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Chapter One
A pair of warm hands covered her eyes. Lyric’s heart jackhammered as the person drew even closer behind her. Her mind wanted to believe it washim, the man whose hands swept over her body in her dreams, leaving her in a feverish need. But he wouldn’t do something playful like this.
“Guess who?” The unfamiliar voice ratcheted up her fear.
Definitely nothim. She really wished it was her badass-biker enigma.
The disappointment made her shoulders sag.
Viper. She hated the ridiculous name, but that’s all he’d given her. A man of few words and hot looks, they’d had this thing going on between them for months that couldn’t be defined or explained, except to say they both avoided giving in to the pull between them. She’d gotten used to him being there at the bar, a mostly silent presence who offered protection when some drunk got mouthy or handsy with her.
But it had been twenty-three days since she’d seen him.
The loss of him in her life left her feeling colder than the mid-January Wyoming temps.
Whoever was playing this stupid game wasn’t oneof her siblings. Jax knew she hated being scared. He’d learned her retaliation wasn’t worth the joke.
So would the stranger who had snuck up on her now.
This whole drama amped her impatience because she didn’t have time for this. Especially from someone she couldn’t name by the sound of their voice. And with that realization, fear washed over her annoyance, and she went still. With nowhere to go she had only one recourse and shoved her elbow into the guy’s gut. He released her, and she spun around, ready to face off with whoever snuck up on her in the barn.
“Ouch. Damn, Lyric. It’s just me.”
She stared in incomprehension at someone she barely remembered. He’d obviously followed her home all the way from Nashville, where she’d recently traveled. Alarms went off in her head. “What are you doing here?”
And how did he know it was her morning to work on the family ranch? She took turns with her sisters while her brother Jax worked the cattle and their parents handled the cabin rentals. The rest of the time, they worked the Dark Horse Dive Bar.
Their grandmother had run it for years, giving the small town a gathering place not only to get drunk and rowdy but also have a good meal, an event space, and community. Grandma had left the bar to her and her siblings when she passed three years ago.
“I knew you’d be surprised.” He glanced over the stall gate at her horse, Bruin. “Damn, he’s big.”
“Your name is Rick Rowe, right?” They’d met in Nashville at the Whiskey Bent Saloon where she’d gotten a dream New Year’s Eve gig playing with her best friend and cowriter Faith Jordan. Faith lived inNashville and had landed them the coveted spot to be one of the early openers that night.
He smiled, his eyes bright with joy. “I knew you’d remember me. We clicked. I couldn’t wait to see you again, so we could write together, like you said.”
She remembered him always crowding into her personal space and trying to dominate the conversation. He forced her to focus on him, preventing her from talking to the others around them. They were people Faith had wanted her to meet and mingle with in hopes that they’d make connections with others in the country-music business and sell their songs.
Lyric didn’t have dreams of being up on stage. She wanted to hear someone else singing her songs on the radio and to a coliseum crowd. Lots of artists, not just her.
She fulfilled her singer fantasy just fine by playing at the bar and posting videos on her YouTube channel. She curated her personal channel and the one she ran for the Dark Horse Dive Bar. Both did well, but her personal one had gotten her a huge following. If she kept at it, she’d hit a million followers in a few months.
She made some decent revenue off the channel with select advertisers. She wasn’t in it to be a millionaire, but she had to pay the bills. And her little nest egg had burgeoned into an I-could-buy-a-house-retire-early-and-live-well territory.
And recently she and Faith had sold a couple of their songs to up-and-coming artists.
She liked her life, her work, her place just fine for now.
“What are you doing here? In Wyoming? How did you find me?”
“I follow your YouTube channels. Obviously the bar you work at is closed this morning, but I asked aroundabout you. Everyone is so friendly in this town. They all know you. One of them was kind enough to tell me you’re usually at the bar early to start cooking, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays you spend your mornings here. All I had to do was look up the address for the Wilde Wind Ranch.” He looked so pleased with himself.
She’d been so careful online not to make it this easy for people to find her. She never used the name of her town. She didn’t even use her last name. But it was impossible to stay completely anonymous, and everyone knew she worked at the Dark Horse Dive Bar. Still, she never thought anyone in town would naively send someone out to see her at the ranch. Luckily, it seemed they hadn’t given Rick her home address, not that it would be that hard to find her at the apartment above the bar.
Damn.
This was not good.
She seriously needed to reevaluate her security.
