Last Surrender

Chapter 2-1

Two

“All right, kiddies,” Henry quipped as he pulled up in front of the Hotel Sidney bar. “Don’t have too much fun. And if you want to head home before Aaron gets off work, Linds and I will be in town until ten or so.”

“I’m not going to call and interrupt your date, Hen,” Jeremiah said.

The older man ignored that. “Lindsay gave you our cell numbers, right, Heather?”

Heather checked her phone and nodded. “Yep.”

“We gotta get you a cell phone for nights like this,” Henry said, meeting Jeremiah’s gaze in the rearview mirror.

“This is the first time in eleven years that I might need a cell phone,” Jeremiah retorted. He rocked forward to press a kiss to Lindsay’s cheek. “Thanks for dragging us into town. Have fun on your date.”

“You know we will,” Henry’s beautiful redheaded wife replied with a devious gleam in her eyes. It disappeared when she rotated in her seat, replaced by a gentle smile. “But seriously, call if you need to.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He slipped out of the back seat of Henry’s quad-cab truck and jogged around to open the door for Heather. They stood on the sidewalk and waited until Henry drove off before turning and heading into the crowded bar. At least two dozen men swiveled on their barstools or in their chairs to watch Heather saunter to an empty high-top table against the far wall. Jeremiah rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t blame them. She’d gone home to change while he’d made arrangements with Henry and Aaron for their rides to and from town, and his jaw had nearly hit the floor when she’d stepped out onto her deck. In boot-cut jeans that hugged her shapely backside, hips, and thighs and a faux-leather halter top with a cutout that showed a hint of cleavage, she was devastatingly sexy… and by the confident set of her shoulders that was exactly what she’d intended. Her long, rich dark hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, and she’d added a hint of dark eye shadow that made the fire in her blue eyes blaze.

God help any man dumb enough to get in her way tonight.

Beside her, Jeremiah was invisible in his best jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Only a couple men spared him more than a fleeting glance. Not that he was surprised. He was only an inch taller than Heather, and despite eleven years of hard labor on the ranch, he had nothing on the bulkier men here—hardly competition to most of those ogling his companion.

They’d barely claimed their stools when a particularly brave man ambled over and leaned on the table between them with his back rudely to Jeremiah.

“You’re going to give this whole place heat stroke, woman,” the man said. “Let me buy you a drink to cool you off.”

Heather laughed. “Wow, that was cheesy. Sorry, pal. I’m not interested in anything you have to offer. So, if you’d be so kind as to piss off….”

“You’ve got a smart mouth. You might want to shut it before it gets your friend here in trouble.”

“You come on to her uninvited, and she has the smart mouth?” Jeremiah snorted. “Congratulations, dude. You are the jackass who gives the rest of us a bad name. I’d, uh, give you a prize, but I’m all out of Dickhead of the Week badges.”

The man whirled around to face him. “You want to start something? Is that it, little man?”

“I don’t… but she might. And if you’re dumb enough to take her up on it, you’ll find out quick that the phrase ‘hits like a girl’ ain’t an insult.”

The man glanced between them, then stalked away, muttering under his breath. Jeremiah bristled when the word b***h drifted back to him. He turned to Heather to apologize, but laughter danced in her eyes.

“Yeah, no s**t!” she called after the man.

Without turning around, he flipped her off.

She laughed. “That was fun.”

Jeremiah let out a breath. “It kinda was. But I’m beginning to question the wisdom of inviting you out for drinks tonight. I’d rather not get into a fist fight, thank you.”

“Oh, come on. I know Henry taught you how to brawl properly. And I hear he was one of the best in his day.”

“I can hold my own, but that doesn’t mean I want to have to tonight. We’re supposed to be celebrating, remember?”

“Or commiserating.”

One of the waitresses came over to take their order, and while she was listing out the finger foods on special tonight, Jeremiah studied Heather. Earlier, when she’d stopped to see if he needed help, he’d thought she looked… troubled. With that and the aggression simmering just beneath the surface, she struck him as a woman fighting an internal battle. Since she’d made no mention of her boyfriend, he had a pretty good idea what it might be.

“You all right?” he asked when the waitress left to get their drinks.

“Not really.”

She didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t press her. The waitress returned with their drinks, and after Heather had drained half her strawberry daiquiri, she sat back and offered him a smile.

“You haven’t asked what my boyfriend will think of me going out with you,” she said.

“Last time I checked, you didn’t need anyone’s permission to go out with a friend. And anyhow, I get the feeling he isn’t in the picture anymore.”

“Is that what this is? Just two friends out for drinks?”

He held her gaze for a moment, but then he had to look away. He took a sip of his rum and coke but almost choked on it; a lump had formed in his throat, and his heart raced erratically. He’d been waiting for this moment a long time. She hadn’t confirmed that she was single, but a woman still happily in a committed relationship didn’t go drinking with another man dressed like that with a look in her eyes like she wanted to make every man pay for what one had done to her. He opened his mouth to explain, then snapped it closed again.

Just go for it.

