A slow smile spread over the bouncer guy’s face. “Dane’s brother.”
Travis nodded, pulling out his wallet to handle the cover charge.
“No charge for Dane’s brother.” Bouncer Guy held out two gold, plastic wristbands with VIP etched in black letters.
Rachel caught Travis’s gaze, her eyebrows raised.
He was certain they were thinking the same thing—a barn has VIP wristbands?
Travis took the bands, helping Rachel with hers before attaching his own. The bouncer guy unhooked the thick rope blocking the entrance and jerked his chin, indicating they should pass through.
Rachel gripped his arm and rolled up on her toes to whisper in his ear, “I’ve never been a VIP in a barn before.”
Her breath against his earlobe made his whole body heat.
“That makes two of us.” He turned his head so his face was right next to hers, and he kissed her. Quick. The kind of kiss two people shared when they were comfortable with each other. The kind that wasn’t any kind of promise because it didn’t need to be; it was simply who they were.
That realization had him tripping over his feet a little. Rachel held on to his arm as though if she released him, he’d disappear into the crowd.
There was quite the crowd inside, a wall-to-wall melding of the locals and those who owned seasonal homes. Cowboy hats abounded, paired with worn jeans, right alongside not-worn-in designer jeans and one-hundred-dollar haircuts.
Travis liked it.
What the place lacked on the weathered outside, it made up for on the inside. First, because the inside had new lumber for walls. That squelched his previous concern the place might cave. Even the sawdust on the floor seemed to be more for show than for utility, because the sawdust was way too clean to have been there before that evening.
Rachel was pulling him toward a table set up along the wall filled with a buffet of food, but that’s not where she stopped. Behind that table was another with mason jars filled with what appeared to be moonshine and a keg of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
At the end of the table was a tabletop sign announcing the beverages were for the VIPs.
“I’ve never had moonshine before,” she said with a sly grin.
He squeezed her arm. “Be careful with that stuff—it’ll light you up.”
“That sounds fun.”
“Depends on who’s holding your hair tomorrow.”
“You’d hold my hair?”
“Did I bring you to a fancy barn or what?”
“I guess you’d hold my hair, then. But good news”—she chucked him on the shoulder—“you don’t have to, because I have an iron stomach.”
This he did not know about her.
She nodded along with her assertion.
“Then I suppose you should try the moonshine,” he said.
The attendant offered a tiny, shot-size mason jar filled with clear liquid to Travis.
He took it and passed it along to Rachel. “Enjoy.”
“You’re not having any?” she asked, doing a little sniff test that made the corners of her eyes water.
He shrugged. Given that he’d driven her there, he was definitely not having any. Plus: “My stomach is not of the iron variety, and I’d prefer not to be throwing up tomorrow.”
“I would also prefer you not throw up tomorrow.” She lifted a shoulder, and her sweater slipped down a notch, exposing a lace bra strap. “The Frank stomach is notoriously weak. Which is a wonder, given your excellent breakfast choices.” She layered on the sarcasm nice and thick.
