Bliss Brothers: The Complete Series Boxed Set, page 57
“No. Because my father had the most screwed-up will on the planet. It’s only added to my already bizarre job.”
“What’s your bizarre job?”
I take another sip of beer. “Don’t you think we should be on equal footing before I tell you all my secrets?”
“Oh my god. Do you work for the CIA or something?” She looks over her shoulder at the mostly empty booths. “Did you come here because of the will?”
“I came here because of a bunch of papers in a folder. That sounds like I work for the CIA, but I work for the family business.”
“The mob.” Her voice lowers to a definitive whisper.
“The Bliss Brothers Resort & Club,” I whisper back.
Her eyes go wide. “You own a resort?”
“Along with my brothers, yes.”
“Asher Bliss.” She tests the name one more time, and then something flickers through her eyes. Recognition? It’s gone in a blink. “Bliss.”
“See? You know my name.”
She snaps her fingers and points at me, a flush of color coming to her cheeks, and I’d bet all the money in my wallet that this is cosmo number three. “I do know it. But you don’t know mine.”
“I’d like to.” I’d love to.
“That’s the thing. If I tell you, I feel like I’ll also have to tell you why I’m really here tonight.”
Heat sprints down the length of my spine. “You could tell me the secret first and leave it anonymous.”
She pins me to my seat with her gaze. “But I’m feeling—” The sentence is interrupted by a hiccup. “I’m feeling brave.” She takes a deep breath, like she’s a second away from jumping off the high dive. “I’m Everly Carson. And I’m here to find a husband.”
2
Everly
Asher’s eyebrows shoot up at the word husband and an alarm bell goes off in my mind. It sound suspiciously like a muffled version of the one on top of the fire station over on First. It’s the cosmos making that alarm seem far away—more of a dreamy suggestion to put the words back into my own mouth than an urgent warning.
I wasn’t a hundred percent truthful when I said I’d had one and a half drinks. I’ve had one and a half, plus an additional one and a half. And this current one makes three and a quarter.
It’s not like I expect a cosmo in a highball glass to solve my problems, which are patently unsolvable by alcohol. If only I could legally marry citrus vodka.
But all it can do for me now is make this entire situation—Asher, the bar, the fact that I just admitted I need a hasty husband—slightly less mortifying.
It still makes my cheeks burn that I couldn’t find a way around my father’s will, which is apparently ironclad. And not only is it ironclad, the details are incredibly specific. You would not be surprised to find out that those details are making my life…difficult. To say the least.
Asher sits up straight on his barstool and takes a deep breath. Moisture flees the inside of my mouth, leaving a dry, sandy sandy wasteland. I pick up cosmo number four to wet my lips and gulp another quarter of it down in the process.
His gaze travels over the rest of the bar. “You came here to find a husband?”
I crane my neck and take it all in, trying to see it through his eyes. This turns out to be completely unnecessary because even through my eyes it’s clear that the Riverbend is a bust. One couple nestles in the back booth, four bros huddle around a deck of cards and basket of peanuts at the table by the narrow front window, and Lindsey Barnett, one of my sister’s friends from school, stretches her legs out on a bench seat by a round table somewhere in the middle.
That’s it.
If Asher hadn’t walked in…
“The Riverbend has a view of the bay.” I take another swig of my drink. “It seemed like as good a place as any.”
The door of the bar opens, letting in a breeze that smells like fallen leaves with a hint of bonfire. For a second a strange quiet settles over the bar. Heads turn toward the open door, one after the other. I hold my breath.
Greg Owens, the owners and winner of the award for Bartender Who Works The Most Shifts, looks up from where he’s drying glasses with a pristine white cloth. “Can somebody shut that?”
“I’ve got it.”
The voice comes from directly behind me and I startle, my body jerking several inches off the barstool. How did he get back there? Now I can hear every creak of the floor underneath the rubber soles of his boots on the way to the door, but before I must have been so caught up in Asher Bliss’s eyes that I didn’t notice his approach. He must have been tucked in one of the back booths near the dart board. Just outside he threshold he pauses to lift his cattleman hat back onto his head. For a moment, his broad shoulders fill the doorframe, the light from the bar casting him into a shadowy silhouette against the backdrop of the street. Then he turns, the moonlight catching on his face, and pulls the door closed behind him.
Noise rushes back into the Riverbend again, filling the space. Asher turns back around to face me. “Who was that?” He shakes his shoulders and settles back in. “I thought a tumbleweed was going to blow by. That song played in my head.”
“The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.” The flute
“Right.” He considers me. “You don’t know who it is? He has serious lonesome cowboy vibes. And I don’t even know what I’m talking about when it comes to cowboys.”
A pair of fingers walks a chilly path down my spine. The lonesome cowboy walking out of the bar isn’t exactly a stranger, but he’s not exactly relevant to the issue at hand. The cosmos whisper that I should tell him, just give Asher Bliss enough to get his focus back on me, but I don’t want to.
The fact is that Asher looks like a solution to my problem.
