Take Me, Cowboy

But he hadn’t. So she didn’t.

And now she needed a date.

She stalked across the room, heading toward the table that she and Chase, and often his brother, Sam, occupied on Friday nights. The lighting was dim, so she knew someone was sitting there but couldn’t make out which McCormack brother it was.

She hoped it was Chase. Because as long as she’d known Sam, she still had a hard time making conversation with him.

Talking wasn’t really his thing.

She moved closer, and the man at the table tilted his head up. Sam. Dammit. Drinking a beer and looking grumpy, which was pretty much par for the course with him. But Chase was nowhere to be seen.

“Hi,” she said, plopping down in the chair beside him. “Bad day?”

“A day.”

“Right.” At least when it came to Sam, she knew the difficult-conversation thing had nothing to do with her. That was all him.

She tapped the top of her knee, looking around the bar, trying to decide if she was going to get up and order a drink or wait for someone to come to the table. She allowed her gaze to drift across the bar, and her attention was caught by the figure of a man in the corner, black cowboy hat on his head, his face shrouded by the dim light. A woman was standing in front of him looking up at his face like he was her every birthday wish come true.

For a moment the sight of the man standing there struck her completely dumb. Broad shoulders, broad chest, strong-looking hands. The kind of hands that made her wonder if she needed to investigate the potential fuss of sex again.

He leaned up against the wall, his forearm above his head. He said something and the little blonde he was talking to practically shimmered with excitement. Anna wondered what that was like. To be the focus of a man’s attention like that. To have him look at you like a sex object instead of a drinking buddy.

For a moment she envied the woman standing there, who could absolutely get a date if she wanted one. Who would know what to wear and how to act if she were invited to a fancy gala whatever.

That woman would know what to do if the guy wanted to take her home after the date and get naked. She wouldn’t be awkward and make jokes and laugh when he got naked because there were all these feelings that were so...so weird she didn’t know how else to react.

With a man like that one...well, she doubted she would laugh. He would be all lean muscle and wicked smiles. He would look at her and she would... Okay, even in fantasy she didn’t know. But she felt hot. Very, very hot.

But in a flash, that hot feeling turned into utter horror. Because the man shifted, pushing his hat back on his head and angling slightly toward Anna, a light from above catching his angular features and illuminating his face. He changed then, from a fantasy to flesh and blood. And she realized exactly who she had just been checking out.

Chase McCormack. Her best friend in the entire world. The man she had spent years training herself to never, ever have feelings below the belt for.

She blinked rapidly, squeezing her hands into fists and trying to calm the fluttering in her stomach. “I’m going to get a drink,” she said, looking at Sam. And talk to Ace about the damn lighting in here. “Did you want something?”

He lifted his brow, and his bottle of beer. “I’m covered.”

Her heart was still pounding a little heavier than usual when she reached the bar and signaled Ace, the establishment’s owner, to ask for whatever pale ale he had on tap.

And her heart stopped altogether when she heard a deep voice from behind her.

“Why don’t you make that two.”

She whisked around and came face-to-chest with Chase. A man whose presence should be commonplace, and usually was. She was just in a weird place, thanks to high-pressure invitations and idiot brothers.

“Pale ale,” she said, taking a step back and looking up at his face. A face that should also be commonplace. But it was just so very symmetrical. Square jaw, straight nose, strong brows and dark eyes that were so direct they bordered on obscene. Like they were looking straight through your clothes or something. Not that he would ever want to look through hers. Not that she would want him to. She was too smart for that.

“That’s kind of an unusual order for you,” she continued, more to remind herself of who he was than to actually make commentary on his beverage choices. To remind herself that she knew him better than she knew herself. To do whatever she could to put that temporary moment of insanity when she’d spotted him in the corner out of her mind.

“I’m feeling adventurous,” he said, lifting one corner of his mouth, the lopsided grin disrupting the symmetry she had been admiring earlier and somehow making him look all the more compelling for it.

“Come on, McCormack. Adventurous is bungee jumping from Multnomah Falls. Adventurous is not trying a new beer.”

“Says the expert in adventure?”

“I’m an expert in a couple of things. Beer and motor oil being at the top of the list.”

“Then I won’t challenge you.”

“Probably for the best. I’m feeling a little bit bloodthirsty tonight.” She pressed her hands onto the bar top and leaned forward, watching as Ace went to get their drinks. “So. Why aren’t you still talking to short, blonde and stacked over there?”

He chuckled and it settled oddly inside her chest, rattling around before skittering down her spine. “Not really all that interested.”

“You seemed interested to me.”

“Well,” he said, “I’m not.”

“That’s inconsistent,” she said.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” he said, regarding her a little more closely than she would like. “Why are you in the mood to cause death and dismemberment?”

“Do I seem that feral?”

“Completely. Why?”

“The same reason I usually am,” she said.

“Your brothers.”

“You’re fast, I like that.”

Ace returned to their end of the bar and passed two pints toward them. “Do you want to open a tab?”

“Sure,” she said. “On him.” She gestured to Chase.

Ace smiled in return. “You look nice tonight, Anna.”

“I look...the same as I always do,” she said, glancing down at her worn gray T-shirt and no-fuss jeans.

He winked. “Exactly.”

She looked up at Chase, who was staring at the bartender, his expression unreadable. Then she looked back at Ace.

Ace was pretty hot, really. In that bearded, flannel-wearing way. Lumbersexual, or so she had overheard some college girls saying the other night as they giggled over him. Maybe he would want to be her date. Of course, easy compliments and charm aside, he also had his pick of any woman who turned up in his bar. And Anna was never anyone’s pick.

She let go of her fleeting Ace fantasy pretty quickly.

Chase grabbed the beer from the counter and handed one to her. She was careful not to let their fingers brush as she took it from him. That type of avoidance was second nature to her. Hazards of spending the years since adolescence feeling electricity when Chase got too close, and pretending she didn’t.