Melissa Cutler - Cowboy Justice

The doors burst open. “Don’t tell her to calm down. Believe me, she hates it.” It was Rachel, balancing three shots in her hand. “Here, take a glass before I drop one.”

Jenna passed a shot to Amy, then took one for herself.

Amy frowned down at hers. “What are we doing with this stuff?”

Jenna clinked the lips of their glasses together. “What do you think? Shooting it.”

“I get really silly when I drink, Jen. You know that,” Amy said.

“That’s what I’m counting on.” And if one shot didn’t turn her from stressed to silly, Jenna wasn’t above buying round after round until Amy’s buzz set in.

Rachel nudged Jenna. “How long’s it been since you had a drink?”

“Well, Tommy’s five, so . . . nearly six years. Wow. But I need it tonight. We all do.”

“Isn’t this what AA calls enabling?” Rachel asked. “Am I causing you to fall off a wagon, or something?”

“I’m not an alcoholic and you know it. It’s just that I lost my appetite for the stuff when I got pregnant.”

Rachel sniffed her shot, then screwed up her face. “This tequila is making me lose my appetite. Why can’t we shoot whiskey instead?”

“Because whiskey’s not ladylike. Now hush up. You’re not weaseling out of this shot by whining. Do it for Amy.”

“You don’t have to do it, Rachel,” Amy said.

Jenna pinned Rachel with her best scolding expression. “Don’t listen to her. She’s the bride; she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. As the wedding planner, my word trumps all.”

Amy shook her head. “I don’t think that’s—”

“Fine. For Amy.” Rachel raised her glass in a toast, then tossed the tequila back.

Jenna and Amy followed suit. The liquor flooded Jenna’s throat with the warmth of an old friend—or maybe her worst enemy.

The taste and burn reminded her of high school, which was pretty pathetic, but there it was. It sent her right back to long nights of partying in the vacant desert with Carson Parrish and all the other misfits she’d wasted away her teenage years with. She might’ve been angrier at the memories or at herself, except that she was damn proud of how she’d turned her life around.

Back in the day, her tolerance was such that it took her at least three shots to work up a buzz. Tonight, the drink settled in her muscles and brain almost instantly.

Amy shuddered and handed her empty shot glass to Jenna.

“All right, why did we do that?” Rachel said, stacking her glass on Amy’s.

Jenna draped a fortifying arm across Amy’s shoulders. “We’re not sure Kellan’s brother is going to make it to the wedding.”

Rachel didn’t flinch. “That’s because he’s an asshole.”

“Rachel, he’s family now!” Amy scolded.

Jenna rolled her eyes. Here they go . . .

“Yeah, I get that,” Rachel pressed, “but there’s no rule in the books that says family members can’t be assholes. In fact, I’d wager there’s no more focused collection of assholes in the world than people have in their own families.”

Amy made a sound like a snort that got Jenna’s attention fast. The second she looked her way, Amy burst out in giggles.

God bless tequila.

A squeak warned of the patio door opening again. Kellan stepped out, ducking under a strand of low-hanging twinkle lights. Amy smushed her mouth together and tried to stop laughing.

“Okay, womenfolk, what’s this pow-wow all about?”

Jenna rattled the stack of empty glasses. “We were getting some fresh air and enjoying a splash of New Mexico’s finest tequila.”

“Not really,” Rachel said. “I only sprang for the cheap stuff.”

Jenna patted her arm. “That was called sarcasm, sweetie.”

Kellan’s eyes twinkled as he gave Amy a once-over. “Are you getting my bride drunk on our wedding eve?”

Amy snorted through her nose, clearly fighting another bout of giggles. Kellan’s smile broadened and he pulled Amy from Jenna’s arms into his own.

This was a good man Amy was marrying. The kind of man who took care of things and people. Like Rachel’s fiancé, Vaughn, did. That her sisters had found such fine matches eased some of Jenna’s guilt about her plan to leave town.

Amy threaded her arms around Kellan’s ribs. “Just a little bit drunk.”

“Good. Makes it easier for me to take advantage of you.”

“I’m always easy for you to take advantage of like that.”

“True enough.”

Rachel groaned and started for the door. “I don’t care that you’re getting hitched tomorrow. I’m not going to stand around and listen to you talk dirty to each other. I’m going back in.”

Jenna poked her arm as she passed. “Like you and Vaughn are any different.”

Rachel kept moving, but flashed Jenna a coy smile that hinted at the love and happiness Vaughn had brought into her life. The kind of love Jenna wanted for herself. She stared blankly at the swinging door as it closed behind Rachel, almost afraid to look back at Kellan and Amy in the throes of their own love story for fear that jealousy would turn her insides ugly.

A fast song came on in the bar, along with the DJ calling out a line dance.

No more pity party. Not with a song calling for her to whisk Tommy to the dance floor and boogey down. And if a slow song came on and Matt Roenick asked her to dance, then so much the better.

She wound through the crowd pouring off the bar stools, then zigzagged through tables en route to the dance floor, searching out Tommy and Matt as she moved. Lo and behold, they were already dancing, along with Kellan’s six-year-old goddaughter, Daisy. Matt didn’t see her, busy as he was modeling the steps to the Watermelon Crawl for the kids.

In Jenna’s experience, kids made lots of men nervous, especially those of the single, unattached variety, but not Matt. From the day he came into her family’s life to negotiate an oil rights contract, he got down to the kids’ level and played or talked with them like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Blame it on her hormones or Darwin’s theory of evolution, but seeing a man interacting with kids or babies got her blood stirring and her imagination looking into the future. To top it off, clearly Matt could hold his own on the dance floor. He handled the kids and the steps likehe did everything else in his life—with smooth, easygoing confidence and genuine enjoyment. It was the single-most endearing quality about him that had caught her attention all those months ago and dropped her deeper and deeper into longing every time they were together.

And, sweet sundae, did she long for him tonight.

She hung back, watching. Daisy didn’t give two wits whether she did the steps right, but Tommy’s tongue was poking out the side of his mouth in concentration as he watched Matt’s boots.

During the butt shimmy part of the choreography, Tommy hammed it up, and Jenna couldn’t stifle a laugh, he was so cute.

The laugh caught Tommy’s attention. “Mommy, I’m dancing! Just like we practice at home.”

She met Matt’s amused expression with a wink, then smiled at her son. “I can see that. Great job.” She scooted close to the kids and grabbed Tommy and Daisy’s hands to help them into a turn.

Matt leaned her way during a kick and weight change. “He told me you two do a lot of line dancing and two-stepping in the living room before bedtime.”

True enough. She could dance until her boots wore out and the band went home or the radio broke. It was her favorite way of letting off steam since she’d stopped raising hell in order to raise her son right.

“I can’t think of a better way to end the day.” Well, she could, but it’d been a while—too damn long, in fact—since she’d had the pleasure of indulging in that particular pastime.