Falling For A Cowboy. Karen Rock

couple of the guys guffawed at their long-standing joke with the lone firefighter in their group. Many worked on ranches or in rodeo and gathered at this pool hall most nights.

      From corner-mounted speakers, a George Strait tune blared. Pictures of local and state sports teams covered every inch of the wood-paneled walls, jockeying for space. Jared had signed a few of them, he recalled, eyeing a framed eleven-by-sixteen photo behind the cash register. It featured his senior year, record-breaking catch during a state division championship.

      One thing he liked best about Carbondale, he’d always be its hero.

      “Just finished toasting marshmallows on I-77,” Red drawled, referring to the location of a small wildfire that’d broken out over the weekend. He lifted a finger and waved it in a circle, signaling the waitress for a round of drinks. “What can I get you fellas?”

      “I’ve got this,” Lane insisted. “Plus, it’s my turn to buy.” He turned to Jared, eager to please, a fan of Jared’s since high school. “Another beer?”

      He shook his head, then eyed the striped balls remaining on the pool table. “Heading out to Amberley’s in a minute.”

      Roseanne, the pool hall owner’s daughter and part-time waitress, hustled over. She laid her hand on his arm and peered at him beneath lashes so long he guessed they were either fake or she was an alien.

      “You goin’ to hear Back Country play at The Barnsider next weekend?”

      His lips curved into a smile at the flirty look she shot him. She was short and thin and kind of twitchy, filled with the kind of restlessness that set her earrings swinging. A long sweep of cropped platinum hair fell in her face—pale with clean quick features, eyes covered in a haphazard blue.

      Roseanne no longer interested him, exactly, seeing as how they’d already been out a couple of times and that’d gone nowhere, but he wouldn’t turn his nose up at the attention.

      “Could be.”

      “I might be goin’,” she said, coy.

      “That a fact?” he answered lightly, shooting for a tone that was friendly but not encouraging.

      His brothers, and especially his younger sister, Jewel, teased him mercilessly about his “girl problem,” calling him lady-killer or heartbreaker. But the women, they came to him. He never aimed to hurt anybody. Just wanted to keep things light. Fun. No strings roping down this cowboy. If they got their hearts broke, well, he did feel bad about that, but he’d never done it intentionally. That would have required him to put effort into it, which, like most things in life, he didn’t since everything came kind of easily to him. Sports, friends, ladies’ hearts...

      Roseanne finished taking drink orders, snapped her pad closed and turned to him again. “Wouldya like to go with me? If we get too drunk, we could just crash at my place after.”

      He shot his buddies a quick side eye to stop the guffaws he sensed coming. Roseanne might be misled, but she didn’t need to feel bad for it.

      “Well, now, I appreciate that offer. I do. But I might have already promised to take Amberley, so...”

      “Oh,” Roseanne nodded fast. “Of course. You and Amberley, I mean...”

      She scurried away, her face aflame. He hung his head a moment. Now he did feel bad. Although he and Amberley were just friends, everyone assumed more. Here he’d gone and added fuel to the fire.

      “Thought you two broke up,” Red taunted as the guys exchanged knowing, irritating looks.

      Jared shrugged, then stooped over the pool table. It bugged him that Amberley had been ignoring his recent calls and texts. The word friend didn’t describe how much she meant to him. Family neared the mark, but then that’d make her a sister. Given how pretty he found her when he forgot to think of her as just his bud—well, thinking of her as a sister was every kind of wrong.

      No. Being his best friend made Amberley one of the most important people in his life. Tonight he’d get to the bottom of her freeze-out. Right after he won this pool game.

      His fingers tightened around the stick he now angled over the table. He had two shots, he assessed, doing his level best to tune out his exasperating friends and win the game. Fifty dollars rode on it, but more than that, Jared just plain hated losing, especially to a member of his family’s longtime feuding neighbors, the Lovelands. His opponent, bull rider Maverick Loveland, a middle child out of five brothers like him, and a smug, tight-lipped, mean son of a gun, not like him at all, had stopped by his table and challenged him twenty minutes ago.

      He didn’t care about the money. His thirst to win was rooted in decades of fighting with the ranching family that constantly trespassed on their land for nonexistent water access rights, damming up a river that didn’t belong to them, and all because they blamed his family for stringing up one of their own over a hundred years ago.

      Yet the murdering, kidnapping, jewel-thieving Lovelands started the feud, putting them squarely in the wrong...not that anyone could ever talk any bit of sense into that mulish clan. The Cades and the Lovelands had struck back at each other for so long it’d become a way of life, despite the fleeting truce they’d called last Christmas. For the first time in generations, the Lovelands had attended the Cades’ annual neighborhood party, a surprise move that’d ended about as well as could be expected—with nearly all of them sharing a jail cell overnight for brawling.

      His deputy sheriff brother, Jack, who’d been visiting from Denver, and local sheriff Travis Loveland had agreed to release the disorderly group in the morning if they hadn’t killed each other by then. Somehow, they’d made it through the night without anyone dying. More shocking still, it turned out his brother James’s girlfriend, Sofia, had invited Boyd Loveland to the party because he and his ma wanted to start dating.

      Jared still struggled to believe that.

      And he and his brothers and sister sure as heck wouldn’t permit it. They suspected cash-strapped Boyd, threatened with his ranch’s foreclosure, sought their mother’s money and—of course—those water access rights. Fortunately, Ma came to her senses after the Christmas fiasco and stopped taking calls from Boyd. Still, she swapped too many looks with him at church for his comfort. A plan to rid themselves of Boyd for good was in the works.

      For now, he’d content himself with Maverick.

      He eyed his shot choices again, evaluating the easier target. He hated losing and avoided it at all costs.

      “Heard Amberley dumped him stone cold,” Lane guffawed.

      The eight ball jerked forward and smacked into the lone solid ball left on the table. Loud laughter followed on the heels of a brief stunned silence when it sunk into a pocket.

      Maverick Loveland clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks, dude. Though if you wanted to give me fifty bucks, you could have just handed it over. Saved me some time.” He plucked the cash off the table and ambled away, as sarcastic and conceited as every other rotten Loveland.

      Jared swore under his breath, stung.

      “Sorry, Jared!” Lane jittered around him, shoving his hands in his pockets, then yanking them out again. “That’s on me. If I hadn’t distracted you, you would have won it for sure.”

      The rest of the crew nodded quickly, and Jared relaxed a tad. Lane was right. He hadn’t lost. He’d been sidetracked by thoughts of Amberley.

      Why was she avoiding him these past few weeks?

      He fitted his stick back in the holder. “Loveland got lucky.”

      “Yeah, he did,” Red vowed. He lifted the mug Roseanne offered him and sipped.

      “Exactly,” murmured another friend.

      “Heck, yeah,” said a third.

      The tight group, former high school football teammates who’d won the state division championships together, shared plenty