Roped In by Crystal Green

Author:Crystal Green
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-09-16T04:00:00+00:00

SHANE SAT AT THE long bar at the Jackrabbit, a place that had been built in the mid-1950s, when an affluent man, Darius Alger, had come through Pine Junction with his wife, Cynthia, and they’d fallen in love with the rustic landscape. To hear the tale, Cynthia had nursed some kind of Hollywood fixation for cowboy movies, and Darius had built her a small-scale town that had been used a couple of times as an actual film set near the silver mine side of Pine Junction.

The Jackrabbit Bar itself was located in this quaint corner, next to the fanciest place in town—the two-level Hacienda Hotel, a home in which Darius and Cynthia had lived at one point. The movie set area also consisted of a dance hall, which was now a small department store, the Grand Hotel—the second-fanciest place in town and the only other lodgings—plus a general store that still sold goods. There was also a fake sheriff’s office, which the town had kept intact, with a stuffed prisoner dummy in a tiny jail cell that kids could look into from the outside. On the weekends, when tourists came through to sample the apple pies and jams that Pine Junction had a reputation for, a caretaker would turn on the recorded snoring noise that the stuffed dummy made.

Here in the Jackrabbit, though, it was all true business, all the time, with distressed wood floorboards, a polished bar and a long gilt-edged, golden-veined mirror behind the bottles that stood ready for the drinking.

Shane was just getting into one of those bottles—whiskey—and he kept it near him as Nicolas the bartender checked in on him.

Shane nodded to the salt-and-pepper-haired, burly man, who also served as bouncer when it was needed. He hated to think of how many times Nicolas had thrown his dad out on his ass when he was alive and ornery.

But, as Nicolas left Shane alone now, he told himself that he hadn’t come here to think about Dad. That’s why he’d gotten away from the ranch tonight, so he wouldn’t remember him and his harsh words and threats every time he looked at his father’s recliner in the family area.

As he took a slug of whiskey—his first of the night and probably his last before he had to go back to the bunkhouse he’d elected to stay in with the ranch employees—something kept biting Shane. His father.

God, he wished he hadn’t gone and blabbed more than he should’ve to Nicki last night.

Why had he felt as if it was okay to do that?

Was it because she’d been familiar with his dad and it hadn’t seemed so unnatural to say something about him to his next door neighbor?

All Shane knew was that, from now on, his personal life should be on one side of the fence and his relations with Nicki on the other. The error wouldn’t happen again.

Next to him, someone took a seat. It was Lemuel Matthews, whom Shane had learned was the Jackrabbit Bar’s most frequent customer.

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