She sauntered around the table, coming to a stop in front of the silver-haired cowboy with the smart mouth. Hands on her hips, she flipped her hair back and looked down at him with a knowing smile. “I can’t argue with the description,” she said, leaning over to give him a peek at her cleavage, “but I don’t think you can handle a full-flavored version.”
“I disagree, sweet thang,” he said, lunging suddenly forward to grab her around the waist. His callused hands were rough on the bare skin of her stomach. The roughneck pulled her into his lap, holding her down with a heavy arm across her thighs. “And I like a little tartness with my sweets.”
There was another chorus of laughter, and Brenne fought back the urge to use her elbows on the man. She smiled sweetly instead and leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Thanks for letting me get off my feet, but there’s plenty of other thirsty customers who don’t like waiting for their drinks.”
“Let ‘em wait,” Silver Mustache said, leaning in to rub it against her neck. He moved away at the cold voice that rang out from behind them. Brenne craned her head around to find Alex standing there with a scowl on his face.
“Let her up,” he said, his tone indicating that he expected his order to be followed.
“She’s comfortable where she is,” Silver Mustache growled back.
Brenne could see that Alex wasn’t pleased, and she couldn’t help a little flutter of excitement. Lou was right. He was acting like a hunting dog guarding over his favorite bone. Did that mean he wasn’t as immune to her charms as he’d let on?
“You got one second to let her go before this saloon gets destroyed for a second time.” The steel in his voice said Alex wasn’t bluffing.
“Okay, boys,” Brenne said, lifting her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Insurance just finally paid out. If you make Johnnie rebuild this place again, he’s liable to bury us all along with the debris.” She went to stand and was relieved when the roughneck released his hold. “I’ll bring you boys another round,” she told them, then walked off in the direction of the bar, hoping her performance was enough to defuse the tension.
Unfortunately, three of her brothers were waiting for her. Johnnie nodded his head at her order and started to pour, but Jim and Jameson weren’t ready to let the little display they’d just watch go so easily. “Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing, sis?” Jim spat, his eyes full of fire.
“My job,” she tossed back with just as much heat.
“And that right there is the problem,” Jameson said. “Your temperament isn’t suited to waitressing, is it?”
She looked her eldest brother over with something close to contempt. “My temperament? Says the man who told the fertilizer fellow to go fuck himself just last week.”
“He was double-charging,” Jameson said, then threw up his hands in frustration.
Jim was ready to take over the argument without losing a beat. “Jameson is right. This job is the problem. But we’ve found a solution that suits everybody.”
“Everybody being every MacAllen sibling with something dangling between their legs? What business is it for everyone else to stick their nose in?” She could feel her temper starting to flare. Having a passel of overprotective brothers could tax a girl’s patience.
“Just hear me out,” Jim said as Alex returned to his place beside his friend. “Alex was just telling us how shorthanded he is, and since you love animals more than anyone we know and you have plenty of experience, we thought you were the perfect solution to his problem.”
Brenne couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She turned to Alex, her expression deadpan. “You want me to come work for you? This was your idea?”
Alex stared over her shoulder. “I do and it was.”
Brenne glanced in her brother’s direction. Jim and Jameson were unreadable as brick walls, but Johnnie couldn’t keep his expression in check enough for her not to read him. “Yeah right. You’re trying to control me as always. You don’t like that the men of Whiskey River show me their appreciation. But you know what, it doesn’t matter what you like. It only matters what I want, and that’s to stop being pushed around by the rest of you.”
She turned her back on her brothers and headed in the direction of the restroom. Brenne needed to calm down before she could face anyone, but Alex didn’t give her a chance. When she opened the door to the restroom, he appeared behind her and pushed her into it. An older woman whose bottle-blonde hair should have long turned gray was washing her hands. She turned around in shock, mouth hanging open. “Give us the space,” Alex told her, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
The woman looked in Brenne’s direction and, at her nod, pushed her way past Alex grumbling about rude men. When the door closed behind her, Alex stood against it. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
Now it was Brenne’s mouth that was hanging open. “Wrong with me? You’re the one who just bullied his way into the ladies’ restroom.”
“Why don’t you take the job?”
Brenne looked at him. “Because you said not three days ago that they were on to us, remember? That we had to stop seeing each other. Now you’re begging me to come work for you? I don’t buy it. My brothers put you up to this, and I’m not just going to do what I’m told. Forget it.”
“They didn’t put me up to it,” he said, his voice steady. “It happened just as Jim said. And he’s right. You’re knowledgeable and trustworthy.”
“And this has nothing to do with me sitting on that cowboy’s lap out there?”
He shook his head, his expression earnest, and Brenne felt some of the tension melt away from her limbs. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he does want me to come work for him.
Maybe he misses me, and this is his way of throwing us together again.
Just like that, a glimmer of hope became a beacon. “Alright,” she said suddenly, thrusting her hand out for him to shake. “You’ve got yourself a new employee.”
An employee with benefits, she told herself as a smile spread across her face.
CHAPTER 5
ALEX
I can’t believe I let them talk me into this.
Brenne MacAllen was standing in front of the shoulder-high filing cabinet in the office of his Lubbock clinic, trying to find the home of the file she was holding. He could hear her whispering the name over and over under her breath as she rifled through the alphabetized files.
Having her in the same space with him was taxing, and not just because of the whispering. She’d been there all of thirty minutes and he was already having images of them making love on his desk.
This isn’t going to work. I’m an idiot for thinking it could. He should have let her walk away, shouldn’t have followed her and pushed her to accept the position. Now he was stuck with Brenne for twenty hours or more a week. Stuck with a woman he was trying to forget, who was now bending over the open cabinet drawer and displaying the most perfectly round ass he’d ever seen in his life. Have mercy!
“I don’t think these files are in order,” she muttered as she dug in deeper, and Alex had a sudden nightmare of Brenne improperly reorganizing his entire filing system, leaving him unable to find anything ever again. He repressed a groan and wondered again how he’d fucked up so royally.