Last Chance Rebel. Maisey Yates

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СКАЧАТЬ night, and no one was looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. So, instead of getting a good night’s sleep, they were obviously out playing darts and riding on the mechanical bull that Ace had installed about a year ago.

      Recently, Ace had opened a more upscale place, but he could still often be found here at everyone’s favorite dive. The fact that he wasn’t here some of the time was strange though. Copper Ridge was a constant. A small, slow-moving community that didn’t often see change. But the last few years had brought quite a bit of it. Tourism was beginning to become a major industry, and while she was definitely grateful for that, it was also changing her beloved landscape.

      Just a year ago Ace had been single, and flirting with everything that moved. Now, he was married and about to be a father. Not that it bothered her. She had never been interested in Ace that way. It was just... Watching other people, people like him who had never even seemed interested in such a thing moving on with their lives and finding a companion made her feel hollow. Unsatisfied in a way she rarely was.

      The fact he had married a West made her feel even weirder. Because the Wests made her feel weird in general. It was like they were infiltrating everything.

      Not that she held anything that had happened to her against Sierra, Ace’s wife. Sierra was at least five years younger than Rebecca and wouldn’t remember anything about the accident, much less have any culpability in the events surrounding it.

      Still. It was the whole thing.

      “You feeling okay, Rebecca?” Ace asked, setting her preferred brew down in front of her. She hadn’t even had to specify what she wanted. He knew.

      “Just worked too hard,” she said.

      “I’m not sure I’ve ever talked to anybody who suffered from that affliction before,” he said, winking.

      “What can I say?” she responded. “I’m a glutton for punishment.” As she said it, she had to wonder if it was true. She nodded once, picking up the beer and lifting it to her lips as she turned away from the bar and headed toward the table where Lane and Alison were already sitting.

      “Is Cassie coming?” she asked, sitting down at the table slowly, her muscles screaming at her.

      “No,” Alison said. “Something about date night.”

      “As if that sexy mechanic she’s married to is better company than we are,” Lane said, grabbing hold of the toothpick in her drink and lifting it to her lips, plucking one of the impaled cherries from it and eating it.

      “That’s a fancy drink,” Rebecca said, looking down at her beer. “What’s the occasion?”

      “Wanting to feel fancy.”

      Rebecca doubted a cosmopolitan with an entire handful of cherries could make her feel fancy after today. “Well, I guess that’s fair enough.”

      “You’re limping,” Alison said, her expression concerned. “Are you okay?”

      She was annoyed that they’d noticed. “I’m fine.”

      “Except this is probably related to the work you were doing today?” Lane asked.

      “Maybe.” She looked resolutely at her drink and not at Lane.

      “What did he have you do? Were you riding the horses or bench-pressing them?”

      Rebecca scowled. “There was just more lifting than I anticipated.”

      “What’s happening?” Alison asked.

      Rebecca shook her head, and Lane shot her a sharp look, then spoke anyway. “Rebecca is working for the guy who caused her accident.”

      “You’re what?” Alison asked.

      Rebecca reached across the table and grabbed hold of the remaining cherry on Lane’s toothpick, then took the unnaturally red fruit and popped it into her mouth.

      “Hey!” Lane groused. “Cherry-stealing bitch.”

      “Loudmouth.”

      “What is going on?” Alison asked, clearly unamused by all of the antics.

      “Exactly what I said,” Lane said. “Rebecca has decided to work for the guy who caused her accident, and clearly she has put herself under physical duress doing it.”

      “Why?” Alison asked. “Rebecca, do you need money? If you need money, you can ask us. I would much rather give you some. Or, put you to work mixing frosting.”

      “I don’t need money,” she said, feeling like a cat that had been backed up against the wall. “There’s a specific thing that I have to work out. And it requires working for him.”

      “Could you possibly be more cagey?” Lane asked.

      “If I tried,” Rebecca said, her tone deadpan, “I suppose I could be.”

      “I just don’t get it.”

      “It’s complicated. I owe him money.”

      “How do you owe him money?”

      “It’s complicated!” A prickling sensation assaulted the back of Rebecca’s neck, and she looked up just in time to see Gage walking through the door of the bar. “Oh, great,” she muttered.

      “What?” Alison asked.

      “Nothing,” Rebecca responded. She stood up, taking a long drink of the last of her beer. “I need another drink.”

      She made her way back over to the bar, too late remembering that everything hurt and walking across the space was an assault. “More beer,” she said to Ace, setting the glass on the countertop.

      “What happened?”

      She turned around, her heart thundering hard against her chest as her gaze clashed with Gage’s stormy blue eyes. “Nothing,” she bit out.

      “Then why are you limping?”

      Rage poured down through her like an acid rain. “Oh, I have a little bit of a problem sometimes with my joints. My bones ache. Not because I’m old, mind you. But because I sustained a pretty serious injury to my leg and sometimes after I work, the muscles tighten up and everything goes a little bit nuts.” She gritted her teeth. “I feel like you might know something about that.”

      “The work is too much for you,” he said, his voice flat.

      Ace came back over to the bar and set the glass down in front of Rebecca.

      “Put that on my tab, Ace,” Gage said.

      She grabbed hold of the beer, her heart hammering hard. “Don’t do that, Ace.”

      “Don’t listen to her,” Gage said.

      “I’m going to pay for the beer if you can’t figure it out,” Ace said, turning away from them and going to help another customer.

      “I’m СКАЧАТЬ