bar, an icy long-neck was waiting for him. “How’s it going, Otis?”
“Can’t complain. It’s a sad commentary on life in Hickory Bluff that you guys keep me busy. ’Course, what can you expect in a town where the only place to go is away?”
“Aw, it’s not as bad as that. You know, most of us—yourself included—live here because we like it.”
“Because we don’t know no better,” Otis retorted as he moved to wait on a customer at the opposite end of the bar.
Josh turned for a look around the room. Some of his buddies were occupied at the two pool tables at the far end, and a half dozen more sat at the big round table they’d claimed for their own. While he was debating which group to join, his gaze settled on Calvin Bridger, alone in a distant booth. He didn’t ask permission to join Cal, since he’d probably say no and Josh would do it, anyway. He just slid onto the bench across from him.
“I didn’t know you were back in town,” Josh remarked.
Cal took a deep drink from his beer, then scowled at him. “I didn’t ask you to sit down.”
“Good thing I’ve known you all of our worthless lives, or I might think you were being rude. When did you get home?”
“A couple days ago.”
“Where’s Darcy?”
Cal mumbled something and shrugged, then took another long swallow.
The three of them—Josh, Cal and Darcy Hawkins—had gone to school together from kindergarten on. When just about everyone else went out for football, basketball or baseball, Josh and Cal had started rodeoing. Cal had been a lot better at it—had turned it into a career and made a living at it for fifteen years and counting. He’d also married Darcy a few years back, and seemed to be pretty good at that, too.
“You guys staying at your folks’ or hers?” Josh asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Which one?” It made a difference if a person wanted to go visiting, since the Bridger ranch was a few miles west of the Rawlinses’ and the Hawkins place—called the Mansion with a derisive sniff—was on the east side of Hickory Bluff, high atop a hill and looking down on the town just as the Hawkinses had always looked down on its people.
Cal drained his beer and signaled Otis for another, then fixed a hostile stare on Josh. “I’m staying at the ranch. I don’t have a clue in hell where Darcy is. She didn’t want to go to this last rodeo with me. She didn’t want to come home with me. Here lately she doesn’t want to do much of anything with me. Now will you go the hell away and let me have one beer in peace?”
Josh didn’t argue or press for more details. Taking his beer, he stood up, then turned back. “Let me know before you leave.”
Though it wasn’t a question, Cal nodded. “Yeah, sure.”
Josh never gave a lot of thought to the state of people’s marriages. Some of his buddies changed wives the way other people traded cars. A few had been married a long time and seemed satisfied with their wives, three kids and a dog. Some swore they’d never get married, and he believed them. Some swore the same, and he didn’t. But Cal and Darcy…damn. They’d been together a long time. If asked, Josh would have said they had the second-best chance at staying together forever. First, of course, went to Tate and Natalie.
Looked like he would have been wrong.
He crossed to the round table, into which some joker had carved The Knights, and pulled up a chair, swinging it around backward to straddle. The conversation was football—the college games played the weekend before and the Wildcat game coming up on Friday. Both Tate and Jordan had been Wildcat stars, both scouted by college teams, and Jordan was attending Oklahoma State University on a football scholarship. For those reasons, people seemed to think that made Josh an authority of some sort. Truthfully, he didn’t know any more about the game than anyone else—and didn’t care as much as most of them. Tossing a football around and risking life and limb against guys twice his size didn’t appeal to him at all.
He’d by far preferred risking his life and limb against bulls ten times his size, he thought with a grin.
He’d finished his first beer and was nursing his second and thinking about asking the pretty brunette at the bar to dance when Dudley Barnes hollered his name from the vicinity of the pool tables. “Rawlins, get your scrawny carcass over here and give me a chance to win back that forty bucks you stole from me last week.”
Shooting pool with Dudley was about the easiest money Josh had ever come by. He could beat him blindfolded and with one hand tied behind his back. There was no challenge to it, but it was something to do. Besides, that pretty brunette taught at Theresa’s school, and Theresa might not take kindly to him paying her any attention.
Crossing to the table, he laid a twenty-dollar bill next to the one already on the edge, then circled to take a cue stick from the rack on the wall. He chalked the tip while Dudley racked the balls, then bent over the table to break.
“How ’bout you lose twenty to me and twenty to my friend?” Dudley suggested.
“Aw, you don’t have any friends,” Josh replied. The cue ball hit with a clean cra-ack and the balls rolled in every direction. He moved to the end of the table and bent over, bracing his hand on the felt.
“I’ve got one, and she’s the prettiest girl in the place. Talks real pretty, too, ’cause she’s from…where was it, honey?”
“Atlanta.” The voice was feminine…and familiar, even though he’d never heard it before that morning and had confidently thought he would never hear it again.
He made his shot, then slowly looked up. It was easy enough to overlook anyone standing beside Dudley. At six foot six and three hundred pounds, he was a big boy. But once Josh’s gaze connected with Candace Thompson, Dudley faded into the background.
She’d changed clothes for slumming at the local honky-tonk, into jeans that clung the way they were meant to and a red button-front shirt. Her boots were brown, thick-soled work boots that hadn’t seen much, if any, work, and she wore a black cowboy hat that was way too big for her head. Seeing that it belonged to Dudley, it was probably too big for everybody’s head.
“Buddy, this is Can—”
Josh interrupted Dudley’s introductions. “We’ve met,” he said rudely, then turned his back on them to make the next two shots.
She waited until he’d straightened again to speak. “Technically, we haven’t. I know your name is Josh because the waitress called you that, but—”
He hit the next ball with more force than he’d intended, but it rolled into the intended pocket, anyway. Then he faced her impassively. “I’m Josh Rawlins. Tate Rawlins’s brother. Natalie Rawlins’s brother-in-law. And you’re Candace Thompson. And that’s all that needs to be said, isn’t it?”
And you’re Candace Thompson. Candace hadn’t known it was possible for someone to put so much pure loathing in the four syllables of her name. No doubt he’d picked that up from Natalie, a fact that sent an ache through her, but she hid it. Instead she coolly watched as he methodically sank ball after ball.
She’d
