The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(3)

None of them made her feel like everything she’d ever known before was a pale, cardboard construct, and he might be the only thing that was real.

The only thing that could make her real.

She swallowed hard, walking over to the bar. The bartender was a handsome man, broad chested with a quick smile, tattoos up his brown forearms, a bright gold wedding band and a twinkle in his eye. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah. I... Whiskey. Please.”

“All right. Any particular kind?”

She didn’t know anything about whiskey. “Do you have a special kind that makes you brave?”

He grinned. “Even cheap stuff will do that. Just comes with a headache.”

“It’s my experience that just about everything in life comes with the headache,” she said, trying to smile. And then she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Goose bumps broke out over her arms.

And the fire inside her flared.

That happened a split second before she heard a low, husky voice just behind her.

“It’s you, isn’t it?”

She turned, and there he was.

So close.

Impossibly close.

And she didn’t know if she could survive it.

Because those electric blue eyes were looking right into hers. But this time, it wasn’t from across a crowded bar. It was right there.

Right there.

And she didn’t have a deadweight clinging to her side that kept her from going where she wanted to go, doing what she wanted to do. She was free. Unencumbered, for the first time in fifteen years. For the first damn time.

She was standing there, and she was just Mallory.

Jared wasn’t there. Griffin wasn’t there. Her parents weren’t there.

She was standing on her own, standing there with no one and nothing to tell her what to do, no one and nothing to make her feel a certain thing.

So it was all just him. Blinding electric blue, brilliant and scalding.

Perfect.

“I... I think so. Unless... Unless you think I’m someone else.” It was much less confident and witty than she’d intended. But she didn’t feel capable of witty just now.

“You were here once. About six months ago.”

He remembered her. He remembered her. This man who had haunted her dreams—no, not haunted, created them. Had filled her mind with erotic imagery that had never existed there before, was... Talking about her. He was.

He thought of her. He remembered her.

“I was,” she said.

He looked behind her, then back at her. “Where’s the boyfriend?”

He asked the question with an edge of hostility. It made her shiver.

“Not here.”

“Good.” His lips tipped upward into a smile.

“I...” She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to say, because this shimmering feeling inside of her was clearly, clearly shared and...

Suddenly her freedom felt terrifying. That freedom that had felt—only a moment before—exhilarating suddenly felt like too much. She wanted to hide. Wanted to scamper under the bar and get behind the barstool so that she could put something between herself and the electric man. She wondered if she was ready for this.

Because there was no question what this was.

One night.

With nothing at all between them. Nothing but unfamiliar motel bedsheets. A bed she’d never sleep in again and a man she would never sleep with again.

She understood that.

Any number of her friends had had those sort of experiences. And she never had.

It was such a funny thing. Because she had felt...

She’d felt lonely and wrong a lot of the time in her life. Not quite the golden boy her brother was, though her parents loved her, and she knew it. But she’d had to work to reach even a minimal standard. She hadn’t been popular at school. Hadn’t excelled at anything in particular.

She wasn’t conventionally pretty. Her hair was frizzy and a mousy brown color, her curves unremarkable as far as she was concerned. She had never been popular, but she had never been particularly alternative either.

She hadn’t had a big group of friends, until she’d started dating Jared at fifteen. And then suddenly it had changed. He had been fun and funny. He had a whole group of people who surrounded him.

And she’d been one of her first friends to lose her virginity.

She’d felt worldly and sophisticated. Special. Because she knew all about those things that transpired between men and women. It had caused a sort of rift between the old friends she’d had before beginning to date Jared, who were convinced that she was losing herself and her perspective.

She’d felt like she had gained perspective. She was in love and they didn’t understand. She was ready for deeper, more mature things than they were.

She’d kept it all a secret from her family. Carving out a division between her social life and the life she had at home. Trying to be perfect in every arena. Sexually experienced, confident Mallory at school. Studious and well-behaved Mallory at home, who might not be quite the all-star Griffin was, but who was self-sufficient, didn’t cause trouble and didn’t give her parents grief.

And then her world had caved in around her. And she’d still tried to keep everything separate.

The impending changes, the fear, then the overwhelming grief.