Authors: Linda Lael Miller
“You’ve had a few beers,” Zane repeated woodenly.
“That’s what I said,” Landry confirmed, and the words had a fine edge to them, like a steel blade, freshly sharpened. Then he laughed, sounding more like the kid he’d been way back when than the man he’d become since. “Actually,” he went on, sounding drunker by the second, “I’ve probably had slightly more than a few.”
Zane swore under his breath. As far as he knew, Landry didn’t have a drinking problem, but he supposed he’d had plenty of time to develop one since they’d last seen each other in person.
Anything was possible.
“Hello?” Landry prodded, waxing impatient now. When he talked, he expected people to pay attention.
“I’ll be there in half an hour,” Zane replied briskly. “Do yourself a favor and order up a cup of strong coffee, will you? In fact, why don’t you make it a double?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
E
VEN
AFTER
SEVERAL
purposeful delays, Brylee arrived at the Boot Scoot Tavern before any of her friends did. She was chronically punctual, it seemed.
When she drove into the gravel parking lot, with its patches of weeds, there were several vehicles taking up space. None of them were familiar and, though she’d been to the Boot Scoot about a million times before, she was strangely hesitant to go inside, at least by herself.
Sighing in resignation, she reached over and lifted her shoulder bag from its place on the passenger seat, set it in her lap and then sat there for a few moments longer, biting her lower lip and wishing she’d stayed home.
She was strongly tempted to give in to previous temptation, ditch Amy and the others, do her shopping for tomorrow night’s dinner, then head back to Three Trees, where she could hide out at the library or take in a movie.
Except that it would be cowardly to skip out now, and anyway, to Brylee, a promise was a promise—and besides, she was vastly overdressed for a night of browsing through the stacks at the library or munching popcorn in a theater. Bad enough that she’d have to enter a supermarket in this outfit, later in the evening. She’d look flat-out ridiculous—or worse, as if she was out to find herself some action.
Inviting as the prospect was, turning back wasn’t an option. After mulling all that over and feeling no less confused than before, Brylee paused before opening the door of her SUV, checking her hair and lipstick in the rearview mirror, and felt a jolt of chagrined alarm at her own reflection—hair pinned up in a saucy do, with tendrils curling at her nape and cheeks, sprayed into helmetlike submission. She was wearing not only eye shadow and mascara, but liner, too—along with foundation and powder and blush.
She’d even plucked her brows and shaved her legs, for pity’s sake, and then there was the dress—the
dress.
It was a “heads up, handsome, I’m back on the market” kind of getup, for sure, flirty and red, with a clingy fit through the bodice and hips, where it flared out subtly into three tiers of flapperlike ruffles.
Had she bought the darned thing for a costume party or what? She’d found it hanging at the back of her closet, tried it on to see if it would still fit and had decided the slip of silk would do as well as anything else she owned. She couldn’t remember buying it
or
wearing it, which was just as well, because the occasion had probably had something to do with Hutch Carmody.
Some things—and some men—were better forgotten.
“Who are you?” she asked the image looking back at her in irritated amazement. “Nobody
I
recognize, that’s for sure.”
What, she wondered now, long past the point where she could have done anything differently, had she been thinking? She was having tacos and beer with the girls at the Boot Scoot, not going out for a glamorous night on the town in Manhattan or L.A. with Prince Charming.
Exasperated, having just come to her senses with a hard slam, Brylee thought about fleeing yet again, just turning right around and heading back home to the ranch—forget the grocery list she’d keyed into her smartphone. Yes, it would be a yellow-bellied thing to do, but wasn’t discretion the better part of valor, at least
some
of the time? Would it be so
very
wrong to beat a retreat without even setting foot inside that seedy cowboy bar at all?
She might have given in and split the scene in spite of earlier misgivings—if Amy hadn’t pulled in next to her, with a jaunty honk of her car horn and a wave of one hand. The woman was beaming when she got out from behind the wheel; she locked up, and came around to stand next to Brylee’s driver’s side door.
Forcing a smile—after all, it was
herself
she was put out with, not Amy—Brylee rolled down her window.
