Smooth-Talking Cowboy. Maisey Yates

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СКАЧАТЬ and Luke had been doing had definitely been designed to draw attention. But she didn’t want to actually contend with that attention in real time. She wanted to deal with it on her terms. When she was good and ready to deal with it. And that would be when she had been given a lot more time to process everything herself.

      She looked up at the scarred, wooden wall and frowned when she saw a list of names carved into it.

      Second to last was Luke Hollister. She put her fingertips against his name, a strange kind of energy zipping through her as she did.

      “Found me,” he said.

      She looked up, startled. Luke was standing right next to her, his hands shoved into his pockets, his black cowboy hat positioned firmly on his head.

      She jerked her hand back as though the wall was on fire and in danger of scalding her skin. “What is it?”

      They were all men’s names. She recognized a couple of them, but no one she knew very well. And she couldn’t figure out what they might have in common.

      Luke lifted a shoulder. “Dumb shit.”

      “What dumb... Stuff?” Now her curiosity was getting the best of her.

      “They don’t do it much anymore. This,” he said, tapping his hand against his own name, “is from a long time ago.”

      “What? Did you... Drink the most beers or something?”

      “When a guy hooked up in the bathroom they used to carve his name on the wall.”

      Her stomach plummeted down to her toes. “What?”

      “Yeah, Laz put a stop to that. He didn’t much care for people carving into the side of his wall when he bought the place.”

      “You... You...”

      Just then, the bathroom door opened and a woman walked out, barely glancing at her and Luke as she breezed past.

      “Looks like it’s vacant.” He gestured toward the bathroom.

      “You’re not going to wait outside for me, are you?” That was all she needed. Luke timing her bathroom break. While she was in there it would also probably be unavoidable to imagine him in there with that woman...

      “Yes,” he said. “Because I’m waiting for you.”

      “You’re awful,” she said, rushing into the bathroom and shutting the door firmly, locking it behind her. She pressed her palms against her face and realized that it was hot.

      She looked around the small room and tried to imagine how on earth a person would... Do that. With everybody outside fully aware of what was going on.

      She took care of her necessities, her heart thundering hard the entire time. Then, when she washed her hands, she went ahead and splashed some cool water on her face and her neck.

      When she exited the bathroom, he was standing there, leaning against the wall, his head down, his black hat concealing his face. Then he looked up, revealing all that stunning masculine glory. Strong chin, square jaw, those lips that she had kissed. Lips that had kissed another woman and more in the bathroom she had just exited.

      That thought was even more effective than the cold water she had literally just splashed on herself.

      She walked past him without saying anything and he followed behind her.

      “Hang on,” he said when they got to the bar. “I have to settle my tab.”

      “You couldn’t have done that instead of loitering outside the bathroom door like a pervert?” she muttered.

      “I waited for you,” he said. “You can wait for me.”

      She realized, dimly, somewhere in the back of her mind, that this all served the purpose that they had come here for in the first place. She wasn’t here with him as a date. She wasn’t. They were here so that they looked like a burgeoning couple. Which made him waiting for her, and them walking across the bar together, look romantic or something.

      Of course, had she actually been here on a date with him, finding his name carved into the wall like that would have been even more upsetting. No. It would have been upsetting. It wasn’t upsetting at all as it was. She didn’t care how much of a whore he was. That was his business—and the woman’s. Whatever woman was crazy enough to try and get involved with him with any actual sincerity.

      He paid Laz, and then put his hand on her lower back as they headed toward the door. She gritted her teeth, trying her best to keep her expression neutral until that first blast of night air hit her in the face as they walked out onto the street.

      Then, she pulled away from him. She shoved her hands in her pockets and walked down the sidewalk, looking for the first crosswalk before making her way across toward the truck. He was already there. Because he had just gone directly across the street.

      “That’s jaywalking,” she said.

      “Do I look like I care?” he asked, rounding to the passenger side of the truck and jerking the door open for her.

      “It doesn’t seem to me like you care about much,” she said, getting in and grabbing hold of the door handle, slamming it shut before he could do the honors.

      He got in and started the engine, pulling away from the curb quickly, before she managed to get herself buckled.

      “For the record,” she said, once they were on the road, “it’s illegal to start driving before the passenger is buckled, too. Like jaywalking.”

      She didn’t know if that was actually true. But it sounded legitimate enough.

      “Again,” he said, “I don’t care.”

      Now he was starting to sound snippy, and he had no right to sound snippy. He wasn’t the one who had been kissed in the middle of the bar in front of everyone. Okay, so he had been. But it was different for him. Different for him because he was Luke Hollister, and he had kissed any number of women, and his kissing her wouldn’t reflect badly on him. She was the one who had kissed only the second man she had ever kissed in her entire life, and then seen his name carved on the wall because he had...

      They headed out of town, the glow of the streetlights fading in the distance behind them, the evergreen trees that lined the side of the road absorbing any light that was coming from the moon or the stars, making them feel ensconced in darkness, only the narrow glow of the headlights illuminating a very tight path in front of them.

      She kept her eyes on the double yellow line on the road, something comforting about having that familiar sight to rest her eyes on while the rest of the world felt wild, untamed and unknowable.

      And she couldn’t even pretend it was because of the darkness. It was because of Luke. And the way it had felt when his lips had touched hers.

      There was a certain point where she’d stopped worrying about unknown things in the darkness, because she had been convinced that she knew herself well enough she could find her way through anything. That she had decided firmly who she was, and who she would be, and had been at peace with that choice. But all of that assurance had crumbled around her СКАЧАТЬ