Rich Groom (The Dirty Thirty Pledge 1)

She takes a sip of her beer and smiles. “Been a long time since we’ve seen you around here, cowboy.”

“Cowboy?” I raise an eyebrow. “Not sure the term fits.”

“Ah, right. It’s city boy now, isn’t it. Or rich boy.” It’s a statement. Not a question.

I shrug. “Maybe. But you know you can never really take the country out of someone.”

“That’s true,” she says, gesturing to herself and laughing. “Look at me.”

“How are you, Anna?” I try to ignore the fact that I sound wistful, and push down the fact that it seems like my entire world hinges on her answer. I glance at her left hand, wrapped around the bottle, and the relief of not seeing a ring there is painful. Odds are my friends would have told me if she had gotten married, but still, I feel like I can breathe again.

“I’m good. I can’t complain. It’s a beautiful day, there’s good music and good friends.” She winks at me. For just a brief second I think I notice sadness in her face and in her eyes, but then it’s gone again and she has that sweet smile on her face.

“What have you done since…you know.” Even though everyone tried to tell me about her life, I didn’t listen. I didn’t think that she’d want me to. Now that I’m standing in front of her, I wish I had soaked up every little bit of information that I could about her just so I’d know exactly what to say.

She smiles, and her eyes are sparkling, almost like she’s amused that I can’t—or won’t—mention our break-up. “The same thing that I’ve always done,” she says. “Try to follow in Mom and Dad’s footsteps with my music. And when I’m not doing that, I’m the manager at the bookstore in town. We’ve really turned it into something. You should stop by while you’re here.”

She worked at the bookstore when she came home from school on breaks. I do my best to hide my surprise that she’s still working there. “I’ll make sure that I do.”

“But what about you?” she asks. “How is Green Hills’s shining star?”

I choke on a laugh. “I’m not that.”

Anna makes a face that tells me she thinks that’s bullshit. “You and I both know that’s not true. People know you’re here. No less than five people told me that you were coming to town or that they had already seen you. You may not have noticed that people are staring at us, but they are. They know why you’re here too.”

“How would they know that?” They can’t possibly know about all my plans. I barely know all of my plans.

“Have you forgotten everything about living here?” She looks out at the crowd. “For a small city, it’s still a town full of people who want to know each other’s business. The high school football star who became the college football star who went on to be a successful entrepreneur with his friends and start his own record label? To them, you shot the moon.”

“Yeah,” I say, because I can’t deny it. I haven’t been able to say this to her face yet. “I’m sorry if that’s had an impact on you.”

Her smile is a little tighter now. “I think that people finally have started to realize that I honestly don’t know anything about your life now.”

Shit. One more thing that I’ve done wrong, and I should have realized it. Anna and I were a very public couple. Everyone thought that we were going to get married. I did too. I was just an idiot that thought she would wait for me through everything, including taking time to fulfill that stupid pledge. God, what a moron I am. And when I made it big, I should have realized that people would look to her for news about me, no matter if we were together or not. Given the amount that people try to tell me about her, it makes me feel even worse that I didn’t think about it. “Anna,” I say, “I’m—”

“Do you want to dance?” she says quickly. Too quickly. I think we’re both relieved that I didn’t go there yet. “This is a good song, and we haven’t danced in a long time.”

“Of course,” I say, watching as she knocks back the rest of her drink, tosses it in the trash and takes my hand. I let her pull me onto the dance floor, stunned by the way my body is reacting just to the touch of her hand. I’ve gone from normal to overdrive, every sense overloaded, and I’m fighting my own arousal like I’m a fucking teenager.

God, her skin is so soft, and I can’t believe that I forgot that. Annabelle always had the softest skin in the world, and whenever I was touching her, I never wanted to stop. It seems I’ve pushed down a lot of things, trying to forget that I messed up the best thing I ever had in my life. And as successful as I’ve been, nothing is ever going to change that.