Smooth-Talking Cowboy

“I thought I was going to let you know if I needed a ride. And my boss gave me one. So I didn’t.” She cleared her throat. “Thank you. For fixing the car. I really do appreciate it. And I do owe you a drink.”

“Is it possible that you were covering your ass, though? Because you didn’t want to tell Kaylee that you were here to stare at Bennett all evening?”

Her face got hot and she had a feeling she was lit up like the damned neon sign that hung outside the saloon. “No... I don’t...”

Her gaze drifted over to the table, to where Kaylee and Bennett sat next to each other. That stomach tightening turned into a twist. A mean, painful twist that sent a metallic taste flooding through her mouth.

“You don’t care.” Luke leveled his gaze on her. “Laz,” he called out. “Can I get a shot? Something really good, because Olivia Logan is paying. And you know she’s good for it.”

Laz nodded and set about to pouring another measure of amber liquid into Luke’s glass.

“Excuse me?” Olivia asked.

“I changed your tire, Olivia,” Luke said. “Don’t go getting me cheap alcohol.”

“No. What do you mean I don’t care?”

Luke sat next to her, his broad shoulder nearly brushing hers as he took his position on the stool. “You don’t care about Bennett.”

“Yes,” she said. “I do. I care about Bennett... A lot. I love him.”

“Why did you break up with him then?”

“It’s complicated,” she said.

“It’s not that complicated. You want to be with him or you don’t.”

Great. She was getting lectured about love and relationships by a man whose longest relationship had been with his pickup truck. “I needed to be sure that he wanted to be with me,” she said stiffly.

“Okay,” he said, arching a brow. “By breaking up with him?”

“Well,” she returned, “it’s informative. I mean... I guess at this point not so informative in the way that I wanted it to be.”

“You wanted him to see what he was missing?” Luke asked.

For all that he pretended not to understand her feelings, he seemed to understand pretty well. Better than she would like, actually. She didn’t like that he could see through her quite so easily because if Luke could, surely everyone could. “Yes,” she answered reluctantly.

He lifted a shoulder. “I still don’t think you care.”

She picked up her soda, and then redirected, brought it down hard on the bar. “I do care.” Her heart was pounding and she was breathing fast. “Stop acting like you know what I want. Or you know what I think. You don’t actually know me.”

“Olivia Logan, I have known you since you were a stuck-up little girl. And I know you now that you’re a stuck-up woman.” Laz slid the tumbler of whiskey down in front of Luke and Luke tipped it up to his lips, downing it in one go.

Luke leveled his gaze at Olivia. “Don’t tell me I don’t know you.”

“I’m not stuck-up,” she said, bristling.

He shifted in his seat and her eyes were drawn to where his hand was wrapped around his glass. He had strong hands. A working man’s hands. Callused and rough, vaguely dirty around the fingernails even when they were clean.

She imagined that they’d be rough to the touch. That they would scrape against her skin.

If she were to shake hands with him, or something. Because there were no circumstances otherwise under which they would ever touch.

She looked away.

“Okay, Olivia.” His tone was so maddeningly placating it made her want to punch him.

“I’m not. Why do you think I’m stuck-up?”

“Because right now you’re looking at me like I’m something you stepped in out in the cow pasture. In fact, you look at a lot of the world that way.”

“I’m in a bar.” She waved her hands around. “Which is not my natural habitat. I don’t think I’m better than the bar, I just don’t feel like I know my place in it. And anyway, you’re not nice to me.”

“Honey, I fixed your flat tire earlier and gave you a ride to work. What do you mean I’m not nice to you?”

She trawled back through her memory, trying to come up with the example of a time when Luke had been mean to her. Well, not mean, but maybe unkind. All she knew was that she felt upset after being with him often enough that she was certain he had to be.

“You know. You are... Provocative.” He was. He provoked her. That was the word. Not mean, maybe, but she always left interactions with him feeling like she’d been poked with a stick.

He lifted one brow. “Provocative? Well. That has several connotations to it, sweet thing.”

There he was. Provoking. “Do not call me that.”

“Don’t call you what?” He lifted his glass and indicated the empty state to Laz. “Honey or sweet thing?”

“Both. Neither. I am nothing remotely sugar-based to you.”

“Well. My mistake.”

Laz refilled Luke’s glass and Olivia shot him the evil eye. “I’m not paying for two drinks.”

“You’re a peach, Olivia,” Luke said. “I’m real sorry about that stuck-up comment.”

She looked out of the corner of her eye and saw that Bennett was watching her closely. That Bennett was watching Luke and herself. She turned back quickly, focusing her attention on Luke.

“I’m not your peach, either.” She sniffed.

For some reason she couldn’t quite pin down, she settled into her seat a little more firmly and listed a bit to the side, her shoulder brushing up against Luke’s.

He paused with his glass up against his lips, his green eyes turning sharp enough to cut straight through her. Her eyes lowered, resting on those lips, still pressed against the whiskey tumbler. He had just a bit of gold scruff right there around his mouth, spreading over his square jaw, the beginnings of a beard or just the end of a long workday. For some reason, she found herself captivated by it. And by the shape of his mouth.

Quickly, she raised her gaze back to his, and found it wasn’t any more comforting.

Then his eyes narrowed and he tilted his head slightly to the side, looking quickly over his shoulder and back at the table of Dodges behind them.

“Don’t play games with me, Olivia,” he said, his voice low, rough. “You’re not going to win any of them.”

She swiveled her head to look at him, keeping her face blank. Keeping her mind blank. “What do you mean?”