“Glad to see you here.” His father’s friend smiled and shook Wyatt’s hand. Anxious to sit down and get out of the crowd, Wyatt excused himself and made it to the booth.
“One of you scoot over,” Wyatt stated simply. Rein didn’t hide his shock as he slid over. Wyatt attempted to look comfortable, but caught his brother’s smug grin. He spotted Dalton’s longneck, grabbed it, and took a pull from the bottle. Instead of their normal smartass remarks, they stared at him in disbelief.
“What? Can’t a guy change his mind?”
Rein smiled finally and Dalton rose to go get them another round. “Aimee asked about you,” Dalton said as he slid back into his seat. He pushed a bottle toward Wyatt.
“Did she?” he commented. The bottle stopped midway to his mouth as his comment hit his brain. He glanced at his brother’s face and saw his mouth curl into a smile.
“You want to know what I told her?” Dalton leaned forward, pointing his bottle toward Wyatt.
Every nerve in Wyatt’s body was stretched thin. He was aware of Sally at the bar, who looked at him, then leaned over to Betty and whispered something. Dalton was pushing his buttons. Again.
“Not really,” he responded, taking a long swallow of his beer.
“Maybe you should listen this time, Wyatt,” Rein suggested.
At that moment, a loud
whoop
went up from the crowd, followed by a thunderous applause drowning out the rest of the conversation. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway as Wyatt’s brain all but stopped when Aimee took the stage and shaded her eyes from the bright light. She picked up the microphone and smiled at the crowd. It brought another round of applause.
Wyatt’s heart faltered as he took in how damn sexy she looked in her pink rhinestone T-shirt, short denim skirt, and soft brown cowboy boots. He followed her gaze, though it was hard to take his eyes off her as she pointed toward the bar where Sally sat. Right next to Principal Kale, he realized.
“I’d like to thank Dusty, Betty, and Jerry, and my partner in crime, Sally Anderson, for helping to make tonight’s Food Pantry fundraiser such a success.” She received more applause and Wyatt found his heart swell with pride at her accomplishment.
“Anything for you, sugarbee,” a tough-looking guy hollered from one of the tables near the stage.
The hairs on the back of Wyatt’s neck bristled. He gripped his beer and focused on Aimee instead, who seemed to be take things with her usual calm.
“She sure has the audience eating out of her hand,” Rein commented. “She’s a remarkable woman.”
Wyatt took another draw of his beer. He didn’t need to comment on what he already knew.
“Hey, are you okay?” Dalton kicked him under the table.
Wyatt glanced at his brother. “I’m here to support the cause, just like everyone else.”
Rein leaned forward and smiled at him. “Right, not because you have a vested interest in anyone in particular?”
“Shut up.” Wyatt took a long swallow and polished off his beer. He felt the stirrings of a gentle buzz in his brain, and realized it’d been quite a while since he’d had alcohol of any kind. Rein offered to buy the next round but Wyatt refused. He wanted to be of sound body and mind.
“Okay y’all.”
Wyatt smiled at her city-girl attempt at being country.
“I don’t claim to be good at this, but someone challenged me with a pledge of fifty dollars and for that I’ll do anything.” A couple of hoots went up from a back table and the crowd erupted in laughter. Aimee waved her hand at them in dismissal. “Get your minds out of the gutter, you guys. This is for a good cause.” She perched on the edge of a barstool. Wyatt felt a stab of jealousy as he realized more eyes than his noticed how her miniskirt rode up a bit on her thigh. She hooked her heel on the bottom rung of the stool and looked down at the floor. “I’d like to dedicate this to my sister. It was one of her favorite songs. She…um, was my twin and much stronger in many ways than I am. But she taught me to never to settle.” Aimee looked out over the near-silent crowd. “She believed life should be lived with passion. Take more risks, she’d say to me.” Her soft chuckle came through on the mike.
Wyatt gently rolled his empty bottle between his hands and remembered their talk about her sister in his kitchen.
“Well, suffice it to say, coming here to End of the Line was a big risk for me.” She grinned.
“We love you, Aimee,” Sally yelled across the room.
Aimee shook her head. “Well, here’s to you Sarah and to all the possibilities that lie ahead.”
For the next few moments, Wyatt sat mesmerized in stunned silence, along with the crowd, as Aimee belted out the words to Jo Dee Messina’s “Burn.” Moved by her song, by who she’d been when she was with him, Wyatt stood as she finished and headed toward the stage, ready, if need be, to make a public declaration of the feelings he’d denied. His chest ached; his body ached, everything ached to be with her, to hold her close. She smiled, and blinded by the spotlight, handed off the mike to the next singer amid a standing ovation.