Maybe it’s insane, given the thump I felt at the center of my chest when I heard his last name. Curiosity runs its fingernails down my skin, leaving goose bumps in a trail down my arms. It comes in a steady rhythm like waves lapping against the shore of Paulson Bay.
One Bliss, two Bliss…
I don’t know where my brain was going with that.
But Asher came in on a gust of wind that held a hint of summer. I’ve never seen him here before. I’ve never seen him anywhere before. The only thing familiar about him is the depthless blue of his eyes. And if Lonesome Cowboy hadn’t been headed for the door…
No. He has nothing to do with my situation, even if he has something to do with Asher Bliss walking into this bar tonight. He doesn’t matter.
“Are you single?”
Bless you, cosmopolitan martini, for making my mouth work without my permission.
Asher cocks his head to the side. “Are you avoiding my question?”
“My question is more important. My question has a timeline.”
Those blue eyes narrow. “Were you serious before? About losing your house.”
“I was. Yes. I was completely serious, and I was also serious about needing a husband.” I look him up and down. Every feature of his sends a miniature earthquake through the center of my core from the windblown yet somehow perfect fall of his dark hair to the ocean shock of his blue eyes to his cut chin and oh, god, don’t get me started on the way that his shirt stretches almost erotically over his body.
And who shows up at the Riverbend in Paulson if they already lead a rich and full life with a wife and several children? Who comes to Montana from a bayside resort in New York if everything is peachy? If my assessment is correct, then Asher Bliss has some space to fill in his life. I don’t even need much of it. I only need some temporary vows and a license on file at the county building.
Nobody has to know. And even if he has something to with the Lonesome Cowboy Who Shall Not Be Named, what’s that to anyone in Paulson? Nothing. Never the twain shall meet. And even if they shall meet, nobody needs to know about any potential arrangements I might make with a handsome stranger at the Riverbend just in time to avert a family crisis.
“You okay?”
I’ve been lost in thought, is where I’ve been, and I drag my gaze up from the general vicinity of Asher’s abs and back to his eyes. “I’m…” I lift my highball glass to my lips one more time only to discover that I’ve been drinking it without realizing and now it’s empty. “I’m fine. I’m good. But I seriously need to know if you’re single.”
“I am single,” he says solemnly. I believe him.
“Here’s the deal, Asher Bliss.” A nervous numbness wraps itself around my jaw and settles in on my tongue. When I came to the Riverbend two hours ago, I didn’t actually expect to proposition someone in quite this way. I did have a moment where I pictured myself out on the sidewalk at closing time, frantic, asking people to marry me like Donna in the West Wing trying to trade her vote for President. “I like the looks of you.”
The sexiest half-smile I’ve ever witnessed curves the corner of his mouth in a delicious arc. “I like the looks of you, too. That’s why I sat down here.”
“And you could’ve sat pretty much anywhere, so that means something.” I snap my fingers and point at him again, because of course I do. It’s like my brain thinks I can snap away some of the fierce attraction humming at the base of my spine. It does not work. “The bottom line is that I’m in a real…situation.” I clear my throat. “My late father’s will has a wedding clause with a deadline that’s up in two days. If I’m not married, the ranch goes up for auction.”
“A wedding clause,” he echoes, as if saying it more times will make it make sense. “Do you get the proceeds from the auction?”
“Does it sound like I get the proceeds from the auction?” I drop my head into my hands, then pick it back up. Face this head on. “No. The local police department does. And my sister and I are out a place to live.”
“There’s no way around it?”
“Trust me, I’ve checked.” And checked, and checked, and checked. “The deed won’t transfer to me until thirty days after the county clerk’s office receives a copy of my marriage certificate.”
His eyebrows go up again. “Why the thirty days?”
“Because if I file for divorce before then…”
“The deed is off,” he quips.
“You did not just make that joke. This is a serious situation.”
He looks at me, stone-faced. “Sometimes a good pun can alleviate the tension.”
“There are better ways to alleviate tension.”
“I didn’t say it was the best way.” Asher blinks.
“Yeah? What’s the best way?”
“If I say beating around the bush will you murder me in this bar?”
“Oh my god.”
Asher picks up his beer and drains it. “Ask me what you want to ask me, Everly Carson. You’re running out of time.”
3
Asher
Everly bites her lip and I force another breath into my lungs. Tension pulls between us like a rope hitched to my rib cage. The beer cascades over my brain in an alcoholic sheet. Ask me. I don’t know why I want her to ask me. Maybe when the question is out in the open air, we can leave this bizarre moment behind and breathe.
“What would you say to being my husband? My fake husband.” She curls her hand around the empty highball glass with the lime wedge still hanging from the rim.
The oxygen goes out of my chest in a whoosh.
When I walked into this bar, this was the last imaginable scenario. People meet in bars all the time. They take each other home. A tiny percentage of them go on to multiple dates and relationships and marriages. I never thought—I never thought—that this would happen.
Desperation shines in the pink light reflected in Everly’s eyes.
It’s wrong.
It’s wrong to pretend something like this. Certainty circles itself around my spine and hardens into something confident and forthright.
