Page 27 of Then You Happened
Ginger chuckles as he serves a beer down the line to a man who looks like he doesn’t need another drink. “You’ve spoken with her, right? Hostile. Nasty.”
“Determined?”
“Don’t look now,” Ginger says, “but you just stood up for her.”
I shrug as I take a long pull on my beer.
“Five-plus years is a long time not to turn a piece of land, a business like hers—with a goddamn derby horse on it, no less—into a successful breeding operation,” he muses.
“For most of that time, it wasn’t her running it, though,” I argue on her behalf while keeping the little tidbit he just dropped tucked away.
She has a derby horse? Why isn’t she breeding it?
He slides a beer across the bar to his server and gives me a wink. “You learn how to read people standing behind a bar,” he says.
“Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“One more thing. No one in this town wants their name affiliated with failure.” He leans close and lowers his voice for dramatic effect. Jesus fucking Christ, does he ever shut up? “Nobody likes a long shot, man, and the Knox Ranch is the long shot. No. People around here like the sure thing.”
I chuckle in response to this small-town bullshit nonsense. Fucking hell, it’s no wonder the poor woman is struggling.
They like the sure thing.
Running my thumb over the Coors Light label, I give the subtlest shake of my head, wondering how much of what he said holds any weight.
“I have a hundred of those beers you’re holding that say you can’t salvage what’s left of that ranch,” he says and wipes his hand on the rag tucked in the side of his waistband. “I’m all about defying convention, but you can’t do that when you don’t know the ropes. And she sure as shit doesn’t know the ropes. Hell, she’d do best if she took the offer she was given a while back to sell it so she can go live that hoity-toity life it seems she was born to lead. Give us back our land and . . .”
And by the rest of the heads turning, I can guess who just walked in the door—the woman who’s been the bar owner’s main topic of conversation for the past god knows how many minutes.
I don’t turn around. Instead, I let the silence eat up the space until all that’s left is the sounds from the televisions around us.
“Well played, Jack.” Tatum’s voice rings through the bar.
“Can’t fault me for seeing if you actually pay attention to criticism.” I chuckle more to irritate her than anything and am quite surprised that she did.
“Tell me one reason why I should hire you.”
I run my tongue along the inside of my cheek and take my time responding. “Because I’m exactly what you need. I’m your sure thing.” I turn around on my barstool slowly.
And there she is.
I ignore the punch in my gut that seeing her again delivers. Her hands are on her hips, and there’s that fire I admire in the jut of her chin. There’s clear determination in her stance as a bar full of townspeople watch her and listen to her every word.
“That didn’t answer my question.” Those storm-cloud-colored eyes of hers lock onto mine with the lift of one of her eyebrows. “Sure things rarely pan out.”
“Then you shouldn’t hire me,” I say with an indifferent shrug. There are only seconds for me to decide how to play this before I fall into the same trap Tatum did when she moved here—the one that leaves me hated in town because of misperception. “Besides, I’ve been warned about the ranch . . . about you. No skin off my nose to walk away.”
“I didn’t figure you for a quitter,” she murmurs with disdain.
“You want me. You don’t want me.” My chuckle hums through the uncomfortable silence in the bar. “Indecision seems to be a real problem of yours. That, and your temper. No wonder you can’t seem to keep a single person on staff. I’m not your husband. I won’t kowtow to a woman like he did. You need to learn some manners, Ms. Knox.”
“Manners get you nowhere.”
“Neither do demands.”
Yet, there is something about the pride in the set of her chin, the humiliation edging the gray of her eyes, and the harsh bob of her throat as if she’s wondering if she should stand her ground or turn and run that gives me pause. Her even being here despite the crazy rumors about her almost has me admiring her strength. She has to know what they all think of her, and yet, here she is, full of false bravado, insecurity, and determination.
It’s those things that should tell me to run the other way like the goddamn wind, but they are the same reasons I didn’t keep driving after I convinced myself that I’d somewhat fulfilled my promis
