If you can call her a star.
No, the worst part is that in those little milliseconds between hearing a throaty, sexy laugh when I walked in here and realizing who that laugh belonged to, every cell in my body lit up with undiluted, primal attraction.
And I can’t make it stop.
“No, no, tell me more,” she’s saying to Kory, owner of Almosta Ranch next door to Wit’s End and one of my best friends here in Hell’s Bells, as they sit together by the window, under the antler chandelier with the one light bulb that’s perpetually out.
Jesus.
First she moves into Tony’s ranch. Then she has the nerve to laugh like that. And now she’s at my table.
My table.
Leaning in and flirting with my best friend. “If there are tricks to being safe around the wildlife, Junie and I are all ears.”
“The moose are super nice,” Kory replies to a round of raucous laughter from the rest of the Hell’s Bells patrons who are gathered around. “Definitely try to pet them.”
He’s a six-foot-four Black man who took over Almosta Ranch a few years before I came back to Hell’s Bells. When he’s not wrangling cows, who are pretty self-sufficient half the year, he’s driving around Wyoming in his jacked up Ram to support his boyfriend, who’s one of the top drag performers in the state.
So I shouldn’t be bothered at all over the fact that she’s flirting with him.
“Pet . . . the . . . moose . . . ,” Maisey dictates as she prints something in an open notebook. It’s a dot journal—several of my students use them every year—and I’d bet Tony’s ranch that the cover has her face on it.
That seems on brand for what I saw of her on her show.
June snags the notebook and flops it shut.
Huh. I was wrong.
It’s kid artwork.
“Mom, do not pet moose.” June gives her a look. “He was joking.”
Maisey beams at all of them. “I know,” she stage-whispers back to her daughter. “But he’s so funny, I want him to stay and keep telling us stories. Now. Kory. Tell us the best thing to do the next time we see a bear.”
“You call Flint. Most of the bears love him. Used to train them in his spare time.” He tips his chin at me, all broad smiles.
Like he hasn’t been on the receiving end of all my muttering about how much she doesn’t belong here and how I’ll be saving her ass from trouble all too often, since we got the email that she was coming.
I scowl.
He covers his mouth, stroking his beard, but I’ve known him too long to believe he’s doing anything but covering a chuckle.
“Too bad school’s starting next week.” Kory keeps grinning at them while he points to the open chair at the weathered plank table. “Always cuts into his bear-circus time.”
I could leave.
Don’t have to ruin my dinner by having it with Tony’s niece and her sexy laugh and her everything’s fine attitude.
But Iron Moose has the best bison burgers this side of the Rockies, and don’t even try to tell me there are better onion rings anywhere in the world.
Nothing better to help a man heal after getting thrown off a horse.
Plus, Kory’s usually pretty good company.
Usually.
I saunter across the room and take the open seat at my favorite table, which puts me between Kory and June. I’m facing the window that overlooks the bluffs west of town as the sun dips lower in the sky, but my view of the dazzling orange sunset is interrupted by my nemesis.
Why didn’t she take the seat where she could see the view?
This is literally the best seat in the house.
Who wouldn’t take this seat?
There’s something wrong with this woman. Anyone who doesn’t want to take the sunset-view seat at Iron Moose is broken.
“Order yet?” I ask Kory.
“Yep. You took too long. But lucky for you, Maisey here says she owes you dinner.”
“And more.” Maisey turns that smile on me.
Doesn’t work.
Not for me.
Or her daughter, whose eyeballs are going round as she curls her lip. “Mother. Please don’t ever say stuff like that in front of me again.”
“Oh for goodness’ sake,” Maisey replies. “I was offering to sew him some curtains or take a look at his electrical box.”
“I don’t think that made it better,” Kory mutters.
“Don’t be inappropriate in front of kids,” I mutter back.
“I’m not a baby,” June’s whispering to Maisey. “I know what innuendos are. Dad makes them in front of me all the time, and he’s been letting me watch R-rated movies since I was seven.”
Maisey’s smile is turning brittle. “He shouldn’t do that either. I’ll have a talk with him.”
“Like it matters. You’re never going to let me see him again.”
“Junie. I would never keep you—”
“You a senior this year?” Kory interrupts to ask June.
“Junior.”
“Ever do drama?”
“I play soccer.”
Fuck.
Kory’s gaze slides to mine once more.
Everyone’s gaze is landing on me.
Even the people in the tavern who are too far away to hear. They know a bomb just dropped.
“You any good?” Kory asks June.
She whips out her phone, and thirty seconds later, she’s shoving a video at us. “That’s me. Number forty-three. I have a kick that doesn’t stop, and I’ve terrified goalies in six different states.”
“As soon as we get Junie registered at the high school tomorrow, we’re finding the soccer coach to ask about tryouts,” Maisey says.
Kory looks at me.
I don’t look back.
June looks down at my shirt.
Jersey, to be more specific.
I don’t look at her either.
Or at Maisey.
Fuck again.
“Bison burger, Flint?” Regina Perez asks as she pauses at the edge of our table. Her family’s been running Iron Moose since before Hell’s Bells was big enough to be a dot on the map. Dated her once upon a time for about five minutes my senior year of high school, but that didn’t work out.
She’s married with three kids now, and she picks up shifts here to get out of the house.
“Yeah. Onion rings, too,” I tell her.
“Oh, do you always get the same thing?” Maisey asks, either oblivious to the tension or willfully ignoring it. “We could’ve ordered for you if I’d known. I love little towns. And regulars. And everyone knowing everyone else.”
“Nope,” Regina answers for me. “He just gets this look when he wants a bison burger.”
“I do not.”
She lifts a dark, well-sculpted brow over her brown eyes.
Kory coughs.
I give them both a shut up look, and that simple motion pulls my lower back, because apparently, I don’t handle getting tossed off a horse as well as I used to.
If fifty is the new thirty, and I’m in my actual thirties, shouldn’t I feel like I’m about twenty-one?
“What are the Demons?” June asks.
“High school mascot, but in Flint’s shirt’s case, it’s the soccer team,” Regina answers. “He’s the coach. Started practices this week, didn’t you? Come straight from there?”