CHAPTER THREE
OLIVIA FELT LIKE there was a spotlight shining down on her as she walked into the Gold Valley saloon. Because she was alone, and she was certain that everybody in the room had taken note of that.
Happily, her boss, Lindy, had agreed to drive her back to her car, so she hadn’t had to call Luke to come and pick her up from work. And also happily, he had made good on his promise to fix her car.
She frowned slightly thinking of that. That had been... Well, it had been awfully nice of him. It had saved her the cost of a tow truck. And the cost of getting the tire fixed. It wasn’t like her dad wouldn’t have paid for it. But she didn’t want to inconvenience him. And he wasn’t very happy with the way everything had gone down with Bennett. Ultimately, he probably would have badgered her into calling Bennett to try and patch things up with him.
She wanted things patched up with Bennett. She did. Which was why she was here in the bar, alone.
She frowned and edged up to the bar, sitting gingerly on one of the tall stools. For somebody who really wasn’t a big bar person she sure did end up spending a lot of time in them. She didn’t do much drinking, and she didn’t especially like loud environments. But all of her friends seemed to. So when everyone went out after work they inevitably ended up either at Ace’s in Copper Ridge or here.
Laz Jenkins, the owner of the bar, sidled down to her end, a broad smile on his face. “Good evening, Olivia. Your usual?”
Her usual was a Diet Coke. She sighed. “Yes.” She looked down at the scarred bar top, at the contrast between her perfectly manicured hands and the rough-hewn wood. Then she looked up at Laz’s broad back. “Thank you,” she added, because she realized she had forgotten her manners. And Olivia Logan never forgot her manners.
It was early, and the bar was mostly empty, but she knew that they would be here. If she had wanted to avoid them, she would have gone down into Copper Ridge. Actually, if she had wanted to avoid them she would have gone home.
Her phone buzzed and she looked down.
Are you home yet?
It was from her mother. She lived in a little house on her parents’ property, so her mother probably had a fairly good idea that she wasn’t home.
No.
Will you be late?
Olivia sighed and brought up the little phone icon next to her mother’s name. “I’m at the saloon,” she said crisply when her mother picked up.
“Okay,” her mom responded.
“Is everything all right?” She always defaulted to worry. Which was funny, because Tamara Logan also defaulted to worry automatically. Olivia knew why. It was Vanessa’s fault. But Vanessa wasn’t within reach, which meant that Olivia was the focus of all her parents’ concern.
In high school, one slip in her GPA and her parents had been terrified she was on the same dark path as her sister. They were twins, after all. And if Vanessa was susceptible, why wouldn’t Olivia be, too?
She’d been treated like a rebellious teenager when she’d never once set a foot out of line.
“Everything’s fine,” her mom answered. “I was just curious if you were sitting at home or if you had gone out.”
“I’m not with Bennett,” she said.
Then, as if on cue, the door opened and there he was. Bennett and his brother Wyatt. Followed closely by Luke Hollister.
Her throat tightened, her stomach squeezing as if somebody had wrapped their fingers around it and made a fist.
“Have fun,” her mom said, clearly sounding concerned.
“I will.”
“Don’t drink unless you have a ride.”
In spite of her general physical distress Olivia laughed. “Mom, I never drink.”
“I know. You always were a good girl.”
That made her feel guilty. Guilty for being annoyed with her mom when her feelings were borne of concern. And not concern that came out of nowhere.
Olivia hung up and put the phone down with shaking fingers, just as Laz set her drink down on a block of wood that functioned as a coaster.
“Thank you,” she said.
He treated her to another dazzling smile, his dark eyes twinkling. He was a lot older than she was, in his forties, maybe. It was difficult to guess his age. But she could definitely see why women came to the bar to stare at him.
Everything in her tensed as she turned away from the bar and back toward the door, lifting her Diet Coke. Bennett would have to come over eventually. Because he would have to order a drink.
The door opened again, and in came Jamie Dodge and Kaylee Capshaw. Jamie was the youngest of the Dodge siblings, a year younger than Olivia, and hadn’t spoken to her since Bennett and Olivia had broken up.
And then there was Kaylee. Kaylee, Bennett’s best friend. Who was only a friend, and Olivia had always believed that. She had always liked Kaylee. She truly had.
