Total pages in book: 16
Estimated words: 14860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 74(@200wpm)___ 59(@250wpm)___ 50(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 14860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 74(@200wpm)___ 59(@250wpm)___ 50(@300wpm)
The moment the little bit of red cleared the inside of his jacket pocket, I nearly fell off the barstool altogether.
An Indian paintbrush.
He was pulling an Indian paintbrush from his jacket and placing the small but hard to miss flower in the pocket of his shirt. He made sure to leave his blazer open enough that the Wyoming’s state flower, which grew rampant in the fields around my ranch, was visible.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!
Someone may as well have forced a lead weight down my throat because my stomach felt like it was being crushed. Before I could even consider what I was doing, I reached up to snatch the little red flower from my own shirt pocket and stuffed it into my jeans pocket, not caring that the petals would be crumpled beyond recognition.
How will we find each other?
I could still remember the moment I’d been sitting in my office, the chat window on the Heart 2 Heart dating app open, as I considered my response.
As soon as I’d seen the bright red flowers dancing in the wind all through a small patch of wild grass next to the house, I’d known.
Indian paintbrush. Do you know it?
Yes.
We’ll both wear one.
I’d practically heard the shyness in my soon to be date’s voice as he’d typed his response the night before.
Okay.
But it hadn’t been just some random guy on the other side of that screen… it hadn’t been some random guy I’d been chatting with for hours every night for weeks. It hadn’t been some faceless random guy I’d been dreaming of having the impossible with.
A real relationship.
Nope, not some random guy at all.
It had been Mouse.
Mouse, the scrawny kid who never talked and that I’d been lusting after from the moment he’d been introduced to me.
Mouse, the barely legal guy who could destroy everything I’d worked to build in the years since my parents had died.
Mouse, who could bring my entire world crashing down around my ears if he told even one person that his hard-ass, no-nonsense, rich-as-shit cattle empire king of a boss liked dick instead of pussy.
Fuck.
CHAPTER TWO
MOUSE
“What are you having?”
I heard the question more than once in my head, but it wasn’t until the familiar words, “Hey kid,” were added that it registered that the irritated bartender was talking to me.
My fingers shook as I fiddled with the little red flower in my very itchy blazer. I forced my eyes up and managed to squeak out, “Water, please.”
That was one of the many reasons I’d inherited the nickname of Mouse. My voice tended to go unnaturally high when I was nervous. Add in my small stature and quiet nature and I really wasn’t much more than a mouse in a man’s body.
“You gotta order something, kid.”
“Give him a whiskey sour,” I heard a voice to my right say. “On me,” the man added. I was so caught off guard that I didn’t think to deny the offer. Instead, I glanced at the man. He wasn’t an overly large man, but he was bulky, mostly in all the wrong areas. He sent me a leering smile that showed off crooked, stained teeth that proved the heavy stench of cigarette smoke was likely coming from him.
By the time I opened my mouth to say, “No, thank you,” the bartender was already placing the drink in front of me. I waited for him to ask for my ID, but the bartender moved on to the other men and women sitting at the bar, leaving me to deal with the man next to me, who’d somehow managed to move his body closer to mine without moving his chair.
“You ain’t from around these parts, are you kid?” the man asked with a creepy grin that left me feeling cold inside. Blessedly, there was no sign of the Indian paintbrush flower that graced my own pocket on his person. But the way he was looking at me and the fact that he’d moved his drink so that his hand was pretty much next to mine told me what it was he was looking for.
I was so shocked by the overt gesture of the guy hitting on me merely by buying me a drink, all I could do was just sit there mutely.
Cody might have been one of the larger cities in Wyoming, but it wasn’t exactly gay-friendly. Being out anywhere in a state that many residents proudly called the real Old West wasn’t exactly the safest of things. I’d admired the few “out and proud men” I’d seen here and there, but I’d feared for them too. I’d wondered who and what would be waiting for them once they were out of the safety of the public eye.
“Believe me, I’d remember you,” the man whispered as he leaned in close to me. The smell of alcohol washed over me. It was probably the reason he was being so brazen.