I shoved through the door into the bar, coming to a quick stop as my eyes adjusted to the light. I brushed a wet lock of hair off of my cheek and threaded through the tables to the bar at the back. Once I slipped onto a stool, the bartender spun to face me. He was a jolly looking man with round blue eyes.

“I’m Tank. You look like you could use a drink,” he announced, his wide smile softening his observation.

“A beer will do,” I replied.

“House draft okay?” he asked.

At my nod, he spun around. Within seconds, he’d handed me my beer and silently offered a clean towel. Though it was tiny, seeing as it was a bar towel, I quickly scrubbed it over my dripping wet hair and face before handing it back to him. I settled in to try to forget my shitty day.

A bit later, I drained my beer and glanced around the bar, savoring the anonymity of being in a crowded bar in Anchorage, Alaska where no one knew me. I was tucked in the corner by the wall, pleased to have a nice view of the crowd and yet go unnoticed by just about everyone there. Tank caught my eyes again, a question held in them. I nodded and held my empty pint glass aloft. He nodded in return while he mixed a drink for someone and pulled another pint for me with his free hand. The extent of my conversation with anyone this evening had been limited to Tank’s earlier introduction.

If he thought anything awry with the fact I was wearing a wedding dress splashed with mud, he didn’t show it. Neither did anyone around me. Anchorage was just large enough of a city people left you alone if you appeared to want to be left as such. That said, people were friendly too. Alaska, despite its sprawling geography, kept its residents close, all bound by the knowledge they lived on the edge of the wild and had the strength and guts for such a life.

I took a drag on what was my third beer and wondered if perhaps I should slow down. I was definitely tipsy and on my way to drunk. I fingered the cream silk of my wedding dress. Or maybe I needed to consider it my not-wedding dress. I’d been all dressed and ready to go when I’d failed in my battle against the knot of tension balled like a vise around my heart. I swallowed against the rush of emotion that rose inside as my eyes traveled down the fitted bodice of my dress and bounced to the muddy splotches all over its swirling skirt. Oh yeah. I hadn’t simply ditched my groom-to-be just before we got to the altar, I’d bolted in the rain. Another swallow of beer, followed with a slow sigh. What stung the most—all I felt was relief. Not regret, not second thoughts. Just pure relief.

I’d walked across the hallway at the back of the church and barged into Earl’s dressing room. There he’d stood, tall and handsome with his dark blonde hair and brown eyes. It was what I never saw in his eyes when he looked at me that pushed me to tell him I couldn’t marry him. When Earl looked at me, I saw a kind regard, a humored attempt to appreciate me for who I was. Yet, there was never anything close to the hot fire I’d known once upon a time with someone else. I’d apologized, but I’d also been flat pissed with him for trying to trick himself and me into thinking he really loved me.

A dash into the late afternoon rain on a cool summer day in Alaska had felt cleansing. Until I got chilled and finally ducked into this bar. I didn’t even know what it was called. I suddenly recalled I didn’t have a penny on me. It wasn’t like I’d been carrying a purse for my aborted walk up the aisle. Oh well, oh hell. I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror behind the bar and bit back a sigh. My amber hair was a damp, tangled mess.

I didn’t think much about how I looked. To be honest, it was more that I tried not to. I was as tall as most men. I ran my own construction business to boot. I tried to never let it show, but when it came to my femininity, seeds of doubt were planted firmly inside. It didn’t help that all but one man treated me pretty much like a man, Earl included.

I gave my head a hard shake and glanced around the bar again, scanning the collection of people. Businessmen rubbed elbows with fishermen here. Sports reigned supreme on the televisions screens mounted at various points in the bar, and a few pool tables were clustered in the corner. That’s what I’d do. I loved pool and was pretty damn good at it.

A few minutes later, I was paired up in a game with three other guys. They’d thrown a few looks askance at my wedding dress and seemed amused at playing with me. Tipsy and deep into my don’t give a damn mode, I set out to beat them.

Roughly an hour later, I grinned as my last ball rolled neatly into a pocket corner. “Well, boys,” I said, glancing among them.

The boys in question had been drinking and gotten steadily more sullen as we played. One of them, a hulking sort with dark eyes and hair, glared at me. They’d bet on this game after the first two, and I was due five dollars each from them.

Mr. Hulk, as I’d come to call him in my head, stepped close to me, too close for comfort. “No fiver from any of us. You got that?”

I was just drunk enough not to care. I stretched up to my full five foot eleven inches. He might have more bulk than me, but I was a hair taller. “Ah, I see. You only like to bet if you’re gonna win? What an ass,” I said, my lips curling in a sneer.

I was stretched too thin emotionally with white hot anger, a simmering anger I’d kept buried for the entirety of the two years I’d wasted on Earl, and a tad too drunk to be reasonable right now. When the jerk stepped closer and put his finger on my chest, I didn’t even think. I punched him, right in the nose.

“You fuckin’ bitch!” he shouted as he swiped his sleeve across his face, smearing the blood from his nose on his cheek.

