I am Not Your Melody: (steamy cowboy romance) (4 page)

Not a good sign
… This town was deader than she’d imagined. Looking through the window of a butcher shop, she could see a man unloading some large game to be butchered. Weren’t people supposed to go to the butcher to
buy
meat, instead of hand it over? And who had a whole shop just for a butcher, anyway? That was usually relegated to the back of the grocery store.

“Is it always like this?” she asked.

“Don’t worry… you’ll get your customers.” Bill looked over to her, and once again she was struck by how good-looking he was. “Us cowboys, we like to drink.”

Allie smiled to cover up for the butterflies fluttering in her stomach. If Bill kept looking straight at her, she might have to close her eyes. It was that intense.

“What’s your favorite drink?” she asked. “Wait — don’t tell me.”

She had an uncanny knack for guessing people’s drinks. It made her a good bartender, and hopefully it would be an easy icebreaker as a way to get to know the new townsfolk in her bar. Well…
their
bar.

“I’m guessing you’re a double scotch neat type of guy,” she said, with way too much confidence.

He started to look away, unimpressed, and she backpedaled.

“No, wait!” Damn it, she was rusty. She lowered her volume. “You like
whiskey
. Double shot of whiskey on ice. You let the ice melt and nurse it.”

Bill grunted and raised his eyebrows.

“Am I right…did I get it?”

He didn’t reply as they pulled into the back parking lot — really just a square of asphalt tucked behind the bar, and came around to open her door for her.

“This is it,” Bill said.

He extended his arm for her to grab hold of him, and she jumped out of the truck. His hand was surprisingly large, and warm. The calluses spoke of a lifetime of working on the ranch. But the pain in his eyes… he was broken.

Completely broken.

Allie looked at him and tried to smile. Her new bar was a small, one story building, made out of cement blocks that had been stucco’d over and whitewashed.

“Plenty of folks park here, an’ enter through the back way there,” Bill said, pointing to an old door with the paint peeling from it.

A chain, meant to keep the door locked, instead hung limp at the side of the doorframe.

“Oh no,” she gasped. “Did someone break in?”

“Well,” Bill said, “the usual. Happens when any building is abandoned. Kids think it’s their new clubhouse. I did it back in my day too, so I can’t blame ‘em.”

“A clubhouse,” she repeated.

“Even the older guys, they sometimes go in to drink since it’s convenient.”

Allie nodded, determined not to make it into a big deal. If even the owner of the bar didn’t care that kids had probably vandalized the inside of his uncle’s bar, then why should she? Hell, Bill probably joined those guys drinking in his bar. A private party of sorts.

Everything had to be fixed up and painted anyway.

“Come on,” Bill said.

He put his hand on the small of her back to lead her. The intimacy of the gesture took her by surprise — especially since back at his office, he seemed to be doing everything he could to avoid even looking at her.

His touch warmed her skin through her T-shirt. It was bold of him, but either Bill wasn’t aware of that, or didn’t care. He led Allie — his hand still on her — to the front entrance that came in off the sidewalk. Next-door to the bar was a bank. That was good, since the bank wouldn’t be open during their busiest times at the bar. Less noise complaints.

The front window had been boarded over.

“Is there glass behind that board?” she asked.

Bill cocked his head to the side. “Broken glass. They’re all broken. The boards are what’s new.” He pointed to some charred wood piled up by the side of the building. “That’s from a little fire that broke out inside last month. I think some of the guys got too drunk to keep their flames down.”

Allie turned to him in exasperation. “This was your Uncle Freddy’s bar. Don’t you care? This was his livelihood and you haven’t even
maintained
it.”

Bill looked down at her from his height advantage, his steel gray eyes staring into hers with an intensity that burned her like fire.

He took his hand off of the small of her back, and she missed it immediately.

“I don’t know how they work things in Miami,” he said, saying the name of the city as if it were an insult, “but I don’t know who the hell you think you’re talkin’ to. Don’t you scold me like I’m some naughty kid you wanna spank.”

This was all wrong. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. Her first day with her new business partner — how had she already screwed up so royally?

She shouldn’t say anything more. But as Bill had already witnessed, staying quiet had never been her strong suit. No reason to change now.

