What a Bride Wants (3 page)

Jo
’s lips twitched. “How odd.”

Ella
ignored her and signed her name with a flourish. “There. All done.”

“
Good. Now burn it.”

“
No.”

“
Ella Grace, I know what you’re thinking, and as your dear childhood friend it is my
duty
to— Ella!” Jo’s voice was rising, the further away Ella got from the table. Ella was halfway to the bulletin board, her shoulders back and her gaze firmly fixed on her destination when Jo spoke again. “Ella, this is a really bad idea.”

“
No, I’m really liking it.”

“
You won’t in the morning.”

“
My future won’t look so hot in the morning anyway, what with me murdering my father and being a wanted fugitive and all. I’ve decided to live in the now.” Ella reached the saloon’s bulletin board, glared at the offending personal ad, and briskly cleared a space next to it. She stole two pins from the school band’s flyer and another pin from a postcard advertising the local library, and stuck her own ad up on the board. If Samuel T. Emerson wanted to make her private life public then, dammit, she’d make it public.

She studied the ad, tilted her head to on
e side. Something was missing. Ella uncapped the pen and wrote MUST HAVE SPARK across the bottom in big bold capitals. Might as well live in hope.

“
Jo, have you ordered yet?” Ella wasn’t quite yelling. Jo wasn’t quite doubled down on the bench seat trying to stifle her giggles. Reese wasn’t quite ready to throw them out. Yet.

“
Not, but I’m having the beef and the potato bake.”

Ella smiled brightly
. “Hey Mardie, we’re ready to order. I’ll have the trout.”

Sawyer pushed through the swing
ing doors that fed from the storeroom out to the run of Grey’s long bar. One of the beer taps had been spluttering like a fuel-starved engine and he’d had to go and tap a new keg. The saloon had been quiet enough when he’d left, but it was buzzing now and for no discernable reason that he could fathom.

“
What’s up?” he asked Mardie as she swung by with a round of empties for him.

“
Remember that personal ad in this morning’s paper? The one for the docile house husband?”

“
Hard to forget.”

“
Ella Grace didn’t put that ad in the paper after all. Her daddy put it in on her behalf.”

Sawyer didn
’t know much about father-daughter relationships, but he sure as hell recognized public embarrassment when he saw it. “Father of the year.”

“
Ella’s just written her own ad and stuck it up on the board next to the other one. She’s after a lover. One who can annoy the living bejeezus out of her father.”

Sawyer smiled.
He liked the defiance inherent in Ella’s actions. It tugged at heartstrings buried deep in his past. He knew how it felt to pull up short of parental expectations. Sawyer glanced over the customers again. “Which one’s Ella?”

“
Booth eight. The smaller brunette.”

Sawyer
looked over toward the booth. Aha.
That
brunette. He’d seen her come in, along with her friend. She wasn’t all that big and she wasn’t all that curvy now that she’d shed her winter coat, but there was something about her that drew the eye and held it. Her confidence, maybe. Or perhaps it was just the liveliness in her eyes. He always had been a sucker for bright eyed women, no matter the actual eye color.

Hers, he noted,
were the vivid blue of cornflowers on a sunny summer’s day.

“
You should go read Ella’s
other
ad.” Mardie fished in her apron pocket and came up with a phone that she held up at eye level and pointed his way. “Let me take a photo of you first, ‘cause you might want to answer it. C’mon Sawyer,
use
those dimples, look naughty–not
that
naughty, and… wow. You’re really photogenic, aren’t you?” Mardie’s smile came at him sunny side up and full of mischief. “Hold the fort for me, lover boy. I’m just going to run this through the printer.”

“
Yeah, no, Mardie, I don’t much like having my photo up on any walls. Got a thing about avoiding the limelight. And the wrath of
Reese
.” And the press.

Then again, maybe it wouldn
’t hurt.

Sawyer thought back to the ridiculous personal in the paper that morning and couldn
’t help but laugh.

“
There. Behind the bar. Look,” said Jo, and Ella looked and then forgot what she was talking about in favor of looking some more, because he was hot, smoking hot, and he was heading out from behind the bar and striding toward the bulletin board with a sheet of white paper in hand.

His shoulders were broad and
his face was a collection of strong planes and angles, no softness anywhere, and then he stopped at the board and read the ad and his eyes crinkled as he smiled, and there – right then and there – Ella felt the world around her slip a little sideways.

“
Any spark yet?” Jo wanted to know. “Because
that
is Sawyer.”

“
Could be the two daiquiris,” Ella muttered as she dragged her gaze away from him and reached for the water jug on the table. “Phew. Is it hot in here? It’s hot in here.”

“
I knew you wouldn’t be immune.”

