straightened, then stood, making a very male noise that seemed...gratuitous. Like he was just stretching noisily to remind her that he was a man and she was...vulnerable to his powers of testosterone. “I imagine not.”
“Your excitement is catching,” she said, treating him to her fakest smile.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m not your sorority sister.”
“I was not in a sorority.”
“Well, there you go. Busting stereotypes all over the place.”
She lifted the coffee mug to her lips, taking another sip. “Absolutely to change the subject, because the one we are currently on basically amounts to you being an ass... What’s in your barn?”
“Is that a double entendre?”
She made a face. “No, what could that even mean?”
“Well—”
“No. Please don’t tell me what it could mean.”
“I didn’t take you for a prude, Sierra,” he said, his voice suddenly getting warm, thick. Certainly not the sort of tone he should be using with her, since he didn’t like her, and she was a waitress. His waitress. His waitress that he didn’t like.
“I hide my Puritanical streak underneath my short shorts.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
Her throat tightened, her whole body getting tingly. “We shouldn’t do this.”
“What?”
He looked innocent. Which really wasn’t a great or authentic look on him. “We shouldn’t banter.”
“A little banter isn’t going to hurt.”
“Banter is dangerous. Especially good banter.”
“Maybe. But it won’t go anywhere, because you’re the one who has to beg.”
She nearly choked on her tongue. “Well, I’m not going to. I was trying to change the subject. A gentleman wouldn’t stop me from doing so.”
“I never said I was a gentleman.”
“Clearly.”
“And we actually did change the subject.”
“But you commandeered my subject change. You didn’t answer my question.”
He sighed. “I have a few horses.”
“Okay. How do you keep horses and sleep until noon?” she asked.
“Well, I pay a couple of kids to come by and feed them in the morning before school. Seriously. I stay up too late to get up in time to take care of them. But, I do like to ride when I have days off.”
He had a cowboy hat. And horses. He was quickly becoming Sierra brand kryptonite.
Except for the part where he was a giant jerk, and her boss.
“Like, do you trail ride or...”
“Sometimes.”
“Does your family own horses?” Her own behavior mystified her. She shouldn’t be trying to get to know him. She should be sticking to the script. If she was going to be here, then they needed to be menu planning, or discussing wall sconces, or something. They did not need to be discussing his horses, or his background in horsemanship.
“No. They don’t. I got into riding when I took a job at a ranch mucking stalls. One of the guys was an old, retired rodeo cowboy. And, since I was sixteen, I thought riding bucking broncos sounded like a great idea.”
“You didn’t, did you?”
He nodded slowly, touching the end of his hat. “Yes ma’am. Once upon a time, I was a rodeo cowboy.”
* * *
ACE HAD NO IDEA why he was telling Sierra all of this. He didn’t like to talk about his past. Didn’t like to talk about the decade he’d spent away from Copper Ridge. Because it led into dangerous, murky territory that he barely allowed himself to think about, much less have a conversation about.
“I didn’t know that. I guess, I thought you’d been running the bar forever. Or maybe that you worked at the bar. But, I would’ve been, you know, not legal drinking age when the bar actually changed its name to Ace’s.”
“Are you calling me old?”
“Well, you’re older than me.”
“Not that much,” he said, sounding slightly perturbed.
“How long have you had the bar?”
“About seven years.”
“Yeah,” she said, scrunching her nose. “I was only eighteen when you took over then.”
“Ouch.”
He was suddenly very conscious of the decade that stood between his and Sierra’s ages. Of course, he had always known that he was older than her, he didn’t need to tally up the years to figure that out. She was shiny. Sparkly. Regardless of whatever was going on with her father, she retained the kind of innocence that was difficult to keep into your thirties.
“Oh, come on. Men get better with age. Women just start shedding their sequins.”
“Bullshit. Fashion magazines might want you to believe that, but trust me when I tell you I’ve had some of the best nights of my life with women over the age of forty.”
He had said that to get a response out of her. What he hadn’t anticipated was the response it would elicit in him when her cheeks turned a deeper shade of rose. “I only wanted to know about your horse riding, Ace, not about the other kinds of riding you do.” Her tone was biting, dry. She was not as unaffected as she was trying to pretend.
Which was good, because he wasn’t unaffected at all.
She had to beg. Thank God for that edict. Because it was the only thing stopping him from grabbing her and pulling her flush against his body, backing her up against a wall, bending her over some furniture.
He’d made a rule, and he would damn well stick to it. He wasn’t completely beyond the pale. He wasn’t unable to control himself. He was not that far gone.
You are.
Maybe he was. But in this, he wouldn’t be. He would stand strong.
Yeah, that’s a real moral high ground, Thompson. You won’t touch her unless she begs you for it. And if she does, you know you will.
“It’s been said I have no shame,” he said. “It’s probably true.”
“Oh, I would say more than probably.”
“Do
