Chapter Three
Hannah
Levi looked assurprised as she felt.
No wonder. That certainly wasn’t what she’d intended to say, and for a stomach-churning split second, she feared he might call her on it.
“How about I swing by and pick you up around eleven tomorrow morning?” he suggested, kindly pretending not to notice the way she’d shifted gears.
Meanwhile Hannah, her tongue thick with dread, could do nothing but nod, because Dallas, with the complete lack of self-consciousness that contributed to his larger-than-life personality, had set a course for the bar, oblivious to the way the entire room had gone silent.
Maybe people weren’t comfortable sharing drinks with their doctor. More likely they wondered what a billionaire was doing in the Grand Master Brewery, which wasn’t a five-star establishment. There was no food on the menu and patrons receiving takeout deliveries was common.
He reached the bar, where she didn’t have stools, only a foot rail, because when things got busy, the regulars knew to pick up their own drinks and skedaddle and save her having to deliver to tables.
“Hey, Levi,” Dallas said, leaning against the bar so that he faced the other man, effectively cutting Hannah out of the conversation, to her irritation.
Levi bobbed his chin. “Doc.”
The friendliness of his tone suggested he liked Dallas, which wasn’t surprising. Everyone liked him. Hannah had liked him too, right up until he became a glaring reminder of her attempt to be something she wasn’t at an especially low point in her life. Now she just felt awkward and embarrassed around him.
Dallas gestured at Levi’s now-empty glass. “What are you drinking?”
“The stout.”
He formed a vee with his fingers and waved them at Hannah. “We’ll take two.”
Hannah’s own fingers turned into thumbs. She wasn’t at all comfortable with Dallas and the man she’d just agreed to go out with having a few drinks together and she sloshed the beer from the tap down the sides of the glass as she poured. She sopped up the spill with a towel and handed the beer to the men.
In return, Dallas passed her an Amex black card so she could start him a tab. She tried not to goggle. She’d heard of them, but this was the first she’d ever seen in real life. She’d half-expected it to come with its own personal security detail.
She ran the card through her point-of-sale terminal with a reverence that reminded her Dallas was out of her league, had likely forgotten all about the night of the wedding, and in fact, maybe she should be flattered he’d managed to remember her name. She wasn’t, though. On the mixed emotions scale, she was leaning more toward annoyance. Why was he here?
Because if it was for her, no one would guess.
She returned his card to him and he tucked it into his wallet, then haphazardly jammed his wallet into a back pocket while she hovered, trying to figure it out.
The two men were discussing Tennessee Walkers, a breed she disliked. They walked too fast and their gait looked jerky, not pretty, although she conceded their ride was smooth enough. She didn’t care for a show industry that encouraged disreputable breeders to train them with weights and acids to heighten their step either, a practice called soring, which continued to this day, no matter how illegal the practice might be.
The talk shifted from horses to bulls, then moved on to dairy prices, and just when Hannah thought the pair of them couldn’t get any more boring, the topic of anaerobic digestion biomass powerplants cropped up. The Wagging Tongue Ranch had installed one and Levi was a huge fan.
Since Hannah could drone on about brewing, she understood—but it looked like she and Levi would both need that coffee tomorrow morning to get through their date, because the conversation alone would never keep them awake. She knew a bit about horses, only because what teenaged girl didn’t love to ride, but next to nothing about dairy farming and cattle. Her palms started to sweat. She knew even less about dating. How had she gotten herself into this mess?
Alayna’s wedding. That was how.
Finally, after over an hour of listening in, afraid the conversation might turn to how she and Dallas knew each other at any moment, Gloria approached the two men and tapped her brother on the shoulder. “I hate to interrupt,” she said to him, “but it’s late and we’re heading home. Are you coming with us or are you sticking around?”
The crowd had begun to thin out. Levi checked the screen on his phone and did a double take. “Whoa, would you look at the time. I guess I’m coming with you.” He smiled at Hannah. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Pick you up at ten thirty?”
Hannah smiled back and agreed, but her heart wasn’t in it, because she should have gone with her first instincts and said no. He seemed nice—incredibly so—but she wasn’t ready to date. She definitely couldn’t imagine doing the things with him that she’d done with Dallas.
She’d never have done them with Dallas either, if she’d known she might see him again. She chanced a quick glance at him, to see if he’d noticed that she’d made a date with Levi, but he was checking out the metalwork piece that hung from the ceiling of a cowboy on a bucking bronco. Her brother had made it for her.
She tapped her thumbnail with the tip of her finger. She had no idea why Dallas had paid so much attention to her the night of the wedding. At the time, she hadn’t cared. One night of rebellion—that was all it had been.
Especially since he paid not one bit of attention to her now.
One of the taproom’s regulars moved in to take Levi’s now-empty spot at the bar. He greeted Dallas, and they exchanged a few words about the stellar results of his hip replacement, but Hannah knew what he was really after.