But for some reason the sight of the tall redhead made her stomach go from tight to curdled. It could be because Kaylee had been there the night she and Bennett had broken up. Because Bennett had brought her along when Olivia had been certain he was going to propose to her at the opening of the tasting room for Grassroots Winery in Copper Ridge over Christmas.
It had made perfect sense to her. Absolutely perfect sense.
They had been together for over a year and known each other almost their whole lives. It had been Christmas. Romantic. And he had brought her, which had made it clear he hadn’t seen that night as momentous or romantic at all. Then when she’d told him how upset she was, he’d said he wasn’t going to propose yet.
Just thinking about the entire situation made her face hot. Made her feel like she was going to break into thousands of little pieces.
Of course, it wasn’t Bennett whose eyes she caught. It was Jamie. Who looked at her like she was a particularly regrettable beetle that had wandered into her path. Kaylee, in contrast, smiled. The redhead conferred with Jamie for a moment, who frowned and went to sit at the table with her brothers and Luke.
It was Kaylee who made her way over to the bar. “Hi, Olivia,” Kaylee said.
Kaylee was nice. That was the problem. It made Olivia feel mean having bad feelings about her.
“Hi,” Olivia said.
“Are you meeting someone here?”
“I...”
She wasn’t. That answer was sad. That answer revealed that she was very clearly stalking Bennett. She couldn’t deny that. Not even to herself. She was. She was full on stalking her ex-boyfriend. Her ex-boyfriend who was her ex because she had gotten angry and broken up with him because he hadn’t been doing things according to her timeline. She had been so certain that by ending things she would make him see that his life was empty without her.
But he was in the Gold Valley Saloon with his family and friends. She was sitting at the bar by herself drinking a Diet Coke.
Getting chatted up with pity by his best friend.
“I was actually hoping to see Luke,” she said.
The lie rolled off her tongue easily. Which was strange, because she was not a liar. In fact, she was a terrible liar. She was well known for that in her family because her sister, Vanessa, had been such an accomplished deceiver, while Olivia had always turned bright red and been unable to make eye contact with the person she was attempting to fool.
She had stopped trying by the time she was eight years old.
“Luke?” Kaylee asked, her eyebrows shooting upward.
“Yes,” Olivia responded. “He rescued me this morning.” That at least was the truth. “I mean, my car got a flat tire and he happened to be driving by just at the right time. He gave me a ride to work. And then he fixed the car. I owe him a drink.” As if she and Luke had discussed this.
“Oh,” Kaylee said again, regarding her with a thoughtful expression.
Olivia smiled, attempting to look enigmatic, which no one had ever accused her of being a day in her life, and took another sip of her Diet Coke.
“Can I get you something, Kaylee?” Laz asked. He remembered everyone.
“A few shots of whiskey would be great. Whatever’s cheap and still good.”
He nodded. “How many rounds?”
“Four,” she said, “I guess. Because I hear that Luke Hollister’s is on Olivia.”
Laz raised his brows, and then went about pouring Kaylee’s shots. Olivia tried to appear engrossed in drinking her soda. Kaylee looked at her a couple of times, smiling awkwardly, and Olivia attempted to seem serene.
Then Kaylee collected the shots and went to the table everyone was sitting at. She said something to Luke, who cast a glance back at Olivia. Her stomach tightened. If he kept doing that she wasn’t going to be able to take another drink of her soda. There would be nowhere to fit it.
She was afraid he was going to make her look like an idiot. That he was going to say she was crazy and he was of course not meeting her here. Because he had not planned to meet her here. She actually hadn’t spoken to him at all since she’d collected her car. Which was rude, she realized.
But she just didn’t like making overtures to Luke. He was a pain. And he always made her feel like she had an itch beneath her skin.
When he stood, saying something to the Dodge siblings with a big smile on his face, she felt like she’d been kicked in the chest by a horse. And then he was walking over to her. She crossed her legs, then wobbled, because she was up on a stool and it was an impractical position. She braced herself on the counter and blinked, then took a quick drink of her soda. Then set it down. She wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted to be doing by the time he got to the counter. And then he was there, so the entire performance was moot.
“I hear we’re meeting? And that you’re buying me a drink?”
She pursed her lips and nodded. Then took another drink of her Diet Coke. “As a thank-you,” she said finally after she swallowed her sip.
“Oh. A thank-you. Funny how I didn’t get one earlier.”
“I thanked you,” she said. “You know. After you picked me up off the side of the road.”
