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“We should go back and sit with Sam,” she suggested. “He looks lonely.”
Chase laughed. “You and I both know he’s no such thing. I think he would rather sit there alone.”
“Well, if he wants to be alone, then he can stay at home and drink.”
“He probably would if I didn’t force him to come out. But if I didn’t do that, he would fuse to the furniture and then I would have all of that to deal with.”
They walked back over to the table, and gradually, her heart rate returned to normal. She was relieved that the initial weirdness she had felt upon his arrival was receding.
“Hi, Sam,” Chase said, taking his seat beside his brother. Sam grunted in response. “We were just talking about the hazards of you turning into a hermit.”
“Am I not a convincing hermit already?” he asked. “Do I need to make my disdain for mankind a little less subtle?”
“That might help,” Chase said.
“I might just go play a game of darts instead. I’ll catch up with you in a minute.” Sam took a long drink of his beer and stood, leaving the bottle on the table as he made his way over to the dartboard across the bar.
Silence settled between Chase and herself. Why was this suddenly weird? Why was Anna suddenly conscious of the way his throat moved when he swallowed a sip of beer, of the shift in his forearms as he set the bottle back down on the table? Of just how masculine a sound he made when he cleared his throat?
She was suddenly even conscious of the way he breathed.
She leaned back in her chair, lifting her beer to her lips and surveying the scene around them.
It was Friday night, so most of the town of Copper Ridge, Oregon, was hanging out, drowning the last vestiges of the workweek in booze. It was not the end of the workweek for Anna. Farmers and ranchers didn’t take time off, so neither did she. She had to be on hand to make repairs when necessary, especially right now, since she was just getting her own garage off the ground.
She’d just recently quit her job at Jake’s in order to open her own shop specializing in heavy equipment, which really was how she found herself in the position she was in right now. Invited to the charity gala thing and embroiled in a bet on whether or not she could get a date.
“So why exactly do you want to kill your brothers today?” Chase asked, startling her out of her thoughts.
“Various reasons.” She didn’t know why, but something stopped her from wanting to tell him exactly what was going on. Maybe because it was humiliating. Yes, it was definitely humiliating.
“Sure. But that’s every day. Why specifically do you want to kill them today?”
She took a deep breath, keeping her eyes fixed on the fishing boat that was mounted to the wall opposite her, and very determinedly not looking at Chase. “Because. They bet that I couldn’t get a date to this thing I’m invited to and I bet them that I could.” She thought about the woman he’d been talking to a moment ago. A woman so different from herself they might as well be different species. “And right about now I’m afraid they’re right.”
* * *
Chase was doing his best to process his best friend’s statement. It was difficult, though. Daniel and Mark had solid asshole tendencies when it came to Anna—that much he knew—but this was pretty low even for them.
He studied Anna’s profile, her dark hair pulled back into a braid, her gray T-shirt that was streaked with oil. He watched as she raised her bottle of beer to her lips. She had oil on her hands, too. Beneath her fingernails. Anna wasn’t the kind of girl who attracted a lot of male attention. But he kind of figured that was her choice.
She wasn’t conventionally beautiful. Mostly because of the motor oil. But that didn’t mean that getting a date should be impossible for her.
“Why don’t you think you can get a date?”
She snorted, looking over at him, one dark brow raised. “Um.” She waved a hand up and down, indicating her body. “Because of all of this.”
He took a moment to look at all of that. Really look. Like he was a man and she was a woman. Which they were, but not in a conventional sense. Not to each other. He’d looked at her almost every day for the past fifteen years, so it was difficult to imagine seeing her for the first time. But just then, he tried.
She had a nice nose. And her lips were full, nicely shaped, her top lip a little fuller than her bottom lip, which was unique and sort of...not sexy, because it was Anna. But interesting.
“A little elbow grease and that cleans right off,” he said. “Anyway, men are pretty simple.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. You don’t have to do much to get male attention if you want it. Give a guy what he’s after...”
“Okay, that’s just insulting. You’re saying that I can get a guy because men just want to get laid? So it doesn’t matter if I’m a wrench-toting troll?”
“You are not a wrench-toting troll. You’re a wrench-toting woman who could easily bludgeon me to death, and I am aware of that. Which means I need to choose my next words a little more carefully.”
