Episode 2: The Ungrateful Rescue

“Come on,” a gruff voice commanded and Jenna was practically dragged across the room.  

Aiden, she realized with sudden inexplicable relief. She hated him for being her rescuer even as she dazedly considered throwing herself into his tree trunk sized arms and begging him to take her home with him.

“Sit,” he nudged her toward the booth.  Jenna merely scowled at him, forcing any gratitude aside. Anger. She needed to be thoroughly pissed at him.

Of course he’d had to rescue her. Dag-gum him. Who asked him for his help, anyway?

Aiden Blackston lowered his considerably impressive body onto the bench opposite the one he’d pointed her to and Jenna contemplated which would be the worse of two evils. Sitting here with him or braving the lively crowd. 

“Dangit,” she muttered and slid into the booth. Resting her head in her hands, she refused to look at him, her anger giving way to humiliation. She hated that she was so controlled by her emotions that she was now forced to sit and share a booth with the very last person she ever wanted to see again.

He had to rescue me, she thought glumly.

He nudged her arm with something cold and Jenna glanced up to find him holding a dark brown bottle toward her. When she merely blinked dumbly at him, he set the bottle in front of her with a heavy thunk and reached for the nearly empty beer mug in front of him.

Blinking him from her vision, she stared at the bottle he’d given her and scowled to hide her relief. A root beer.

“Th…thanks,” she muttered, desperately gripping the bottle and lifting it to her lips. She drank deeply, her eyes darting around the room searching for something…anything to divert her attention from the man sitting across from her.

“Another draft?” Cindy, the tall blond waitress slid two plates of burgers and onion strings onto the table and reached for Aiden’s empty mug.

“I didn’t order this,” Jenna looked from the plate to Cindy, her tastebuds practically salivating at the thought of sinking her teeth into that juicy hunk of beef.

“Jack sent it over,” she grinned and playfully fanned herself. “Your brother the prince.” Still grinning, she turned back to Aiden. “Was that a yes or a no on the refill?”

Aiden shook his head. “No. Thank you.” He slid his water glass closer to his plate and Jenna could feel him avoiding looking at her, too.

Aiden never drank more than one beer, Jenna knew. And she knew why, though she wished she didn’t. She really wished she didn’t know a blessed thing about him, much less his demons. Shaking her head, she refused to think anymore on what she did or didn’t know about Aiden Blackston.

Dangit.

“Eat,” he gruffed and lifted his own burger to his lips for a healthy bite.

Jenna stared mesmerized at him for moment, unwillingly drawn to him. She alternately wanted to kick his shin and snuggle into him. Or maybe just lick the mustard from the corner of his mouth.

“You grip that bottle any harder it’s gonna bust.” He paused, his lips inches from the burger and glanced at the light scar on her chin. “You’ll have to get stitches.”

Mentally slapping herself, Jenna released the bottle, tucked her napkin into the collar of her shirt, assumed the customary elbows-out-face-leaned- in burger eating stance and bit off a big bite of her burger.

As the flavors exploded on her tongue, Jenna’s eyes fluttered shut and she released a lusty moan. Aiden swore under his breath and she snapped her eyes open to find him gulping from his water glass.

Smiling with a small measure of satisfaction, she continued to chew her food and watch him as he stared at the table. Good to know he’s not as immune as he wanted me to believe, she mused.

With the next bite, she purposefully moaned even louder, longer and lustier than before, drawing out the sensual nature of her reaction and even added a little shiver to her act.

“Dammit, Jenna,” Aiden gritted.

Jenna dropped her burger back to her plate and daintily dabbed at her lips. “No good deed goes unpunished, Aiden. You should know that by now.” Ignoring his scowl, she shoved a cluster of onion strings into her mouth, licking the salt from her fingertips.

“Duly noted.” Aiden snatched his burger from his plate and attacked it with a vengeance. He chewed quickly, his gaze darting around the room, looking anywhere but at her.

Jenna took the opportunity to study him while he wasn’t watching her. He needed a haircut. His dark wavy hair spilled messily across his forehead and curled over his collar in the back. Her fingers itched to glide through those dark silky waves. Yep. Definitely needed a haircut. Dag-gum his hide.

Exhaling, she took another swig of her root beer, letting the cool sweet beverage sooth her quickly warming blood.

He looked tired, too, she realized with a frown. Feathery lines framed his eyes and the lines around his mouth were more pronounced. But more than that, she bit her lip thoughtfully, his broad take-on-the-world shoulders seemed ever so slightly—cocking her head to the side, she frowned—definitely slumped, she concluded.

Suppressing the urge to ask him about it, Jenna concentrated on her food, polishing off her burger in five bites. After another deep pull of root beer, she leaned back against the booth and let a quiet belch escape her lips.

Aiden finally turned his attention to her, a small grin lifting the corners of his mouth.

“Glad to finally see the color back in your cheeks,” he saluted her with his water glass. His own burger was gone as well and he went to work on clearing his plate of the onion strings.

