Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 101501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 508(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 508(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
I expected him to argue, but his mouth twitched and his eyes brightened with humor. “You’re the boss.” I opened my mouth to retort that I sure the heck was, but he closed the distance between us with a single step, and my response stuck in my throat. “We’ll do it your way. For now.”
I was positive I should have spit out, “We’ll be doing it my way all the time,” because that’s what drawing the line in the sand meant, but the words failed me when he leaned closer and raised his hand as if he were about to kiss me. My pulse began to race the closer he came, and I licked my lips as nervous energy shot through me. I should push him away. He’s my employee! My eyes began to close automatically in anticipation, but they shot wide open when Max barked and Logan reached past me without missing a beat; grabbing the bag of peanuts I’d been using to fill the buckets.
“I’ll fill the rest,” he mumbled with a grin, turning to the next table. Heat ran up my neck and settled in my cheeks. I was an idiot. He wasn’t about to kiss me, he wanted to finish setting up.
I was so caught off guard by my own stupidity I managed to stumble over Max—while I tried to escape out of sheer humiliation—and landed on my ass.
Logan swung around when Max yipped and raised a brow at the two of us.
There was no escaping now. Not from my humiliation or misguided thoughts, so I pulled Max into my lap and showered him with love. “I’m keeping Max when you leave.”
“Is that so?”
“Mmhmm. You can take off for wherever you were headed, but Max is staying here with me.”
Logan squatted down in front of me, grinning from ear to ear. “Guess I’m staying put then.”
“That’s okay. You can leave. We’ll send you pictures from time to time.” I decided to avoid his direct line of sight until the flush disappeared by burying my face in Max’s neck.
“We’re kind of a matched set.”
His voice sounded too close—so I whipped my head up—and cracked Logan in the nose with my forehead. I gasped at the pain exploding through my head, and he grumbled, “Fuck,” grabbing his nose as blood began to drip.
“Oh, my God!” I pushed off the floor and ran to the bar for a towel and ice.
He was standing when I returned, so I shoved him into a chair and tilted his head back. “We need to keep pressure on it.”
“I’ll have you know, I’ve survived four tours of duty and hundreds of covert operations,” he grumbled, pulling the towel from my hand. “I’ve protected the president and senators. Been shot at. Bombed. Baked in the desert. Frozen in the fucking mountains. And not once in all that time has anyone broken my fucking nose.”
“You snuck up on me,” I squeaked.
He opened one eye and glared at me. “Right.”
I grabbed the towel back and started to argue it was his fault for being so stealthy, but the front door swung open and half the town’s men began to pour inside. Normally I had a sprinkling of customers when we first opened, so I blinked at the crowd. Dozens of flannel shirts filled the room. Big, small, short, and tall. It seemed every man who ever knew my father decided to grab a beer at the same time.
When the door slammed shut behind the crowd, they stopped dead in their tracks and took in the scene of me pressing ice to Logan’s nose. Moments ticked by before Ed Burk cleared his throat and ordered, “When you’re done kicking that boy’s ass, draw me a cold one, will ya?”
The blue eye currently glaring at me closed on a muttered, “Fuck.”
____________
“Is he still glaring at me?”
I was currently topping off a draft of American beer for Gerry Sullivan, the town’s doctor, while keeping an eye on Logan. He was dragging in his gear from his truck to store in my office, where I had a small cot with a foam mattress for the nights when I closed and was too tired to drive home. It was the only bed I had for Logan, unless I invited him to sleep on the pull-out couch at our house. And that was a no-go. I didn’t know him well enough for one thing, and the other was my brothers. They would lose their minds if I brought a man home to live with us. Not to mention he was my bouncer and I needed him here until we closed. If we had trouble it was at night and on the weekends when ranch hands blew off steam, so he needed to bunk here.
Gerry turned his bald head Logan’s direction and shrugged. “Kinda hard to tell with that one. He has a resting scowl or, as my daughter likes to call it, a resting bitch face.”