Chapter Seven
One Guinness and three shots of Jameson Whiskey later, Rachael’s world spun. After the first drink, she’d said she needed to stop. She’d told Cole that was her limit. Yet he’d already lined up three shots for each of them.
How he knew Jameson was her favorite, she didn’t know, but she took the shots in thanks and after clinking the glass against his, shot them all back.
Cole stared as if he couldn’t believe it, and then raced to finish off his own whiskey line-up.
As the bar began to empty out, Cole stood and tapped her on the shoulder. Sparks flew down her arms, humming through her fingers. Each time he’d touched her tonight—inadvertently or otherwise—she’d had the same reaction to him. She couldn’t shake it.
“Pool table’s finally free,” he said. “Do you play?”
“Psht.” Rachael buzzed her lips together to make the wet sound. Her lips were already tingly; another few minutes and they’d be completely numb. “I won a pool championship back in college.”
“Really?” He smiled and dropped his ID on the bar. “Where’d you go to school?”
The bartender traded Cole’s ID for the cue ball.
“UC Santa Cruz,” she said, her words slipping and sliding together. “Did you go to school? College, I mean.”
“No, that path wasn’t in the cards for me.”
Cue ball in hand, he turned and strode toward the back of the bar, where a pool table was situated beneath two Coca-Cola umbrella lights. It was private in back, with dim lights and not a single patron within earshot. While Rachael dug four quarters out of her purse and fumbled to stick them in the pool table slots, Cole measured sticks on the rack against the wall.
“How’d you get started in music?” she asked, leaning against the table.
“Why do I get the feeling our game of pool is going to turn into Twenty Questions?”
He handed her a stick and set his own on the table.
Okay, so Cole was used to keeping things private. Made sense. If Rachael had her personal business spread over the cover of every gossip magazine, she might’ve been inclined to keep everyone out, too. But he’d taken her out of her comfort zone the last two days; it was his turn.
“Want to play Sink It or Spill It?”
His eyebrows shot to his hairline. “What the hell is that?”
A game she used to play with friends in college after a few drinks. Truth or Dare with a pool table twist.
He slid the rack over the balls, releasing them from their triangle prison, and then bent over the opposite side of the table and lined up his first shot.
“You sink a ball or have to tell me something nobody knows about you,” she said.
“Peachy.” He eyed the cue ball, hesitating. “Same goes for you, right?”
“Yup.”
Nodding, Cole let the stick fly over his fingers. It hit the cue ball with a deafening crack. Two striped balls dropped into the pockets.
He shrugged. “You’re not the only one who can play.”
Damn. If she wanted to win—and get anything out of him in the process—she’d have to distract him.
As Cole moved around, lining up his next shot, Rachael stood at the end of the long table. She held the stick upright and rested her hands near the top. Ever so slowly, she slid her hands down, one after another, stroking the wooden shaft.
At first, he didn’t notice. He studied the chaos on the table, analyzing possible angles. But then, as he bent and aimed, she slid her hands lower and rolled her fingers over the wood. She looked away and sighed, pretending not to know what she was doing. But he saw.
He focused on a striped ball in the corner, shot, and missed.
“Now…how’d you get started in music?” she asked again.
Swiping his hand across his jaw, Cole backed away from the table. “I wasn’t what you’d call a good student,” he said. “I ditched school, smoked, and partied too hard. One day my junior year, my music teacher gave me a guitar. My first one. He taught me how to play. After that, I was hooked.”
“That’s not what I was expecting,” she said. “I would’ve thought you were born with a guitar on your hip.”
She lined up her shot and sank the yellow ball into the side pocket. She aimed at another and dropped that one too, banking it off the side. She missed her third shot, and huffed, backing away from the table.
“On a scale of one-to-ten,” he said, smirking, “how disappointed were you that Joey couldn’t make it tonight?”
If she were being honest with herself, she’d say she wasn’t disappointed at all. Not once she stepped out of Angie’s and bumped into Cole.
“Five,” she said finally. “It was a last minute date, so I didn’t have time to get all worked up about it. That nervous, anticipation feeling was missing.”
“Hmph.” He lined up another shot. “Interesting.”
“What’s so interesting about that?”
He paused, sliding the stick through his fingers. “Is that your question if I miss?”
“No!” She’d have to be careful. “Don’t try any of your trickery with me, Cole Turner. I’m on to you.”
