Mick rose from the table and moved past the dance floor toward the bar. Reuben Sawyer sat on his regular stool, looking old and pickled. Reuben had lost his wife thirty years ago, and for the last three decades, he’d sat on the same stool almost every night drowning his sorrows. Mick didn’t believe in soul mates and didn’t understand that kind of sorrow. As far as he was concerned, if you’re that lonely for a woman, do something about it that doesn’t involve a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

Several people called out to Mick as he passed, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t feel like shooting the shit. Not tonight. As he moved down the hall toward the back door, an old high school girlfriend stopped him.

“Hey, Mick,” Pam Puckett said as she stepped out of the ladies’ room.

He supposed pushing past her would have been rude. “Hey, Pam.” He stopped and she took it as an invitation to wrap her arms around his neck and give him a friendly hug that lingered a few seconds beyond friendly.

“How’re you doing?” she asked next to his ear.

“Good.” Since high school, Pam had been married and divorced three times. Mick could have predicted divorce in her future. He pulled back and looked into her face. “How about yourself?”

“Not bad.” She dropped onto her heels, but kept one hand on his chest. “I haven’t seen you in here for a while.”

“I’ve been spending a lot of time at the other bar.” Pam was still attractive, and he knew that all he had to do was take her by the hand and he could take her home. He kept his palm on her waist, waiting to feel the first pull of interest behind his fly. “Are you still working in the sheriff ’s office?”

“Yeah. Still dispatching calls. I threaten to quit every other day.” Her palm slid up and down his chest.

He had three hours before closing. It wasn’t like he had to haul ass to Mort’s. He’d been with Pam before and they both knew that it was just sex. Just two adults getting together and having a good time. “You here by yourself?” he asked.

Her hand slid to his waist and she hooked a finger through his belt loop. He should have felt a spark of interest, but he didn’t. “With a few girlfriends.”

Tell me, Mick, do all the women you sleep with know about each other? Sex was probably just what he needed to get Maddie out of his head. It had been a month since he’d gotten laid, and all he had to do was take Pam’s hand and pull her behind him out the back door. “You know I don’t ever plan on getting married. Right?”

Her brows lowered. “I think everyone knows that, Mick.”

“So I’ve never lied to you about that.”

“No.”

Once he got Pam naked, he’d let her take his mind off other things. Pam didn’t like sex long and drawn out. She liked it quick and as many times as a man could get it up, and Mick was in the mood to accommodate her. He brushed his thumb up her ribs and felt a little spark of interest.

“I heard about that writer talking to everyone in town,” she said and snuffed out his spark.

He really wished she hadn’t said that. “See ya around.” He dropped his hand and took a step back toward the door.

“You’re leaving?” What she meant was: You’re leaving without me?

“Gotta work.”

It was still light out when he stepped from the bar and drove toward Mort’s. He shoved his glasses on the bridge of his nose as a dull ache settled between his eyes. Maddie Dupree was messing with his past, talking to the town about his family, and affecting his sex life. With each passing moment, he felt the growing appeal of tying her up and stashing her someplace.

His stomach growled as he pulled his truck to a stop behind Mort’s, and instead of walking into the back of his bar, he walked a few doors down to the Willow Creek Brewpub and Restaurant. It was a little after nine and he hadn’t eaten since lunch. Small wonder that he had a headache.

The place was practically empty, and the scent of pub wings made him even hungrier as he made his way from the back. He walked to the hostess stand and placed his order to go with a young waitress. The restaurant made the best pastrami on marbled rye and kettle chips in three states. If Mick’d had the time, he would have ordered a summer ale. The brewpub made a damn good summer ale.

The inside of the restaurant was decorated with beer posters from around the world, and sitting in a booth beneath a Thirsty Dog Wheat poster was the one woman he’d been fantasizing about tying up and tossing in a closet.

A big salad and an open folder sat on the table in front of Maddie Dupree. She’d pulled her hair back from her face and painted her lips a deep red. Her brown eyes looked up as he sat on the bench seat across from her. “You’ve been busy,” he said.

“Hello, Mick.” She waved a fork toward him. “Have a seat.”

Her orange sweater was left unbuttoned up the front and she wore it over a white T-shirt. A tight white T-shirt. “I hear you’ve been talking to Bill Potter.”

