Dirt: A Sexy Small Town Romance (Copperwood Book 1) (3 page)

I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to push away the traitorous thoughts assaulting my brain. Alene was Shane’s ex. If he hooked up with anyone while he was back in town, it would be her. It wasn’t like she got ugly as she got older. A bit more fake looking, but even I had to grudgingly admit most men found her attractive.

Shit, what did I care? It wasn’t as though Shane was going to stick around. The only thing his presence in Copperwood meant was I was going to get hurt and Mike was going to have to suffer through a few chick movies until I got over Shane. Again.

“Another one, Mya.” A patron at the end of the bar waved for my attention, pulling me away from a conversation I wanted to hear, but didn’t really need to.

By the time I finally made it back to them, Alene finally made her grand entrance and had joined them. Of course she had. Alene deemed Pick’s to be worthy of her presence and Shane was the center of the imaginary court she held. She clung onto Shane’s shoulder, as if nothing had changed in ten years. I wished I hadn’t even thought about Shane and Alene hooking up. I didn’t want Shane Crawford sleeping with Alene. I didn’t want him sleeping with anyone, but Alene was so much worse.

Damnit, I didn’t have the right to be jealous. Besides, Shane was leaving town.

Shane’s arm rested loosely over her shoulders and from the way his mouth hovered close to her ear while he talked, he didn’t seem to mind her attentions.

I shoved my fantasies aside. Shane didn’t want me in high school, he wanted girls like Alene, and it looked like he still wanted the girls like Alene. They spent too much money on clothes and make up. They spent money on getting their nails done and dying their hair. And they looked at it all as an investment with the dividend being a husband. Hopefully, one who
didn’t
work at Mega–Mart

Mike caught my attention and offered a smile before mouthing the word ‘sorry’. I didn’t hate Mike as much as I did when he ordered a beer for Shane.

4

Shane

M
ya Sidony hadn’t changed at all. The tall lanky teenager grew into a tall lean woman, with just a hint of curves. She played sports in high school. Primarily because the volleyball and basketball coaches couldn’t imagine not having a girl almost over five foot eight on their team. As usual, she wore her brown hair pulled back and dressed in a casual manner hinting at the part of her personality that never minded what people thought.

It was a welcome change from the women I normally saw in the city and the pale imitations of the women in the city flocking around the inside of the bar.

I don’t think I ever remembered Mya wearing her hair down. I imagined it though. More times than I cared to admit. I imagined her straddling me, bent over my chest and hair brushing against my skin. I imagined the softness of the silky strands as I combed my fingers through them. I imagined it fanned across my pillows as I laid on top of her while we made love.

We never fucked in my imagination. We only made love. A woman like Mya didn’t fuck and didn’t let men fuck her. At least I wanted to believe as much.

I finally pushed Alene away from me. She had been rubbing against me since she walked in and spotted me talking with Mike. I guessed she wanted to relive our youth, but it wasn’t very good then and from the way she pressed up against me, I didn’t think it was going to be very good now.

She pouted and did an impersonation of a little she perfected when she turned thirteen and discovered boys would buy her things if she gave them something they valued. In Alene’s case, the boys valued kisses and eventually sex. Hell, I succumbed to her obvious ploys, but I was a teenager back then. I didn’t know any better and the brain in my head wasn’t leading most of my decisions.

“Her mom died of cancer a few years back.”

Mike must have caught me looking at her. “I heard.”

“A few months after her dad got laid off from the mine.”

That I
didn’t
hear. I knew that when the original owners sold the mine to the corporation, the new owners laid off a bunch of miners to bring in cheaper labor. Less experienced labor, but it cost them less to get the copper and they could make a bigger profit. I just figured my dad would make sure they took care of Mya’s dad. I was wrong. And it wasn’t the first time I was wrong when it came to my father.

I grabbed for the bottle of beer.

I shouldn’t have let the dirt settle. I shouldn’t have let it get buried. I shouldn’t have fallen back on the training of my job. I found everything I could about men and women who weren’t very good men and women and made sure it stayed buried. I was good at it, and it had the added bonus of paying well.

