Smooth-Talking Cowboy

Whatever it was, he’d felt less pleasure from a hand wrapped around more intimate parts of him than from her delicate fingers wrapped around his own.

“Let’s go,” he said, his voice gruffer than he intended. But dammit, he was affected. He wasn’t used to being affected. He was used to doing the affecting. He was used to being the one causing a reaction, not contending with one. Particularly one he didn’t want.

He didn’t have a lot of practice in restraint. Life was pretty easy for him. Everything he had he’d worked for honestly. Everything except that money in the bank from the insurance settlement. And that was why it still sat there, because it occupied a place that was uncomfortable for him. A place he didn’t know what to do with.

He didn’t like things like that. He liked his life simple.

He wanted something, he worked for it. He wanted a woman, he slept with her. He wanted to be done with a woman, he cut things off.

He didn’t do longing. He didn’t do unrequited lust and unquenched desire. He didn’t want things he couldn’t have. Hell, usually he didn’t even want things he had to wait for.

But there was money he’d received from a loss, from a moment in time he resented, and if he did nothing with it, it would be worse than benefiting from it.

And there was Olivia Logan. About to make him lose his mind because her hand had touched his. Like he was a green horse that had never been ridden.

In rebellion to those feelings, he held on to her more tightly, shifted so that his fingers were laced through hers as the two of them walked across the street and toward the saloon. When he looked down at her, he almost laughed. Except that his throat was too tight, and his chest felt like there was a ten-ton weight on it.

Yeah, except for those things, he was tempted to laugh at Olivia, who looked like she was carved out of a particularly lifeless bar of Ivory soap. She’d gone waxen and pale, her expression frozen, her petite little shoulders stiff as they made their way to the front door of the bar.

“You’re going to have to look a little bit less like you want to throw up on my boots, kiddo,” he said.

“I don’t... I don’t know if I can do this,” she said, extricating herself from his hold.

“It’s too late, honey,” he said. “We’re already doing this. People have already seen us out the window. And they’re wondering what the hell you’re doing with the likes of me. But you know who’s going to wonder that most of all? Bennett. Bennett Dodge is going to wonder what the hell you’re doing with me.”

“Is it going to cause trouble?” she asked, her dark brows knitting together, a little crease appearing between them. “Is it going to cause trouble between you and the Dodge family, because I know you’re close...”

“You don’t care,” he said.

“Will you stop telling me I don’t care about things?” she said, frowning deeply.

“When you stop lying about it, sure. You’re worried about what people will think. Because you’re worried that they’ll think you’re slumming it with a guy like me, right? Because I’m a no-account from nowhere and you’re Olivia Logan. But that’s the point, isn’t it?”

“My mother is going to get phone calls.” She scrubbed her hand over her forehead, as if that could remove the worry lines that had appeared there at the mention of her mother.

He shrugged. “So what? Let her get phone calls. There are worse things. You can explain it to her. You can tell her the truth, or you can tell her our lie. Either way. But you’re a grown-up, Olivia. And nobody gets to tell you what to do.”

“Right.” She sighed. “That’s not how life works when you care about people, Luke. You don’t just...do whatever you want and leave someone to worry.”

“Why not?” he asked. “You can’t control what someone else feels.”

She made a frustrated noise. “That’s not...you’re missing the point. And I don’t care if you miss the point. You and I just don’t see eye to eye.”

“We don’t need to see eye to eye. We just need to work together for a bit. Now, do you trust me, or not?”

Her brown eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. “Not as far as I could throw you.”

“Good. You shouldn’t trust me. I’m not a gentleman.” Right now he felt like a particularly hungry fox sniffing around the henhouse. “But, I do have the best idea running for how you can get Bennett’s attention.”

Olivia took a deep breath, shaking those stiff shoulders out, then looking up at him. “Okay.”

“Okay.” He took a step ahead of her and grabbed the handle on the door, pulling it open. “After you.”

She walked in ahead of him, and he was struck by just how small and delicate she was. The top of her head wouldn’t graze the underside of his chin if she walked under it. It made him want to pick her up, carry her over a threshold or some shit. And that was a weird impulse. Except, he supposed not really all that weird. Since what he really wanted was to throw her down on a big bed and spend the rest of the night exploring every inch of her.

Damn. Things were escalating. She had always been an itch to him. From the minute that girl had turned eighteen she’d been a problem.

Pretty. Remote. She’d been far too young. So far off-limits that he’d never allowed his fantasies to get this graphic.

But he’d touched her now. Untouchable Olivia Logan. He’d felt her skin beneath his fingertips and it was like those chains he’d put around himself had dissolved. Now all that resolute control was getting strained.

Which wasn’t a difficult thing to do considering he didn’t have a whole lot of practice with control. Except for with her. With her, he had certainly tried over the years.

This was making it damn difficult.

He walked in behind her, pressing his fingertips against her lower back, again in defiance of that need rocketing through him. He clenched his teeth, wondering silently if he was a masochist and didn’t know it.

“Why don’t you go get us a table?” he asked, scanning the room to see if Bennett, Wyatt and Grant were already in residence.

Bennett and Wyatt were. Grant was unsurprisingly absent.

He wished the guy would get his ass in gear and get out more, he really did. But Grant was like a difficult burrowing animal. Certain times of the year, particularly in the winter, it was tough to get him out to do anything. He seemed to do better later in the year. Some people might attribute that to seasons on sunshine and whatever. Luke figured it had to do with the fact that his wife had died in February. The lead-up to the month was always tough.

He wasn’t the most emotionally enlightened guy, that much was for sure, but he knew a little bit about loss.

About the way dates burned themselves into your brain. The way they seemed to exist in the back of your mind, eternally in your consciousness even when you weren’t trying to be aware of them.

“Hey.” Luke sidled up to the bar and signaled Laz as Olivia looked around the room, bewildered, clearly trying to decide which table to select. She was not good at subterfuge, that much was certain. It was kind of charming to watch her try. “I need a couple shots of whiskey.”

“Olivia doesn’t drink whiskey,” Laz said, picking up a shot glass.

“All right. What does she drink?”

“Diet Coke.”

“I’ll still take the extra shot of whiskey. But, add the Diet Coke to it. In case she wants to mix the two.”

“She won’t,” Laz said.

“She might before the evening is up,” Luke said, confident. “You can just put that on my tab.”

Olivia had finally made a decision, and was sitting at a table near the dartboard, looking lost. Luke acquired their drinks and went to join her. He slid the Diet Coke in front of her as he took his seat, then placed both shots of whiskey in front of him.

“Am I that trying to hang out with?” she asked, looking pointedly at the two glasses of alcohol. There was a hint of humor in her eyes and he found that more surprising than anything.

“The other shot is for you. In case you’re feeling crazy.”

“No. On a very rare day sometimes I feel regular soda crazy, but not so much hard liquor crazy.”