One Night Charmer Read online

  She shook her head, looking miserable. “Everyone left me. Because they aren’t nice. You’re right. I do need better friends.”

  “Yes,” he said, “you do. And let me go ahead and tell you right now, I won’t be one of them. But as long as you don’t live somewhere ridiculous like Portland, I can give you a ride home.”

  And this, right here, was the curse of owning a bar. Whether he should or not, he felt responsible in these situations. She was compromised, it was late, cabs were scarce in a town the size of Copper Ridge and she was alone. He could not let her meander her way back home. Not when he could easily see that she got there safely.

  “A ride?” She frowned, her delicate features lit dramatically by the security light hanging on the front of the bar.

  “I know your daddy probably told you not to take rides from strangers, but trust me, I’m the safest bet around. Unless you want to call someone.” He checked his watch. “It’s inching close to last call. I’m betting not very many people are going to come out right now.”

  She shook her head slowly. “Probably not.”

  He sighed heavily, reaching into his pocket and wrapping his fingers around his keys. “All right, come on. Get in the truck.”

  * * *

  SIERRA LOOKED UP at her unlikely, bearded, plaid-clad savior. She knew who it was, of course. Ace Thompson was the owner of the bar, and she bought beer from him at least twice a month when she came out with her friends. They’d exchanged money and drinks across the counter more times than she could recall, but this was more words than she’d ever exchanged with him in her life.

  She was angry at herself. For getting drunk. For going out with the biggest jerks in the local rodeo club. For getting on the back of a mechanical bull and opening herself up to their derision—because honestly, when you sat your drunk ass on a fake, bucking animal, you pretty much deserved it. And most of all, for sitting down in the parking lot acting like she was going to cry just because she had been ditched by said jerky friends.

  Oh, and being caught at what was most definitely an epic low made it all even worse. Ace had almost certainly seen her inglorious dismount of the mechanical bull, then witnessed everyone leaving without her.

  She’d been so sure today couldn’t get any worse.

  Tequila had proven her wrong.

  “I’m fine,” she said, and she could have bitten off her own tongue, because she wasn’t fine. As much as she wanted to pretend she didn’t need his help, she kind of did. Granted, she could call Madison or Colton. But if her sister had to drive all the way down to town from the family ranch she would probably kill Sierra. And if she called Colton’s house his fiancée would probably kill Sierra.

  Either way, that made for a dead Sierra.

  She couldn’t exactly call her father, since she wasn’t speaking to him. Which, really, was the root of the evil that was today.

  “Sure you are. Most girls who end up sitting on their ass at 1:00 a.m. in a parking lot are just fine.”

  She blinked, trying to bring his face into focus. He refused to be anything but a fuzzy blur. “I am.”

  For some reason, her stubbornness was on full display, and most definitely outweighing her common sense. That was probably related to the alcohol. And the fact that all of her restraint had been torn down hours ago. Sometime early this morning when she had screamed at her father and told him she never wanted to see him again, because she’d found out he was a liar. A cheater.

  Right, so that was probably why she was feeling rebellious. Angry in general. But she probably shouldn’t direct it at the person who was offering to give her a ride.

  In spite of the fact that her brain had rationalized this course of action, her ass was still firmly planted on the ground.

  “Don’t make me ask you twice, Sierra. It’s going to make me get real grumpy, and I don’t think you’ll like that.” Ace shifted his stance, crossing his arms over his broad chest—she was pretty sure it was broad, either that or she was seeing double—and looked down at her.

  She got to her wobbly feet, pitching slightly to the side before steadying herself. Her head was spinning, her stomach churning, and she was just mad. Because she felt like crap. Because she knew better than to drink like this, at least when she wasn’t in the privacy of her own home.

  “Which truck?” she asked, rubbing her forehead.

  He jerked his head to the left. “This way.”

  He turned, not waiting for her, and began to walk across the parking lot. She followed as quickly as she could. Fortunately, the lot was mostly empty so she didn’t have to watch much but the back of Ace as they made their way to the vehicle. It wasn’t a new, flashy truck. It was old, but it was in good condition. Better than most she’d seen at such an advanced age. But then, as far as she knew Ace wasn’t a rancher. He owned a bar, so it wasn’t like his truck saw all that much action.

  She stood in front of the passenger-side door for a long moment before realizing he was not coming around to open it for her. Her face heated as she jerked open the door for herself and climbed inside.

  It had a bench seat. And she found herself clinging to the door, doing her best to keep the expansive seat between them as wide as possible. She was suddenly conscious of the fact that he was a very large man. Tall, broad, muscular. She’d known that, somewhere in the back of her mind she’d known that. But the way he filled up the cab of a truck containing just the two of them was much more significant than the way he filled the space in a vast and crowded bar.

  He started the engine, saying nothing as he put the truck in Reverse and began to pull out of the lot. She looked straight ahead, clinging to the door handle, desperate to find something to say. The silence was oppressive, heavy around them. It made her feel twitchy, nervous. She always knew what to say. She was in command of every social situation she ever stepped into. People found her charming, and if they didn’t, they never said otherwise. Because she was Sierra West, and her family name carried with it the burden of mandatory respect from the people of Copper Ridge.