“But not for fixing your tire. And you didn’t text me. I thought you were going to let me know if you had a ride.”
“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?”
“You leaning in like that. Because he’s watching. You think you’re gonna make him jealous?”
She reeled back, moving herself away from Luke. As far away as possible. “No. I wasn’t doing anything.”
He chuckled. “Yes, you were.”
She hated him. She really did. He seemed to put the pieces of her motivation together faster than she did and it wasn’t fair.
“No one would believe it,” she said. “Nobody would believe that I...”
The words froze in her throat. Not just because she could hear how bitchy they sounded, but because suddenly she couldn’t remember what she had been about to say anyway. Because he was looking at her with that steady green gaze, that glass still poised just below his lips and the overhead lights of the bar were highlighting that scruff on his face. Suddenly, she was thinking about the texture of that, too. She wondered if it would be rough, like she imagined his hands would be. He was a very rough sort of creature.
She was not a rough sort of creature.
“Oh, they’d believe it,” he said, his lips tipping upward into a cocky smile. “Even good girls do something stupid every now and again.” He took a swallow of his whiskey. “Might as well be me.”
There was that itch, the one that bloomed beneath her skin whenever he was close. That felt like a cross between having a match struck against her flesh and stepping on a star thistle.
“I don’t do stupid things,” she said.
“Except for maybe break up with the boyfriend you claim you don’t want to be broken up with?”
“I don’t want to be broken up with him.” She tapped the side of her glass. “I want to get back together with him.”
“So you say. I don’t buy it.”
“I didn’t ask you to buy it. I’m not trying to sell it to you.”
“True enough. But, maybe we can try to sell something to him.” He reached out and that hand she had just been pondering made contact with her skin. He squeezed her chin between his thumb and the curve of the knuckle on his forefinger. And it was rough. Just like she had thought it might be. Then he winked. “I’ll see you around, kiddo.”
Then he knocked back the rest of his whiskey and reached into his wallet, putting a twenty on the counter and walking back to where the Dodges were sitting.
She just sat there, staring at him like she had been clubbed in the head.
He had touched her.
And he had winked at her.
And he had called her kiddo, which for some reason felt a million times more offensive and slightly more disconcerting than honey or sweet thing had.
He was an annoyance. A constant annoyance.
She looked back into her Diet Coke, feeling flushed and prickly and isolated. Because nobody was sitting at the bar with her. She wasn’t welcome at the table over there. Or anywhere the Dodges were. That hurt in a variety of strange and sharp ways. She had been friends with that family for most of her life and now she just wasn’t welcome.
She had to believe it was because the breakup had hurt Bennett. And as much as she didn’t want him hurt, she did want to know that he cared.
She sneaked another glance back toward the table, and saw that Bennett was looking at her again. Then she looked at Luke. At his broad back. Broad shoulders. He was not looking at her. And she could still feel the impression of his touch against her chin.
Her gaze darted back to Bennett and she noticed that his expression was speculative. So she offered him that enigmatic smile she had been practicing earlier. Because she was working on being an enigma rather than a broadcast system.
Then she finished the rest of her Diet Coke and started to fish in her purse for some money.
Laz walked over to the bar and picked up the twenty Luke had left behind. “That actually covers everything, Olivia,” he said.
And all she could do was stand there and stare, feeling light-headed. Because somehow, Luke Hollister had ended up buying her a drink, and that had not been the plan.
Olivia didn’t like it when things didn’t go to plan. But unfortunately, that seemed to be the story of her life at the moment.
She got up off the stool and walked slowly across the scarred-up wooden floor, looking down and shoving her hands in her coat pockets, careful not to look at anyone in the saloon. She edged the door open with her shoulder and walked out onto the street. It was dark out, and chilly.
The kind of cold that efficiently sliced through nice, sleek wool coats and penetrated down beneath the skin. But apparently not the kind of cold that could eradicate the heat left behind by Luke Hollister’s hand.
She focused on putting one foot in front of the other as she walked down the uneven sidewalk, her each and every step bathed by the golden glow of the old-fashioned streetlights that lined the street.
Today had been weird. And it had contained far too much Luke for her liking.
Tomorrow would be different. It would be better. It would not begin with a flat tire. And it would not end with Luke Hollister’s thumb pressed against her chin.
At this point in her life she was certain of very few things. But that was one of them.