“Wish you’d be on me, instead.” As his gaze caught hers, he winked. “We’ll have to work on that.”
Heat flooded her cheeks. She rubbed the blush away, but the delicious warmth remained in lower places.
Cole sank another three balls before missing the fourth. He was good at pool. Probably one of the better players she’d been matched against.
“What happened at your tour stop in Houston?” she asked.
She remembered Rita mentioning something about it, and that Cole needed peace and quiet to focus. Although it wasn’t something nobody knew about him, she’d been dying to ask.
“I’m surprised you haven’t heard the rumors. Guess not many current events get through the mountain pass.” Exhaling heavily, he chalked up his stick. “I’d gone out with Tori West a few times, over the course of a few weeks. Have you heard of her?”
Tori West, A.K.A. blonde bombshell and Victoria’s Secret model.
Rachael hadn’t realized it until this moment, but she’d sort of hoped Cole felt the same spark she did. That he felt the same simmer in his blood, the same attraction. If he’d dated Tori West, glitz and glamor to the extreme, she probably had as much sex appeal as Mrs. Butterworth.
“The name’s familiar,” Rachael said nonchalantly. “She’s a model, right?”
“Right. She showed up to the show in Houston. I wasn’t expecting her and…” His gaze drifted off. “…let’s just say I was distracted and the show went to shit.”
Rachael shook her head. “Nuh-uh, that’s not an answer! That doesn’t count.”
“Of course it does.”
“You didn’t really tell me anything. You don’t answer, you forfeit the game.”
“The hell I do.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Tori’s one of those girls who needs attention all the time, from everyone around her, twenty-four hours a day. She wanted me to allow her to come onstage during the last song of the night. It was a slow song, Just Say Love. I think she’d dreamed up this huge moment in her mind where she’d come on stage and I’d declare my love for her in front of everyone or something.” He set down the chalk and met her gaze beneath the amber lights. “I told her no, that she wasn’t allowed to come onstage. I’m not the type of person to make my private life public that way. She lied, told stage security that we had this big thing planned. She walked onstage and the crowd went wild.”
“What’d you do?” Rachael asked, wishing she’d heard before now.
He shrugged. “I stopped the show mid-song. Told her I didn’t want to see her again.”
Rachael winced. “Ouch. Bet that didn’t go over well.”
“No, she chucked a guitar into the audience. Kicked over speakers. I tried to continue playing, but the crowed booed me offstage. She looked like the victim, and now I’m the bad guy.” He licked his lips, letting his tongue linger in the corner. “No skin off my nose. I’m used to being seen that way. Rita thinks the tour could rebuild my reputation. If I knock people’s socks off with my music, they’ll put Houston and my personal life in the backseat.”
No wonder there was so much pressure to nail the last two tour stops.
“Did you love her?” Rachael asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
He grinned slyly. “I believe that’s another question.”
Diving back into the game, Rachael put a blue-striped ball in her sights and shot it into the side-pocket. She sent another two balls whizzing into the corners, tying up the game.
Cole took off his sweatshirt and draped it over a table in the corner. The black shirt underneath was tight, stretching over his biceps. Her hand wobbled slightly as the stick slid over it, and she missed her next shot.
“Have you ever been in love?” he countered.
“Wow, now we’re really getting personal.”
He laughed. “You’re the one who breached the topic of the ‘L word’.”
True.
“Yes,” she answered. “Too many times to count, though since those guys are long gone from here, I’d say I was mistaken. It wasn’t really love at all.”
He ordered another two rounds of Jameson and brought them over.
“To the damned ‘L word’,” he said, holding out his glass.
“To love.”
Glass clinked against glass. The drink warmed Rachael’s insides on its way down, buzzing as it settled in her stomach. As their gazes collided over the rims, Rachael studied the warm flecks in Cole’s honey-brown eyes. There was more to him than a crude mouth and a set of drool-worthy abs. She was sure of that now. There was something deeper flowing beneath the surface of his rock star persona. He had determination to succeed mixed with a solid work ethic; she truly admired that. Plus, she got the feeling he regretted how things ended with Tori West.
An Adonis body with a steel resolve and a sweet heart?
She might’ve hit the jackpot…or maybe the Jameson made Cole Turner seem dreamier than he really was.
Cole took a shot at one of the last striped balls on the table, and missed. His angle was off.
