WOUND UP at Denny’s. If Ian had any reservations about her choice, he didn’t voice them.
For some reason, her dad had loved Denny’s. And every single time they ate at one—which was frequently—he cracked the same “Moons Over My Hammy” joke. And Lacy laughed. Always.
Part of her felt as though bringing Ian to Denny’s was wrong, somehow. She hadn’t been able to face eating here alone. Somehow, with Ian, it felt as if...
As if she could do this.
“What are you going to get?” he asked when they slid into a booth that looked out onto the street.
“I’m not that hungry,” she said. When he looked up at her sharply, she said, “I ate today. Really.”
For a moment, she thought he was going to scold her like a child—much as he’d all but scolded her bull last night. But then his mouth twisted off to one side and he said, “Easy, Evans. We’re just friends here.”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t sound like you believe me,” he said from behind his menu.
“I’m not very good at having friends,” she admitted. It’d always felt like such a failure, that she wasn’t any good at maintaining friendships. Her mother had once said that Lacy was an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of person, and it was true.
He tried not to laugh but didn’t quite make it. “You don’t say.”
She rolled her eyes. “I suppose you’re friends with everyone?”
“Most everyone. I’m either friends with them or they deserve to be flattened by a bull.”
“Or by you?”
“If need be,” he told her. “Did you have a history with Jerome before this rodeo?”
She physically flinched at the mention of that jerk. “No. Didn’t even know his name. I don’t normally pal around with the riders.”
He let that set for a moment. The waitress came over, poured the coffee and took their orders. Lacy ordered a salad but Ian ordered three appetizers and a steak dinner with sides. The waitress gave his physique a once-over before she left the table.
Lacy looked with her. Today, Ian had on a gray shirt. It was still cuffed at the elbows and he still had that leather strap around his wrist. He’d taken his hat off and set it on the windowsill. The hat was brown felt, but the band wasn’t horsehair or leather. Quills? That would make sense, she guessed. He was an Indian.
Ian cleared his throat. “Or the fighters?”
She didn’t want to answer that question because admitting that she’d never hung out with a bullfighter before felt as if she was admitting something. That Ian might be an exception.
So she changed the subject. “Is this your first year as a fighter? I think I would have remembered you from last season.” If she could get him to talk about himself, then maybe he wouldn’t ask any questions about her.
He went along with her tangent. “Yeah. I used to play football—”
“Shocking,” she said, a smile on her face. A real smile. Then she made the mistake of letting her eyes drift over his shoulders and down to that chest.
Ian leaned forward, a playful smile on his lips. “You know, you’re actually quite funny when you want to be.”
Was that a challenge? It sounded like one. “Don’t tell anyone. It’d ruin my reputation as that bitch with the bulls, and then where would I be?” She ignored the way her face warmed at his compliment, and she really ignored the way he noticed it. Something in his eyes shifted—deepened.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, his voice lower. She felt it in her chest. But then, he leaned back, breaking the spell. “Anyway, I got lucky getting to tag along with Black Jack. Otherwise, I’d probably be down at the level below this one. Black Jack was up in the bigs for a long time before he got into a bad wreck. He thinks we can get back there if...”
She arched an eyebrow at him and actually smiled. “If you stop throwing bulls to the ground?” She was teasing him, she realized. When was the last time she’d teased someone?
“Yeah, that.”
The waitress set down a huge mound of onion rings and mozzarella sticks. “Be right back with those chips,” she said, and Lacy swore she winked at Ian.
If he noticed, he didn’t show it. Instead, after offering Lacy some cheese sticks, he said, “How about you? How long have you been rodeoing?”
It was a perfectly innocent question, the kind someone asked when they were making polite small talk. But suddenly it was harder to breathe. A weight was on her chest and she wished she’d ordered the Moons Over My Hammy, just for Dad.
“I’ve been coming for as long as I can remember. My dad was the stock contractor. The Straight Arrow was his business.”
“Ah,” Ian said, as if that had answered all his questions. “This your first year without him?” His voice was kind.
She nodded, a small movement of her head.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She tried to shrug, but it wasn’t a smooth thing. She was not a smooth woman.
She couldn’t hold up under his intense gaze, so she grabbed a cheese stick and began to eat it to hide her anxiety.
“Is your mom doing okay?”
She blinked a few times. She would not cry. Hell, she would not even tear up. Absolutely no moisture would leak from any orifice in her body. “I... I really don’t want to talk about this.” She set her half-eaten cheese on her plate. “If you don’t mind.”
He tilted his head from side to side. “If you decide you want to talk, you let me know.”
“Why?” It came out so quietly it barely made it to the level of a whisper. She tried again. “Why would you want to listen to me?”
“Because,” he said simply, as if that were the only answer that mattered.
It wasn’t. Honestly, what was he doing here with her, besides trying to feed her fried food? “This isn’t a date,” she reminded him. “I’m paying for my half of the food.”
He pointedly looked at her cheese stick. “Seriously, Evans? I’m buying your salad. Consider it part of my payback for the vet bill.”
“You can’t keep using that excuse.”
“Sure I can,” he said as he ate another cheese stick. “You act like if I buy your dinner, I’ll expect you to put out or something.”
“Most guys would. Most guys would have expected something in return for saving me from Jerome. Not that I needed saving,” she hurried to add, because she realized she was making herself sound weak and she was not weak. She wasn’t.
“And
