Chapter Two
Dallas
Dallas watched Hannah’staillights disappear down the drive. The back end of her truck bounced over every slight bump in the asphalt, indicating its suspension was pretty much shot.
A massive headache switched from one eye to the other, then settled behind both because it chose not to play favorites. First Simone decided this had to be a good time to take their nonexistent relationship to some fictitious next level—in the garage of all places, because it turned out she had an exhibitionist streak to round out her crazy—and then, Hannah had witnessed the fallout. He could have wept.
Even in denim cutoffs and a stained, worn-out white shirt, and without any makeup, she looked like an angel. Her smile, tainted with mischief, glowed from her eyes. It said not only was she sweet, she was fun. Long, honey-brown hair curled at the tips when it was loose. It felt like corn silk when he ran his fingers through it. He’d known from the moment he first set eyes on her that she was the one and he was all-in.
He’d found out too late that she was in a longstanding, if somewhat toxic, relationship. It had taken him months to get past the hurt and acknowledge he’d made a tactical error—that he’d seen something he desperately wanted, and with his usual disregard for the consequences, he’d gone for it without asking questions. He was a leaper, not a looker. He knew it. He hadn’t stopped to consider things from Hannah’s perspective. If he hadn’t been so wired from the performance the groomsmen had just given the bride, he might have wondered why she’d been so willing to have sex with a man she barely knew.
But he hated unfinished business. He’d actually looked her up when he was in Bozeman for a conference last fall, but she hadn’t been home. He wished he’d known she moved to Grand. What he wouldn’t give for just five minutes to clear the air between them so he could figure out exactly where things had gone wrong. And, okay, maybe get a second chance. He’d checked her left hand and there was still no ring on her finger.
Could he be any more pathetic where she was concerned?
His cell phone jangled out “Good Lovin’” by The Rascals. He’d programmed the song because it was on the soundtrack for the movieGrumpy Old Menand meant the nursing home was calling. He dug his phone out of his pocket.
“Dallas,” he said.
“Dr. Tucker? This is Patrice.”
He grinned at the formality. The nursing home was the one place in Grand where no one cared about his money, only his competence, but the head nurse was the soul of propriety and refused to use his first name no matter how much he tormented her.
“Hey, Patrice.” He didn’t dare call her Patty yet, but his nerve was building. “What’s up?”
“Marsh still isn’t eating.”
Marsh was a ninety-eight-year-old cowboy who hadn’t lost his love for the ladies. He was polite in their company, yet had plenty of wild stories to tell when they weren’t around, and he was one of Dallas’s favorite patients. A few weeks ago, however, he’d decided he’d had enough of living and lost all interest in food. He didn’t like being confined to a wheelchair, but since he’d fallen a few times and the overworked staff couldn’t monitor his every move, it was for his own safety. At his age, broken bones weren’t going to heal.
Dallas had been struggling with the moral issues of forcing him to eat versus his wish to end his days on his own terms when his biggest problem was boredom. Other than his sketchy balance, he was healthy in mind and body, which was more than could be said for a lot of the nursing home residents. He might have retained his will to live if he had family to visit him, but his wife passed away a few years ago and they’d never had any children.
Dallas had zero qualms about abandoning the Endeavour’s open house in favor of a visit with Marsh. He’d made Dan promise the kids would wear helmets. He’d rather play doctor at the home than rich boy at the ranch any day of the week.
“I’m on my way.”
Maybe he’d swing by the Grand Master Brewery on his way home.
*
Hannah
Hannah backed thetruck into the small parking lot at the rear of the building and entered the brewery through the delivery entrance, where the rich, doughy smell of spent barley lingered. Gleaming steel tanks lined two of the walls, from floor to ceiling, because she’d opted to lower her footprint by building up instead of spreading out.
She loved her brewery. She’d bought an old brick building next to a quaint little strip mall on the corner of a residential street—mostly because the lower level had once been a store, so it had a lot of open space—and there was a small apartment upstairs. It was nowhere near downtown though, and at first, she’d been disappointed not to get a spot on the riverfront, but as it turned out, this was much, much better. The community consisted of starter homes for young adults and new families, and the residents liked having a place to hang out, play board games, and enjoy a good beer that didn’t cost them a fortune in either money or time. They could bring their kids too, if they had them. She’d added a play area once she’d assessed the need and seen the age range, and she sometimes opened the taproom, which faced the street, on rainy Saturday afternoons so families could come in and hang out.
Maybe next year, if she could afford the extra staff, she could add an outdoor patio for the sunny days, too. She was never going to get rich off her business model, but since she’d never had money, she didn’t care. She’d lost her dad when she was small, and with five children to feed, life had been tough for her mom. The whole family had learned to make do. They’d also learned what was important and who their friends were.
Besides, she enjoyed giving back to her community. She only wished there were more hours in a day.
She swapped her sandals for a pair of rubber boots. The brewery was where most of her work happened and where she planned on spending her afternoon, running a new Sweetheart cherry sour brew from the maturation tank through the filtration system. Between the Endeavour Ranch’s open house and the beautiful weather, foot traffic would be light today, so the taproom was closed until seven o’clock.
She hummed a Taylor Swift tune as she worked. Not even a run-in with Dallas could ruin the satisfaction she felt that all of this was hers. Or it would be, after only two hundred and forty more payments.
Besides, Dallas himself wasn’t the problem. She slopped the contents of a bucket over the toe of one boot as she tipped the bucket over a drain. He made no secret of the fact he found her attractive, which was flattering, and he’d been right there, ready and willing to bolster her wounded pride when she’d badly needed the lift. She’d used him to get even with Tim and she hated the reminder of what wasn’t exactly one of her finer moments. All she’d wanted was to experiment with sex, because wasn’t that where Tim found her lacking?
That was where Hannah had made her mistake, however, because when it came to sex, whatever might be wrong with her, there was absolutely nothing lacking in Dallas. He’d never heard of the wordinhibition. The things she’d let him do… had been a willing participant in… hadenjoyed…
But revenge sex, no matter how good it might be, wasn’t for her. She wasn’t that woman. She’d woken up the next morning unable to face herself in the mirror. She’d ignored all of Dallas’s attempts to contact her. And when Tim called her two days after the wedding, wanting to talk, she found she couldn’t face him either, because two wrongs definitely did not make a right. It boiled down to self-respect. If self-respect equaled boring, then she was on board.