Maisey Yates - Smooth-Talking Cowboy

Luke Hollister had just kissed her in front of everyone.

Bennett was there. She remembered that too late. She remembered everything too late. Including why they were doing this. Of course. He was making a show, as he had promised he would do. And he was definitely trying to get a rise out of her, which she expected, because he was Luke.

All of that made sense. Except none of it made sense. Not inside of her anyway.

“Throw the dart,” he said, his mouth so close to hers it would take nothing for her lips to touch his again. Nothing at all.

Then he withdrew, taking a step back and leaning against the table again, all cocky arrogance and that kind of masculine swagger she hated. She did. She hated it. And right now she was pretty sure she might hate him, too.

She turned away from him, drew her arm back and threw the dart. And it missed.

She hadn’t missed a bull’s-eye without meaning to in more than ten years.

Hot, angry tears pricked her eyes but she refused to let them fall. Because that was just stupid. This was a game. That was all. It was supposed to be a game where they made Bennett jealous. Where they made him think that he was in danger of losing her.

It was supposed to make Bennett feel wild and unpleasant things; it was not supposed to make her feel wild and unpleasant things.

Too late she remembered to look over at Bennett. And when she did, she had to force herself. He was facing away from them. For all she knew, he hadn’t even seen the kiss.

“He saw.”

She blinked, feeling numb. “What?”

Luke was looking at her, his expression grave. “Bennett saw the kiss,” he said.

And just like that, she felt about two feet tall. Because not only had he read her mind just now, it confirmed to her that Bennett was all he had been thinking about during the kiss. She hadn’t thought of Bennett until after. Much, much after. But Luke had been aware the entire time. And then, when she had been standing there feeling vulnerable and reduced, desperately trying to remember the purpose behind this entire interaction, he had read her. Unerringly.

Meanwhile, she couldn’t read him or Bennett or anything. She couldn’t even read herself.

“Good,” she said, as if it was all she cared about. As if there was nothing more conflicting inside of her than whether or not they had managed to affect Bennett.

To say nothing about how she had been affected.

Except, she had missed the target. And there was no pretending that hadn’t happened. She bit the inside of her cheek. “He’s never seen me miss a bull’s-eye,” she said. “At least, kissing him certainly never made me miss a bull’s-eye. That will give him something to think about.”

She could tell by the particular curve of his smile that Luke didn’t believe her. But he didn’t say that. This, quite possibly, was the first time he had ever been a gentleman to her in any way that counted.

“You sure you don’t want another drink?” he asked, taking a step backward, toward the bar.

She sniffed. “I don’t like whiskey.”

His smile widened. Why was his confidence so impenetrable? Why was he so... So much? “Really?”

“Really,” she confirmed.

“I’ll get you a refill on that Coke,” he said, turning away from her and heading back toward the bar, leaving her to ruminate by the dartboard.

She chanced another look at Bennett’s table. And he still wasn’t looking at her. But she caught Kaylee’s eye again. The other woman was clearly unamused with Olivia. Well, at the moment, that made two of them. Olivia felt like she had taken a step into a river, only to find that there was a drop-off sooner than she had anticipated. And that she had scrambled to find her footing, finding instead only algae. Now she was being swept downstream. As analogies went, it was both unpleasant and apt.

She wanted to run. She wanted to run right out the door of the saloon, down the main street, all the way back home. She wanted to abandon this mission, wave a little white flag of defeat, start over tomorrow morning and pretend that nothing had happened.

The only thing that kept her there was that sheer goal-oriented, stubborn nature of hers. She had started down this path, and she had to see it through.

Well, more accurately at the moment, she had started swimming in this river, and at this point she just needed to see where the current would carry her. She couldn’t undo what everyone had just seen. Couldn’t pretend she hadn’t just kissed Luke in front of God and everybody in the bar.

There was no taking that back. Sure, she could offer up handwritten notes to everyone in attendance explaining what she had tried to do, that she was very sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again. Sure, she could stand up on a chair and make an announcement, that she and Luke had been engaged in a little bit of improv, and hadn’t that been a great scene? But it definitely hadn’t been real.

But that would be silly, and she wasn’t going to do that.

Which meant she had no other choice but to allow the current to continue to sweep her along. And hope there wasn’t a waterfall waiting for her at the end.

She beat Luke soundly at darts, which was the only expected thing to come out of the evening. Thankfully, she managed to get herself solid again, and didn’t miss another shot for the rest of the night. Luke, on the other hand, was actually fairly terrible.

“Don’t you know how to shoot a gun?” she asked when they had finished tallying the score, which had been more of a formality than anything else, because she had so obviously beaten him.

“Yes. With a scope. That’s a little bit different.”

“Pretty pitiful, Hollister,” she said, feeling bolstered by the win and momentarily forgetting what had happened a half hour earlier.

“I know my talents. I’m okay with the fact that they don’t lie at the dartboard.”

“Really. Where do they lie exactly?”

“The back of a horse, out on the ranch and in the bedroom.

Heat flared through her body, bleeding out toward her cheeks, down her neck, lower. To all those places that had been affected by the kiss.

“If a man has to boast,” she said, knowing her tone sounded clipped and stiff, “then it sounds a little like just that. Boastfulness with nothing behind it.”

“I don’t boast,” he said. “I’m terrible at darts, and I never claimed any different. One thing you should know about me, Liv. What you see is what you get. I don’t lie.”

“Except now. What Bennett’s seeing isn’t real. Don’t go claiming perfect honesty when you’re in the middle of treachery.”

“I’m being honest where it counts,” he said. “You know what I want.”

Something about the way the heat shimmered in his green eyes when he said that made her stomach tighten. Made her question if she actually did know what he wanted. If this really was all about Bennett and some property her father owned, or if there might be something else. But that was ridiculous. A man like Luke wouldn’t want anything from a woman like her. A woman who barely knew how to kiss, much less anything else.

And if he did, it wouldn’t be about her specifically, but about the fact that he was a man, and they had needs, and all of that. Particularly men like him, who didn’t practice any kind of restraint.

At least, she had never witnessed him practicing restraint of any kind. He was about as different from Bennett as a man could be.

“I have to get up early,” she said. “We should probably go.”

But first, she really needed to use the restroom, because ultimately she had ended up having three Diet Cokes to keep her focus on something—anything—other than Luke.

“All right,” he said, grabbing his jacket off the back of the chair.