  Her father was one of the most esteemed horse breeders in the entire country, and it wasn’t uncommon for his connections to bring people with big money into town, sometimes on a permanent basis. An entire culture of horsemanship had been built up because of her father, because of her sister Madison’s dressage training. And in addition to that, her family made donations to the schools, to local charities...

  And beneath all of that, what no one else knew was that her father was actually an awful human being.

  That’s not true. Jack Monaghan knows. His mother knows.

  Her friend Kate knew, since she was engaged to Jack and all.

  The secret was like a festering wound that had been tightly bandaged for years. But now the bandage was ripped off, and the wound was reopening, the truth of it slowly bleeding out around them, touching more and more people with each passing day.

  She took a deep breath, trying to ease the pressure in her chest, trying to remove the weight that was sitting there.

  “What’s your sign?” Somehow, her fuzzy brain had retrieved that as a conversation starter. The moment the words left her mouth she wanted to stuff them back in and swallow them.

  To her surprise, Ace laughed. “Caution.”

  “What?”

  “I’m a caution sign, baby. Now where are we going?”

  “I’m staying with my brother Colton. He has a ranch just outside of town. After the Farm and Garden. Not as far out as the Garretts, kind of by Aiden Crawford’s place.”

  “Does he have an address?”

  She blinked, shaking her head. “Right. 316 Highway 104.”

  “All right, I think I can figure that out.”

  “I can give you directions. Or you can map it on your phone.”

  He snorted. “Do I look l
ike I’m carrying a smartphone?”

  No, no he didn’t. “Oh. A caution sign. Like on the road.” Suddenly, the meaning of his comment washed over her. “I get it.”

  “Good job.”

  She sniffed. “You don’t have to be mean. I’m drunk, not stupid.” Actually, she was debating that last thing. Right now, she was heavily debating it. Most of her actions over the past twenty-four hours had been pretty freaking stupid. Apparently anger made her kind of dumb.

  “This is a judgment-free zone, little girl,” he said, making her feel smaller, sillier with that very reductive endearment. Was it even an endearment if it was reductive? She wasn’t sure.

  She was only pondering that because of the alcohol. She wasn’t sure she would have noticed his phrasing at all if she’d been sober. A lot of men talked to her like that.

  Baby doll. Pretty little thing.

  She didn’t have trouble with men. Or, more to the point, she could have exactly the kind of trouble she wanted to with most any guy in town. She didn’t, because she was a West, and she’d always been taught the importance of discretion in such matters. That truth had been hammered home when Madison had dealt with her own crazy scandal at seventeen.

  Sierra’d had boyfriends at college, but, while she liked to engage in a little bit of flirtation with the men in town, she wasn’t really one to follow through. In a place like Copper Ridge it was too easy to run into an ex at a stop sign, and she had never wanted to deal with that. Had never wanted to deal with bringing a guy home to her family. Too many expectations.

  Which, given the recent revelations about her father, was a bit of a joke.

  For all his talk about discretion he had apparently spread himself all over town. And he had a child with someone else. A child who was now a man. A man who had been in the bar tonight. A man who had just seen her go ass-over-head off a mechanical bull.

  She’d totally lost the thread of the conversation, and her train of thought. Her head was starting to hurt. She knew that she was going to regret all of this in the morning, intensely. She was regretting it now, even with the comforting blanket of alcohol still somewhat wrapped around her.

  Tomorrow was going to be a very particular kind of hell.

  “I’m not a little girl,” she said, because it was the only thing she could think of to say.

  “Of course not,” he replied, his tone placating.

  She had known who Ace Thompson was for a long time. He was the guy that almost everyone in town had bought their very first beer from the moment they turned twenty-one. She was no exception. But she hadn’t realized what a butt-head he was.

  A hot one. He had dark hair, and a dark beard that was just a shade longer than stubble. It always made her wonder if it was intentional, or if he had just gone a few days without shaving. There was something about that, the careless presentation that still managed to make him look irresistible, that made her think of all the debauchery that occupied his time, and kept him too busy to shave.

  “You don’t have to sound so much like you’re patronizing me,” she said.

  “But I am patronizing you.”

  She bristled. “I guess you’ve never had any crap happen in your life that makes you go out and get drunk and want to...”

  “Ride a mechanical bull? Not specifically. But I’ve tried to drown my sorrows in a bottle of Jack a time or two.”

  “So, that’s all this is.” She sighed, looking out the window at the dark shapes of the pine trees, like a jagged spill of ink against the night sky. “Just one of those things.”

  “He wasn’t good enough for you. It was him, not you. He looked like an ass in that popped collar anyway.”

  She let out a harsh breath that fogged the window and obscured her view. “It isn’t about a guy.”

  “Honey, I don’t really care what it’s about. Guy, girl.” He paused. “I’m actually more interested in the second option.”

  She turned toward him, barely able to make out the shape of his profile in the darkness. “Not a girl, either.”