“News travels fast.” She speared some lettuce and cheese and opened her mouth. Her red lips closed over the tines of the fork and she slowly pulled it back out of her mouth.

Mick pointed to the open folder. “Is that my rap sheet?”

She watched him as she chewed. “No,” she said after she swallowed. “The sheriff mentioned that you were a pain in the ass, but he didn’t mention a rap sheet.” She closed the folder and put it on the seat beside her. “What did he arrest you for? Vandalism? Urinating in public? Window-peeking?”

Smart-ass. “Fighting, mostly.”

“He mentioned a fire. You wouldn’t know about that, would you?” She took a bite of her salad and washed it down with iced tea.

He smiled. “I don’t know anything about any fires.”

“Of course not.” She set her fork on her plate, then sat back and folded her arms beneath her large breasts. Her T-shirt was so thin he could clearly see the white outline of her bra.

“Did you have a nice chat with Harriet Landers?”

She bit the side of her lip to keep from laughing. “It was interesting.”

Mick sank down on the seat and lowered his brows. The toe of his boot brushed her foot and she tilted her head to one side. Like smooth shiny silk, her hair fell across one shoulder as she looked at him. For several moments she stared into his eyes before she sat up straight and pulled her feet back.

“Harriet screwed my grandfather to death in the back of her car,” he said. “That’s hardly a crime.”

She pushed her plate aside and folded her arms on the table. “That’s true, but it’s juicy stuff.”

“And you’re going to write about it.”

“I hadn’t thought to mention your grandfather’s…ill-timed departure.” She turned her head a little to one side and looked at him out of the corners of her big brown eyes. “But I do need to fill pages with family background.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Or I could fill pages with photos.”

He sat up, placed his elbows on the table, and leaned forward. “You want me to give you photos? Nice happy family Polaroids? Maybe at Christmas or Thanksgiving or the summer we all went to Yellowstone?”

She took a drink of her tea, then set it back down. “That would be great.”

“Forget it. I can’t be blackmailed.”

“It’s not blackmail. More like both of us getting what we want. And what I really want is to take pictures of the inside of Hennessy’s.”

He leaned even farther across the table and said, “How does it feel to want?” A waitress set his plastic sack of food on the table and he said without removing his gaze from Maddie, “Stay out of my bar.”

She leaned toward him until his face was just a few inches from hers. “Or?”

She was gutsy as hell, and he almost liked that about her. Almost. He stood and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. He tossed a twenty on the table. “I’ll throw you out on your ass.”

Chapter 9

“You’re crazy.”

“It’ll be fine.” Maddie looked over her shoulder at Adele and opened the door to Mort’s.

“Didn’t he say he was going to throw you out on your ass?”

“Technically, we were talk about Hennessy’s.”

They stepped inside and the door closed behind them. Adele leaned close to Maddie and asked above the noise and the music pouring from the jukebox, “Do you think he’s going to care about technicalities?”

Maddie figured that was pretty much a rhetorical question and her gaze scanned the crowd inside the dimly lit bar, looking for the owner. It was eight-thirty on a Friday night and Mort’s was once again packed. She’d had no intention of setting foot inside the cowboy bar again until Mick had told her not to. She had to let him know that he didn’t intimidate her. He had to know she wasn’t afraid of him. She wasn’t afraid of anything.

She recognized Darla from the last time she’d been in Mort’s and her neighbor Tanya from the Allegrezzas’ party. She didn’t see Mick and breathed a little easier. She wasn’t afraid. She just wanted to get more than three feet inside the bar before he laid eyes on her.

Earlier, she’d curled her hair on big rollers that gave it lots of volume and loose curls. She wore more makeup than usual and a white cotton jersey halter dress and sandals with two-inch heels. If she was going to get escorted out, she wanted to look good on the way. She carried her red angora cardigan because she knew that as soon as the clock struck nine she would freeze without it.

The juke pumped out a song about redneck women as Adele and Maddie wove their way through the crowd toward an empty table in the corner. Adele, with her long curls, tight jeans, and save a horse, ride a cowboy shirt, drew her share of attention.

“Do you see him?” Adele asked as they slid into chairs facing the bar with their backs to the wall.