But it was the hat that was making it hard for her to concentrate… A black felt cowboy hat sat low on his head, the brim shadowing the upper portion of his face. As if sensing her avid stare, he reached up with one heavily tattooed hand and took it off, setting it carefully on the bar beside his beer. Gym Travis—wearing nothing but those damn gym shorts and athletic tape on his hands, long hair tied up—was enough to make any woman forget her own name. But street clothes Traviswith a damn cowboy hat… Roxy forgot how tobreathe. He was magnificent.
He plucked several peanuts out of the basket, his fingers deftly shelling them. She was transfixed. The shells were tossed onto the floor—the oils in the shells were beneficial to the wood floors—and popped the peanuts into his mouth.
“You’re staring.”
She startled, then narrowed her eyes on him. “Am not.”
His grin was quick, and the low chuckle that rumbled out of his chest made her belly do strange flipflops that she was altogether not a fan of.Dammit to hell.
Busying herself behind the bar, she peered at him out of the corner of her eye, before Rudy got her attention for another beer several seats down. She wandered back closer to Travis, who was shelling peanuts and tossing them back between drinks of his own beer. He had somehow produced a pen and was doodling on the edge of the napkin idly, the pen nearly swallowed by the size of his hand. Moe requested a dollar in quarters for the jukebox, and a few moments later the first bars ofChris Stapleton’s‘Tennessee Whiskey’ floated through the bar on the hidden speakers around the place.
“I’m sorry for snapping at you,” she said quietly to him several minutes later, pulling glasses out of the bar dishwasher below the counter and setting them aside to dry. She glanced up at him. “Last week. It was… it was a bad day and it was wrong of me to take it out on you.”
He nodded, the only concession to having heard her. He wrapped his fingers around the pint glass—his hand was so large his fingers nearly wrapped around the entire glass—and brought it to his lips before setting it back down. Pushing the basket of peanuts away, he leaned his forearms against the edge of the bar again and leaned forward, his upper body leaning over thebar slightly. His eyes met hers and she stilled, the golden-honey brown of his eyes riveting even in the low light of the bar.
“Bad days I understand better than you could possibly know, Red,” he said quietly. She swallowed again, and nodded, though she wondered what he meant by that, curiosity peaking at what demons this man could possibly be hiding. He cleared his throat, his eyes never leaving hers, and continued gently, “I’m sorry I pressed. You’re right; it’s none of my business what’s going on in your life. However, I will step in when it puts you or anyone else at risk if you’re incapable of focusing during a class. Inattention can cause accidents, and I don’t like those. Too much paperwork.”
Roxy couldn’t stop the scoffing laugh that escaped her, and she shook her head, sighing in defeat. She braced her hands on the edge of the bar, leaning against her outstretched arms. “I promise I won’t cause you any extra paperwork, Travis. And you’re right, too; I wasn’t paying proper attention. I didn’t mean to cause you any alarm.”
He reached out across the bar and covered the back of her hand with one of his, squeezing lightly. “It’s a bad habit of mine, a reflex I can’t shake. I once didn’t do anything about warning signs I saw, and it cost me. Ever since then…” he shrugged, pulling his hand back and gripping the beer again. “Let’s just say if I have a gut feeling, I’m not usually incorrect.”
Roxy’s heart hammered in her chest. The touch of his fingers along the back of her hand had sent a zing of electricity up her arm and straight to her middle, and it had nothing to do with static or science. And then his words caught up to her.Shit. “You have a gut feeling about me? Why?”
He stared into her eyes for what felt like an eternity before he simply said, “If you need anything, don’t hesitate to reach out. I mean that.Anything,Roxy. Day or night.”
Then he pushed himself back from the bar and stood lithely. He finished the last of his beer and set the empty glass down, then fished in his back pocket, pulling out his wallet. He tossed a twenty down and she reached for it, mumbling, “I’ll just grab your change—”
He shook his head and said, “That’s all set.”
She gaped at him and stammered, “Travis. It’s a three-dollar beer—"
He shrugged as he picked up the cowboy hat by the cap and placed it on his head. Those honey-colored eyes came back to hers again and she had to remind her lungs how to work properly. “See you, Red.”
She nodded, staring after him as he made his way across the wooden floor toward the door. As he pushed the door open, light flooded the dim room again, the sunlight catching on his light brown hair, turning the strands into a kaleidoscope of golds, ambers, blondes, and silvers as it danced around his shoulders. As the door closed behind him, a low whistle sounded and she whipped her head around to the far side of the bar. “Oooowee, doll.”
Rudy and Moe, both well into their fifties, were watching her with grins on their faces. “What?”
“That boy didn’t come here for beer or peanuts, doll,” Moe chuckled, bobbing his graying eyebrows. Their words were heavily accented, that Texas twang lilting as they spoke.
“No, sir, he sure didn’t,” Rudy laughed, taking another drink of his beer. “That boy got it bad.”
Roxy glared at them both. “Got what bad, Rudy?”
Rudy and Moe shared a glance and then Rudy pointed toward the napkin still tucked beneath Travis’s empty beer glass in front of her on the bar.
“Ten songs that napkin has his number on it.”
Lowell, another regular, chimed in then, saying, “That boy’s fixin’ to marry you, honey.”
Roxy turned back toward the glass and napkin before pinning them all with a stare. “You’re all fucking knocked in the head. Rudy, no dice.”
“Only cuz you know I’m right,” he chuckled. She snatched up the empty glass and the napkin, spinning it so that she could make out what he’d been doodling in the bottom corner. Sure enough, his phone number was scrawled across the bottom.
“So? How’s about them songs, doll?” Rudy called over, still chuckling.
Stuffing the napkin into her back pocket, she muttered sourly, “Rudy. You’re cut off.”
“Aww hell, Roxy, we were just playin!”