  “Way to spoil a man’s fantasies. Lucky for you, the only thing I’m really interested in is getting you home without you getting kidnapped and mangled by a drifter, okay? That’s something I can’t have happen on my watch. You can get drunk. You can make a fool of yourself riding a bull. I don’t care. That’s all part of how I get paid. What I don’t need is some silly little rich kid getting herself killed trying to get home from the bar because she hangs out with a bunch of idiots who don’t care about her safety. All right? That’s as far as my good deed goes.”

  His words were harsh, exceptionally so, given her particularly raw state. She felt...bruised. Completely and righteously enraged. “You shouldn’t have troubled yourself. In Copper Ridge the crime rate pretty much consists of kids throwing water balloons at shop windows.”

  “We have a police department for a reason, babe.”

  “Sierra,” she said through gritted teeth. “My name is Sierra West. Not babe. Not kid. Definitely not little girl.”

  “Well, that puts me in my place.”

  “I haven’t even begun to put you in your place.” That was not as hard-core as it sounded in her head. She just sounded kind of pathetic. A little bit whiny. She was both of those things, but she would rather Ace Thompson didn’t know that.

  She was starting to bleed her issues all over the cab of the old truck in front of a man she barely knew.

  Everything seemed to be falling apart.

  She couldn’t say anything else. If she did she would dissolve completely. Into a puddle of big, wimpy girl tears. She was better than this. She knew how to be better than this. She had been trained to keep a brave face on from birth. Where the hell was it now?

  It wasn’t his business what was happening with her family. She should have let him think her little mini-breakdown was about a guy.

  In fact, she would retract her earlier statement. It was technically about a guy anyway. Her father. Jack Monaghan, the half brother she hadn’t known she had...

  “It’s about a guy,” she said, feeling her own subject change like a bad case of whiplash.

  It was so strange to feel tongue-tied and clumsy around a man, around anyone. She didn’t usually. She was going to put it down to her weird mood and the intoxication.

  “I figured. Girls like you don’t have a lot of problems bigger than that. Except maybe a broken nail.”

  Annoyance spiked through her. “Please. If I was the type to worry about a broken nail I would hardly have gotten onto the back of your mechanical bull. I might be spoiled, I’m not going to deny that. But I’m also a barrel racer. I’ve been riding horses since before I could walk. I don’t exactly sit at home with my hair in curlers planning my next shopping spree.”

  He chuckled. A real laugh. “Point taken.”

  “Anyway. I’m just upset because... You know, sometimes people aren’t what they seem to be. And then you just wonder... If you’re a gigantic idiot. If you really shouldn’t be allowed to cross the street by yourself because you can’t tell that someone’s a bad guy after spending... All that time with him... How can you ever be confident you know anyone?” Her throat tightened, emotion flooding her. She had no control right now, and she hated it. She was used to being able to put on a flawless show no matter what was going on inside of her.

  She’d been dumped by her boyfriend junior year—her first boyfriend. First kiss, first everything—right before one of the big games in Autzen Stadium, and she’d managed to parade right in there with her group of girlfriends, a huge smile plastered on her face. She’d even done a little happy dance for the Jumbotron that had made it onto national TV. A big chipper eff-you to the man who’d broken things off with her.

  She didn’t let people see her sweat. She didn’t let them see her cry. They thought her life
was easier because she let them think so.

  But it was all falling apart now.

  “You can’t ever totally know people,” Ace said, something in his tone dark now. “People are liars. And they do what makes them happy. They serve themselves. So, of course they lie to you. For a month, for a year. They may not even know they’re lying to you, not until something comes up that means they have to protect their own asses. They’ll forget everything they ever told you to keep themselves happy. That’s people. Sorry you’re having to deal with it.”

  Ace’s words were so hard, so desperately cynical. Not the kind of words she would ever have guessed would come from the friendly neighborhood bartender.

  “So, you think that’s everybody?”

  “I can’t test this theory on everybody. It’s even tough to prove with one person. You would have to live with someone for a hell of a long time and never have it go to hell to prove otherwise. No one in my life has ever lasted that long.”

  Tears pricked the back of her eyes, and she felt like an even bigger idiot. Getting emotional not just for herself, but for some guy she didn’t even know. “That’s really sad.”

  “Not really. It’s just life.”

  “So that means you don’t even feel bad about it? About the fact that people are just a bunch of lying tool bags? I feel pretty bad about it.”

  “You’ll get over it.”

  His words made her feel hollow. Not just her, the world around her. The ground. The sky. Like all the substance, the very foundation, was gone. “What if I don’t?”

  “Then it’s going to be a hard road for you. Though you know what? It won’t actually be that hard. You’ve got a lot of money to catch you when you fall. You’ve got your family.”

  Except she didn’t. She had walked away. But he wouldn’t understand that, and he wouldn’t believe it.

  Silence descended on the cab like a plague of locusts. Oppressive. Heavy. She wanted to think of something to say, and she didn’t want to say anything to him ever again. It was a minefield. He had all the wrong answers. Everything she didn’t want to hear.