Page 43 of Reluctant Bride

“Your system is cheating.”

“My system is strategic optimism.”

I look up mid-argument and find Sage watching me from the bar over the rim of her glass, not even pretending she isn’t enjoying my losing streak, and I miss my next shot entirely because I’m too busy holding her eyes to watch the table.

“You’re not even trying anymore,” Cora says, unimpressed.

“I’m distracted.”

“By what?”

I don’t answer that. Cora follows my line of sight to the bar, sees exactly what she finds there, and has the decency not to say anything else about it.

Tate wanders over with his phone already out, thumb moving, his habit when he’s decided a conversation needs a citation. “The state semifinal,” he says, apropos of absolutely nothing, which means Finn and Cora have clearly been fighting about this for years and he’s just now catching up to the argument in progress.

“Rimrock lost by six,” Cora says. “I was there. I was fourteen and I remember how much it hurt.”

“You were not fourteen. You were twelve. And we lost by four, not six, because Wyatt hit that three at the buzzer that didn’t count because the clock ran out a full second before it left his hand.”

“The clock was broken that whole season.”

“The clock was fine; you’re just still bitter your brother fouled out in the third.”

Tate turns his screen toward both of them without a word. Box score, pulled from some archive I didn’t know existed, timestamped and merciless. Cora reads it, goes quiet, and hands it back.

“Fine. Four. I stand corrected and I still hate that game.”

“See,” Finn says, delighted beyond all reason, “this is why I keep him around.”

Maren finds Knox by the jukebox and drags him onto the small stretch of floor that passes for a dance area, and he goes without a single word of protest, which from my brother-in-law is surrender. Tessa’s telling somebody the story about the fire extinguisher at the drive-in movie theater, the Prairie Star, the one that ends with Eli losing his eyebrows for a month, and Eli’s protesting the details loud enough that half the bar’s turned to listen. Holt stands near the door with Mackenzie, not dancing, not playing pool, just watching the room like every room, patient and missing nothing.

I catch myself doing the same thing a beat later, counting exits out of habit, counting who’s armed and who isn’t, and I make myself stop. A truck with no plates followed us to the fairgrounds and a federal informant’s blood is still somewhere under my fingernails no matter how many times I’ve scrubbed, and for one night I want to be a man in a bar with his wife instead of a man running threat assessments constantly. It doesn’t fully work but it works enough.

Sage catches my eye again and doesn’t look away.

I leave the table mid-game, which earns me a groan from Finn and a not-so-subtle count of my losses from Cora, and I cross to her because there is not one single reason left in my body to stay on the other side of the room.

“You’re losing,” she says, when I reach her.

“I’m rebuilding my strategy.”

“You’re sulking.”

“I contain multitudes.”

“You contain a business degree and a pool cue you don’t know how to hold.” Her mouth curves, slow, wicked, the exact expression that used to mean trouble for both of us at twenty. “Dance with me, Sullivan. Prove you’re good at something tonight.”

“I ran this entire county’s freight logistics before I was thirty. I think I can manage a two-step.”

“Freight logistics and dancing are not the same skill set, Sullivan.”

“They’re both about knowing where to put your weight.”

“That’s either very wise or something you read on a fortune cookie.”

We move onto the floor and she fits against me like she always did, the part of this that never needed practice, her hand finding my shoulder like it’s done it a thousand times, and the jukebox is playing something slow enough to be an excuse and fast enough not to look like one. Her mouth finds my ear.

“Lethal politeness,” she says, quiet, just for me. “I’ve decided I like it. On me it would terrify me. On other men it’s the best thing you own.”