The downtown Denver hotspot was crowded even for a Saturday night. Daphne Evans could hardly squeeze toward the bar through the crush of twenty-somethings trying to enjoy their evening out at The Players Club. The music was loud. The crowd was enthusiastic. And Daphne had no doubt that the bar was making a ton of cash tonight for the three bartenders on duty.

“Zach!” Daphne jumped up and down and waved her hands as best she could in the midst of the tight crowd. She was only five foot four inches tall, and sometimes it was hell trying to see over the rest of humanity.

It took three tries for Zach to see her in the mob. The two of them had known each other for years, since she had worked here part time during college. Zach was a part owner and one of the bar managers. He always took care of her when her busy schedule allowed her some time out to have fun.

“I got you!” Zach shouted back to her. He lifted his right hand into the air and made the “rock on” sign.

Daphne waved back and tried to scoot her way just a little closer to the bar. Unfortunately, that meant jostling some barely legals in their stiletto heels and tight dresses. Of course, the problem with this was that they were so off-balance, so tipsy from their fruity drinks, and so out of it that one of them immediately fell right onto her perfectly shaped derriere.

“Hey!” The young woman shrieked as though she had been doused in oil and lit on fire. “You bitch! You pushed me down! I am so going to kick your ass!”

It did not help that Daphne could hear Zach laughing behind the bar. “Girl fight!” he shouted.

“Not helpful!” Daphne shouted back. Then she reached down, grabbed a scrawny little arm, and pulled the barely legal back to her ridiculously high heels. “There. See. You’re fine.”

“Oh my God! Don’t touch me!” the woman shouted. She yanked her arm out away from Daphne but managed to knock herself off-balance again as she did.

Daphne sighed as the woman went down for a second time. Her two friends were utterly useless creatures. They stood there and did a lot of gasping and complaining but did not lift a finger to help her. That figured. Daphne was now twenty-five. She had a career with a local public relations firm and a life. And at some point, she had come to realize that the gap between her and the barely legal set had become so incredibly wide that they now seemed like children to her.

With a grunt of irritation, Daphne barely managed to cut off the rude comments that wanted so badly to pop out of her mouth. She reached down and grabbed the young woman’s arm again. Yanking the girl to her feet, Daphne steadied her on her shoes.

“Stop moving!” Daphne snarled. “You’re too unsteady. You’re just knocking yourself over again and again. So, stop being stupid and just go dance or something.”

“Like hell!” The young woman actually took a swing at Daphne.

Fortunately for Daphne, she could see that punch coming a mile away. She stepped back quite casually and dodged the punch as it flew right by her face. Unfortunately, the punch landed square in the nose of a cowboy who happened to be standing right behind Daphne. No. Not just any cowboy. He was the best-looking man in the bar and probably the state.

“Son of a bitch!” The man grabbed his face and started cursing a blue streak. Okay. So, he was good-looking and pretty much stereotypically foul-mouthed. Nice.

“Daph, you’re starting to make a real mess in my bar!” Zach sang out. “I’ve got your drink if you dare to grab it!”

Daphne snatched the bottle of Coors off the bar and held it in front of her. Between the stiletto heels and the glowering cowboy, it felt as though Daphne were miles shorter than everyone around her.

The cowboy was still cursing. Then he pointed at the barely legals. “What the hell is wrong with you? You just punch a guy in the face? You better watch yourself, jail bait, or I’m going to send your scrawny asses back to the nursery!”

“It wasn’t us!” The young woman put her fingers against her practically naked bosoms and batted her big blue eyes. “It was the short, ugly chick!”

Oh, damn. They were all pointing at Daphne. And then the woman’s words sank in. Daphne narrowed her eyes to slits. “Short, ugly chick? Seriously? Have you looked in a mirror? You must have because you used a paint roller to put on your freaking makeup this evening!”

Fury welled up inside of Daphne. The cowboy was now laughing. Without another thought, Daphne used the steel toe of her boot to give the barely legal’s stiletto heel a nudge. The woman’s ankle turned and the shoe folded. She went down hard on the ground. This time Daphne let her stay there.

