One Night Charmer

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 like 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.

“Aren’t bartenders supposed to be encouraging? Aren’t you supposed to smile and nod and say what everybody needs you to say?”

After feeling like she would sit in resolute silence, the words came as a surprise even to her.

“Sorry. I’m out from behind the bar. You use me as a designated driver and you get my honest opinion. People tend not to like my opinions.”

She didn’t believe that was true. Trying to think back on every event she’d ever vaguely circled around him at, she really didn’t believe it was true. If she was sorting through her thoughts correctly, he had a good reputation. He was a nice guy. He showed up at every charity event her family was ever involved in. He provided free drinks, in exchange for publicity of course, but still, he did it at considerable expense to himself.

She remembered about a year and a half ago when the community had come together to rebuild Connor Garrett’s barn. Ace had been there then. Not just helping to rebuild, but providing refreshments.

He was usually smiling.

She wondered where that guy was now.

Maybe he just doesn’t like giving people rides home at one in the morning.

That was fair. Anyone could be grumpy. She was most definitely off her game, so why shouldn’t it be the same for him?

His life was so much simpler than hers anyway. What he had, he had outright, free and clear. He owned a bar, and it was his domain. He did what he wanted to with it. He was able to help people with it. He was high-profile in the community, but he had a certain measure of freedom with it. There was all kinds of acceptance for what he did, no matter what. He had a reputation for sleeping with anything that moved, but it didn’t seem to damage him.

Yeah, he basically had it made. So for all he could say about the evils of people, she’d never seen any evidence that it had touched him.

And it made her think back to his earlier comment about her breaking a nail. How easy he seemed to think things were for her. How soft he seemed to think she was, and it made her angry. He didn’t know. He had no idea.

He turned the truck onto a narrow, paved driveway, the one that led back to her brother’s ranch.

If she was going to say the words that were bubbling up inside of her like boiling water, she had to say them now. And she wanted to. Maybe because she was feeling bold due to the alcohol. But maybe because it was just the right thing to say. Maybe because he needed to hear it.

“Things are easy for you, though,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“You said my road wouldn’t be that hard, but you’re the one who has it made. You’re a man. A man everyone just kind of gives a pass to. It doesn’t matter what you do. Everyone just kind of accepts it. You can say whatever you want. Like now. You’re giving me a ride home, after being totally condescending. And you don’t even care. Me? I have to watch what I say. I have to... I have to keep up appearances for the family name. You burned that bridge a long time ago. Aren’t you like...a pastor’s kid? And you own a bar now. But if anything, people just kind of laugh at it. How funny, your dad preaches sermons on Sunday to everyone who’s hungover from being at Ace’s place on Saturday night.”

“You can stop talking now, Sierra West,” he said, his tone deadly now. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You don’t know my life.”

“Maybe not. But you don’t know mine. And you were more than ready to cast judgment on me, Mr. World-Weary, I-Know-People. You think you know me, but you don’t. Maybe nobody does.”

He laughed, and it grated against her skin. It was derisive. Unkind. “Trust me, baby, everybody thinks that. Everybody thinks they’re so unknowable, so complicated. But they aren’t. People are just people, you included. You don’t have any hidden depth to awe and astound me.”

“Stop the car,” she ground out.

“We aren’t there yet,” he said, his voice hard.

“I don’t care. We’re in the driveway. I can walk to the top of it.”

“Right. And I’m going to let you get eaten by a mountain lion now?”

“I’m not going to get eaten by a mountain lion.”

“No, you’re right. He probably won’t eat you. He’ll probably just gnaw on you for a while. But I think I’ll go ahead and keep driving you so that doesn’t happen, either. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

She gritted her teeth. “Out of the goodness of your heart?”

“Hell, no. Because I don’t want to deal with any of the fallout that would come from having you get gnawed on on my watch.”

“Asshole.”

“Well, now you know my secret.”

“It’s a poorly kept one. I just had to be around you for about five seconds and it became pretty clear.”

“So we’ve established that I’m an asshole, and you’re a whiny rich girl. You’re going to be very embarrassed by all of this tomorrow. I, on the other hand, won’t.”

That did it. Now she was just pissed. “Embarrassed? Why should I be embarrassed? You’re the one who should be embarrassed.”

“Why?” he asked.

Dammit. She didn’t know why. She had said it, and it had felt strong, and kind of badass, but now she felt like it really wasn’t. Especially since she didn’t have anything to back it up.

“Because—” good one, Sierra “—because, you’re just a bar owner. Serving alcohol and buying mechanical bulls for people to fall off. What is that?”

“Most of the town spends more than a bit of their free time at my humble establishment. And I seem to recall you spending money to ride good old Ferdinand, so I’m going to go ahead and say maybe you shouldn’t throw stones from your glass house.”

“Whatever. Other people grow up and move on from that kind of behavior. You wallow in it. And don’t think I haven’t heard plenty about your reputation with women. You’re just one of those guys. An eternal...frat boy. You were probably hoping to get into my pants.”

“I was very much not hoping for that.”

“So you say.”

