Sadie guessed by the look of them.

That was one of the unique things about this place. It was a coastal town, with deep traditions tied to the sea. With fishermen, and crab shacks, seagulls and amazing fish-and-chips. But just inland were the cowboys and ranchers. Sheep, cows and beautiful stables with high-priced horses.

Copper Ridge was the melting pot of everything good in Oregon. Trees and waves, forests and beaches. In that regard, her hometown was a lot more special than she’d realized until she’d been away from it for a decade.

Old Town had changed, too. Where before things had worn a coat of neglect and salt from the sea, they were repainted, revamped and attractive to tourists now. Which was a very good thing for her.

“Can I help you?” a waitress called to her from behind the counter.

There was a glass display case beneath the countertop, laden with the very same pies and cakes the fishermen in the corner were indulging in. There were also doughnuts, giant cinnamon rolls and cupcakes that Sadie was thinking needed to go with her coffee right now.

“I’d like a cupcake. And to talk to whoever does the baked goods.”

The woman blinked and something about her expression sent a flash of memory through Sadie. “That’s me.”

“Oh, well, great.”

“What kind of cupcake?”

“Your favorite. I’m not picky.”

“I like the chocolate peanut butter.”

“Sounds perfect.” Sadie watched as the other woman bent to get the cupcake from the bottom of the display case.

Familiarity nagged at Sadie, but she still couldn’t quite place her. Obviously she had to be someone she’d known here. Someone from school?

When the waitress rose back up, the motion stiff, a grimace on her face, it hit her. “Alison?” Sadie asked. “Sadie! Sadie Miller. From school. And other things that weren’t school-related.”

The other woman’s eyes widened for a moment and something sad passed through them before there was recognition and then, finally, a small smile. “Oh...oh, Sadie. I didn’t recognize you.”

“Well, I wear less black eyeliner these days. Clearly, so do you.”

She laughed nervously. “Yeah. A bit.”

“So, what have you been up to?” Sadie asked, dimly realizing that there was something uniquely wonderful in seeing faces from your past.

“Nothing much, really. Working here. Baking. I got married.”

“Congratulations.”

“Yeah,” she said, forcing another smile that looked distinctly sad.

Alison had been part of her tight-knit crew. They’d caused a bit of trouble together—the barn incident being one of them—and mainly spent time in the woods near the Garrett ranch or on the beach, because for them it had been better than being at home.

They were the misfits of Copper Ridge, and even if no one else had fully realized it, they had. They knew they were different. They knew they were wrong. Broken families, poverty. Abuse.

There was only one elementary school, one junior high and a high school that sat squarely between Copper Ridge and Tolowa, making the most out of the shared student population. That meant they’d spent a lot of years circling each other like wary strays, slowly forming a group. A bond that had been, at the time, thicker and stronger than the bond with their families.

Alison, Damian, Matthew, Kelly, Sarah, Josh and Brooke. A few other people rotated in and out, but that was the core.

And she’d left them behind. She’d never contacted them.

In that moment, she felt ashamed.

“Not married,” Sadie said, holding up her bare left hand for emphasis. “I’ve been...moving a lot. Being a crisis counselor. And now a proprietress at a bed-and-breakfast. So...I still don’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“Sounds nice to me. You escaped,” Alison said.

That was how she’d felt at the time. Now she wasn’t so sure.

“I’m back. This place has that way about it. It even called
me
back eventually, and I like moving on a lot more than looking back. Historically speaking.”

There was a disconnect happening. Something so fundamentally defeated in Alison’s eyes, something so familiar, that it hurt Sadie to look at it. And she couldn’t nail down what it was or why. Maybe just fatigue from a long shift.

“Do you ever... Do you talk to anyone else from school?” Sadie asked.

Alison looked down. “Not really. Matt’s still here. He fishes. Brooke owns a shop up the road, but we don’t... I don’t have a lot of time. Everyone else moved like you. Josh went on and made all kinds of money... I’m just still here.”

“Oh.” She made a mental note to track Brooke down later.

“Yeah.”

“Well,” Sadie said, filling in the silence, which she was professionally good at. “I heard that you had the best baked goods in town. And the thing is I’m organizing a community Independence Day barbecue on the Garrett ranch, which is, not incidentally, where my B and B is. And I wanted to have a dessert booth. Possibly a pie eating contest. So I wanted to talk to you about what you have, what is possible production-wise and if the owner of the diner might be interested in donating a certain number of pies for the contest in exchange for advertising space.”

“These are the best pies!” one of the men shouted from the corner. “Alison makes the best everything.” There was a round of agreement from the other men at the table and that pulled another smile out of Alison.

Getting a smile out of her, Sadie was coming to realize, was as difficult as pulling Toby out from the back of the lazy Susan cupboard when he was annoyed about the vacuum cleaner.

“There, that’s all the validation I need,” Sadie said. “So if you’re up to it, I’d really like to involve you. And if the diner owner isn’t super into it, I’m happy to purchase pies directly from you. Or maybe you’d be interested in manning the dessert booth? You could sell pie by the slice. It’ll be a great bit of advertising for you. And hey, since I think you’re probably a million times better than me at baking, pies might be a great thing for me to have in the B and B anyway.”

Sadie wished she could stop the tumble of words now, because Alison looked wary, and it hit a warning button deep inside Sadie. But the ideas were rolling off her tongue now without her permission. Possibly because of that internal warning signal.

For a therapist she was awfully useless in out-of-office people situations.

“I’ll have to check with Jared. If he can spare me for that much time,” Alison said.

“The diner owner?”

“My husband,” she said, blinking rapidly. “He may not want me getting so involved in something like that. It’s already hard with how much I do here.”

“Right. Well, I mean, only if you want to. Don’t feel an obligation to me or anything.”

“I do want to,” she said.

“Then I’m sure your husband will be happy for you. It’ll be good for you and all.”

Alison didn’t look so sure and that right there sent Sadie’s instincts from warning bells to the desire to maim the guy in the testicular region.

“Right. Yeah. Just the cupcake?” she asked.

“A marionberry pie, too, actually. I’ll have it after dinner.”

Alison bent and pulled a pie out and put it in a white box before ringing both items up.

“Great,” Sadie said. “And now I know where to get my goody fix, and where to see an old friend. So all in all, this was a productive day.” Sadie reached into her purse and pulled out a crumpled receipt from the coffee stand she’d gone to earlier, and wrote her cell phone number across the back. “Call me. If you ever need anything, or want to hang out, or have questions about the barbecue.”

“Sure,” Alison said, taking the receipt. “I will.”

Sadie had the feeling the other woman was lying. And again, she couldn’t quite place why. But everything seemed wrong. Well, the statement about the husband not wanting her to be gone too much seemed off to Sadie, but then, Sadie knew there might be other factors. Even though her gut response was that it sounded awfully controlling.

“Thanks for the goodies. If I slip into a sugar coma, don’t be too surprised.” Sadie waved and walked out the door, back down the sidewalk toward where she’d parked her car.

She was happy about the pie, but uneasy about everything else.

And this was the problem with coming home. There were so many emotions tied up in things. She didn’t like it. Before leaving Copper Ridge she’d had a whole lifetime of heavy. Of bad feelings and worry and outright terrifying crap, and she just didn’t like to feel things that were even close to that anymore. It wasn’t healthy to dwell, after all.

But Copper Ridge made her dwell, dammit.

And just like that, the magic of returning home was gone.

* * *

I
T
WAS
DECK
DAY
.
And Sadie had a bevy of shirtless construction workers off the back of her house, putting down posts and cement blocks in preparation for the building of the massive deck she’d designed for the B and B.