CHAPTER THREE

HARPER

Branton isn’t exactly known for its bar culture and nightlife. Ice fishing? All aboard. Drinking? Here’s an overpriced Molson to share with the five other people at the bar. Which is why I’m surprised when the sole bar in town is almost full when I arrive. And loud. Wheat Kings by The Tragically Hip blares as I scan for Mindy.

I spot her in a corner with two neon cocktails. I give her a peck on the cheek and sit down. “What’s going on?”

She takes a sip of her cocktail. “Some kind of Sunday night free-drink clusterfuck they’re trialing.”

I look around. I thought I was going all out in a tight black top and my best pair of jeans, but given the other girls in the bar, I’m underdressed.

You’re losing your touch, gal. Not that I was any sort of Elle Woods at school, or even college, but I had style… once… I think.

I pick up the cocktail. “What’s this?”

“A ‘Winter Garden.’ I thought we should celebrate.”

I roll my eyes, taking off my jacket and preparing myself for a long reading of James’s many faults, the many and varied warning signs I just should have seen like my life is a giant Buzzfeed article. “Well, they got the winter part right. What’s in it?”

“Redemption…. And gin, vermouth, rosewater yadda-yadda. Medicine.”

“I’ve already had my medicine, the cacao kind.” I nervously bring the glass to my lips, tipping the glass-slash-bowl back. It’s surprisingly warming once you get past the overwhelming taste of alcohol. “Are you trying to get me drunk so you can have your wicked way with me?”

Mindy arches an eyebrow. “Girl, even if I did swing that way your scrawny ass wouldn’t do it for me.”

I look over my shoulder down to my butt. “My ass is not scrawny.”

“You’ve never heard the phrase ‘cushion for the pushin’?”

“How about the phrase ‘Pain in the ass’?” I retort, smiling.

She laughs. “B-b-burn, but seriously, you got to start eating more.”

“In-between classes, and marking, and prep, and—”

Mindy puts her hand up. “Yes, yes, I get it. You’re busy, but if you don’t look after yourself, who will?”

And there I go again imagining myself as that forlorn spinster knitting by a window, wondering where her youth went. I shake my head. “God, I feel so crappy. This whole thing with James…”

“No, no, no,” Mindy shakes her finger. “I’m not going to sit here and watch you sink into a big pile o’ pity. Forget James and his bendy penis.”

I lift my head from the table. “I told you about that?”

“Oversharing doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

“You love it,” I laugh. “You live vicariously through me.”

“Do not.”

“Do so.”

Given what I’ve heard through the wall of late, however, suggests Mindy needs no help on the living front. I’m waiting for the day Mrs. Robinson upstairs knocks on our door asking who’s being murdered.

We’re smiling at each other, and though my spirits are momentarily lifted, I think of James and all the bullshit that is my life and start to sink into that pity puddle all over again.

Mindy sees it. “Oh no you don’t.” She stands, scanning the room like a sailor looking for land. “We need to get you an emergency lay, stat.”

I exhale. “Can we not?”

She narrows her eyes, examining the crowd. “Nah, too old. Too… fugly. Too… uppity. Too… Just no.” She stops. “Hello.”

I follow her eyes to a guy sitting at the bar with a beer between his hands, looking down into it like it’s a magic eight ball. We’re side on, but he’s definitely attractive—sharp jawline, inky hair, thick arms. He’s wearing a tight black tee, casual, clearly not a local.

A man of mystery, right here in Branton, the black hole of the western world.

“Go and talk to him,” Mindy demands.

I look over again, take in the competition, and turn back to Mindy defeated. “I can’t do it. I’m out of practice.”

Mindy stands, swiping her cocktail up. “Fine. You won’t, I will.”

“Wa—” But she’s already heading over there, weaving her way to the bar.

Damn it.

She sits down besides Mr. Broody. I see her introduce herself, extend her hand. She’s smooth, always has been. She was a boy magnet in high school and remains so now thanks to her exotic South American-cross-French heritage. Guys pick up on that kind of cultural catnip instantly.

My stomach tightens while I watch her. It takes me a while before I work out it’s jealousy. I’m sitting here actually jealous at my best friend.

Because unlike you, my dear, Mindy is not a coward.