“
Let’s not be hasty.” Ella took a quick sip of water but she couldn’t quite keep her gaze away from the masterpiece that was Sawyer. “Good grief, look at those shoulders. They’re almost as wide as your average door. Must make life difficult – always having to sidle in sideways.”

“
I thought you said you wanted to be a believer.”

“
I do. I do want to be a believer. How do I make him speak?”

“
I hear the usual approach is to say hello.” Ella and Jo watched in silence as Sawyer pinned a bit of paper below her ad. Looked like a photo. And a phone number.

“
Could be he’s pinning up someone else’s reply,” Ella said. “No need to be all… hopeful.”

Except that
Sawyer turned and looked straight at her and his eyes were green, honest-to-God, no-other-color-involved, deep forest green. He quirked his lips and showed off a dimple in his cheek, and then he turned and sauntered back to the bar, easy as you please.

“
I think I’m in lust,” Ella wheezed. “After all these years, it’s finally happened. I feel like I’ve just been hit by an eighteen-wheeler. What do I do?”

“
Are you going to listen to my advice this time?” Jo looked skeptical. Ella nodded frantically.

“
Breathe.”

“
You can buy her a glass of water,” Reese told the loser at the bar flatly. “With ice and lime.” Reese Kendrick wasn’t big on words but he
was
big on maintaining order in the bar. Sawyer liked that about him; liked that Reese’s fearsome reputation was usually enough to shut down trouble before it began.

Trouble was, those warring ads on the
bulletin board had taken on a life of their own. Sawyer might have been the first to pin up his picture but he hadn’t been the last. The ad for the perfect lover now had three more responses beneath his own, and the ad for a docile house-husband had two.

One of th
e house-husband contenders had sent dessert over to Ella’s table instead of a drink. And she’d eaten it. Well, strictly speaking, Ella’s friend had eaten most of it, but Sawyer still figured it for a nice play.

B
ets were going down all across the saloon as to what the delectable Ella Grace was going to do next. Meanwhile, the number of beverages being sent her way was hitting double digits, hence Reese’s decision to cut her off.

Reese
sent the loser away with a glass of sparkling water.

Reese was
currently eyeing
him
with the flat bleak gaze of a man lining up a sniper shot.

“
What?” Some kind of defense was clearly needed. “I was
helping
when I answered that ad. What if she’d had no takers? That would have been really embarrassing.”

“
You’re such a sweetheart,” said Mardie from the other side of the bar, and then went and spoiled her defense of him with a snicker.

“
Ouch. Who babysat your daughter the other day when you had to go to Livingstone?” He pointed to his chest. “Me. The sweetheart.”

“
I already thanked you for that, even though Mrs. Burrows saw you out walking Claire and now thinks I’m a twice fallen woman with a weakness for truck-stop trash.”

“
Your baby was screaming because she was bored. I defend my right to walk her around the block. We picked up fallen tree branches and Claire tried to eat them. Happiness ensued.”

“
You let my baby eat trees?”

“
No, I let her
try
.”

“
Trees aside, you
do
know that the father you’ve pledged to help annoy is Samuel T. Emerson, of Emerson Holdings?” Reese told him dryly. “Ring any bells? Because you’re living in one of his bunkhouses.”

Sawyer
probably should have made that connection himself; what with the Emerson name being plastered all over the transport trucks, not to mention the trucking company signage itself. “Gotta hand it to old Samuel T. He does provide good sleepover accommodation for his drivers. Clean room, good shower pressure. Really good mattress.”

“
You don’t care who he is, do you?” said Reese.

Sawyer smiled. So did Reese.

“All this rebel bonding,” Mardie grumbled. “Sawyer, how
did
you manage to rent that room at Emerson’s Transport?”

“
I asked. Man called Ray gave me the option of rooming by the week, cash in hand.”

“
You’re not even on the books,” Mardie told him bluntly.

Sawyer
slid the last of Mardie’s drinks order onto the tray. “Don’t have to be if I can be out of there in ten minutes.”

“
Did you come by that drifter mentality the hard way, or were you just born to it?” she sniped, and Sawyer thought that maybe, just maybe, he didn’t deserve that and that her comment was mostly meant for someone else. From all accounts, Mardie’s ex had been a drifter too, and that probably wasn’t the half of it. Sawyer had come up behind Mardie on his first day working the bar – she’d been trying to reach for a fresh bottle of top shelf whisky, and he’d watched her flinch hard then go utterly rigid when she’d realized he’d hemmed her in. He’d stepped back slowly, giving her space, lots of space, and almost let her reaction pass.

Almost
.

“
Okay, so next time we do that, how about you stand over there and tell me what you want down from the shelf and I’ll get it for you?” he’d offered carefully, and watched some of the stiffness ease from her thin shoulders.

“
Deal,” she’d said in a low, ragged voice, not even turning to look him in the eye.

He
hadn’t asked questions. Hadn’t really needed to.

