Dirt: A Sexy Small Town Romance (Copperwood Book 1) (7 page)

BOOK: Dirt: A Sexy Small Town Romance (Copperwood Book 1)
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Mike sat down in the chair and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and while he stared at me with his eyebrows drawn together. “What are you really doing here, Shane?”

“Settling my father’s estate.” I wasn’t about ready to give him any other information. He didn’t need to know all of the reasons I came back, especially if he was going to come to my door accusing me of something I couldn’t even begin to fathom.

“Then why are you showing up at Mya’s door?”

“I could be asking you why you were there.”

“Because I’m her friend. And I help out when I can.” Mike leaned back in the chair and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Don’t lead her on again, Shane.”

“We had lunch together.” He didn’t need to know I kissed her or that she kissed me back.

“Yeah, and you aren’t going to be around next weekend to take her out to lunch, are you?”

Mike wasn’t wrong. I opened my mouth, but closed it before I struggled to find words that would never fully explain my intentions. I was being selfish. I knew that. “Still playing?” I changed the subject.

Mike shrugged his shoulders and glanced around the room. “At home. Nothing serious.” He stopped looking around the room and turned his attention back on me. “Why are you here and not at your dad’s, Shane?”

“I hadn’t spoken to him in years. Somehow it just felt wrong.”

“Damnit, Shane, this is high school all over again.” Mike gave up any pretense of small–talk and returned to the initial reason for showing up at my door.

“What are you talking about?”

“She still has a school girl crush on you. She never really got over it and it was fine when you hadn’t come back here because she could daydream. But now that you’re here…” Mike shook his head from side to side. “Now that you’re back, she doesn’t need to daydream.”

“Mya’s a grown woman, Mike.”

“A grown woman who is still the little girl tailing after you hoping for even the slightest bit of attention.” He leaned forward and closed his eyes while rubbing his forehead. “And you’re finally giving her that attention, but you won’t keep on giving it.”

“And why the hell is this your business?” I glared at Mike and crossed my arms over my chest. I clenched my jaw and ground my molars together.

“Because you aren’t going to be here on Monday, but I will be.” Mike jumped up to his feet and paced around the small open area of the motel room.

I let him stomp around for a few minutes. I didn’t get why he was angry. He was the one who talked me out of dating Mya in high school, but he never dated her. Plus, Mya was always my friend more than his. But that was before I left.

Shit. Mike wasn’t playing the role of friend, he was playing the role of big brother and he knew me well. Or at least he thought he did.

A lot had changed since I left town all those years. Too bad, Mike still saw me as the same eighteen year old kid who didn’t care what anyone else thought about him as long as he was having fun.

I stared at Mike, knowing I wouldn’t be able to say anything that would convince him he was wrong. Especially because he wasn’t. I was leaving Copperwood. This was a short stop and one I didn’t plan on repeating again. At least that was what I intended when I first drove into town.

“Watch yourself with Alene.” I decided to change tactics and the subject.

Mike’s eyebrows lifted high on his forehead and his eyes widened. “What does Alene have to do with any of this?”

“She doesn’t. Just watch yourself okay?” I couldn’t let him know what I had started digging up on her. Alene’s problems were her own to tell. Plus, I had plenty of my own problems in need of telling, but I was too much of a coward.

“Whatever. This doesn’t change anything with Mya. You hurt her and I will hunt you down and beat the shit out of you.” Mike stood up and stepped closer to me.

I refused to back away from him and instead lifted my chin and narrowed my eyes. “Hurting Mya is the last thing I want to do.”

Whether my words had any impact on him or not, I couldn’t tell. I didn’t think he believed me, but then I probably wouldn’t have believed me either. He spun around and headed to the door.

“Mike.”

He pulled the door open, but stopped to look over his shoulder at me. Waiting for me to continue.

“Find a reason to keep on playing. You were good.”

“Copperwood’s different, Shane. None of us have much time for hobbies anymore.” He walked out the door, closing it behind him.

I stared at the closed door. It might not have been his intention, but Mike got me thinking about my future plans. Specifically my future plans with Mya and Copperwood.