“You owned this bar long before I bought in,” she said, anger creeping into her voice. “You had an obligation to take care of it. Even if you couldn’t run the business, how hard is it to keep it locked up and safe?”

“I told ya the place needed fixin’ up. You’re actin’ like I lied to get you to buy in.” He took his cowboy hat off and ran his large hand through his black hair in frustration.

“Repairs are coming out of your wallet,” she snapped. “You led me to think you’d closed up the bar right as your uncle left it, and waited till now to reopen, with my help.”

“Yup,” he said. “That’s what happened.”

“I knew it needed fresh paint, new flooring maybe, cosmetic fixes. You didn’t tell me you and your buddies were sneaking back in and making fires on the floor. That kids were breaking windows for fun.” As if of their own accord, her gestures got bigger, accusatory. “Or was that you breaking those windows?”

Bill grabbed her hand from out of his face, and held her wrist captive. “You’re actin’ like you’re gonna poke my eyes out, and I can’t have that.”

No one had ever restrained her before, or stopped her from getting in their space. Not that she usually did that. This man, this cowboy…he brought out the fire in her. None of it made sense. In that moment, she didn’t know if she hated him, or respected him for not taking her crap.

Allie instinctually knew that if she’d calm down, get out of his face and back off, he wouldn’t still be holding her wrist. Instead, she clawed at his hand with her free one, until he took hold of her other wrist as well.

“Get off me!” she yelled. She looked around the empty street. Could people see? There was no one, just her and Bill Edwards.

“Stop actin’ like you’re ready to fight me,” he said, stepping in close, his breath hot on her cheek. Her hands were trapped between his broad, muscular chest, and her own body. “Stop screamin’ at me.” He looked her straight in the eyes. “You should be a redhead with all that fire in you. On the phone, in emails, you seemed calm, organized, like you had your shit together.”

“I do,” she said. “You don’t know me.”

“I’m gettin’ to.”

Ugh. It was true. He was getting to know the part of her she’d hoped to keep hidden — the part that was scared to death about taking on a project this huge on her own. The part of her that worried she wasn’t going to be able to move on and make a life for herself without her ex-husband.

“What are you gonna do now, Allie?” Bill slowly, carefully, relaxed his grip on her wrists. He slid his hands up to cradle her own. “You gonna back out now?”

Chapter Four

“No,” she whispered. “I’m not going to back out. Running this bar is my future. This has to work.”

“It will,” he said. “What’s done is done. Uncle Freddy was another father to me. Losin’ him was —” Bill shook his head, as if to stop himself from saying too much. “I didn’t think of it as ruinin’ his livelihood. I just didn’t stop folks who still wanted to use the place, ‘cause we all missed it. We missed
him
.”

His anger before, she knew, was a thin veneer over the pain he had felt when his uncle had passed. And the passing of his wife not too long before that…

“Let’s go inside,” she said.

“All right. But if you start scoldin’ on me again we’re gonna have a problem.”

She shook her head, just enough to acknowledge him. Yes, he was acting like a prick, but he’d been through a lot. And maybe, judging by the sorrow he exuded behind his don’t-fuck-with-me façade, he was still going through it.

“Go on in,” he said. “Door’s…unlocked.”

She held up the key he had tossed at her back in his office. “Guess these were just ceremonial, then.”

Bill shrugged. “You looked like the kinda girl who means to keep things locked up.” He smiled — a glimpse of the man she knew from his emails.

“Okay then,” she said simply. “Bar time.”

Please don’t be a complete tear-down
.

The door opened with a creak.
Fix noisy door
, she noted.

Inside the bar, white sheets covered chairs, which had been stacked up like small barricades around the room. What had those chairs been for? There were no tables that she could see.

The actual bar top itself took up the entire back wall. It too was covered in white sheets, to keep the thick layer of dust that had accumulated on the sheets off of the wood.

Above, the shelves for the alcohol held various random items instead: a rifle; a small pile of matchbooks; a football, worn with age.

“Where’d all the alcohol go?” Allie asked. “I mean, when your uncle died, wasn’t this place still running and stocked? Did someone steal all the booze?”