“Now wait a minute, sugarbee.” A loudmouth jerk in a black T-shirt rose from his chair and pushed his way toward her. He waved his money in the air. “Here’s that fifty I promised.”
Aimee shielded her eyes from the light and gasped aloud, startled when he grabbed her around the waist. She showed her good nature and smiled each time she lunged for the bill and he held it from her in search of a kiss. The crowd was in an uproar, finding it funny, but Wyatt was not amused by the performance. Dalton called out to him, but he was deadly serious about what he had to do.
“Come on, sugarbee. Give us a kiss and I’ll add another ten to this.”
Like hell
.
His gaze narrowed as he assessed the situation. If she knew him and enjoyed his slime ball flirtations, then this idea had disaster written all over it. Wyatt reached out and tapped the guy on the shoulder. “Why don’t you just give the lady her money, friend?”
He glanced over his shoulder at Wyatt. “Why don’t you take a hike, cowboy? Aimee and I are old friends. We met right here at Dusty’s, in fact, I even bought her first drink here.”
First
? He looked at Aimee, whose stricken eyes pleaded with him not to make a scene.
Goddamn
. How many times would he have to get burned before he learned? Anger welled inside him. Years of the pain he’d stuffed deep into his soul tore through and clawed its way out. He blinked and suddenly the world around him became crystal-clear.
He grabbed the man’s shirt, jerked him around, and planted his fist smack-dab in the middle of the smirk on his face. He was pretty certain something broke in the process, though he wasn’t sure if it was his fingers, or the guy’s nose. No longer as cocky, the man stumbled backward and landed sprawled across a table. Patrons scattered, chairs toppled, and bottles and glasses crashed to the floor. The bar went silent as everyone waited to see what would happen next. Wyatt shook out the soreness in his hand and reached over to pluck the fifty off the floor. He handed it to Aimee, who stared at him with a mixture of shock and disappointment etched on her beautiful face. “Sorry,” he mumbled and headed for the door.
“Wyatt.” She called to him but he was in no mood to go into a lengthy explanation about his behavior. He’d snapped and by doing so sealed his fate as a bona fide small-town asshole for a good long while.
“Wyatt Kinnison, you stop right there.” It was her teacher voice.
He stopped and turned slowly to face her. She was walking quickly as she struggled with that sorry pink excuse for a winter coat. He braced himself for what was about to come and for what he probably deserved, but he just didn’t give a damn. She halted in front of him, her clear blue eyes ablaze.
“What the hell was that?” she demanded.
His nerves were still on edge. He was pissed at the jerk inside, at himself, and he didn’t know how to make things right. He pushed up his hat. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” she repeated.
He blew out a heavy sigh. “Aimee. I’ll take care of the mess. I’ll even make a sizable donation to the Food Pantry, but right now I’ve got to go.” He started to leave. She grabbed his arm and yanked him to a stop.
“Jesus, Aimee, what is it you want from me?”
She planted her hands on her hips. “For starters, how about the truth?”
***
Aimee wasn’t about to let him leave until she had her say. With what she now understood, thanks to Dalton’s explanation, she was even more determined, if not a little ticked, to make him realize that she wasn’t like the other women in his life who’d strung him along and left him. “I’m not like her.” If her hunch was correct, she figured this little show was him coming to grips with how he felt about her. Either way, it was time to make him face his demons. “Admit it, Wyatt. You think I’m going to be like the other women who’ve left you. Well, I’ve got something to say about—”
“Aimee,” Wyatt blurted out suddenly. He grabbed her shoulders and shoved her aside. She stumbled and fell to her knees in the snow. Livid, she struggled to her feet in time to see a man, head down, his arms tight around Wyatt, pushing him backward across the parking lot. A moment later, they fell and rolled in a tangle of fists and curses over the snow-covered gravel. She realized it was Mr. Metallica and he’d managed to get Wyatt on his back. He swung and his fist connected to Wyatt’s jaw. Angry impulse drove Aimee forward and she leaped on the man’s back. She dug her fingers into his eye sockets.
“You psycho bitch!” He shook her off like a rag doll. She landed on her back and saw the anger in his eyes as he stumbled toward her. The distraction gave Wyatt time to recover and he grabbed the guy and swung him around to meet his fist. Dazed by the force, he took a step or two back and then fell as he held his face and moaned obscenities.