Those full lips thinned into a dangerous line, her green eyes glittering dangerously. “Why don’t you do that, Chase.”
He cleared his throat. “I’m just saying, if you want a date, you can get one.”
“By unzipping my coveralls down to my belly button?”
He tipped his beer bottle back, taking a larger swallow than he intended to, coughing as it went down wrong. He did not need to picture the visual she had just handed to him. But he was a man, so he did.
It was damned unsettling. His best friend, bare beneath a pair of coveralls unfastened so that a very generous wedge of skin was revealed all the way down...
And he was done with that. He didn’t think of Anna that way. Not at all. They’d been friends since they were freshmen in high school and he’d navigated teenage boy hormones without lingering too long on thoughts of her breasts.
He was thirty years old, and he could have sex whenever he damn well pleased. Breasts were no longer mysterious to him. He wasn’t going to go pondering the mysteries of her breasts now.
“It couldn’t hurt, Anna,” he said, his words containing a little more bite than he would like them to. But he was unsettled.
“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind. But barring that, do you have any other suggestions? Because I think I’m going to be expected to wear something fancy, and I don’t own anything fancy. And it’s obvious that Mark and Daniel think I suck at being a girl.”
“That’s not true. And anyway, why do you care what they—or anyone else—think?”
“Because. I’ve got this new business...”
“And anyone who brings their heavy equipment to you for a tune-up won’t care whether or not you can walk in high heels.”
“But I don’t want to show up at these things looking...” She sighed. “Chase, the bottom line is I’ve spent a long time not fitting in. And people here are nice to me. I mean, now that I’m not in school. People in school sucked. But I get that I don’t fit. And I’m tired of it. Honestly, I wouldn’t care about my brothers if there wasn’t so much...truth to the teasing.”
“They do suck. They’re awful. So why does it matter what they think?”
“Because,” she said. “It just does. I’m that poor Anna Brown with no mom to teach her the right way to do things and I’m just...tired of it. I don’t want to be poor Anna Brown. I want to be Anna Brown, heavy equipment mechanic who can wear coveralls and walk in heels.”
“Not at the same time, I wouldn’t think.”
She shot him a deadly glare. “I don’t fail,” she said, her eyes glinting in the dim bar light. “I won’t fail at this.”
“You’re not in remote danger of failing. Now, what’s the mystery event that has you thinking about high heels?” he asked.
Copper Ridge wasn’t exactly a societal epicenter. Nestled between the evergreen mountains and a steel-gray sea on the Oregon Coast, there were probably more deer than people in the small town. There were only so many events in existence. And there was a good chance she was making a mountain out of a small-town molehill, and none of it would be that big of a deal.
“That charity thing that the West family has every year,” she mumbled. “Gala Under the Stars or whatever.”
The West family’s annual fund-raising event for schools. It was a weekend event, with the town’s top earners coming to a small black-tie get-together on the West property.
The McCormacks had been founding members of the community of Copper Ridge back in the 1800s. Their forge had been used by everyone in town and in the neighboring communities. But as the economy had changed, so had the success of the business.
They’d been hanging on by their fingernails when Chase’s parents had been killed in an accident when he was in high school. They’d still gotten an invitation to the gala. But Chase had thrown it on top of the never-ending pile of mail and bills that he couldn’t bring himself to look through and forgotten about it.
Until some woman—probably an assistant to the West family—had called him one year when he hadn’t bothered to RSVP. He had been...well, he’d been less than polite.
Dealing with a damned crisis here, so sorry I can’t go to your party.
Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t gotten any invitations after that. And he hadn’t really thought much about it since.
Until now.
He and Sam had managed to keep the operation and properties afloat, but he wanted more. He needed it.
The ranch had animals, but that wasn’t the source of their income. The forge was the heart of the ranch, where they did premium custom metal-and leatherwork. On top of that, there were outbuildings on the property they rented out—including the shop they leased to Anna. They had built things back up since their parents had died, but it still wasn’t enough, not to Chase.
He had promised his father he would take an interest in the family legacy. That he would build for the McCormacks, not just for himself. Chase had promised he wouldn’t let his dad down. He’d had to make those promises at a grave site because before the accident he’d been a hotheaded jackass who’d thought he was too big for the family legacy.
