*
Dallas
Ten months later
Dallas Tucker hadpaid for medical school by stripping at bachelorette parties and he’d had more dollar bills dipped in his G-string than duck bills in water.
But when faced with a ruthless female tabloid reporter determined to interview the three new owners of the Endeavour Ranch about the billions of dollars they’d inherited from some judge they’d barely known, he’d decided this might be a good chance for Sheriff Dan McKillop to take center stage. The Endeavour’s open house had been his bright idea, after all. Dallas had better places to be.
And as far as places to be on the ranch went, the garage wasn’t half bad. It was air-conditioned. Sunlight pooled in through the skylights in the high ceiling and the vibe was more automobile dealership than workshop. Ryan O’Connell liked fancy cars—although he no longer stole them, he bought them—and they offered a comfortable place to sit and reflect. Normally there were six vehicles, but Ryan, who disliked publicity as much as he liked cars, had disappeared for the day in his favorite—an older-model, steel-blue Mercedes AMG that he’d already owned before they inherited the money.
The garage door opened.
Dang, Dallas had forgotten to lock it. Ryan had specifically asked that the garage not be part of the open house tour.
“Dallas? You in here?”
“Simone. Hey.” Relieved, he scrambled out of a black AMG with a grill on the front that put him in mind of Bane, one of DC’s Batman villains. “Can you lock the door?”
Simone Parker was a former girlfriend of Dan’s and they all sometimes hung out at Lou’s Pub together. She was pretty, in a chain-smoker, biker chick kind of way, and right now, he was happy to see her. He didn’t deal well with boredom and she played a mean game of darts. There was a board set up on one wall.
“I thought I might find you in here,” she said. The door closed with aclick. The bolt shot across, which was good, because now Dallas didn’t have to worry about anyone else walking in. “I heard you have a Spider and I hoped you might show it to me.”
She meant Ryan’s Ferrari 488 Spider, custom-painted in British racing-car green, and hot off the lot. Dallas’s car, on the other hand, was a four-wheel drive Jeep Cherokee because medical emergencies never seemed to happen when the weather was fine.
“The cars are Ryan’s hobby, not mine, but feel free to look. Just don’t touch,” he warned her. “He’s got a thing about fingerprints on the paint. Ask me how I know.”
She laughed as she walked slowly around the two-seater convertible, appreciation in her eyes as she admired its lean, powerful lines. While not a car guy, he completely got the attraction. Ryan might not be crazy about people handling the paint, but he had no problems whatsoever with letting Dallas take them out for a spin, and the Ferrari really was sweet.
He was so absorbed in policing the paint that he failed to notice when her appreciation transferred to him. It wasn’t until his lungs filled with hairspray that he discovered she’d crossed personal boundaries and invaded his airspace.
“The real question,” she said softly, “is how do you feel about fingerprints all over you?”
The next thing he knew, she had her tongue in his mouth—he was a doctor, so he had all kinds of issues with that—and was tugging his shirt from his shorts.
“Whoa. Hey, hang on a sec,” he said, wrestling his lips free. He caught her hands by the wrists and eased them from under his shirt. She used to sleep with a guy who was like a brother to him, he longed to point out. And that was only one of the reasons this was so not going to happen. “Why don’t we play darts?”
She shrugged. “If that’s what we’re going to call it.”
“I mean that kind of darts.” He pointed at the board on the wall. It was electronic, with soft-tipped plastic darts to protect Ryan’s cars from drunks and people who just had bad aim.
She planted her hands on her hips. Her eyes narrowed. “Seriously, Dallas? That’s the game you’d rather play?”
Right now, he’d rather play dumb. He cut her the smile that got him homemade cookies from elderly patients and reached in his pocket for a quarter to flip.
“Heads, you have to keep score,” he said, and tossed the coin into the air.
*
Hannah
While Hannah’s fledglingmicrobrewery rarely distributed beyond a few local restaurants, and she relied mostly on the taproom for income, the open house at the Endeavour Ranch had been a business opportunity too good to pass up. All of the locals, as well as at least ninety percent of Custer County, would be here at some point throughout the day, hopefully sampling her products.
And all she had to do was get in, unload, and get out while avoiding Dallas Tucker completely.
What were the odds they’d both end up in Grand?
Ryan O’Connell had placed the beer order. She’d promised him delivery around one o’clock—the brewery didn’t run itself, and on the weekends, she was its labor—and received instructions to deliver the kegs to the outdoor kitchen at the back of the house. Someone would be around to show her where to place them.