Wyatt collapsed to his knees, his lip bleeding.
Aimee rose shakily to her feet and moved toward him. Someone grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to her feet, holding her back from helping Wyatt. She impulsively began to fight against the man.
“Aimee, it’s me.” It was Rein. She turned to look at Wyatt and saw another one of Mr. Metallica’s friends charging toward him.
“Wyatt!” Aimee issued a warning and stepped back when a dark blur flew past her.
Dalton tackled the man to the ground. He hauled him by his shirt and held him with his fist poised. “You picked the wrong family to mess with,” Dalton warned. Mr. Metallica tried to stand on watery legs and braced himself against a car.
“Let him go, Dalton,” Wyatt clambered to his feet and walked toward Aimee.
Dusty and a handful of patrons stood at the top of the steps, watching the commotion.
Wyatt looked down at her as he knocked the snow from his hat. “Sorry. There wasn’t much time to warn you. You okay?”
Aimee frowned and noticed the long tear in her puff jacket. “Dammit, this was my favorite coat.”
“It wasn’t warm enough for around here anyway,” he remarked and stamped his hat back on his head.
“Don’t you start with me, Wyatt,” she retaliated.
“Kids, kids. Let’s play nice. Now is anybody hurt? No broken bones?” Dalton asked as he joined his brothers and Aimee.
“Bruised jaw,” Wyatt stated, rubbing it gently. “Probably my fingers, too.” He wiggled them. “Nothing broken, though.”
Dalton eyed Steve and his friends as they hobbled toward Dusty’s. “I think loudmouth probably got the worst of it.” He grinned at Aimee. “Did you wrestle in college?”
“Show’s over, folks. Back inside.” Dusty stood at the top of the steps with his arms folded across his chest. He blocked the way of the troublemakers. “Where do you think you boys are going?”
“Inside for a drink.” One of the men punched his fist into the air.
“Not in my place, you don’t. My advice is to get your friend here over to the Billings ER and have that nose of his looked at. But as far as you all coming here, I never want to see your faces in my bar again, you understand?”
“That’s bull, man,” Mr. Metallica mumbled. “He started it.”
“It seems to me you did with that little act in the bar with our host for the evening. You pushed too far, and there are plenty of eyewitnesses to the fact.”
“You all right, Wyatt?” Dusty called to him.
“I’m fine and sorry about the table, Dusty. I’ll replace it.”
“Damn right, you will. You want to press charges? Sheriff’s just a phone call away.”
“Nope, I suppose in a way I had it comin’,” Wyatt responded.
“And you, dumb ass?” Dusty spoke directly to the bloodied man. He shook his head. Dusty nodded. “Good. Now you boys get on out of here. The rest of you, let’s get back inside and remember the real reason we came here tonight.”
Aimee brushed the snow from her coat.
“Do me a favor, you two,” Wyatt spoke to his brothers. “Could you take care of the cleanup and help Aimee when it’s over?”
“And just where do you think you’re going?” Aimee asked in surprise.
“Home. Where I should have stayed.”
“Hell, no.” Aimee turned and called to Dalton. “Tell Sally I had to leave.”
Dalton waved in response, but tossed a smile at Rein.
She faced Wyatt. “You and I are going to have this out come hell or high water tonight. My place is closer. Take me home.” She breezed past him and climbed into the cab of his truck.
Wyatt drove through town and neither spoke. Aimee wanted to thank him for coming, but she was thinking more about what she was going to say to him when they got alone.
“Do you have some ibuprofen?” he asked, his eyes on the road. He hadn’t looked at her once since getting in the truck.
“Probably,” she remarked and considered she might need it herself before the night was over.
They rode for another few moments in silence.
“I’ll replace your coat,” he offered.
Aimee snorted. “You’ve been gunning for my coat since the first time we met.”
He sighed.
“Take a right, there in the parking lot. I’m the spot on the end.” Only then did Aimee realize and thankfully she’d slipped her phone and keys in her coat pocket. She’d have to call Dusty’s and have Sally get the book bag she’d left behind the bar. She felt his eyes on her as he followed her up the stairs. She hoped to find a gentle way of approaching the subject of Jessie, this woman who’d apparently left a deep scar when she betrayed him and let him know she wasn’t like her. Aimee let herself in, dropped her keys on the counter, and turned to face him as he came through the door. “You can hang your hat over there.”