“So? Did you love her?” Rachael’s stomach flipped. Did she really want to hear?
“Probably not.” Even from the opposite end of the table, Cole’s whiskey-brown eyes smoldered. “But she ruined any chance of figuring out if we could get there when she tried to make me profess my feelings in front of everyone. The last thing I need is my private life to collide with my professional one.”
Rachel walked around the table and bumped into his shoulder, sending chills ratcheting down her arms. “We’re not so different after all.”
“How’d you figure?”
“I’ve dated a few guests who’ve stayed at the inn, and I think I’ve loved a few of them.” She bent over the table to take her shot. Her vision blurred and suddenly there were two balls with red stripes. “It’s all fun and games while they’re sleeping two doors down, but then they leave and go on their way. I’m left with the memory of a great week. That’s it.”
His gaze bore into her back. “I see.”
“That’s why I can’t date someone who stays there.” She fired the stick through her fingers. And missed. “It’s how I protect myself. Probably the same reason you date woman after woman without getting serious with any one.”
Before she could take her next shot—or was it his turn?—Cole was standing beside her. The crisp aroma of his aftershave and the smell of rich leather tickled her nose. His body radiated heat and hers responded, the blood in her veins heating to molten lava.
Slowly, he took the pool stick out of her hand and rested it behind her. He planted his arms on the edge of the table, pinning her within the strong cage of his body. Her eyelids fluttered closed and her lips pouted, but not because she was trying to be cute. It was the alcohol, the way it made her warm in her belly and weak in the knees.
Okay, okay…it was him.
“I didn’t realize this was a problem,” he said, his voice a lover’s caress against her ears. “But I’ve had my eye on you since I came into town and you caught me in my towel.”
She shuddered from the memory.
“Consider this my notice.” He leaned in, his breath fanning warm against her cheek. “I’m checking out early. Like now.”
He dropped his head and planted a gentle kiss on her lips. Gone were the thoughts of Cole Turner skipping out of town. Gone were the worries of being left behind, broken-hearted. She wasn’t marrying the guy, she was kissing him.
There was nothing serious about a little, innocent peck.
And then, when she thought he’d pull back, he slid one hand around her waist and yanked her against him. She sucked in a surprised breath. He took advantage of the opening, sliding his tongue past her lips.
God, he tasted good. Like spice and whiskey mixed into a warm, yummy blend that made her stomach whirl.
Her lips were deliciously numb, so she mashed them against his and drove her fingers through his hair. He groaned at the contact, and suckled her bottom lip into his mouth. A fierce blaze of desire lashed through her and blew that innocent kiss to smithereens.
It was the night, the whiskey, the taste of Cole’s mouth and the skill of his tongue as it tangled with hers. Whatever the reason, she hopped back onto the table and drew him closer with her thighs. Pool balls scattered behind her; out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the eight ball dropping into the corner pocket.
Game over.
“Whoa, hold up,” Cole said, ripping his mouth from hers. His gaze trailed over her shoulder. “As much as I like what you’re doin’ right here, there are people watching. I can’t afford pictures showing up online.”
She craned her neck around. The bartender, Nathan Ogletree, was averting his eyes, pretending to dry the bar with a wet towel—she wasn’t buying it—and Dom, the town’s snow-plower and painter, was holding up his phone.
“Did you take a picture, Dom?” Rachael spat, spinning around.
He shrugged big, flannel-covered shoulders. “What if I did?”
“Shit,” Cole said. “This is what I was worried about.”
Rachael narrowed her eyes, holding Dom square in her sights. “If anything shows up online, I swear to God that I’ll tell your mother about the graffiti we did to her barn.”
Dom shoved his phone into his breast pocket and shuffled outside.
“You graffitied a little old lady’s barn?” Cole asked.
She laughed into a snort. “You’re not the only one who had a delinquent streak in school.”
“Rachael McCoy, you are one sweet surprise after another.” His hand moved to her thigh. “What do you say we go back to your inn and finish what we started here?”
“I’m not falling for you, Cole Turner,” she said rather decidedly. “I won’t let myself.”
“That’s good,” he said, brushing a few strands of hair behind her ear. “Because I’m not talking about falling for anyone. I’m talking about hot and heavy, make-you-forget-your-own-name sex. What’d you say?”
Is this really what she—
“Hell, yes!” She hopped off the pool table, and dragged him out of the saloon.