Herd That (The Valentine Boys 1)

“Nobody is going to be thinking that!” I cursed. “Are you nuts?”

He shrugged. “It’s true, though. I have a reputation, and what if that’s what you’re so afraid of? What if it’s me you don’t want to be associated with, and you’re just trying to be nice?”

I had… nothing to say to that.

How could he think that?

He was delusional.

“Fine,” I said, knowing he’d immediately say no to my unreasonable request. “You can take me out on a date. I want to go to breakfast with Santa at Smokes.”

I’d actually looked into it myself and found the whole damn thing sold out. I was sorely disappointed.

Smokes was a restaurant/smokehouse that you could buy smoked ham, turkeys, bacon, and even gifts since they’d opened their new store right next to their old one. Not to mention they had the best damn fudge this side of Texas.

Ace blinked.

“You want to what?” he asked, his eyebrows raised to his hairline. “That’s for kids!”

I started grinning. “Maybe. But I heard you get to feed turkeys and longhorns.”

He shook his head. “You’re literally the weirdest girl I’ve ever met.”

My brows rose. “Really? I don’t feel like I’m weird.”

He snorted.

“I’m not saying that you’re weird, per se, but you do weird things. I mean, what adult woman would want to go to a breakfast with Santa just because the place she’s going to has longhorns and turkeys you can feed?” he asked.

He did have a point.

“And I’ve literally begged to go out on a date with you. To the movies. To a wine tasting. To dueling pianos.” He shook his head. “You’ve turned me down every which way.”

I had done that.

He’d asked me multiple times, even suggested places he thought would be great to hang out at, going as far as to find places that were even out of town.

Except, those ‘out of town’ places were owned by people that lived in town. People that knew me, and didn’t like me.

I smiled fondly at the man. “I’m not interested in wine. I’m more of a beer girl. And dueling pianos sounds like lots of fun, but I don’t want to go to the vineyard. They’re all stuck up, pretentious assholes.”

He frowned. “They’re not that bad.”

My brows lowered.

“I know you’re not going to believe this, but when I went there after I got home with Desi, I’ve never felt so unwanted. A lot of those people think I’m trash. I do have a reputation, after all.”

His hands tightened on the wheel as he watched me. “Then I would’ve left the moment that I knew. Desi should’ve done that, too. I’ll never go back there.”

I waved the offer away with a sweep of my hand at the empty air.

“One of your friends owns it. I’m not going to ask you to stop going to a friend’s place just because they all looked at me and whispered insults,” I countered.

His hands clenched around the steering wheel.

“They whisper insults?” he asked in an eerily calm voice.

I looked away from him and studied the sky.

He was pissed and pushing his truck likely past what it could handle.

I didn’t point that out, though.

Ace didn’t strike me as not being fully and completely aware of what was going on around him.

I looked away and shrugged. “It’s really nothing new. I did some pretty stupid shit when I was a kid. I deserved half the stuff that was said to me when I was younger. Even some of the stuff that they say to me now.”

He scoffed.

“From what I’ve heard, you weren’t that stupid. You were just being a kid and got caught doing the stupid stuff that most kids get away with. So, you drank underage? What kid didn’t?”

The way he said that so matter of fact had my heart stalling in my chest. He was being serious. He didn’t think I was truly all that bad.

“I put my parents through the wringer,” I admitted. “I was the kid they thought wasn’t going to graduate from high school. When I graduated college, I swear they cried tears of joy at my graduation.”

“I don’t remember your parents much,” he admitted. “Other than the random tidbit about them not belonging here. Or at least your dad anyway.”

I snickered. “Dad hated how they talked about him… which I think played a part in how I acted, too. I disliked how they always looked at him like he was crazy. I mean, a Japanese guy is allowed to be a rancher, too. Sure, he might’ve been awful at almost everything he did, but they didn’t have to talk so poorly about him.”

Ace sighed. “Small towns are worse than big towns,” he admitted. “That’s partially why it took us so long to come back. And when we did come back, why it took us so long to get back into the game again, so to speak.”