Pete stepped in, not the least bit bothered by my sudden inability to define whatever was between us. “I’m Emma’s friend.” The men shook hands.
“Nice to meet you, Pete.”
“Likewise,” he said.
Jack turned his warm brown eyes my way again, his grin getting wider. “You still in Round Rock?”
I nodded. “I moved back after college.”
“I’ll be out visiting my mama and daddy next week. We need to catch up. It’s been way too long.”
We exchanged numbers — neither of us had owned cell phones in high school — as we chatted a bit more. He hadn’t been back to Round Rock in months. I shared some news with him, but there wasn’t much to tell. It was a quiet town that didn’t change much, which was just how I liked it.
“Listen, I have to meet up with a few friends,” Jack said, running a hand over his close-cropped hair. “But I’ll definitely give you a call next week so we can get together.”
“Sounds good,” I said, and lifted up onto my tiptoes to give him another hug. He said goodbye to Pete and Kasey before crossing over to join a table of guys already drinking and getting loud.
“Do you want a drink, Emma?” Pete asked me.
“Yeah, a beer sounds great,” I said.
“You got it.” He moved through the crowd towards the bar.
Kasey took my hands, jumping up and down on the balls of her feet the way she did whenever she was excited about something. “Oh. My. God. Pete is gorgeous, Em!” She squeezed my fingers, and I couldn’t help but smile, too.
“He is pretty to look at, isn’t he?” I laughed, and so did she. “But he’s so nice, too. I’ve never met a sweeter man.”
“I thought for sure he’d be dull,” she said. “What with running a farm and spending all day around animals? But he’s really funny! You got yourself a good one.”
Not that I’d thought she wouldn’t take to him immediately — Pete just had one of those sunny personalities, same as Kasey did — but hearing how much my sister already liked the man I’d been spending most of my time with over the last several weeks calmed the nerves I hadn’t even noticed were churning in my stomach. That was at least one down. The last hurdle was Daddy, but I wasn’t quite ready to introduce him to Pete just yet.
“I’m so happy for you, Em,” she said. “I have to get back to my tables or my boss will throw a fit.”
She smiled because we both knew she could pretty much do whatever she wanted around here and get away with it. Her boss loved her. Literally. Daddy had threatened more than once to come down here and show the man the rough end of his fist. Kasey only rolled her eyes and laughed, telling us how harmless the man was, even if he was most of the way through his fifties with grown children older than I was. I didn’t doubt that she could take care of herself. Neither did Daddy, which was why he’d only threatened to tan the man’s hide and hadn’t actually done it.
I gave her another hug and watched her walk off, getting stuck in a con
versation with another male customer before she could even get to the other side of the room. I turned to watch Pete at the bar, waiting on our drinks. Kasey was right. I’d found a good one.
Chapter Twenty-One
Pete
Saturday
I handed a glass of beer to Emma and led her over to the bar where two stools had just opened up. We sat down and clinked our glasses together.
“Here’s to a damned fine rodeo,” I said, and we drank to that. I was riding a serious high. We’d sold both Tucker and Max today, which had earned me several thousand dollars more than I’d paid for them. And, Lacey’d won her division in the barrel races, earning herself a tidy sum. Not to mention I was out on Saturday night with the most beautiful woman in this town, or any other.
“Tell me about Jack?” I asked.
She looked at me, searching my face, maybe to see if I was jealous. I wasn’t. The way he’d come up and hugged both Emma and her sister made it pretty clear to me they were old friends. But I wanted to know as much as I could about this girl, who was still mostly a mystery to me, even with the door of that safe opening a little more every day.
She set her beer down, flipping her thick ponytail over her shoulder as she answered me. We’d run by the hotel for showers and a change of clothes before heading out for the evening. She’d traded her jeans and button up shirt for a pair of sandals and a dark blue dress made of some silky fabric I couldn’t stop running my fingers over. She’d had to slap my hands off her leg three or four times on the drive over.
“Jack and I went to school together. We’ve been friends about as long as you and Lacey. Anytime you saw me, you saw him right after. Daddy used to call Jack my shadow.” She laughed, her eyes taking on that faraway shine the way they did whenever she was remembering something nice.
“But we went off to different colleges after graduation. He was all the way in Dallas, and I was here in Austin. We were never home on the same weekends, and we just lost touch.” She shrugged. “I can’t believe we ran into each other here, in Kasey’s bar of all places.”