He dared to meet her eyes, and the brief flicker of vulnerability he saw in them gave him the courage to say what he needed to.

“If you really did break up with your boyfriend, I’m interested in applying for his position in your life—have been for a long time—but I’m not going to apply for it tonight. So yes, this is just two friends celebrating a birthday and the anniversary of an event that knocked a life onto the right track.”

She studied him for a long time with her eyes narrowed, but the fact that she didn’t immediately reject the idea of a possible future for them was encouraging.

Then, to his surprise, she raised her glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

“Just… do me a favor?”

“Okay. What?”

“Try not to get me killed or thrown in jail tonight. I get that you’re pissed at men right now, but I’d rather not take the direct or indirect brunt of it. I have a full schedule tomorrow, and I don’t think the Hammonds would appreciate me taking tomorrow off after I already took half of today off.”

She nodded and toyed with her straw for a moment before taking a sip of her daiquiri. “Fair enough. I’d hate to be the reason you landed back in jail. What was it like?”

“Prison? I hated it. Concrete and cinderblock and steel, rigid schedules and routines, no privacy, no individuality, no sky….” He shuddered as the memories slunk out of the far reaches of his mind he’d banished them to. “I would honestly rather die than go back. It’s five years of my life I’ll never get back—five years I can’t think about without my skin crawling.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

“Okay. I promise I won’t do anything tonight that’ll get you sent back.” Then she laughed. “We do make a pretty good team, though.”

Quietly and methodically, Jeremiah locked those memories away again and chuckled. “We do, don’t we.”

“What made you think I can fight?”

“It’s no secret that your dad is a Golden Gloves boxer.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he taught me.”

“Didn’t he?”

“No.”

He opened his mouth to apologize, but she smiled, a silent statement that no apology was needed. Frowning, he sipped his rum and coke and waited, sensing that an explanation was forthcoming. He couldn’t begin to clarify why he thought she knew how to fight; it was something he knew instinctively. She was too confident in her movements, and even face to face with a cringe-worthy display of macho bravado, she’d been entirely fearless.

“My father didn’t—still doesn’t—think girls need or should learn how to fight. But I taught myself anyhow with some help from my brother Curtis. It’s come in handy a time or two.”

“Might’ve come in handy tonight, too.”

She shrugged. “Sorry about that. You’re right. I’m in the mood for a brawl, and I shouldn’t even be pissed at men right now. I’m not, really. Mostly, I’m pissed at myself.”

“Why?”

“Because I broke up with a great guy. A perfect guy.”

Jeremiah lowered his gaze to his nearly-full drink. What could he say to that? He was here as her friend, but dammit, he’d watched her date and love other men for so long that the last thing he wanted to hear about was how perfect her ex was. Because he’d met Dustin once or twice, and the guy was perfect, and if he wanted to fight to get Heather back, Jeremiah had no hope of competing for her affection.

“Doesn’t matter how perfect he is if he isn’t right for you,” he heard himself say.

“Try telling that to my parents. They were hoping he’d be the one to finally make me settle down.”

“Make you settle down?” Jeremiah shook his head, struck by the words she’d used and the hint of despair that edged the anger out of her voice when she said it. He wanted to explore the emotion behind it, but something in her demeanor stopped him, giving a clear impression that it was an off-limits topic. “Out of curiosity, if Dustin was so perfect, why wasn’t he right for you?”

“Because I’m not.”

He blinked at her. Surely she wasn’t insinuating she wasn’t good enough for her ex. “Not what?”

“Perfect.”

She’d said it so quietly that the din of the bar almost buried it.

He leaned back, stunned by the undisguised vulnerability etched into her face. “What does that matter?”

Her search for the right words played out across her face, but in the end, she couldn’t find them and only shook her head. It might be a breach of etiquette, but he stood and walked around the table and held his arms out to her. She surprised him again when she didn’t hesitate to slip into them. When she dropped her head onto his shoulder, he couldn’t be sure which of them was more distraught—he’d never seen her like this, and he didn’t like it. She was always so sure of herself.

But no one could be strong all the time.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “That your family doesn’t support your decision and that you aren’t sure you made the right one.”

She didn’t respond immediately, and when she did, her words shocked him again.

“But I did make the right one,” she murmured. “Even if I didn’t want to admit it until just now.”

The last she’d said in barely more than a whisper, and he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to have heard it. If she’d had more than half a strawberry daiquiri, he might’ve thought it was the alcohol talking. Since he wasn’t sure how to respond, he didn’t say anything, and sooner than he was ready, the moment passed, and she slipped out of his arms and returned to her seat. She flagged the waitress down and asked for a shot of Captain Morgan. As soon as she had it in her hand, she tipped her head back and gulped the shot, twitching her fingers at the waitress to request another.

For the next hour, Jeremiah nursed his rum and Coke. As appealing as a nice buzz sounded tonight, his reason for drinking in the first place had long since faded into the background of his thoughts. He wanted to keep his conversation with Heather on less volatile subjects, and to do that, he needed a clear head.