1
Jensen Kittredge was kicked back in his favorite booth in the most disreputable bar in town, enjoying the usual spoils of a fine Saturday night.
The blonde was named Candace, the redhead was calling herself Tammy, and the two brunettes were too busy taking pictures of themselves to offer any biographical information. But the night was young and really, who needed a biography? This was the kind of bar that prided itself on its commitment to anonymity—even when a person was a regular, like he was.
He had eased into the bright, long summer evening with a few beers over a burger at what had once been the only family-friendly bar here in Cold River, Colorado. The Broken Wheel Saloon with its truffle fries and live bands had been the local watering hole since Jensen was a kid. These days—this very day, in fact, if the GRAND OPENING signs festooned over one of the old barns down by the river were any indication—there was a brand-new microbrewery in the mix that Jensen had been reliably informed planned to serve excellent beer and good food too, but he hadn’t gotten around to finding out for himself. Not tonight.
Because it was a Saturday and after a burger and a beer or two, when the summer sun finally made its lazy way toward the horizon, Jensen had headed over to the reliably gritty Coyote on the other side of the river, where the booths were too dark, the music was too loud, and trouble was always brewing.
Jensen liked himself a good helping of trouble.
But the apparition that suddenly appeared at the end of his booth, looming over the brunettes with a frown on her face, was not the kind of trouble he liked.
He was a big fan of the no-last-name, don’t-call-me, but-let’s-get-sweaty variety.
The woman standing there like she had a ruler running down her back—like maybe she’d appeared in a puff of prim-and-proper smoke and was feeling crabby about it—made him remember other kinds of trouble. The far less entertaining kinds. The kinds that had involved humorless authority figures, detention, and the parts of high school he hadn’t enjoyed as much as he had the stuff he was really good at. That being girls, football, and more girls.
And Jensen might have been a native of Cold River, surrounded at any given time by folks who knew his mama better than him and could recite every last stunt he’d pulled in middle school from memory—not to mention an alarming number of statistics from the high school football career he had gotten over a long time ago—but that was the point of the Coyote. He might know perfectly well that the lovely, blonde Candace was a nurse over at the hospital with two kids from her no-account ex, but tonight she was no more and no less than a pretty woman in a low-cut top who was tossing back shots and giggling while she did it.
You could be anyone you wanted at the Coyote.
Jensen couldn’t figure out for the life of him why the pinched-face woman in her buttoned-up cardigan and ugly glasses that hid half her face wanted to be … that.
“Jensen Kittredge?” she asked.
She didn’t really ask. She said it the same way they’d said his name in all those detentions back at Cold River High. With all that persnickety intent that always led to discussions about the ways in which he was a big ole disappointment to all and sundry.
Jensen took his time knocking back his whiskey, not sure why he couldn’t get high school out of his head when normally he wasn’t the type to sit around waxing nostalgic about his teenage years. He’d had a fine time in high school, insofar as a person could be fine when forced by law to attend a series of boring classes every day, but he greatly preferred being a grown-ass man. Coming as it did with his own money, his own space, and all the women and whiskey he could handle.
Turned out he could handle a whole lot.
“Are you Jensen Kittredge?” the woman asked, her voice a little sharper, like she wasn’t used to being kept waiting. And certainly not by the likes of him.
Something in Jensen kicked into gear at that tone. He knew that tone.
Because it turned out that another thing he was real good at was being ornery—especially when folks seemed to think he was a little too simple, a little too brawny, or a little too much. Which was most of the time, but Jensen didn’t care. He smiled wide, laughed too loud, and they never saw him coming.
He did all of the above and watched the woman stand even straighter as if his laughter was an affront. He sure hoped it was.
“Darlin’,” Jensen drawled, his own tone much too knowing, “I think you know who I am.”
He expected her to deflate at that, so that she was no longer holding her giant purse shoved half under one arm like it was a weapon. Or a security blanket. He thought she might flush, shuffle her feet, and do any number of the flustered, silly things that women usually did in his presence. Whether they were twenty-two or eighty-five.
Instead, this woman’s eyes sharpened. He noticed they were a pale blue, and he had no idea why the noticing made him almost … tense. She did not get silly. It had to be said, she didn’t look like she was capable of silliness. Instead, she held his gaze with an uncomfortable directness that might have made him sit up and take notice if he hadn’t been so deeply committed to the lazy way he was currently lounging there.
Then she surprised him even more by shifting the force of her attention to the other women in the booth.
“Ladies,” she said in a brisk, matter-of-fact voice that managed to cut through the haze of jukebox music, bad decisions, and questionable behavior that were the Coyote’s main selling points, in Jensen’s opinion. “If you’ll excuse us, please.”
To Jensen’s astonishment, all four women looked up and seemed to freeze where they sat for a moment. And then actually slid out of the booth, one after the next, as commanded.
Huh.
When they’d all staggered away, Ms. Prissy Cardigan perched herself in the booth across from him without touching anything but the banquette. And somehow managed to wrinkle her forehead in such a way that he was fully aware of her thoughts on the relative hygiene of the tabletop, the Coyote itself, and not to put too fine a point on it, him.
Again, not the reaction he usually got from women. Especially not women who sought him out in places like this after dark.
“No need for all the theatrics,” Jensen said mildly, amping up his drawl a little because it felt right. “There’s enough of me to go around.”
The woman opposite him, sitting there so primly and looking at him as if he were some kind of unappealing specimen beneath a microscope, smiled.
A wintry, crisp sort of smile.
Not the kind of smile Jensen normally had aimed his way. Especially not here, in this rowdy bar, on a Saturday night.
“I’m sure that kind of boastful statement goes over beautifully with a great many of your usual…” And she actually pursed her lips like some kind of Old West schoolmarm. If he recalled correctly, Cold River High still had a few. “Friends.”
“I’m a friendly guy.”
“How charming.” She did not look charmed. “I’m not here to become a member of that … brigade.”
Jensen laughed. “That breaks my heart, darlin’. I have it on good authority that I have the best brigade in town. Ask anyone.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” She made as if to fold her hands before her on the table, thought better of it, and dropped them to her lap. Still folded neatly, he was sure. “I’m here on a different matter altogether.”