He pulled the truck up to the front of her brother’s vast log-cabin-style house. She could see that the porch light was on, probably out of consideration for her. Something Colton had done, she was certain, and not Natalie. Natalie would probably prefer that Sierra not be able to find her way to the front door in the dark.

Natalie wouldn’t mind if Sierra was gnawed on by a mountain lion.

“I’m sexy,” she said, opening the passenger door and stumbling out into the darkness. “And I know it.” Dimly, she was aware that that was a song lyric, and she wasn’t coming across very well.

“Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart,” Ace said. “I’m sure some men will even believe you. And on that note, good night, Sierra West. It’s been...interesting, but I think you’ll understand when I say that I hope we don’t have occasion to talk again.”

She stood there for a moment, wondering why he wasn’t pulling away before she realized she was still gripping the open passenger door, preventing him from doing just that.

“Same goes, Ace Thompson.” She slammed the door shut. “Same goes.”

CHAPTER TWO

ACE WALKED INTO the empty flour mill and looked around the open space. He had a cramp in his right hand that signified his ownership of the place, and he’d signed his name so many times that morning his signature had started to look like it wasn’t even made of letters anymore.

But now it was official. The old mill that had been standing empty for years, a ghost waiting to be brought back to life. He stood, looking around at a whole lot of square feet of potential, and expense. The roof had a steep pitch, a mezzanine floor overlooking the vast, empty room. The large picture windows gave a stunning view of the steel-gray Pacific ocean and white-capped waves.

He’d gotten a killer deal on the place considering the location. Of course, it had been a killer deal since the building itself was little more than a gutted corpse lying on the beach. A giant-ass beached whale.

Call him Ishmael, and shit.

But he could see beyond all that. The bar did well enough that he could afford this investment. He could afford to expand. It was a strange thing, committing to that. Committing to moving forward. To really admitting that his life was in Copper Ridge now. That he owned bars. Or, in this case, a brewery.

He checked his watch. Jack Monaghan was supposed to be here any minute, along with Eli Garrett. Ace had the money to put into this place, but he’d really like to kick it off with some investors.

The more interest he had from the community, the better off he’d be.

Buying his current bar had been more of a sure thing. Ted, the old owner, was retiring and that was going to leave a hole. Someone had been needed to step into that hole and fill it with booze.

Ace had been happy to oblige.

But this would be a new place in an old town. Another change to a landscape that had been pretty damn stagnant until recent years. And he had no idea if this was a change that would take, or if it would just get washed away with the next tide.

He turned a circle, his footsteps echoing off the high ceiling. It was easy for him to picture the place filled with chairs. Tables, the brewing equipment in the back. He was getting pretty good at making his own microbrews, and they were popular on tap over at his bar. He had done everything he could to test the venture and make sure it would be something that at least had a fighting chance. But like anything else it was impossible to guarantee.

Business ventures went to hell all the time. Business ventures. Careers. Marriage.

At least, that was his experience.

Still, he was starting to get itchy. He wanted more. Needed more. This was more.

He heard the door open behind him and he turned around just as Jack and Eli walked into the room.

“You made it.”

“Yep.” Jack paused, running his hand over one of the support beams. “I’m always interested in an investment opportunity. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not actually a dumbass.”

“I know you aren’t,” Ace said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “That’s why I asked you to come out.”

Of all the people in Copper Ridge, Ace had had the most contact post-high school with Jack. It still hadn’t been much, but back when Ace was riding pro in the rodeo, he and Jack had crossed paths on a couple of occasions. Ace rode saddle bronc, and Jack had been a bull rider, but they’d made time for a beer or two on a few occasions.

But Ace had quit long before Jack, settling down in Texas for good, or so he’d imagined at the time.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Ultimately, Ace had made his way back to Copper Ridge permanently before Jack had to.

But he’d always gotten a sense that there was a lot more to the other man than he liked to let on. He related to that in some ways.

“I like a good investment, too,” Eli said, moving deeper into the space. “But no one really doubts that.”

Jack laughed. “That’s for damn sure. We’re all pretty sure you have the word responsibility tattooed on your ass.”

“I don’t,” Eli said. “I don’t have any tattoos.”

“Of course not,” Jack said.

“So,” Ace said, eager to get things moving along. “This is the place. I plan on having a full restaurant menu, and a brewing facility. I’ll be serving my own microbrews. Which I will also be selling over at the bar.”

“Sounds like a great plan to me,” Eli said. “What kind of food are you talking about?”

“More than hamburgers. I’m thinking we can get a good assortment of seafood. I’ve already been talking to Ryan Masters about him supplying the restaurant with his catch of the day.” Ace was pleased that this new venture gave him opportunity to work with local businesses. Ryan was the kind of guy Ace liked to do business with. Hardworking. Brought himself up from nothing. A guy very unlike the West family. Who he had no call to be thinking about now. “Not too fancy or anything but you know...the type of microbrew pub stuff that hipsters lose their minds over.”

“Great idea, man,” Jack said. “I’m in.”

“That’s it?” Ace asked. “You don’t want to see any credentials, or spreadsheets, or anything.”

“I wouldn’t understand them if you showed them to me,” Jack said. “I’m smart with my money. By which I mean I pay someone else to manage it.”