Ryan nodded. “We’re all set over at Carpenter’s. We—” He paused when Sean’s face went stoney and turned to the door of the bar.
Jordan, the captain of Pucks Deep, strolled into the Dusty Rose.
Sean muttered something under his breath just as Kelty sidled up next to him.
“We’re not going to have a problem tonight, are we?” She fluttered her eyelids.
Sean’s jaw worked. “As long as he doesn’t start something.”
Rhonda’s voice raised in pitch behind them. “We should dance, right? Why are we still standing here.”
“Let me get you another beer.” Ryan took Sean’s empty glass and wound his way to the bar.
“Get in line, bud.” Tyler moved in front of him, and Ryan put his hand up, threatening to mess up his perfectly styled hair.
“Ooh, he’ll chop off your hand for that.” Emma slid in next to him.
Ryan laughed and set Sean’s glass on the bar. “I didn’t see you two come in.”
“We’ve been waiting for a bit.” Tyler nodded to the slammed bartender, then noticed Jordan leaning in to talk to someone across the bar. "Where's Sean?"
"Being corralled by Kelty.”
Emma grinned. “I call next.” She leaned in and patted hismessy bun. “How long is your hair these days? That bun is looking thick.”
Ryan pulled out the elastic. “Amaya won’t let me cut it. She says I have to be her hair model.”
Emma’s eyes lit up. “Please tell me she tries TikTok trends on you.”
“YouTube shorts.”
She laughed, and he tied his hair back up just as the bartender set Tyler and Emma’s drinks in front of them.
Ryan ordered another beer for Sean. “You two go ahead, I’ll wait.”
Tyler and Emma made their way to the table, and Ryan surveyed the room, mentally calculating how late they were likely to be there. He liked driving with Country and Polk because they usually had something at the ranch to wake up for the next morning.
He was making a strategy for passing the time when the door to the bar swung open again, and Ryan’s nervous system slammed on the emergency break. It was so out of context, for a moment, he couldn’t compute what he was seeing.
Aelin walked in with another woman. She wore a black, strapless shirt tucked into light jeans that sat perfectly at her waist, accentuating her curves. The image of her towel splitting over her thigh sent a jolt straight to his crotch, and he turned back to the bar only to see her walking toward their table in his peripheral vision.
The two of them cut through the crowd like a hot knife through butter. Men turned their heads, their eyes dropping low as they passed. Ryan had the urge to throat-punch every last one of them.
His shoulders tensed as Rhonda’s comments from earlier locked into place. Clark Moses. Text message guy. Camping mats guy.Thatwas who she’d been talking about?
The bartender set Sean’s beer on the counter, and Ryan momentarily froze. He shouldn’t care that Aelin was at theDusty Rose. She was an acquaintance. A hired employee. A member of the community who happened to play a role in Amaya’s life, like her teacher or librarian.
Not the best analogy since he was then imagining Aelin wearing that outfit with glasses and a pencil between her lips.
Take the beer back to Sean. Say hello.That was the normal thing to do.
He felt like a robot following lines of code as he found his way back to the table. Aelin looked up from the girls’ table behind them the second he set the beer down. Her lips parted, and she blinked three times before closing them.
He gave a small nod, then became very invested in André’s retelling of the World Junior’s draft even though the only thing he could hear was the ringing in his ears.
Before he’d driven to Laura and Russ’s house, he’d looked over the contract she sent to his email. It was exactly what he’d expected. He’d sent an email to his boss to switch his vacation week since Aelin listed the third week in July as the only time she would be gone during the summer. It was an easy enough change. He’d signed it and spent an embarrassingly long time trying to decide what to say when he sent it back. In the end, he’d settled on, “Thanks. Ryan.”
He’d felt like an idiot the second he pressed send. Something about her made him second-guess everything, and right then, standing in the Dusty Rose, he knew what it was. He was attracted to her, and he wasn’t supposed to be. He had a wife that he’d promised his life to, and he was imagining another woman’s thighs.