I leaned back in my chair, once again putting aside thoughts of work in order to consider Mya. I needed to figure out what I wanted her to mean to me and if I was willing to accept everything that would go along with it.

14

Mya

I
moved through the motions of setting up the bar at Pick’s without thought or care. Kirstin usually ran late, so I tried to get as many of the menial tasks done before she raced in just before the rush.

We weren’t closed, but only the diehards showed up earlier than five o’clock. We all might be drunks in Copperwood, but we could at least pretend we were civilized.

Mike slid through the bar door, earlier than expected and I moved to the cooler for a beer, but he shook me off.

“Just a coke, Mya.”

I felt my eyebrows lift in surprise, but I filled his order and placed the glass down on a cardboard coaster. “You didn’t seem hung over this morning.”

“I’m not here as a customer.”

Of course he wasn’t. “Did dad send you then?”

“No, Mya.” His calloused hands spun the glass around on the coaster. “He’s leaving tomorrow.”

“I know that.”

“And you still aren’t really over him since when he left ten years ago.”

I grabbed a case of beer and stocked the cooler. Anything to avoid the rest of the conversation.

“Mya, he was a friend. He still is, but so are you and I don’t want to see you hurt all over again.” Mike continued the lecture, even with my back to him. “And when he leaves tomorrow, it’s going to be me having to sit through a marathon of weepie ass movies with love lost women watching you eat a pint of ice cream.”

He wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t right either. The Shane who spent the afternoon with me and dropped me off at my house with a kiss I never wanted to end wasn’t the same Shane who pushed me away all those years ago.

He even took the tip back, reluctantly, when I explained that I couldn’t take it. That it didn’t feel right. He finally laughed and said, he’d just have to come in and order a bunch of drinks and leave a tip for each one.

“It’s different this time.” I stood up too quickly and grabbed the edge of the bar to steady myself before taking another step closer to him.

“How is it different?”

“I know he’s leaving this time.”

Mike stared at me. The only thing I saw in his sharp eyes was a sadness I should have expected, but it still surprised me. “You deserve better.”

His admission floored me. In all our years as friends, we never really talked about relationships. Sure, I dated a few guys, but Copperwood bordered on incestuous. Everyone knew everyone and knew what everyone was doing. It was hard to have a relationship without every well–meaning grandma offering unsolicited advice.

“Maybe he deserves better.” I’m not sure why I said it and from the look on Mike’s face, he was appalled at my admission.

“What do you mean?” Mike grabbed my wrist and pulled me close to him until his nose touched mine. “Mya, he’s not a bad guy, but he isn’t going to give you a white picket fence, and you deserve that.”

“And you’ll give me that?” I shouldn’t have said it. As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to stuff them back in.

Mike let go of my wrist as if my skin burned his hand. “We tried and it wasn’t good. I don’t think for a minute that you’re for me.”

I couldn’t be positive, but I could have sworn his gaze flipped over to the back hallway. I wasn’t sure who or what he was looking at, but I refused to look away from him. He might have the best of intentions, but Mike wasn’t my keeper.

We stared at one another. Neither one of us willing to back away from the other because then we’d have to admit they were right. I didn’t want to be wrong and even though Mike probably wanted to be wrong, I think he believed he was right.

Finally, I looked away from him and stared at the front door of the bar instead. “I’m used to disappointment, Mike. I just want a little bit of fun to make my craptastical life a little less craptastical.”

I wanted to say that I didn’t criticize his choice of sleeping partners. I didn’t berate him for encouraging Alene. The least he could do was the same for me, but that wasn’t Mike. And the only reason I didn’t slap him or scream at him was that I knew his heart was in the right place.

He cared about me and didn’t want to see me hurt.

“Mya?” Kirstin called to me from the back hallway.

So, that’s who Mike was looking at. I wanted to ask more, but after our little ‘come to Jesus’ conversation, I didn’t really feel up to it.

“Be right there!” I grabbed the drink gun and refilled Mike’s coke. “We’ll talk later. Okay?”

Mike nodded his head slowly. “I’ll be here.”

