Rough Country (Tannen Boys 3)

Instead of answering his question, I ask one of my own, going well beyond the standard superficiality of bar room flirtation and straight into date-seven territory, which is usually more than enough to scare off the typical beer drinker looking for a hookup. “What’s your happiest memory?”

“Hmm, deep question. Is this a test?” He spreads his hands out wide on the bar, and I notice just how large they are. They’d seemed almost delicate when he played his guitar, but now I can see the scars and torn cuticles. Working man hands. “So we’re clear, I like it either way.” He waits a beat then clarifies, “Test or not.”

He knows what I’m doing, trying to run him off, but he isn’t swayed in the least. If anything, he seems more intrigued by the too-personal question. Why does that smile of his feel like the sun is shining on me?

“Maybe it’s what I ask everyone who sits at my bar? Something to focus on the good times,” I say coyly, both of us knowing I don’t ask people that. But I asked him.

And not because I’m trying to run him off but because I’m flirting with him.

Me, Willow Parker, a quiet and invisible mouse, flirting with Bobby Tannen, the big, growly lion. Maybe he’ll let you check out his thorn?

My mind is so weird sometimes.

One of his dark eyebrows raises as if he’s reading my mind and agreeing with my assessment of my own oddity. But he answers my original question. “My eighteenth birthday, I was an asshole kid who thought he knew everything. Only one thing in my life kept me from the really stupid shit. Music.” He glances over his shoulder toward the stage and points to his guitar case, sounding a bit wistful as he continues. “My family saved to get me a new guitar. It wasn’t so much the guitar, though. When I opened that wrapping paper and saw Betty, I could feel their support. I still do every time I play.”

“Your parents must be proud of you.”

He shrugs heavily. “They’re both passed now. But I like to think so. Mom’s probably two-stepping around a cloud, pissing off the angels with her loud clapping and whistling.” He smiles like that image speaks to him, but there’s a tinge of sadness to it. He doesn’t mention his father, so neither do I. People are open books about some things and not others, and I learned long ago to be okay with that.

“She sounds like fun,” I tell him.

He lays his hand back on the bar, his pinky finger a bare inch from mine. I’m acutely aware of the small space, wondering if the heat I feel is radiating from him or my insides melting to mush and racing out to my extremities. “What about you? Happiest memory?”

Tit for tat seems fair, I guess, especially since I started this round.

“My first paycheck from photography. Not because I needed the money, though I did splurge on a fancy dinner. No ramen noodles that night. No, this girl got a whole rotisserie chicken,” I joke, remembering how I’d eaten the whole thing with my hands while sitting on the floor because I didn’t have a couch yet. More seriously, I say, “But like you, it was that it symbolized something greater. That my art was worth something, that I was worth something.”

“What was it a picture of?”

I shake my head, feeling ridiculous for getting choked up over something so trivial. “Something stupid. It wasn’t that. It was what it meant to me.”

His eyes narrow, his voice going impossibly deeper. “What was it?” he demands.

I sigh, already knowing I’m going to tell him. “Promise not to make fun of it?” He doesn’t agree, but I say it anyway. “A doughnut. A close-up of a big pink doughnut with multi-colored sprinkles.”

He laughs, a deep, rusty chuckling sound that forces a smile to my face.

“Don’t laugh at me. It was a big deal. That doughnut got me a whole chicken!” And now I can’t help but laugh too. “It had the doughnut shop owner’s wife smiling in the background too, so proud of her doughnut baby.”

“Doughnut. Baby.” He repeats my words, and we both laugh harder, our heads getting closer as we share in the private joke.

The moment freezes, and I suddenly become very aware that he’s moved his pinky finger over mine and our mouths are inches apart. He licks his lips, and I know with every fiber of my being that he’s going to kiss me. I’m waiting, ready, damn near holding my breath in anticipation of tasting him, of being under him if only for a kiss across a sticky bar.

Bar.

Oh! The bar.

And the world outside the bubble I was in with Bobby comes roaring back into focus. I pull back, my hands feeling the instant cold at the loss of contact with him. “Work. I have to . . . work.”