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A tight smile lifted on Briar’s face. “You say that like I wasn’t involved in some mischief growing up.” Her eyes suddenly crinkled in delight.
“You? The girl whose first kiss happened a week ago, wasn’t a good teenager?” I asked, and she leaned back giggling.
“I wasn’t going skinny dipping if that’s what you were hoping for,” she flirted, and I exaggerated my frown.
“Darn it.” I winked. “So, what was your small-town mischief making of choice?”
“Blowing things up. Dad had a lot of junk he’d randomly find. I’d take it with my friends out on the weekends, and we’d light them up. I nearly burnt down my dad’s tractor once, though.” She grimaced as a laugh left my belly.
“I accidentally burnt down two of our barns as a teenager during a bonfire I wasn’t exactly supposed to be having on the ranch,” I shared, and her mouth fell open.
“No,” she sarcastically said, feigning shock.
“Ha. Ha. Ha.” I smirked in her direction and rolled my window down as we pulled up to the gate. And my stomach hit the floor of the truck. “Crap,” I hissed under my breath.
“Is something wrong?” Briar asked as the woman taking payment for parking swayed up to my window.
“Well, I’ll be,” she exclaimed, slipping some sleek auburn hair behind her ear. “If it ain’t Cassidy Duke. Nobody said you were coming today. Joe and Kurt are already here with a couple of girls, and I think Wyatt’s family parked up front.”
“Hey, Laura Marie,” I answered and slipped a hand into my back pocket.
“What was that? No flash of the famous seductive Cassidy Duke smile?” She crossed her arms on the windowsill of the truck, placing her chin against them, and batted her long lashes. “What’s it been, four years, sugar? I’m back from the city and that’s all you have to say.”
“Five bucks?” I asked.
She pursed her lips. “You’re not even going to ask me how it was? I know you spent time away from Riverford, but I also know it wasn’t in a big city.”
“I don’t like cities, you know that,” I grumbled and opened my wallet.
“Of course I know that, sugar.” She giggled, plastering a too flirty smile on her face. “Anyway, Joe’s running in the rodeo tonight. All of us are meetin’ up for some drinkin’ and dancin’ before things get going. You’re joining, right? Kurt told me that you’ve gone out with the boys since I’ve been gone but not had a single date. Now that I’m back, we could pick up where we left off?”
Pulling out some cash, I offered her a five-dollar bill. “Laura, there’s—”
“No way,” she cut me off as her mud-brown eyes drifted from my gaze over to Briar. And a devilish smile that made my bones crawl spread across her lips. “Are you with her?” I glanced at the already overwhelmed girl in my passenger seat. Her expression was unreadable and there were two options here. One would shut Laura down, which had been what I was trying to do before she cut me off. The second would keep me on the same path of letting Briar have the reins in whatever was to come from this.
The latter option would’ve been the right choice. But my heart was struggling enough backing off in my pursuit of the woman I absolutely wanted, and it gave out in that moment.
“Yes, I asked her on a date.” I nodded at Briar who remained completely still in her seat. “Now, are you going to take the money and let us go through? There’s a line waiting now,” I politely finished.
She yanked the bill from my hands. “It’s not like you to ask someone on a pity date,” Laura hissed at Briar. The beautiful blonde in my passenger seat visibly flinched, her first movement since this conversation began. Laura stuffed the cash in the zippered money bag she was holding.
“This ain’t—”
“Whatever,” she cut me off and stepped back from the window. She waved us forward, and I put the truck into drive. The tires crunched over the gravel as we weaved through the makeshift parking lot and found a stall.
Where we sat still and silent.
Briar hadn’t moved.
I wasn’t sure what to say, either, because I’d stepped over a boundary claiming this to be a date without explicitly asking Briar if that was okay, yet I wanted to explain to her that she didn’t have to worry about her or any of the other girls that would inevitably show up.
My past was catching up, just as I knew it would. And I prayed that Weston’s once wise words would reign true in this instance. “There’s nothing going on between—”
“It’s fine,” Briar sharply said, cutting me off.
What was up with all these women not letting me talk?
“No, it’s not. Look, you’re right. I wasn’t exactly the pickiest guy when it came to women and dates before. Remember how I told you one of my past dates actually tried to kill our cattle in order to get me to fall in love with her? She shot Tenley and everything.” I paused and pulled my hat off my head. Running my fingers through my hair, I closed my eyes. “But I need you to trust me when I say I’m not that guy anymore. Please.”
