Cowboy At Arms. Carla Cassidy
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twelve young men had first begun working for Cass.
She had been a good judge of character and surely never would have kept anyone around who showed any kind of violent tendencies, somebody who was capable of slamming a meat cleaver or an ax into the skull of another human being.
If there was a killer in Bitterroot, then the odds were much better that he worked on the Humes ranch. Raymond Humes liked his ranch hands mean and on the edge, and many of them had been around for years or had been born and raised here.
As Dusty drove the short distance from the ranch into town, all thoughts of the murders fled his mind as he once again thought about the night to come with Trisha.
He had no idea if she was a potential long-term match for him or not. All he knew for sure was that he was attracted to her. For months she had invaded his thoughts and dreams. There was also a growing well of loneliness deep inside him.
Maybe his loneliness was more apparent lately because three of his fellow cowboys had found their love matches in the last couple of months. They had been a dozen single men working and living together, and now they were only nine. Dusty wanted to find the same kind of happiness that they had all found.
The Watering Hole was the only official bar in town. It was housed in a large wooden building and on a Saturday night the parking lot was nearly full.
He wished that there had been someplace to meet that was a little quieter, but this was basically the only game in town at this time of the night other than the café where Trisha worked.
Hopefully, he could snag a table away from the dance floor, where the music would be softer and they could actually carry on some kind of a meaningful conversation without too much difficulty.
He found an empty parking space and pulled in. The dog days of August were upon them. The stifling night air slapped him in the face as he hurried from his pickup toward the cooler air that would greet him inside the bar.
The place was definitely jumping. Dozens of couples moved across the dance floor to the beat of the jukebox playing a rousing country western song. Bottles and glasses clinked as drinks were poured and delivered by the waitresses, and laughter rang out from all four corners of the huge room.
Dusty waved to Brody Booth, Sawyer Quincy and Jerrod Steen, all fellow cowboys from the Holiday ranch. They sat together at a table near the back room, where there were two pool tables and a dartboard.
Dusty smiled inwardly. It was a good thing Brody and Jerrod were with Sawyer. The copper-haired cowboy was a lightweight when it came to drinking. It didn’t take much beer for him to have to be carried out of the place.
Dusty wove his way through the crowd and spied an empty two-top table not far from where the three men sat. At least the jukebox wasn’t quite as loud here, although the noisy click of pool balls and triumphant shouts drifted out of the back room.
He sat and once again tamped down the nerves that kicked in the pit of his stomach. He had never been so nervous before meeting or picking up any woman for a date.
It was just drinks, he reminded himself. If they weren’t into each other by the end of the night, they would each go their own separate ways and there would be no harm and no foul.
“Hey, Dusty.” Janis Little, one of the waitresses, greeted him with a friendly smile. “What can I get for you?”
Dusty looked at his watch. It was just ten minutes after ten. Trisha should be arriving within the next fifteen minutes or so. “I’ll have a beer,” he said. “But I’m waiting for Trisha Cahill to join me in the next few minutes.”
Janis raised one of her thin brown eyebrows. “Ah, and here I thought your heart belonged only to me.”
He grinned at the attractive woman. “You know I have to keep up my appearances as a womanizing cowboy who secretly loves and trusts only my horse.”
She laughed. “I’ll be back with your beer in a jiffy.”
He watched her as she worked her way toward the long, polished bar on the opposite side of the room. Janis was pretty and single, but he’d never considered asking her out. She’d never created the edge of excitement in him that Trisha did.
Janis delivered his beer and he’d only taken two sips of it when Trisha walked through the front door. He immediately jumped to his feet and waved to her.
She smiled and waved back. He remained standing as she went around the tables and people to approach him. His heart quickened as she drew nearer. She looked ridiculously hot. Her pale blond hair was loose and flowed to her shoulders in soft waves. Her tight jeans showcased her long, slim legs and the blue blouse skimmed her full breasts and tapered in at her slender waist.
“Trisha, I’m so glad you could make it,” he said when she finally reached the table.
“Me, too.” Only after she sat at the table did Dusty return to his chair opposite of her.
Was she as nervous as he was? She didn’t appear to be. She looked cool and collected. “What can I get for you?” he asked and motioned to Janis.
“I really don’t drink too often, but a beer sounds wonderful. It’s so hot outside.”
“There’s nothing better than a cold beer on a hot summer night,” he replied.
“We’ll be wishing for these hot nights when the snow starts to fly.”
Janis arrived and took the drink order, and once it had been delivered the conversation turned to Trisha’s night working at the café. “Saturday nights are always the worst,” she said. “I swear nobody in the entire town cooks on Saturday nights.” She gave him a rueful grin. “Oh, wait, didn’t I say that to you last night about Friday nights?”
“I believe you did. But that’s small-town living. Weekend meals aren’t just about the food, but also about community ties and, of course, the gossip,” he replied dryly.
She laughed, a pleasant, musical sound. “That’s for sure,” she agreed. “I now know more personal information about some of the people in this town than I ever wanted to know.” She sobered slightly. “And despite how good the gossip mill is and that you and I have talked fairly regularly at the café, I really don’t know that much about you. Did you grow up here in Bitterroot?”
“No, I’m a transplant. I grew up in Oklahoma City. What about you? Where are you from originally?” The last thing he wanted to talk about was himself and his past.
“I’m from back east,” she replied and took a drink of her beer.
“Then how did you wind up here in Bitterroot?” he asked curiously. He was aware that her answer had definitely been vague. Back east could include a million different places when you lived in Oklahoma.
She gazed down into her glass and then looked at him once again. The blue of her eyes was slightly darker than a moment before.
“When I was three months pregnant, my boyfriend, the father of my unborn child, was killed in a terrible motorcycle accident. When my son was born, I decided that I needed a fresh start, someplace new. So, I packed up my bags and my baby and took off.”
“Wow, that was incredibly brave of you,” he replied.
She smiled and picked up her glass once again. “I don’t know if it was incredibly brave or completely foolish, but at the time I knew it was definitely what I needed to do. I spent the next six months or so drifting from town to town, and finally we wound up here in Bitterroot. So far it’s been a good fit.”
She took another drink of her beer and when she set her glass back on the table, Dusty noticed that her hand trembled slightly and her gaze went to some point just over his head.
Interesting, he mused inwardly. Were her hands simply trembling from the nerves of a first date? Or was it something more?
Rather than being put off, he was more intrigued by her than ever. He certainly didn’t know