1
Brandon
“Johnnie Walker. Straight up,” I say, leaning against the bar, not wanting to sit down. I’d been in a saddle all day riding fence lines after the bad storm we’d had, and sitting is the last thing I want to do right now. In fact, all I want to do is shoot whiskey until my body makes me sit. Then I can drag myself to the hotel next door and crash into a mattress that has probably seen better days. But I don’t care. For a night away from the Johnson farm, I’d sleep on a bed of nails.
Fuck, I hate that place. One second I think I’m getting what I want, the next I’m in a living hell. All I ever wanted was to be a foreman and maybe have my own farm one day. I had put having my own farm on the back burner and concentrated on running the Johnson farm for Cash McCallister, but lately things have turned into a living hell, and I’m starting to question if maybe it’s time to move on.
Cash bought the land a few years back because the farm ran along his. I’d been in charge of it since old man Johnson owned it, but it eventually became too much for their family to handle. He sold it off to Cash, and I kept running it for him. I’ve been at Cash’s side for as long as I can remember. He taught me everything I know about working a farm, but this isn’t working for me anymore.
When Cash bought it, he’d let the owners keep the house with a small patch of land around it, but a little over a year ago, Johnson’s daughter June had come home after a bitter divorce. She’s the reason the farm has become so unbearable lately. She’s slowly driving me insane. I’m hoping a weekend away will give me time to reboot. Staying in a shitty hotel for a few days sounds like paradise right now. Anything to keep June’s claws from me. There’s only one woman I want digging her nails into me.
Dolly Jennings’ face appears in my mind, and I want to groan. All that red hair that I can never seem to pull my eyes away from, and those big dimples that take up her full cheeks. She looks so goddamn sweet. No matter how hard I try, she’s never far from my thoughts. The bartender, Jimmy, drops my glass on the bar, breaking me from my spell. He’s brought me the only thing that can make me forget about the woman I can’t ever have. That little firecracker who’s way out of my league. Too sweet for a man my age. Too good for me to be thinking about. Too pure for all the things I want to do to her. But it’s been this way since she strolled into my life years ago, easily catching my attention. No one missed Dolly. She’d light up a night with no moon just by smiling.
I pick up the glass of whiskey and shoot it back, feeling the burn of the alcohol move through me. I drop it back down on the old wooden bar, praying it makes the image of her disappear. Although deep down I don't want it to go away. I pause for a second and then decide to order another when June steps in front of me. Great. Here we go.
“Hey, cowboy. Lucky seeing you here.” She winks at me, leaning up against the bar and standing a little too close. Her fancy perfume fills my lungs, making my throat burn more than the whiskey did. She’s always like this. I never understand what June is up to. Tonight she’s dressed in cowboy boots and shorts so short I’m not sure you can call them that. She plays up the cowgirl image in the way she dresses, but I’ve never seen her work on the land a day in her life.
She’s a Beverly Hills cowgirl, if there is even such a thing. June doesn’t look like she could last an hour doing real work. Her straight bleach-blonde hair is never out of place and her face is covered with too much makeup. June wants to play make believe, and she wants me to pretend with her—something I have no intention of doing.
“June,” I say, taking a step back, but she follows me.
“Brandon.” She does a little eye-roll, like she’s teasing or we’re playing some flirting game. Her hand comes to my chest. “You still can’t call me JJ? Everyone does.”
Her fake smile lights up her face. I know she can turn it on and off in an instant. I’d seen her do it time and time again to her own parents. She was the reason they’d lost their farm to begin with. They had to sell it to clean up after their daughter. June could spend money faster than a dog could lick his balls.
“I’m not everyone,” I tell her, taking another step back and letting her hand drop away. I don’t want to give her the wrong idea. I think I did that when she’d first come back home to live with her parents. She was a fucking mess, to put it lightly, and I’d felt bad for her one night when she’d caught me out on my porch. She talked about how all she wanted to do was find a good man and to settle down, have a few kids and all that.