Daphne leaned over and pointed at the young woman sprawled on the disgustingly sticky and notoriously dirty cement floor of the bar. “Have fun picking yourself up this time. Or you could just stay there since it’s where you belong.”

With those final—and oh so mature—words, Daphne turned on her heel and left the scene of the multiple crimes. She could hear Zach and the other two bartenders laughing behind her. It wasn’t like she was going to get in trouble for this incident. Daphne would have had to destroy the bar to get in trouble here at The Players Club. It was her home turf. So, with that in mind, she marched to the other side of the bar where there were more than a few out-of-the-way tables. She picked a high top and sat down to nurse her beer in silence while she listened to the live music. It took a long while before the strains of the country Western music helped her feel just a little less tense. Her shoulders started to relax, and she stopped unconsciously clenching her teeth.

“Hey. Can I sit down?”

Daphne looked up and found herself staring into the bluest eyes she had ever seen. They were so blue her first thought was that they couldn’t be real. He had straight, messy black hair beneath his black cowboy hat. It sort of curled around his ears. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but Daphne couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Sometimes she saw so many people in a week because of her job that pretty much everyone she came into contact with looked familiar.

Daphne had one answer for this cowboy. “No.”

“Oh, come on.” He put his hand on his chest. The guy was actually carrying around a bottle of top-shelf bourbon and a glass. He smelled like a liquor store and looked three sheets to the wind. “Just let me sit down. It’s the least you can do since you got me punched in the face.”

“What?” Daphne realized that he looked familiar because less than twenty minutes ago she had watched him get nailed in the nose by that barely legal chick who kept falling on her ass. “I didn’t get you punched in the face. I simply stepped aside. Are you suggesting I should have taken the punch to avoid any possibility of collateral damage?”

“Whoa, baby!” The man drew back and held up his bottle. “You’ve got too many big words in there for me. I been kicked in the head a couple thousand times and probably dropped on my head before that. You need to use small words. Think toddler. Then I’ll understand.”

“Toddlers learn to understand the word no,” Daphne pointed out. “I feel like you should be able to handle that one just fine.”

He perched on the barstool across from her. Daphne made a low noise of frustration. Was the guy completely brain dead? He’d been kicked in the head? Did that include being completely incapable of accepting when someone did not want his company?

“Hey!” Daphne said sharply. “You need to leave. I didn’t tell you to sit down. I don’t want company. I was sitting here listening to the music and enjoying myself.” She took a long pull of her beer. “So, you can go now. Thanks.”

“Aw, darlin’, that is just so mean.”

He took off his cowboy hat and tossed it on the tabletop. His hair fell over his eyes. Ugh! He was so attractive! What the hell? His face was beautiful to look at, and his body was just incredible. Of course, she had to remind herself that she was not interested. At all. She didn’t want anything to do with a man. She had spent years ditching the last unhealthy relationship. She was ready to move on and be single and happy for a while.

“I’m not being mean.” She pointed at him with her beer. “You cannot say that someone is mean just because they don’t agree with you or want your company. That’s unfair. So, get your ass off that barstool and walk it back over to those young women in the stilettos. What did you call them? Jail bait? They’d probably love your attention.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t like dancing with a bag of bones,” he drawled. “I don’t like women in heels so high they can’t walk in them. I don’t like women with no meat on their bones. And that little group pretty much pushes all my buttons.”

Hmm. Interesting. He was rather verbal for a guy who was obviously drunk. He was pushy too. That wasn’t cool. Who the hell did he think he was anyway? She sat back in her seat and drank her beer and studiously ignored him. That strategy worked for another song and a half. Then Bourbon Cowboy got restless.