“I don’t know if that’s the best idea.”
She purses her red lips, and I want to trace my thumb over that cherry color more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. “No one would need to know.”
“Some people would know. And isn’t it too late, anyway? There must be a waiting period. For the license.” In New York, it’s…at least a day. Maybe two days. I can’t remember, and pulling out my phone to Google it seems like the wrong move.
“There’s no waiting period here. We’d just have to go to the courthouse tomorrow. License, vows, certificate.” Everly ticks the items off like she’s not talking about a real wedding. Now that we’re here, talking about it, my entire body shies away from the thought of getting married like it’s casual. Not even my brothers are married yet, unless they’ve all done it in secret while I’ve been gone.
And what would my father say?
I have to swallow a laugh, because as much as I try to pretend he’d be disappointed, he’s the one who’s been building secrets for years. I’ve never asked Roman outright if he knows how many outside investments and properties and connections my father has. I’m not sure I know about them all.
It nags at me again—the memory of my dad. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her, he’d said when he’d handed me the folder. The information in the folder itself didn’t give me any insight into what’s out here in Montana. There was no truly detailed information. The most important pieces seemed to be two addresses. One of them is a bank. I’ve looked it up, and the branch is in downtown Paulson. The other is a street address. I still don’t know where it is.
And even though the beer has gone straight to my head, I don’t buy that everything here is what it seems. I don’t buy that Everly didn’t know who the cowboy who came out of nowhere was.
But most of all, I want this too badly.
It’s too easy. It’s too simple. I walked into the bar with a heaviness in my chest that was more than jet lag. How many bars and restaurants and hotels have I walked into alone? How many have I walked into with a woman on my arm who won’t be there by the end of the week? How many times have I sat on a plane in silence because I’ve never felt right about inviting someone to wade knee-deep into my family’s secrets when most of my family doesn’t know about them?
When I looked at Everly sitting on that stool and cursing into her highball glass, my heart made a foolish wish. The universe handed it right back to me like it was teaching me a lesson. You wanted a wife, Bliss? How about the shape of one but not the substance?
“Everly.”
She looks into my eyes, and the dark hope there almost swallows me whole. Of all the bars in Paulson, of all the bars in Montana, of all the bars in the United States, and I had to walk into this one.
“I’m sorry.”
Everly smiles, huge and rueful. “Don’t be sorry. I came here to find a husband, right? If I was serious about the whole thing, I’d have gone to a better bar.”
I fumble blindly in my pocket and come up with a twenty. “I really am sorry.” I thought there was a chance I could go through with a lie this monumental, but there were too many other secrets. I can’t say it out loud. “The idea…”
“Silly.” She looks back down into her highball glass. “Just a silly game at the bar.”
We both know this isn’t true. We both have to know it.
“I’m glad to have met you.” Something wrenches in my chest at the thought of never seeing her again, but how? And why? I’m not staying here for longer than a day or two. You go, you make sure everything’s all right, you come back. Those were the instructions. Those were always the instructions.
For the last few months, I’ve been avoiding the just come back piece.
I can’t avoid it anymore.
It’s late—too late to be dealing with this, and too late to call anyone on the East Coast and explain exactly where I’ve been. I came here because I’m jet-lagged, because it’s morning in Paris, because checking in to the newly renovated Marriott where I booked a room on my personal card seemed unbearable.
I came here because it was the first result when I searched for a bar.
Under no circumstances should I be walking out in the grips of a fake engagement.
I stand up from the barstool.
Everly’s eyes flick upward at the motion. “Bye, Asher.” There’s such a familiarity in her voice that it stops me short.
Almost.
I’m three steps from the door when I hear her footsteps behind me. My body turns against my will, and there she is, one of the napkins from the bar folded in half in her hand. “Listen.” She hesitates, then lets out a big breath and starts again. “Listen, I know—this is crazy, and you have nothing to gain from it, and we don’t know each other. But if you change your mind, call me.”
I shouldn’t take the napkin.
I should hold up my hand and gently decline her number.
I should do what I came here to do, and I should go back to Bliss, where I’m supposed to be.
The napkin feels sturdier in my hand than I thought it would. It’s high quality for a bar napkin. “Goodnight, Everly.”
She doesn’t say anything back.
The rental car’s wheel is slick under my hands. It’s such a new model that it doesn’t have many miles on it, but the way the wheel slips beneath my palms makes the whole business of driving on the open roads under the blue Montana morning feel risky.
Or maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t really slept. The hum of the air conditioner couldn’t soothe my frantic, Everly-drunk brain until the sun was up, and crashing out for a couple of hours doesn’t count. At least, not according to my body and soul.
The address from my father’s folder is programmed into my phone, and the GPS has taken me out of Paulson and out past rolling fields. Ranches. These are the ranches. This is probably where that cowboy was headed when he left the bar last night.
The GPS beeps. “Turn left in four hundred feet,” the woman’s voice says, placid as ever. I can see a driveway up ahead. My heart leaps and stutters and wishes I was on a plane back to New York. What did my father send me to check on here? A ranch? What do I know about ranches?