“No,” Bill said. “Nothin’ like that.” He gave her a look from under his hat. “We didn’t sneak in and drink it, either.”

She widened her eyes innocently, as if that wasn’t exactly the thought that had gone through her mind.

“Uncle Freddy got sick about a year before he died,” Bill explained. “The bar closed when he had to take an early retirement. He sold everythin’ he could to pay for his medical expenses. That’s why all the tables are missin’, and half the chairs. There used to be couches, too. It used to be a good place to sit and drink.”

“How come he didn’t sell the bar himself?” she asked.

Bill looked at her like she was crazy. “This is the family bar. It belongs in the family. That’s why he left it to me — he wanted me to take over right then an’ there, but I couldn’t. Not with me an’ Melody havin’…problems. I was just tryin’ to do right by my wife.”

His face stilled, as if he had said too much.

“You probably have enough money to not need to take on a partner like me,” Allie said, walking around the bar, studying every detail. “I imagine you could have taken your money and renovated it yourself, and hired a bartender to manage it on your behalf — without giving up your full ownership.” She nudged a chunk of plaster with her foot before looking at him. “Why take me on? Why give me half the bar?”

Bill shrugged. “I’m busy,” he said again. “I have no interest in runnin’ the bar. The only interest is in keepin’ the bar going, with me as one of the owners so that it remains in the family. Someone like you — someone who is excited and actually willin’ to work to make this happen — that’s what the bar needed more than anythin’.”

His unexpected appraisal filled her with courage. Bill knew that this bar, this business, meant everything to her. That failure was simply not an option.

He needed her motivation as much as she needed his money to make it happen. Was it a fair trade? Only time would tell.

“Here,” he said brusquely, and handed her a checkbook with a generic vinyl blue cover. “You can use this to get what you need. But if you’re gonna spend a big amount, run it by me first.”

“What’s a big amount?” she countered.

“Somethin’ with more than a couple zeros,” he said, as if he didn’t care that much after all. “I don’t know, get off my tail.”

That man was hardly a charmer. It took considerable effort to not roll her eyes like a teenager. Speaking of…

Allie looked at the floor in the corner of the bar, where kids had stamped out cigarettes on the cement. Someone had written on the wall with a black Sharpie:
RIP FRED, in HEAVEN!!!!!

“So is this bar still being used as a ‘clubhouse?’” she asked, staring at the graffiti.

“Prob’ly.” He shrugged, like it didn’t matter. “Ain’t no bar in town to meet at.”

Bill pulled the corner of the dusty white sheet off the edge of the bar top. The mahogany was dull after a year of neglect. Allie wanted to rush right toward it to polish it and make it shine.

It would be awesome if she could wave a magic wand and make the entire bar just
poof!
transform into the one in her vision. But that transformation wasn’t going to happen immediately, no matter how hard she wished. It would take time and effort. That’s why she was there, anyway. It made her worth the investment Bill was making in the business.

Bill hopped up on to the bar with the ease of man used to mounting horses, and sat, kicking his legs out in front of him, and let his boots thud against the side of the bar when they dropped.

“Have a seat, Allie,” he said, patting the space next to him

She eyed him warily. “Why are you being nice to me, all of a sudden?”

She left the graffiti behind and hopped up on to the bar next to Bill.

“Nice jump, there.”

“Who are you, and where did that surly man go who was harassing me two minutes ago?”

He touched his cowboy hat, pulling the black rim down over his forehead just a bit more. “I don’t feel like bein’ ‘surly’ at the moment.”

“Okay…” Allie raised her eyebrows. Guess she should just enjoy it while it lasted.

“I haven’t been in here since Uncle Freddy retired,” Bill said. “I didn’t go look at it after he died either. Too many memories.”

“What’s it like being here now?” Allie asked.

“Nothin’ like I remember it.” He turned to her, his fingertips touching hers, splayed on the bar. “You gotta get everythin’ back the way it was, Allie. Hell, if I could go back two years…” A cloud came over his face.

The muscles in his thigh hardened against her own thigh, tensing. She was sitting too close to him, how did that happen? He was like a magnet, drawing her toward him.