Page 18 of Wild and Wanted

Beau’s eyebrows raised. ‘No shit?’

‘For a month,’ Dev confirmed.

Ivan’s eyebrows raised. ‘A month?’

‘Taking a break from the city,’ Dev supplied. ‘Learning about ranch life. She told me at the cookout on Monday she was hoping to write some new songs, too.’

A spike of something hot and prickly shot up Clay’s spine that she hadn’t mentioned that to him, but then… he hadn’t exactly been open to conversation. Or cookouts.

‘What’s she like?’ Beau asked.

Dev grinned. ‘Total babe.’

Clay’s knuckles whitened around his beer bottle as the urge to throttle Dev took hold. He opened his mouth to interject before the conversation devolved into some lurid treatise on her feminine attributes typical of men shooting the shit in a bar drinking beers. But he needn’t have worried as Dev continued.

‘And she’s really sweet,’ he added. ‘Quiet and polite. Softly spoken. A bit like the way she sings.’

‘Not a diva?’ Ivan asked.

‘Hell no,’ he rejected. ‘Mags was saying she doesn’t mind mucking out a stall.’

Clay blinked. Mucking out a stall? She wouldn’t be the first guest who insisted on the whole country experience including getting their hands dirty, but he couldn’t picture her doing it somehow.

‘She seems to be enjoying herself,’ Dev added, ‘despite her weekend cowgirl vibe.’

Again, Clay wanted to open his mouth and object to how Stevie had just been framed, but wasn’t that what he’d thought of her only a handful of days ago? With all her new clothes and shiny belt buckle?

‘Her mother’s a little intense. She’s Stephanie’s manager so I suppose it’s her job to keep everything rolling smoothly.’ Dev took a swig of his beer. ‘What do you reckon, Clay? You gave her a riding lesson.’

All eyes were once again on him as Ivan murmured, ‘Did he now?’

Great. Just what he needed. Ivan putting two and two together and getting seventy-fucking-six. ‘She’s alright,’ he said with as much disinterest as he could muster whilst avoiding the quiet speculation in Ivan’s eyes. ‘I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want the world to know where she is so maybe let’s keep it under our hats, huh?’

Admittedly there was hardly the population base in the small Wyoming town in the middle of nowhere to cause any kind of issue, and Beau and Ivan weren’t guys who traded in gossip, but Clay knew a little too much about media interest to be blasé.

Officially done with this topic, Clay stood and drained the last of his beer as the final notes of Stevie’s song washed over him. ‘Who’s up for losing some money at the pool table?’

‘Ha!’ Dev clapped him on the back, draining his beer too before indicating to Beau he’d have another. ‘I’m always up for whopping your ass.’

Clay smiled to himself as Dev took the bait and they moved to the back alcove through the brick archway, beers in hand.

It was worth the trash talk just to shut him up about Stevie.

Beau had kept the bar pretty much the same since he’d inherited it from his mother. It was still all dark wood panelling, rough wooden floorboards and exposed brick that was lit with lurid red lamps mounted on the walls. Out in the bar area were a half dozen booths with red leather seats and an area that became a dance floor on Saturday nights when The Corral was usually jumping with town folk looking for the best hot wings in town.

Occasionally there was some live music to really sweeten the pot.

In the alcove, two pool tables were situated with enough room between and around them to accommodate several groups of people playing at each table. The felt glowed green and welcoming beneath the naked overhead fluorescent tubes. Racks for the cues were attached to the back wall, which was decorated with memorabilia from Clays pro rodeo days. Official PRCA photographs of him mid-flight riding broncs, several of his belt buckles and a half dozen framed newspaper headlines from the Redemption Gazette about the local home town hero.

Clay ignored them all as he lay a ten-dollar note on the dark wood rim of the table and said, ‘Money where your mouth is.’

7

CLAY

An hour later, Clay was about to pot the black and win for the first time tonight when through the arch walked Stevie.

Stevie, her caramel-blonde tresses tumbling around her shoulders and down her back, in some kind of knit dress with a muted red and grey Aztec pattern that finished in a fringed hem which hit about mid-thigh and swung with every step.