They
’d come to an understanding since then, and these days she trusted him enough that she could ask him to babysit her kid for a couple of hours while she went and had some x-rays taken. These days he understood her well enough that he could brush off some of her more cutting comments about his drifter lifestyle.

Most of the time
.

He moved down the bar
. Mardie stopped him with quiet words. “I’m sorry, Sawyer. That comment was uncalled for. It wasn’t meant for you.”

“
We’re good,” he told her gruffly, for the echoes of a battered woman were all around her. “I do drift. I’m not a stable influence.” And this conversation was cutting way too close to the bone and it was time he found a way out of it. “Mind you, I like to think I have a
few
useful qualities. Skills, even.”

“
Yeah, running your mouth,” muttered Reese.

“
Your customers love my mouth.”

“
And his eyes.” Mardie was already turning away with the loaded tray of drinks, her smile firmly back in place. “His dimples. His muscles. His ass. His utter lack of humility…”

“
Find out what the odds of me landing the perfect lover position are,” he called after her. “See if you can raise them. I’m just warming up.”

“
I’m glad to hear it,” said a new voice, a feminine voice, mellow and assured. “Because for a former frontrunner, you’re slipping behind. You haven’t even bought me a drink.”

“
That’s because you’re cut off.” Sawyer turned and there she was, all creamy skinned and restless, and even prettier up close than she had been from afar. He met her gaze and felt the force of it, the singular focus of it, and he was glad he hadn’t still been talking when he turned her way because he might not have been able to finish his sentence. Some people kept their energy contained. This woman didn’t seem to live by that particular philosophy at all. Instead, she exuded a vibrant energy and the air around her seemed to shimmer beneath its impact.

That
, or he was getting dizzy.

He
took a moment, remembered to breathe, and then smiled his best lazy smile. “I was thinking flowers for you instead of a drink.”

“
At this time of night? Where would you get them?”

“
There’s some out back in a vase. I’m not sure who they belong to but I doubt they’ll be missed.”

“
Stolen
flowers,” she murmured. “Tell me, do they smell sweeter?”

“
They do.” He let some rumble enter his voice. He’d wooed women before; he knew what worked for them. And for him.

“
My father’s going to love you,” she murmured.

“
Trust me, he won’t. Although seeing as that’s the point, I’d say we’re good to go.”

“
I’m going to need some references.”

Damn but she had a pretty mouth. Generously
proportioned. Soft and supple looking. “I never kiss and tell.”

“
Convenient.”

“
Discreet.”

“
I’m really not after discreet,” she told him politely. “I’m looking for a noisy, attention-getting affair with a man my father will find thoroughly unsuitable.”

“
For you I could be indiscreet.” She leaned forward. It seemed only polite that Sawyer lean forward too.

“
May I make a confession?”

“
I’m all ears.” Her eyes really were the most amazing shade of blue.

“
It doesn’t even have to be a real affair. It could be a pretend one.”

F
rom somewhere beside him, Reese snorted. Ella Grace Emerson swayed back and eyed Reese reproachfully. “You cut me off.”

“
I know.”

“
I’ve had two. Right at the start of the evening.”

“
Considering the first one was a double, that makes three. And you’re still cut off. Ella Grace, I don’t care who started this debacle, you or Samuel T. I do know that you’re asking for the kind of trouble that isn’t welcome here. So unless you want to wake up tomorrow morning naked in some joker’s bed, with a splitting headache and no notion of how you got there, I suggest you take control of what you’ve started and change the way some people are thinking. Two choices, Ella Grace. Either you shut this down…” Reese’s voice had hardened. “Or I will.”

“
Do you really think that’s where those ads are sending us?” she asked skeptically.

“
You never can tell.”

“
Give me your pen,” she said, and Reese handed her a fat black marker with an air of quiet warning.

Sawyer watched
as she stalked over to the bulletin board and crossed out the docile house husband ad completely. A groan went up from two of the tables, but it was friendly still, there was laughter still. Reese might have a sixth sense for trouble, but it wasn’t upon them just yet.

Ella Grace turned and held up her hand for attention.

As if she didn’t command the room already.

“
Sorry,” she said. “Really not after a husband. It was a joke. Carey and Ry, I’m flattered and truly grateful that you decided to play along. I’ve every confidence that you’ll make fine husbands one day.
Really
fine if you plan on using that ad as your guide.”

Lad
ies cheered. Carey blushed. Ry stood and raised both arms in victory. And then Ella’s hand was back in the air again.

“
As for the lover wanted ad, it’s been pointed out to me that I may need to put a little more thought into that as well before, uh, taking action. So that notice is coming down too.” Groans this time, and more laughter, all still on the bright side of sociable. “I do apologize for the misdirection, people, but I hope there’s no harm done. And, um, for everyone involved, this round’s on me.”