I suppose I never thought about the ramifications of my father’s dirt. I never really wanted to if I was completely honest with myself. It wasn’t ever something I bothered to examine too closely, lest I learn more than I really wanted to know.

The corner of the label on the bottle rubbed against my thumb and I pressed down, peeling the paper from the cool glass in small strips.

I needed to ask the question. “How’s she doing?”

I didn’t want to hear the answer. Not really.

“As well as anyone else here. Maybe better somedays and worse on others.”

“I’m sorry”

“What for? Getting out?” Mike took a swig of beer from his bottle. “Nothing to be sorry about, man. You did what we all wanted to do.”

We both stared at the top of the scarred bar. I hadn’t seen Mike since I drove out of Copperwood ten years ago. I hadn’t even bothered to talk to him much after I graduated college. We didn’t send each other yearly Christmas cards. We didn’t bother to call one another on our birthdays. Hell, we didn’t even email one another. And since I stayed off of social networking sites, it wasn’t like we kept in touch that way.

Sometimes silence was better than insincere noise.

I got out. And despite all of that, I came back. Not voluntarily, but I was back in Copperwood. I was also leaving in two days. Forty–eight hours couldn’t come soon enough.

I looked up and caught Mya looking at me. I couldn’t help myself. I smiled at her. When she looked away from me, I closed my eyes and cemented the image into my mind. It would have to feed my imagination once I left. The memory of her image would be the only thing I would be able to take away with me.

5

Mya

W
hy the hell was Shane Crawford smiling at me like that? I hadn’t seen him smile like that since we were back in school, and even then the smile was never meant for me. It was almost always meant for one of the bleached blonde cheerleaders bouncing with bodies that moved in what I assumed were delightful ways to men.

Although, in all fairness to Shane, I hadn’t seen him since he graduated high school so maybe he had changed the meaning of his smiles and this was the one he gave everyone.

Why the hell was I analyzing Shane’s smiles?

I slammed the rag I used to clean off the bar top into the dirty sink and ran another length of the bar. Our tip basket filled up through the night. Slowly, but one of us would have to count out the basket to change out the singles for the larger bills in the till before we shouted out last call.

“Can you believe Shane Crawford actually came home?” Alene leaned over the bar top. The movement intended to tease any male gaze with the obvious charms of her well–endowed cleavage.

God, I hoped she didn’t realize she was doing it.

“His dad died. I would find it harder to believe if he didn’t come home.” I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for her to order a fruity drink. “What do you want?”

At least she wasn’t standing right next to Shane anymore. Not that I cared though.

“Hula Dancer.”

Alene didn’t blink an eye. She’d been looking at Pinterest again. I could almost guarantee Jack didn’t stock half of the ingredients. I felt my eyebrows lift up while I looked at her. “What’s in it?”

Alene pulled out her cell phone and showed me the screen. Jesus, she’d bedazzled the pink cover. I scanned the recipe and worked very hard not to roll my eyes. Pick’s shelves didn’t have half the booze needed to make the drink. I handed the phone back to her. “I don’t think we have any of those.”

“None?” She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and pushed her massive rack out. As if that would miraculously change the bar’s inventory and her drink would magically appear in front of her.

“I guess I could give you a lemonade with a shot of grenadine?” I walked away from her before she could ask for another weird creation. It wasn’t as though she ever left us a decent tip, or any tip. Kirstin slid into the spot I left and handed her a beer. Kirstin didn’t like Alene any more than I did, but Kirstin didn’t have years of history and didn’t take shit from anyone.

“Mya?” Shane waved his bottle of beer at me.

I hoped maybe to avoid him for the rest of the night, but Shane calling me over dashed that particular hope.

I took a breath and walked over to him. Between Alene and her fruity cocktails and the forever out of reach Shane, I supposed Shane was the lesser of the two evils. But it was a close race. At least they weren’t standing next to one another. Not that I cared though. Much.

If I kept telling myself that, maybe I’d believe it in a few hundred years.