He poured himself another drink. In fact, he poured so much liquor into his glass that it was nearly sloshing over the rim. Then he threw it back and drank the whole thing in one pull. Daphne could not help it. She stared in open-mouthed horror. She had seen a lot of things while working as a bartender here at The Players Club. She’d never seen anyone toss back a whole hand’s worth of top-shelf bourbon in one slug. It wasn’t just a waste. It also burned like hell. Her throat was tingling in sympathy.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Are you crazy? That’s disgusting. You can’t even taste it when you do that.”

“Maybe I don’t want to taste it.” He poured himself another glassful. Then he threw that back as well. “Getting drunk doesn’t usually involve taste. You know? It’s more of a whole body experience.”

“Why do you want to be fall down drunk?” For some reason, this bothered Daphne. “You’re good-looking. You’re going to get yourself so smashed that you’ll do something stupid.”

“Like what?” He was slurring his words now.

Daphne’s brain was spinning. “Like accidentally sleeping with those bags of bones!”

“Yeah.” He gave a sage nod of his head. “That would be bad. Right? Totally bad. I’d have to bleach my whole body tomorrow morning.”

“Bleach…” She couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “I think there’s a bigger problem than that, dumbass.”

“You know, when you call me a dumbass, it almost sounds like an endearment.” He sighed and actually appeared to bat his eyes at her. What. The. Hell?

“It’s not meant to be an endearment. I promise.”

“You’re really beautiful. You know that?” He sat back in his seat and poured himself one more glass from the dregs of the bottle. His hand was shaking now.

Daphne was trying to contemplate the notion that a guy could consume an entire bottle of bourbon in one sitting and still be speaking and sitting upright. Focusing on that was helping to keep her from feeling flattered that he’d just called her beautiful. That didn’t happen very often.

“Seriously.” He was being serious. But it was probably drunk serious, which was just bullshit anyway. “You’re really beautiful. I love your hair color. The light in here really brings out the red. But brunettes are the best anyway. I like brown hair. And yours looks really soft.” He paused for a moment and took another drink of bourbon. “I wonder how it would look spread on a pillow.”

“Okay. Stop.” She waved her hands in front of her and glared at him. “You’re being completely inappropriate.”

“I like brown eyes too.” He grinned at her. “Because I like chocolate. Besides, they remind me of this mare I had once. She was the greatest horse. Smartest animal I’ve ever ridden, you know? She had these big dark eyes, and she would look at me and it made me feel like I needed to earn her trust.”

“I remind you of a horse?” Daphne couldn’t help it. She started laughing. “Tell me. Does this line often work for you? Because I just don’t know of any women who would be flattered into having sex with a guy who says they remind him of his favorite mare. Maybe you should go date the horse!”

“She died a long time ago.” He sounded strangely subdued.

Daphne recognized this behavior. This was what happened when someone drank way too much alcohol. They went from excitable and chatty to moody and morose. He’d probably start crying in a few minutes.

“Hey, Daph, you all right?” Zach appeared beside the high top table. He had a bar towel in his hands, and he was staring at the cowboy with a look of suspicion on his face. “Is this loser bothering you?”

“No.” Daphne got up from the table. She handed her empty bottle to Zach. Then she gave her friend’s arm a friendly squeeze. “I was just leaving. I’ll stop by next week, and we can catch up when it’s slower. Huh?”

“Sounds good.” Zach was glaring at the cowboy, but the guy was pretty well deep in his own world.

Zach left them, and Daphne started to turn around to go. The light touch of someone’s fingers on her arm stopped her. She glanced back at the table. The cowboy was very gently touching her arm as though he were trying to make double certain that she did not feel threatened. It was odd. She had a strangely warm sort of sensation in her belly. What was this guy like when he was stone cold sober? Was he ever sober? Why did he drink? And why did she care?

“I did not mean to offend you,” the cowboy said quietly. “I just want to make sure that you know that.”

“I know.” Daphne struggled to find something to say. “But I don’t like drunks, and I don’t like cowboys, and honestly, I don’t like men either.”

There. That was pretty damn blunt. There was no way this man could possibly believe she was interested in him now. Right? So, she patted his hand and walked away because that was what needed to happen. He wasn’t her problem. And she had enough on her plate anyway.