The Maisey Yates Collection : Cowboy Heroes: Take Me, Cowboy / Hold Me, Cowboy / Seduce Me, Cowboy / Claim Me, Cowboy / The Rancher's Baby. Maisey Yates

      He chuckled and it settled oddly inside her chest, rattling around before skittering down her spine. “Not really all that interested.”

      “You seemed interested to me.”

      “Well,” he said, “I’m not.”

      “That’s inconsistent,” she said.

      “Okay, I’ll bite,” he said, regarding her a little more closely than she would like. “Why are you in the mood to cause death and dismemberment?”

      “Do I seem that feral?”

      “Completely. Why?”

      “The same reason I usually am,” she said.

      “Your brothers.”

      “You’re fast, I like that.”

      Ace returned to their end of the bar and passed two pints toward them. “Do you want to open a tab?”

      “Sure,” she said. “On him.” She gestured to Chase.

      Ace smiled in return. “You look nice tonight, Anna.”

      “I look...the same as I always do,” she said, glancing down at her worn gray T-shirt and no-fuss jeans.

      He winked. “Exactly.”

      She looked up at Chase, who was staring at the bartender, his expression unreadable. Then she looked back at Ace.

      Ace was pretty hot, really. In that bearded, flannel-wearing way. Lumbersexual, or so she had overheard some college girls saying the other night as they giggled over him. Maybe he would want to be her date. Of course, easy compliments and charm aside, he also had his pick of any woman who turned up in his bar. And Anna was never anyone’s pick.

      She let go of her fleeting Ace fantasy pretty quickly.

      Chase grabbed the beer from the counter and handed one to her. She was careful not to let their fingers brush as she took it from him. That type of avoidance was second nature to her. Hazards of spending the years since adolescence feeling electricity when Chase got too close, and pretending she didn’t.

      “We should go back and sit with Sam,” she suggested. “He looks lonely.”

      Chase laughed. “You and I both know he’s no such thing. I think he would rather sit there alone.”

      “Well, if he wants to be alone, then he can stay at home and drink.”

      “He probably would if I didn’t force him to come out. But if I didn’t do that, he would fuse to the furniture and then I would have all of that to deal with.”

      They walked back over to the table, and gradually, her heart rate returned to normal. She was relieved that the initial weirdness she had felt upon his arrival was receding.

      “Hi, Sam,” Chase said, taking his seat beside his brother. Sam grunted in response. “We were just talking about the hazards of you turning into a hermit.”

      “Am I not a convincing hermit already?” he asked. “Do I need to make my disdain for mankind a little less subtle?”

      “That might help,” Chase said.

      “I might just go play a game of darts instead. I’ll catch up with you in a minute.” Sam took a long drink of his beer and stood, leaving the bottle on the table as he made his way over to the dartboard across the bar.

      Silence settled between Chase and herself. Why was this suddenly weird? Why was Anna suddenly conscious of the way his throat moved when he swallowed a sip of beer, of the shift in his forearms as he set the bottle back down on the table? Of just how masculine a sound he made when he cleared his throat?

      She was suddenly even conscious of the way he breathed.

      She leaned back in her chair, lifting her beer to her lips and surveying the scene around them.

      It was Friday night, so most of the town of Copper Ridge, Oregon, was hanging out, drowning the last vestiges of the workweek in booze. It was not the end of the workweek for Anna. Farmers and ranchers didn’t take time off, so neither did she. She had to be on hand to make repairs when necessary, especially right now, since she was just getting her own garage off the ground.

      She’d just recently quit her job at Jake’s in order to open her own shop specializing in heavy equipment, which really was how she found herself in the position she was in right now. Invited to the charity gala thing and embroiled in a bet on whether or not she could get a date.

      “So why exactly do you want to kill your brothers today?” Chase asked, startling her out of her thoughts.

      “Various reasons.” She didn’t know why, but something stopped her from wanting to tell him exactly what was going on. Maybe because it was humiliating. Yes, it was definitely humiliating.

      “Sure. But that’s every day. Why specifically do you want to kill them today?”

      She took a deep breath, keeping her eyes fixed on the fishing boat that was mounted to the wall opposite her, and very determinedly not looking at Chase. “Because. They bet that I couldn’t get a date to this thing I’m invited to and I bet them that I could.” She thought about the woman he’d been talking to a moment ago. A woman so different from herself they might as well be different species. “And right about now I’m afraid they’re right.”

      * * *

      Chase was doing his best to process his best friend’s statement. It was difficult, though. Daniel and Mark had solid asshole tendencies when it came to Anna—that much he knew—but this was pretty low even for them.

      He studied Anna’s profile, her dark hair pulled back into a braid, her gray T-shirt that was streaked with oil. He watched as she raised her bottle of beer to her lips. She had oil on her hands, too. Beneath her fingernails. Anna wasn’t the kind of girl who attracted a lot of male attention. But he kind of figured that was her choice.

      She wasn’t conventionally beautiful. Mostly because of the motor oil. But that didn’t mean that getting a date should be impossible for her.

      “Why don’t you think you can get a date?”

      She snorted, looking over at him, one dark brow raised. “Um.” She waved a hand up and down, indicating her body. “Because of all of this.”

      He took a moment to look at all of that. Really look. Like he was a man and she was a woman. Which they were, but not in a conventional sense. Not to each other. He’d looked at her almost every day for the past fifteen years, so it was difficult to imagine seeing her for the first time. But just then, he tried.

      She had a nice nose. And her lips were full, nicely shaped, her top lip a little fuller than her bottom lip, which was unique and sort of...not sexy, because it was Anna. But interesting.

      “A little elbow grease and that cleans right off,” he said. “Anyway, men are pretty simple.”

      She frowned. “What does that mean?”

      “Exactly what it sounds like. You don’t have to do much to get male attention if you want it. Give a guy what he’s after...”

      “Okay, that’s just insulting. You’re saying that I can get a guy because men just want to get laid? So it doesn’t matter if I’m a wrench-toting troll?”

      “You are not a wrench-toting troll. You’re a wrench-toting woman who could easily bludgeon me to death, and I am aware of that. Which means I need to choose my next words a little more carefully.”

      Those full lips thinned into a dangerous line, her green eyes glittering dangerously. “Why don’t you do that, Chase.”

      He cleared his throat. “I’m just saying, if you want a date, you can get one.”

      “By unzipping my coveralls down to my belly button?”

      He tipped his beer bottle