He hauled off and punched me back, his fist bouncing under my eye. He had enough heft to send me tumbling to the floor, an inglorious heap of muddied silk spilling around me. I was just tipsy enough not to care that my face was throbbing. Without the mud, minus the dingy hardwood floor under me and definitely minus the crowd now gathered around, I considered the way the silk of my dress spilled in a near perfect circle would have made a great wedding photo—one of those candid shots people would love.

In a flash, Tank was there, shoving the guy who’d punched me away. Voices above me collided with each other.

“Dude, she hit me first!”

“Self defense…”

“Yeah, but she’s a girl…”

“She’s a fuckin’ giant, and she can hit. She’s no girl!”

I closed my eyes and wished I could crawl into a hole. The buzz that had kept me afloat this afternoon and evening dissolved into mortification. The jerk was right. I was a giant and no one would ever look at me and think girly thoughts.

“Amelia?”

My heartbeat came to a screeching stop and then jumpstarted with a hard kick. I’d know that voice anywhere. Through the jumble around me with Tank leaning over to ask if I was okay, that voice rang like a loud bell inside. One man. Only one man had ever looked at me with heat in his eyes, heat so hot it singed me. That man spoke my name now. I didn’t have to open my eyes to know. I did anyway. Because I couldn’t bear not to see him.

Cade Masters stood at the edge of the circle gathered around me, another man in a bar crowded with men. Shaggy dark brown hair, green eyes, and a body of raw muscle stood before me. My heart felt as if it had been split open. I’d loved Cade in that wild headlong way that only youth allowed. No more than seven years had passed since I’d seen him, but it felt like forever. Cade had broken my heart and walked out of my life when I was twenty-two. He hadn’t just broken my heart, he’d betrayed me.

Anger flashed hot and high inside, yet I couldn’t look away. My eyes ate Cade up. He wore faded jeans, the fabric so worn it hugged his muscled legs like a caress, and a denim jacket over a black t-shirt. He had something of an outdoorsy, biker vibe. Once upon a time, he’d taken me on long rides on his motorcycle through the nearly empty highways in Alaska surrounding our hometown. He stepped through the crowd and knelt at my side, his green gaze coasting over me. “You okay?” he asked.

I nodded without really thinking about it. He lifted a hand and ran the backs of his fingers along my cheekbone. Oh right, some guy had just punched me in the face. Cade’s presence had wiped my mind clean of everything else. With barely a brush of his touch, my heart fluttered and heat tightened inside.

“You sure?”

I swallowed, suddenly aware of my throbbing cheek. My entire day flashed through my mind. A gloriously shitty day. I fought against the tears, but they welled up, unbidden and beyond my control. One tear rolled down my cheek and then another and another. Of all the times and places to encounter the one and only man who still held a piece of my heart, this had to be the absolute worst.

Cade’s eyes never left mine. Something flickered deep in the depths of them, but I didn’t know how to interpret it. Without a word, he slipped his arm around my waist and lifted me up, bundling me into his arms as if it was the most normal thing in the world to do. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said and started to stride away.

Tank caught him by the arm, and Cade glanced to him. “Yeah?”

“Just making sure she’s okay,” Tank replied.

All I could do was nod. I was so totally not okay, but I was okay in the sense Tank was asking.

Tank’s warm gaze held mine, this bartender who barely knew me, but had somehow known I’d had a bad day and just needed to be left in peace while I had a few beers. I should’ve stayed put in my seat at the bar. My raw emotions and crazy day, all of my own making if I was being honest with myself, had gotten me into this mess.

“You want the police involved?” Tank asked.

I shook my head and finally found my voice. “No. Let’s call it even. I punched him, he punched me.”

“You know this guy?” Tank asked next, nodding to Cade.

“Uh huh. It’s okay. He’s an old friend of my family’s. No need to worry,” I managed. On its face, my explanation was true. Cade and I had grown up together in Willow Brook, Alaska. Our families had known each other for years. Yet, my explanation left out so much of what Cade meant to me, it was almost laughable.

Tank released his grip on Cade’s arm and let us be. Cade was quiet as he strode through the bar, the crowd parting around him. I could only imagine how we looked—me in my dirty not-wedding dress and him giving off his usual back the hell off vibes. It was a shock to see him for the first time in years and even more of a shock to be held in his arms. I felt at home in his strong embrace. He held me easily. He always had. I loved that about him. Cade was a good four inches taller than me at six foot three inches and had never cared about how tall I was. He pushed through the door of the bar, stepping out into the late evening. The rain had stopped at some point during the long hours I’d been hiding in the bar.

He paused once we were outside on the sidewalk and glanced down, his gaze catching mine. “Why are you wearing a wedding dress?”

That was Cade, never one to waste time on preliminaries. I’d loved that about him. Oh how I’d loved so many things about Cade, back before he’d left my heart bruised and battered. Right now, I couldn’t seem to recall the pain. All I knew was it felt so good—so, so, so good to be with him.