“Well, I’ll be,” Amy marveled, cheerleader-cute in her rhinestone-studded jeans and striped, off-one-shoulder shirt. Her blond hair, like Brylee’s, was pinned up and sprayed within an inch of its life. It was a good thing neither one of them smoked, Brylee decided fitfully, because they might have become human fireballs just by trying to light up. “I really thought you were going to come up with some lame but extremely inventive excuse and cancel on us again. But here you are.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Brylee replied, shoving aside the fact that she’d been about to boogie for the hills, but now she had no choice but to serve out the two-hour sentence ahead of her. But she wasn’t going to stay a
minute
longer than that. So she drew a deep breath and asked, with a flimsy smile, “Are we going in, or shall we wait out here for the others?”
Amy dismissed the idea of marking time in the parking lot with a wave of one manicured hand, shook her head and stepped back so Brylee could climb out of the SUV.
The other woman’s eyes gleamed with appreciative mischief as she took Brylee in with a sweeping visual inspection, taking pointed notice of the red dress, the makeup and sexy hairdo, the F-me open-toed high heels. Her perusal was so thorough, in fact, that Brylee felt like squirming. Was Amy taking an inventory, or what?
“You clean up real nice, Boss Lady,” she finally said, grinning. Then, in an impish whisper, she added, “It’ll probably just be the usual Friday-night-in-Parable crowd in there tonight, you know. Unless you’ve got a steamy date afterward and didn’t bother to share the information with your BFF.”
Brylee quickly turned away and made a major project of rolling up her window and locking the SUV, hoping she’d moved fast enough to hide the blush warming her cheeks. “I guess I just got carried away,” she said offhandedly, when she was facing her friend again.
How long had it been since she’d had any reason at all—even a flimsy one, like tacos and beer—to dress like this? Heck, she was even wearing perfume.
Inwardly, Brylee continued to fret. Was she possessed? Did she have an alternate personality she hadn’t known about prior to tonight? None of this was like her—including the hesitation.
As if divining her friend’s thoughts, Amy took a firm grip on Brylee’s arm and hustled her toward the entrance to the Boot Scoot, music and laughter and the heady aroma of fried food rolling out into the cool dusk to greet them.
Unaccountably, in the instant it took for her eyes to adjust to the dim interior of the bar, Brylee’s heart began to pound, and she wanted once again, but more fiercely than ever this time, to spin around on one spiked heel and bolt.
And then her vision acclimated itself to the scene before her. Zane Sutton was ambling in her direction, and he gave her a slow, approving once-over as he drew nearer.
“Oh, hell,” Brylee muttered, stiffening. What was
he
doing in the Boot Scoot, a good thirty miles from home? If he wanted to party, well, Three Trees had a run-down tavern or two of its own.
“Is that Zane Sutton?”
Amy asked, in a stage whisper, after closing her gaping mouth.
“The movie star?”
“Yep,” Brylee answered wearily. “That’s him, all right.”
She worked up a neighborly smile, despite her many misgivings, because it was a free country and if the man wanted to hang out at the Boot Scoot Tavern, of all places, tonight of all nights, then she’d just have to accept it.
Zane, looking cowboy-good in perfectly ordinary clothes—clothes that were better suited to the location than her own, in fact—came to a stop within touching distance and grinned down into Brylee’s face. Amusement, along with something else, sparked in his eyes.
“Hello, Brylee,” he said easily, letting his gaze slide over her again, leaving invisible fire in its wake, instantly followed by a rash of goose bumps.
Amy elbowed Brylee hard and cleared her throat, which meant, in girlfriend vernacular,
Introduce us, damn it.
Brylee remembered her manners, smiled even more determinedly than before and told herself to suck it up and deal. Sometimes, when there was no way over, under or around a situation, a person simply had to go
through
it. “Amy Dupree,” she chirped brightly, “this is Zane Sutton, my new neighbor. Zane, my good friend Amy.”
“Amy,” Zane said, with a nod of acknowledgment.
“H-hello,” Amy stammered out. She wasn’t usually shy, but then again, she didn’t meet movie stars every day, either. Those who graced Parable County with their presence generally kept to themselves, for the most part, anyway—except, of course, when they felt called upon to interfere in local politics or to boycott products that were the lifeblood of the year-round inhabitants, like beef.
Zane’s grin rose to his eyes, lingered there, with whatever it was he thought was so damn funny. “Join us?” he asked smoothly.
Us? Brylee thought, barely resisting an embarrassing urge to peer around his shoulder to see who made up the other component of “us.”
“Sure!” Amy said quickly, her smile as blinding as a prison-yard searchlight. “That would be great!”
“Good,” Zane said smoothly, watching Brylee’s face and acting as if he knew every last one of her deepest secrets and a few she herself had yet to discover in the bargain. With a sweep of one arm, he gestured toward the tables lining the far wall, but the Friday night crowd was thick, and Brylee still couldn’t see where he was directing her and Amy to go.
