Smooth-Talking Cowboy. Maisey Yates

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      “All right. What does she drink?”

      “Diet Coke.”

      “I’ll still take the extra shot of whiskey. But, add the Diet Coke to it. In case she wants to mix the two.”

      “She won’t,” Laz said.

      “She might before the evening is up,” Luke said, confident. “You can just put that on my tab.”

      Olivia had finally made a decision, and was sitting at a table near the dartboard, looking lost. Luke acquired their drinks and went to join her. He slid the Diet Coke in front of her as he took his seat, then placed both shots of whiskey in front of him.

      “Am I that trying to hang out with?” she asked, looking pointedly at the two glasses of alcohol. There was a hint of humor in her eyes and he found that more surprising than anything.

      “The other shot is for you. In case you’re feeling crazy.”

      “No. On a very rare day sometimes I feel regular soda crazy, but not so much hard liquor crazy.”

      “Do you not drink at all?”

      “No, I do. I mean, I have. I just don’t usually.”

      “Any particular reason?” he asked.

      “I like control,” she said simply.

      “Well,” he said, lifting the shot glass to his lips and knocking it back. He grimaced. “That’s a shame. Because so do I.”

      She looked at him and blinked slowly, her expression comically bland. “Good thing this isn’t a real date, then.”

      “Good thing.” He stood up. “Because then you would be obligated to let me win at darts.”

      She huffed out a laugh. “I would do no such thing.”

      “Really?”

      “Really,” she returned. “Any man who needs to beat a woman at darts to feel good about himself is no kind of man in my book. I would rather see how my date fared in the face of defeat.”

      “So confident.”

      “With good reason.”

      “Okay,” he said, “show me how it’s done.”

      * * *

      OLIVIA FELT LIKE she’d had alcohol, and she absolutely had not. But she felt bubbly, fizzy, and her blood felt slightly overheated. It was a strange turnaround from a few moments before when she had been certain that she was going to pass out. It was just that when Luke had held her hand like that...

      She’d held hands with two men in her life. Which was lame and silly, and probably completely ridiculous to get worked up over, but her level of experience was what it was.

      She had very briefly dated one guy before Bennett, and it could hardly even be called dating. They had gone out a couple of times. They hadn’t even kissed.

      But she had held his hand. And then she had held Bennett’s. Often, obviously, as they had dated for more than a year.

      Holding hands with Luke... It had been unexpected. It had been one thing for him to help her out of the car, although, even that small bit of skin on skin had felt significant. But once he had woven his fingers through hers her entire body had gone tight, like fencing wire, and she had found it almost impossible to breathe.

      And it wasn’t like when he shocked her, when he said things that made her blush. No, this was different. It had made her hot, then cold; it had set off a chain reaction that she could hardly figure out even now. It was just... Such intimate contact to make with a man she had known for so long, but never like that.

      She had known Luke since she was a kid. Since he had been a kid, too, honestly. Even though he had always seemed like a grown man to her, because that was a child’s perspective on teenage boys. And that had always put him in this other realm, as this other thing, separate to her. But she wasn’t a child anymore; she was a woman. And he was a man. And that was very... Alarming to fully realize. That there was no longer this invisible wall between them, something that kept them on separate sides of that divide. It made this game they were playing feel far too stark. Far too dangerous and real.

      It felt like something different all of a sudden than what it had felt like when they had conceived it a bit earlier. Far different than that vague itch that usually rested beneath her skin when she dealt with Luke.

      But now they were in the bar trading barbs, and getting ready to play darts, and that felt familiar somehow. And she was ready to jump into it with both feet. To do something to get herself back on balance, because she could not go back to that place she’d been in when his hand had touched hers. No, that, she did not want to contend with. Not at all.

      So darts and good-natured banter it would be.

      She was far better at darts than she was at banter, but you couldn’t have it all, she supposed.

      “Are you really that good, Liv?” he asked, his voice huskier than normal, and strange, the roughness abrading places inside of her she would rather it didn’t.

      She was back to feeling slightly dry of throat and out of her comfort zone.

      “I’m better,” she said. “Haven’t you seen me play before?”

      “Sure,” he said, “but I’ve never played you. For all I know Bennett let you win. Usually, you just play Bennett.”

      “Bennett never let me win,” she said. “He didn’t have to.”

      “I wonder what he’ll think of another man getting to play with you,” he said.

      Okay, this Luke she could deal with. Cocky and arrogant, throwing out innuendo expecting that it would make her blush. And yes, it often did. But at least that was a comfortable pattern. “That’s what we’re here to find out,” she said.

      She went over to the dartboard and collected the darts from where they were stuck into the cork, and then she carried them back to the line, steeling herself for her first shot.

      “You’re really not a bar girl,” Luke said. “So how is it exactly that you are the most notorious dart player in Gold Valley?”

      “I like to have a bit of mystery about me, Luke.”

      “Fine. You have to get a bull’s-eye on this next shot, or you have to tell me how you learned to play darts.”

      She laughed, then she straightened her posture, cocked her arm back and let the first dart fly, effortlessly sticking it in the center of the bull’s-eye.

      “No shit,” he said, slightly annoyed, slightly in awe.

      “I told you I was that good,” she said.

      She liked darts. She had ever since she’d outgrown the little wooden dollhouse she’d played with when she was young. If there was one thing Olivia had done a lot of, it was playing by herself. СКАЧАТЬ