I set a beer down in front of him and turned to move on to the next customer, but Shane grabbed my wrist. His hand burned against my skin and the heat shot directly to my lower stomach. Nothing had changed. I thought maybe the decade he’d been gone would have been long enough to get over my addiction to him, but just as my hope to avoid him for the night failed to reach fruition, so did my want to be over Shane Crawford.

“Maybe we could get together sometime before I leave?”

Gods, his voice was still the same rich tone, but it aged nicely. Once again, my fantasies pushed me into a realm I didn’t want to venture into but couldn’t stay out of. I was doomed. Even as I spoke the words, I regretted them.

“Sure. My number hasn’t changed.” He could probably see the reluctance on my face. I didn’t bother to hide it, but he didn’t say anything, so maybe he didn’t notice it. If anything, his grin shifted into the self–satisfied smirk of the cat who got the canary. I wasn’t about ready to be a canary. Not this time.

His thumb brushed against the inside of my wrist and I felt the charge of his skin against mine everywhere. Nope, definitely not going to be the canary.

I started at his lips. Reality couldn’t compete with my memories. He still had all of his boyish charm he used to get out of trouble when he was younger, but it was different somehow. Like his voice. Yep, the boy was definitely gone and a man had taken his place.

I pulled my hand away and his fingers brushed along mine, tickling the inside of my palm. I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it. He never did. All the touching and looks never crossed over the line of friendship. Even when I tried to send cues that I wanted more from him.

The night couldn’t end soon enough for me. For most of the night, I moved behind the bar, sneaking glances at Shane whenever I was certain he wasn’t looking at me. The bar was busy enough to keep me from hovering too close to Shane’s radius so my sneaking glances grew further and further apart.

By the time I shouted out the words ‘Last Call!’ and started the excruciatingly slow process of clearing out the bar, I looked around, expecting Shane to still be sitting next to Mike, but instead Alene had taken over Shane’s stool.

I wondered when Shane left and why he didn’t bother saying goodbye. Not that I cared he didn’t say goodbye. At least he wasn’t around for Alene to hang off of.

I cleaned the bar surface, swept up my tips, and tossed the empties into the cartons to give back to the distributor. A crumbled napkin sat in the rail where Shane had been sitting, and when I picked it up it made an unexpected noise. When I opened it up, expecting to find a piece of paper with a phone number on it, I instead found a surprise.

A hundred dollar bill.

What the hell? I wasn’t a charity case. I fisted my hand around the bill and spun around to face Mike. “Where’d he go?”

“Who?” Mike grinned at me. He knew exactly who I was talking about. Hell, he probably knew exactly why I wanted to know where he was so badly.

I fisted my hands on my hips and leaned forward. Narrowing my eyes at him, I tried to use a glare that had worked occasionally in the past with him.

Mike raised his hands up in mock surrender. He knew I’d never actually threaten him with more than cutting him off, and even that wasn’t likely to be followed through. “I don’t know, Mya, really. He just said he’d catch up with me tomorrow sometime.”

Alene stared at me with her beady little eyes. She’d never had reason to be jealous of me and Mike, but I had a feeling she wasn’t too happy Shane was paying attention to me when she wanted all of his favors. I had flashbacks of high school and the shunning from Alene and her friends in the cafeteria when Shane insisted I sit with them.

“Fine.” I spun away from them, shoving the bill into my pocket. I’d just give it back to him. He’d either be staying at his dad’s house or the one motel in town, it shouldn’t be too hard to find him. I hoped.

6

Mya

T
he bed, which I had slept in for over fifteen years, decided, on that very night, to become the lumpiest, softest, most uncomfortable bed ever.

Yes, it was definitely the bed’s fault.

And Shane Crawford’s fault.

And Alene’s fault, but I could blame most of my troubles on her without trying too hard. Alene was a very culpable person.

I finally gave up when the digital clock on my bedside flashed over to 4:17 a.m. The a.m. mocked my inability to sleep and even when I told myself not to stare at the clock, I couldn’t help but do just that. I tried every trick for getting to sleep, and since none seemed to work, I rolled out of bed.