Amy, on the other hand, seemed to come equipped with her own personal GPS. The rhinestones on her hip pockets caught colored lights from the jukebox as she sashayed confidently across the room and headed straight for the table with the ratty old moose head hanging on the wall just above it.
A man stood, smiling, as they approached, weaving a path between line dancers and waitresses and people just trying to elbow their way to the restroom. He was breathtakingly handsome, whoever he was, and he obviously knew it, which didn’t endear him to Brylee.
In fact, she bristled a little.
“My brother,” Zane explained mildly, and with a touch of what might have been irony. “Landry Sutton.”
Landry beamed, showing teeth as white and straight and perfect as Zane’s. Were they
born
that way, or was cosmetic dentistry a factor? The brother’s hair was the same toasty shade of dark blond, too, his eyes the same intense blue. And yet, Brylee thought, he was very different from his sibling. His clothes—jeans and a crisp white shirt, regulation dress-up garb for a cowboy—were too, well,
tailored,
fitting him like a layer of spray paint. They were not just expensive, those duds, they were out-and-out flashy, and his boots, with their pointed toes and elaborate embroidery, must have been custom-made.
On an oil baron or a trick-rider in an Old West show, circa Buffalo Bill Cody’s heyday, they might have worked. In Parable County, Montana, they were the unmistakable marks of a wannabe, a greenhorn.
Amy, apparently unconcerned by all this, or just failing to make the same observations Brylee had, gushed all over Landry Sutton, welcoming him to the community and all that, but Brylee could manage only a wooden smile and a stiff “How do you do?” as she put her hand out for Landry to shake. In a sidelong glance at Zane, she saw that his mouth had taken on a slightly smug curve at one side.
Zane’s once-over had at least been subtle—sort of—but when Landry measured Brylee from the crown of her head to the soles of her scandalous shoes, she felt, well, not trashy, exactly, but on display, like a ripe peach at a roadside produce stand.
She might have made excuses then, said she and Amy were expecting a few friends any minute now and promptly chosen a table as far away from Zane and Landry’s as possible, but her BFF was already batting her glue-on eyelashes at the new guy in town, and he suavely pulled back her chair.
Once Amy sat down, Brylee was stuck. Zane, looking strangely sympathetic but still amused, offered her the chair beside his and waited until she took it before sitting down himself.
“Things are looking up,” Landry said in a low drawl, his gaze fixed somewhere in the vicinity of Brylee’s cleavage.
Damn that stupid push-up bra, anyway, she thought. She should never have
ordered
the thing, let alone put it on, but the woman on the shopping channel had promised the earth, plus lasting peace and global prosperity, all for $29.99 plus shipping.
Sucker,
Brylee castigated herself silently, remembering. Had she bought the red dress at the same time, on the same recklessly romantic impulse? Who knew?
“Landry,” Zane said coolly, “quit while you’re ahead, okay?”
It wasn’t a suggestion, Brylee realized, but an order, or even a warning, however politely delivered.
An invisible charge flashed, white-hot, between the two men.
“We really should get a table of our own,” Brylee interjected, with desperate goodwill. “Before the place gets too crowded.” She paused, blushed because she could feel Zane’s sidelong glance stinging tiny hair follicles on every inch of her skin—and not just the visible parts, either. “W-we’re meeting friends.”
“They’re late, anyhow,” Amy said quickly. “Who knows? They might not show up at all. You know how they can be.”
Brylee glared at her friend, contentedly seated beside Landry on the opposite side of the scratched tabletop.
Amy, undaunted, made a face at her.
An unfamiliar waitress came over, harried but, at first, friendly. Whip-thin in her narrow jeans and boob-hugging tube top, she sported big hair, pink boots and a plastic name tag that read “Sharlene.” The finishing touch was a tattoo of a small, grinning skull, its bony head crowned with pink flowers, nestled on the upper curve of her right breast.
If that top shrunk a mere fraction of an inch in the dryer next time Sharlene did her laundry, Brylee thought uncharitably, it would be Nipple-o-rama at the Boot Scoot—forget taco night.
“What’ll it be, Mr. Movie Star?” the waitress asked in a near-croon, eyes twinkling. Evidently, she’d noticed Zane and no one else—even Landry, an unusually attractive man in his own right, might have been part of the wall, for all the attention she gave him.