I sort of wanted to sit here and vent, get all this toxic crap out of my system, but now Mindy’s off doing what she does best. I give her five minutes before she’s fucking this guy’s brains out in the bathroom.

I should leave. I should get the hell out of here and rug up back home with a good book and box of Parisian truffles, maybe a little Gabriel Macht to wash it down.

“Harper!”

I look back over to Mindy, surprised to see her waving me over, Mr. Mysterious locked onto me with such a heavy, demanding gaze it’s a wonder I’m still standing, ah, sitting.

I can feel myself flushing hot. What the hell, Harper?

I’m frozen. Get over there! my head demands, my legs remaining rock solid.

“Harper!” shouts Mindy, using her loudspeaker of a voice to summon almost everyone in the bar.

There’s no way out of this. I stand, reluctantly, clutching my jacket as I make my way over. I am going to kill Mindy later. Death by Here Comes Honey Boo Boo reruns. The way she’s smiling like a Cheshire cat is making it all the easier to plot her demise.

Mindy scoots down a stool, forcing me to sit right next to Sir Sexual. He smells good—cinnamon, leather, even though there’s none of the latter to be seen. And those eyes… Cornflower blue and bright as a meteor shower. They’re pinning me with such intensity, such depth I’m starting to think I should have worn two pairs of panties to soak up my arousal.

This guy is beyond anything I’ve seen in Branton before. Seriously. This is the kind of crazy, outrageously hot individual that would be whipped in public in lesser countries simply for being so sinfully sexy. And that damn dark, messy hair, that sex hair… How does that even happen? How do you roll out of bed, brushing aside your conquests, and leave the house looking like that?

Mindy’s straight into the introductions. “Harper, meet Colton. Colton, meet Harper.”

He extends his hand I take it. It’s warm. No, hot, searing really.

My breath catches. This is no James. This is a bonafide, real, flesh-and-blood man pulled straight from a centerfold.

He ignores Mindy completely. “Tell me, Harper,” he starts, lips moving hypnotically, “what counts for fun in Branton?”

His voice has a low rasp to it, a come-hither pull perfected from years in the game. I almost choke, Mindy poking me from behind. “Um,” I stammer, trying to form a response, “there’s ice fishing?”

Ice fishing?! Are you trying to turn this guy off? I’ve never even been ice fishing.

He smiles, sin incarnate. “You don’t strike me as the ice fishing type.”

Mindy hovers over my shoulder. “Oh, she loooves reeling them in… the big ones, you know?”

Yep. I’m definitely strangling her in her sleep tonight.

Colton raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

“No,” I reply firmly. “I’m not into fishing.”

“What are you into?”

Hot, Hollywood guys dripping sex appeal. I swallow hard again, can feel Mindy willing me on from behind. “You go first,” I say, turning the tables like we’re sixteen playing truth or dare.

And perhaps seven minutes in heaven later…

His eyes drop down to my cleavage, further to my supposedly scrawny hips and legs. This guy? I doubt he’d even need his hands to get my dress off. He’d say a single, magical word and poof, it’d be gone, a grand illusion.

I press my legs together hard to ward off the need that’s growing there, the very alien and strange need I haven’t felt in years.

“You,” he states, “for one.”

He just said he’s into you. Or did he mean ‘in me’? I almost choke again, picking up Mindy’s cocktail and drinking, anything to lubricate my throat that suddenly seems so bone dry. “You are?” I rush out.

“I am,” comes the sultry response, his frosty lake eyes once again on mine, reeling me in like the aforementioned fish.

I don’t know if I can do this. I’m burning up, a human Hindenburg heading for the ground. I spin to get Mindy in on the conversation, get some kind of chroma XX support, but she’s gone.

I look around frantically, but she’s nowhere to be seen.

Crapola.

“Your friend took off,” Colton says, sliding closer to me.

I can’t believe it. This was all a wingwoman’s gambit. Now I’m stuck here with this sexy, clearly overconfident creature without a single lifeline. Phone-A-Friend is off the table, Ask the Audience is a lost hope, and there’s a 50:50 chance I’m going to spontaneously combust… or pee myself.

“Which is fine by me,” he continues, “because all I want is you—out of that dress, waiting and willing.”

And I swear to god I burst into flame.