I didn’t doubt it. I figured the topic of Shane and my condition when he left a decade ago was the focus of any conversations my father and Mike had. Together they must have decided that I needed an intervention and Mike must have drawn the short straw.

I gave him a half–hearted attempt at a smile and walked back to help Kirstin. Too bad she didn’t call for me before the lecture started.

* * * *

Customers crept into the bar until 7:30. At 7:30, they
flooded
the bar. They still had money left over from payday and there wasn’t much else to do during the weekend. However, unlike most Saturday nights, this one was busier. Maybe word had gotten out Shane was back in town and people wanted a chance to see him. Word had also probably gotten out that he wasn’t sticking around for the funeral. New gossip was gold in Copperwood.

Kirstin and I moved around the bar, keeping drinks filled. She had to work harder than I did to avoid the grabby hands of some of the men, but she never got frustrated with them. She bumped up against me and nodded her head toward the end of the bar.

“I think you have a customer.”

“What?” We didn’t really have sections when we worked together, we just filled in where we were needed and split out our tips at the end of the night. I turned my head to the side to see where she gestured and couldn’t help the smile from spreading across my lips.

“Just be careful, okay?” She brushed by me, moving to the other end of the bar before I could respond.

Shane actually showed up. He told me he needed to do some work, but that he’d pick me up in the morning for a breakfast I didn’t have to catch. It was part of the reason I was able to lie to Mike. I figured Shane and I would have breakfast, he would drive off, and I would mope around for a week or so. Part of keeping the moping to a minimum was keeping my time with Shane to a minimum. That plan got tossed out the door.

I set a bottle of beer in front of him and felt a blush move over my cheeks when his fingers brushed against mine. Between holding me at the lake and the kiss, Shane Crawford was heating up parts of my body that had been in hibernation for a while.

“I thought you were working tonight.”

“I’m taking a break.” He looked around the bar and nodded his head at some of the familiar faces by way of a greeting. “Looks busy tonight.”

“I think they were hoping to see you.” Mike sat down next to Shane.

What did he think? That Shane was going to pull me over the bar and fuck me in front of everyone? I cursed myself as images of the two of us together flitted through my thoughts. I didn’t need to be distracted. Not with Mike watching me. Waiting for an excuse to lay into me with another lecture.

Aww screw it. Shane might be leaving tomorrow, but I would take what I could get. Even if it was a quick screw in a bar. I shook my head from side to side. What the hell was I thinking?

Shane lifted his eyebrow at Mike, but didn’t say anything. Before either of them could say anything else, I walked away from them to another customer. I didn’t need to hear their bickering. And from the look on Mike’s face, they were going to find any excuse to make snide comments at one another.

Some things never changed.

Word must have gotten out Shane Crawford was at Pick’s and the already bursting Saturday crowd doubled. Kirstin and I were slammed. I barely had time to keep the orders filled, much less spend any time talking with Shane.

Kirstin and I danced around one another behind the bar, trying to stay out of one another’s way in a smooth dance. So, when she bumped into me, I was surprised. She nodded her head to the back hallway and I stopped pulling drafts to look at what drew her attention.

Shane and Mike moved through the thick crowd carrying cases of beer for the cooler. I glanced down at the cartons we used to hold the empties and saw that a fresh stack of empty cartons waited for the bottles. I grinned at Kirstin and shrugged my shoulders.

“We have bar backs.”

“I’m not sharing my tips with them.”

“We’ll just feed them beer and they should be happy.”

She pushed her blonde hair behind her ear and moved out of the way as the men walked behind the bar. They ignored the good–natured calls from the customers wondering how they got back bar privileges and jumped in on filling the coolers.

“You need to get your boyfriend to come around more often.” Kirstin eyed the over–flowing tip basket.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

Shane was in the back getting ice for us so he didn’t hear the exchange, but Mike was washing glasses and looked at me. I turned away from his knowing gaze. Shane wasn’t my boyfriend, but it didn’t mean I didn’t
want
him to be my boyfriend.

BOOK: Dirt: A Sexy Small Town Romance (Copperwood Book 1)
11.65Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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