She laughed at something that must’ve been particularly funny, throwing her head back and making all that hair shimmer again.
He had to wonder if what he had just said to his brother was true.
“Planning on being alone forever?” Alex asked.
“I’m not alone. I have a daughter. You two don’t know anything about that kind of responsibility. I’m not going to bring women in and out of her life just because I want to get laid. It’s not responsible.”
“Plenty of people have kids and relationships,” Alex pointed out.
“Yeah, well, those people aren’t parenting Violet. She’s not happy with the move, you know that.”
“She seems happier since she got her job at the bakery,” Liam said.
“It’s hard to tell with her.” His stomach tightened slightly, thinking about his daughter and all of the things he seemed to get wrong with her.
“We’ve all got shit to handle,” Alex said, taking a drink. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun too.”
“You don’t know from having shit to handle,” Cain growled. Then felt like a dick because for all that Alex played it down, he was a war hero, and given the fact that he never talked about it in a substantial way, Cain had a feeling Alex was pretty deeply affected by it.
It was the Donnelly way. The more it hurt, the more you laughed it off.
He forced his gaze resolutely away from the redhead. Because there was no point in fostering any fantasies. He had too much on his plate.
“So,” Alex said, “are you just going to sit here all night?”
“I was planning on it.”
“Okay. As long as we’re clear that it’s your choice, and we’re not abandoning you.” He stood up, clapping Cain on the back. “We’re going to go be social.” Alex picked up his cowboy hat from the table and placed it firmly on his head, then he and Liam headed over to the group of women they had pointed out earlier.
Cain shook his head, leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed. He wasn’t envious of them. In his opinion, they really didn’t understand what was important in life yet. They didn’t have anything bigger to live for. Not like him. He had Violet.
And even when she was challenging, she was the reason he got up every morning. He didn’t envy his brothers. Or their so-called freedom. It was empty as far as he was concerned.
He took one more look back at the redhead, ignoring the tightening in his gut, in his groin. Yeah, he didn’t envy them at all. But, while he saw their freedom as empty, his bed was empty too. And right now, he was just damn sick of that.
Copyright © 2017 by Maisey Yates
Take Me, Cowboy
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
WHEN ANNA BROWN walked into Ace’s bar, she was contemplating whether or not she could get away with murdering her older brothers.
That’s really nice that the invitation includes a plus one. You know you can’t bring your socket wrench.
She wanted to punch Daniel in his smug face for that one. She had been flattered when she’d received her invitation to the community charity event that the West family hosted every year. A lot less so when Daniel and Mark had gotten ahold of it and decided it was the funniest thing in the world to imagine her trying to get a date to the coveted fund-raiser.
Because apparently the idea of her having a date at all was the pinnacle of comedic genius.
I can get a date, jackasses.
You want to make a bet?
Sure. It’s your money.
That exchange had seemed both enraging and empowering about an hour ago. Now she was feeling both humiliated and a little bit uncertain. The fact that she had bet on her dating prowess was...well, embarrassing didn’t even begin to describe it. But on top of that, she was a little concerned that she had no prowess to speak of.
It had been longer than she wanted to admit since she’d actually had a date. In fact, it was entirely possible that she had never technically been on one. That quick roll in the literal hay with Corbin Martin hadn’t exactly been a date per se.
And it hadn’t led to anything, either. Since she had done a wonderful job of smashing his ego with a hammer the next day at school when she’d told her best friend, Chase, about Corbin’s...limitations.
Yeah, her sexual debut had also been the final curtain.
But if men weren’t such whiny babies, maybe that wouldn’t have been the case. Also, maybe if Corbin had been able to prove to her that sex was worth the trouble, she would view it differently.
But he hadn’t. So she didn’t.
And now she needed a date.
She stalked across the room, heading toward the table that she and Chase, and often his brother, Sam, occupied on Friday nights. The lighting was dim, so she knew someone was sitting there but couldn’t make out which McCormack brother it was.
She hoped it was Chase. Because as long as she’d known Sam, she still had a hard time making conversation with him.
Talking wasn’t really his thing.
She moved closer, and the man at the table tilted his head up. Sam. Dammit. Drinking a beer and looking grumpy, which was pretty much par for the course with him. But Chase was nowhere to be seen.
“Hi,” she said, plopping down in the chair beside him. “Bad day?”
“A day.”
“Right.” At least when it came to Sam, she knew the difficult-conversation thing had nothing to do with her. That was all him.
She tapped the top of her knee, looking around the bar, trying to decide if she was going to get up and order a drink or wait for someone to come to the table. She allowed her gaze to drift across the bar, and her attention was caught by the figure of a man in the corner, black cowboy hat on his head, his face shrouded by the dim light. A woman was standing in front of him looking up at his face like he was her every birthday wish come true.
For a moment the sight of the man standing there struck her completely dumb. Broad shoulders, broad chest, strong-looking hands. The kind of hands that made her wonder if she needed to investigate the potential fuss of sex again.
He leaned up against the wall, his forearm above his head. He said something and the little blonde he was talking to practically shimmered with excitement. Anna wondered what that was like. To be the focus of a man’s attention like that. To have him look at you like a sex object instead of a drinking buddy.
For a moment she envied the woman standing there, who could absolutely get a date if she wanted one. Who would know what to wear and how to act if she were invited to a fancy gala whatever.
That woman would know what to do if the guy wanted to take her home after the date and get naked. She wouldn’t be awkward and make jokes and laugh when he got naked because there were all these feelings that were so...so weird she didn’t know how else to react.
With a man like that one...well, she doubted she would laugh. He would be all lean muscle and wicked smiles. He would look at her and she would... Okay, even in fantasy she didn’t know. But she felt hot. Very, very hot.
But in a flash, that hot feeling turned into utter horror. Because the man shifted, pushing his hat back on his head and angling slightly toward Anna, a light from above catching his angular features and illuminating his face. He changed then, from a fantasy to flesh and blood. And she realized exactly who she had just been checking out.
Chase McCormack. Her best friend in the entire world. The man she had spent years training herself to never, ever have feelings below the belt for.
She blinked rapidly, squeezing her hands into fists and trying to calm the fluttering in her stomach. “I’m going to get a drink,” she said, looking at Sam. And talk to Ace about the damn lighting in here. “Did you want something?”
He lifted his brow, and his bottle of beer. “I’m covered.”
Her heart was still pounding a little heavier than usual when she reached the bar and signaled Ace, the establishment’s owner, to ask for whatever pale ale he had on tap.
And her heart stopped altogether when she heard a deep voice from behind her.
“Why don’t you make that two.”
She whisked around and came face-to-chest with Chase. A man whose presence should be commonplace, and usually was. She was just in a weird place, thanks to high-pressure invitations and idiot brothers.
“Pale ale,” she said, taking a step back and looking up at his face. A face that should also be commonplace. But it was just so very symmetrical. Square jaw, straight nose, strong brows and dark eyes that were so direct they bordered on obscene. Like they were looking straight through your clothes or something. Not that he would ever want to look through hers. Not that she would want him to. She was too smart for that.
“That’s kind of an unusual order for you,” she continued, more to remind herself of who he was than to actually make commentary on his beverage choices. To remind herself that she knew him better than she knew herself. To do whatever she could to put that temporary moment of insanity when she’d spotted him in the corner out of her mind.
“I’m feeling adventurous,” he said, lifting one corner of his mouth, the lopsided grin disrupting the symmetry she had been admiring earlier and somehow making him look all the more compelling for it.