Fuck. She was coming his way.
“Nice. Holly made her choice.” Sawyer looked more chipper than he had before. “Now she’s your problem.”
Motherfucker.
“That’s Holly for you.” A cowboy slid into the seat beside him, a Stetson on his head. “She goes for the man who looks like he has a college education every time. It’s why she usually isn’t in real trouble here. I’m going to need a whiskey shot with a beer chaser.”
“See, that I can do.” Sawyer slapped a hand on the bar. “This guy wanted to know how old my Scotch was.”
The cowboy snorted. “Tourist.” He nodded the redhead’s way, and Bishop stared for a minute. He’d already met this guy. “Holly Lang. She moved here a couple of years back. Nice lady, but every now and then her ex-husband really gets to her and she comes to the conclusion that she should have revenge sex. It’s a real bad idea, so we take turns hauling her butt back to Bliss. It was Rye’s turn, but he’s working, so I got called in when Stella saw her buying that new dress. Apparently a woman in a V-neck means business.”
Bishop frowned. Holly seemed to have changed her mind and headed for the ladies’ room. She just turned right on her heels and walked away.
The cowboy next to him sighed. “See. She always changes her mind, but by then she’s got some jerk who doesn’t want to take no for an answer.”
Yep, there were several sets of eyes on her as she walked away.
“You’re the deputy’s twin.” They were really identical, but this guy had a deep frown where Rye Harper had been fairly sunny.
“Max Harper. I run the Harper Stables on the other side of town,” the cowboy offered. “And you’re?”
“Henry Flanders. I’m a professor of history. Just here on vacation.”
Max nodded his way and then shot the whiskey Sawyer put in front of him down in one quick swallow. “That’s got some bite. Where the hell did your granddaddy find that? I think that might strip my insides clean.”
“Hey, be grateful,” Sawyer shot back, handing him a beer. “Granddad likely would have given you Mel’s shit. He and Mel went to a sweat lodge and Mel convinced him to buy a case of his tonic. God, the thought of sitting in that fucking thing with twelve naked dudes in the heat does nothing for me. If they want me to get all spiritual and shit, they should put a couple of ladies inside.”
“Damn it. Here comes more trouble.” Max rolled his eyes. “I don’t know that girl, but she’s going to cause a ruckus.”
A semi had pulled up in the parking lot, and a blonde woman jumped out. She turned, and though Bishop couldn’t hear her, he was pretty sure that everything coming out of the blonde’s mouth was curses. She had a backpack in her hand and as she walked away, she flipped the trucker the finger.
Sawyer grimaced. “I don’t need this. Where’s the gun? I’m just going to shoot myself and get it over with.”
“Hi.” Holly was back, and she slid into the chair beside him. “Look, I’m going to admit something horrifically embarrassing to you. I was totally going to come over here and try to pick you up, but then I realized that I would just be having sex with you because my ex-husband is an asshole and that’s really no reason to potentially risk a venereal disease.” She flushed. “Not that I think you have one. I kind of picked you because you looked perfectly disease-free.”
The door slammed open and blondie walked in. She was wearing jeans and a sweater but no coat. And she had on some seriously high heels. She’d also been crying. Like Holly. He was surrounded by emotional females.
“No need to give him the whole story, darlin’. You don’t have to hit on tourists. Your escort is here.” Max Harper nodded Holly’s way. “Just let me finish my beer, and I’ll get you back into town.”
Holly sighed, a look of deep relief covering her face. “Oh, Max, thanks so much. You know it’s really nice that whenever I do something dumb there’s always someone around to help me out. This really is the best town ever. My ex thought it would be a punishment, but I’m good here.”
The blonde sat down at the bar, a devastated look on her face.
Holly’s eyes widened as she looked toward the newcomer. “Do you need a phone, hon?”
The woman turned, frowning. “I don’t have anyone to call.”
“Hey, I want to talk to you.” One of the muscle-bound idiots who had been stalking Holly had a hand on her arm, turning her to face him.
“What?” Holly asked, her eyes flaring with a proper amount of fear.
Max grinned, looking at the redhead and the asshole. “Thank god. I need a good fight. Stef’s been twelve kinds of mopey lately. He won’t even punch me. Artists. I don’t understand them.”
“Are you kidding me?” Sawyer’s hand slapped on the table as the door opened again. “What the fuck is going on?”
And Bishop felt a bit of righteous indignation course through his veins. Nell walked in, pretty as she pleased, with her two puppy dogs trailing behind her. Seth Stark looked around the bar, taking it in as though it was all just an experience and not the site of his potential murder.
Logan just looked scared shitless. He had a Superman T-shirt on, his hands in his pockets.
But Nell walked in like she owned the place. “Sawyer, it’s so nice to see you. This is a lovely establishment you have here.”
Sawyer frowned, his eyes moving around the room as though assessing all the ways his day was about to go to shit. “No it’s not. It’s a dive bar and a nest of criminal activity, so you should leave and take the underagers with you.”
“Uhm, you should really take your hand off my arm,” Holly said politely to the brutish man whose tattoos just might be a roadmap of all his murders. “I’m just about to go home. I don’t have time for a dance.”
“I do,” Max Harper said, putting his hat on the bar. He had a wide grin on his face as he rolled up the sleeves to his Western shirt.
“You were teasing me.” The muscular asshole didn’t look at Max. His eyes were on Holly. “I saw the way you looked at me.”
“Harper, don’t break shit,” Sawyer said before swinging back to Nell.
“I wasn’t looking at you,” Holly argued. “Not any more than I look at anyone. If you come into my field of vision, I will be forced to look at you, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
“You were looking at me like a woman looks at a man she wants to screw hard,” Holly’s assailant said.
“I think she was looking at me that way, too.” A second potential mass murderer stepped up.
“Oh, no, I wasn’t looking at anyone that way,” Holly insisted. “If I was looking at anyone, it was this guy, and I wasn’t thinking about anything like screwing him in a hard fashion. I thought maybe we would start with a little foot massage.”
He was going to have to kill someone and then Nell would get all pissy about nonviolence and she would probably give him a long lecture on why it was wrong to shove a barstool up someone’s rectum.
Bishop took a sip of his horrifying vodka. He didn’t need a lecture from her. And he didn’t need to shove a piece of furniture up some criminal’s asshole. Now, hers, yeah that he could do that, although he wouldn’t shove. No way. He would be smooth and slow. He would take his time getting that perky, tight asshole ready to take his dick. She would fight him at first, the muscles clenching to keep him out, but he would have his way. Sooner or later, his cock would slide in and then she would fight to keep him inside. That was what he needed.
“Are you going to help me with this, professor?” Max’s bark brought him out of his lovely daydream. No one seemed content to leave him be in this place. First, the kids broke up what should have been a nice long fuck, and now the violence was pulling him from thinking about a nice long fuck. The whole town of Bliss seemed intent on cockblocking him.