But even if his father never knew, Chase had sworn it. And so he’d see it done.
In order to expand McCormack Iron Works, the heart and soul of their ranch, to bring it back to what it had been, they needed interest. Investments.
Chase had always had a good business mind, and early on he’d imagined he would go to school away from Copper Ridge. Get a degree. Find work in the city. Then everything had changed. Then it hadn’t been about Chase McCormack anymore. It had been about the McCormack legacy.
School had become out of the question. Leaving had been out of the question. But now he saw where he and Sam were failing, and he could see how to turn the tide.
He’d spent a lot of late nights figuring out exactly how to expand as the demand for handmade items had gone down. Finding ways to convince people that highly customized iron details for homes and businesses, and handmade leather bridles and saddles, were worth paying more for.
Finding ways to push harder, to innovate and modernize while staying true to the family name. While actively butting up against Sam and his refusal to go out and make that happen. Sam, who was so talented he didn’t have to pound horseshoe nails if he didn’t want to. Sam, who could forget gates and scrollwork on staircases and be selling his artwork for a small fortune. Sam, who resisted change like it was the black plague.
He would kill for an invitation to the Wests’ event. Well, not kill. But possibly engage in nefarious activities or the trading of sexual favors. And Anna had an invitation.
“You get to bring a date?” he asked.
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” she said. “Of course, it all depends on whether or not I can actually acquire one.”
Anna needed a date; he wanted to have a chance to talk to Nathan West. In the grand tradition of their friendship, they both filled the gaps in each other’s lives. This was—in his opinion—perfect.
“I’ll be your date,” he said.
She snorted. “Yeah, right. Daniel and Mark will never believe that.”
She had a point. The two of them had been friends forever. And with a bet on the table her brothers would never believe that he had suddenly decided to go out with her because his feelings had randomly changed.
“Okay. Maybe that’s true.” That frown was back. “Not because there’s something wrong with you,” he continued, trying to dig himself out of the pit he’d just thrown himself into, “but because it’s a little too convenient.”
“Okay, that’s better.”
“But what if we made it clear that things had changed between us?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean...what if...we built up the change? Showed people that our relationship was evolving.”
She gave him a fierce side-eye. “I’m not your type.” He thought back to the blonde he’d been talking to only twenty minutes earlier. Tight dress cut up to the tops of her thighs, long, wavy hair and the kind of smile that invited you right on in. Curves that had probably wrecked more men than windy Highway 101. She was his type.
And she wasn’t Anna. Barefaced, scowling with a figure that was slightly more...subtle. He cleared his throat. “You could be. A little less grease, a little more lipstick.”
Her top lip curled. “So the ninth circle of hell basically.”
“What were you planning on wearing to the fund-raiser?”
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I have black jeans. But...I mean, I guess I could go to the mall in Tolowa and get a dress.”
“That isn’t going to work.”
“Why not?”
“What kind of dress would you buy?” he asked.
“Something floral? Kind of...down to the knee?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re not Scarlett O’Hara,” he said, knowing that with her love of old movies, Anna would appreciate the reference. “You aren’t going dressed in the drapes.”
Anna scowled. “Why the hell do you know so much about women’s clothes?”
“Because I spend a lot of time taking them off my dates.”
That shut her up. Her pale cheeks flamed and she looked away from him, and that response stirred...well, it stirred something in his gut he wished would go the hell away.
“Why do you want to go anyway?” she asked, still not looking at him.
“I want to talk to Nathan West and the other businessmen there about investment opportunities. I want to prove that Sam and I are the kind of people that can move in their circles. The kind of people they want to do business with.”
“And you have to put on a suit and hobnob at a gala to do that?”
“The fact is, I don’t get chances like this very often, Anna. I didn’t get an invitation. And I need one. Plus, if you take me, you’ll win your bet.”
“Unless Dan and Mark tell me you don’t count.”
“Loophole. If they never said you couldn’t recruit a date, you’re fine.”
“It violates the spirit of the bet.”
“It doesn’t have to,” he insisted. “Anyway, by the time I’m through with you, you’ll be able to get any date you want.”