Feeling suddenly shy, Jenna removed her napkin from where it had been tucked in her shirt and fumbled with it a bit before steeling her courage. “Thanks,” she nodded toward the crowded room, “for that.”

The crush of cowboys and scantily clad women still occupied nearly every spare inch of open floor space, but sitting in the dim lighting of the back corner booth with him, none of it felt quiet so daunting.

Darn him for knowing her so well.

He said nothing in response, instead shrugging and looking away from her again. She knew she was the very last person he ever wanted to spend another Friday night with. She knew because she felt the exact same way about him.

Episode One

I hate crowds, Jenna Steely silently groused as she pushed her way through the crowded bar room. The Friday night crush of cowboys and their groupies seemed even more oppressive than usual. And Jenna, her near phobia of crowds firmly rooted, found it annoyingly ironic that she’d been born into a family who owned the oldest and most popular bar and grill in the tri-county area.

Jenna’s great-great-great-however many greats-grandfather Joe Steely opened Steely J’s originally as a bar and saloon way back sometime in the 19^th century when West Texas was mostly inhabited by cattle and the few pioneers brave enough to challenge the indigenous population.  Back then it had served whisky and bourbon to outlaws and cowboys. It was her grandfather, Tate, who had opened up the grill back in the 1950’s, serving burgers, ribs and steaks—man food, he’d called it—to the cowboys and lawmen who’d inhabited the area by then.

As the newest generation of owners, a few people called out to Jenna as she made her way through the crowded bar. She’d known most of them all her life. And she would have been more annoyed about having grown up in such a public atmosphere if the dang bar hadn’t paid for her business degree as well as the cherry red Jeep Wrangler parked out front. As it were, the old plank floored bar also kept her in the expensive chocolates she loved. For an attention phobe like Jenna, however, the drawbacks ran about neck in neck with the benefits.

As she neared the bar area, the hair on the back of her neck stood on end and Jenna instinctively glanced to the back corner booth. She knew who’d she’d find there well before her vision landed on one particularly strapping cowboy.

Dang it, she inwardly groaned, quickly averting her gaze. Pushing between two cowboys, she leaned against the bar.

Aiden Blackston.  Figures. The one Friday night she got desperate enough for one of Dewey’s burgers he’d be there in all his swaggering alpha cowboy glory. Son of a…she let the thought trail off with a grimace.

Pulling her shoulders back, she forced herself not to glance back at his table. Instead, she leaned across the heavily scarred bar.

 “Look what the cat dragged in,” her brother, and co-owner of Steely J’s, growled, never lifting his head from the frosty mug he was filling from the tap. “What brings you out from under your rock?”

He slid the frothy beverage across the counter and gave her that toothy grin that had kept her from pummeling him when they were kids. Lifting herself up on her elbows, she leaned across the bar top and noisily kissed his cheek.

“Got hungry,” she admitted and squirmed as a new influx of cowboys crowded her against the bar. She wished suddenly that she’d gone back home when she’d realized that she’d forgotten her keys. She could have avoided this panicky feeling that was suddenly seizing her lungs.

Forcing air into her lungs, she asked, “Dewey not at the grill tonight?” One of the cowboys beside her gave her a salacious wink while another tapped his fingers impatiently on the bar top, presumably awaiting the next frosty mug Jack was filling from the tap.

“Nope,” Jack shook his head and continued to fill and slide mug after mug of beer to any number of cowboys who were there to get their Friday night drunk on. “Had some family business up in Okie. Finn’s on tonight.”

Dewey had been the chief cook at Steely J’s since long before Jenna could remember. Possibly he was a relic left over from when her great great however many great’s grandfather, Joe had first opened the bar sometime back before running water and electricity had been invented. And she loved the old man.

Knowing her penchant for mild panic attacks when faced with a crowd, as well as her habit of forgetting things like keys, the old cook usually left the back entrance unlocked for her to sneak in for a burger or a steak whenever the craving for his cooking kicked in.  When she’d arrived earlier the door had been locked and Jack had just confirmed her grim conclusion.

Unlike Dewey, the other cook, Finn Stewart, hated her. The old codger resented her partial ownership in the bar—working for a woman was not high on his list of favorite past times—and he refused to show her any favoritism. His staunch stance was ‘eat in the bar with the common folk or go hungry.’ She’d have better luck sweet talking a skunk out of spraying her than convincing Finn into fix her a plate in the kitchen. Never mind that she was the owner. The cooks were the boss of a successful grill.

Jack winked knowingly at her. “Want me to get you a go-box?”

The bar area was getting more crowded by the minute and the mild feeling of panic she’d been fighting was quickly turning into her heart pounding out of her chest and her throat closing up. 

This is stupid, she thought and closed her eyes, trying to breathe deeply. She’d been practically raised in this bar. The noise and the crowds—it should all be old hat to her. It was silly to let a little thing like a room full of cowboys and their conquests keep her from enjoying a good meal.

With an audible groan, Jenna turned to face the crowded bar room again.  Purveying the scene in front of her, it seemed as though the crush of people dancing, shooting pool or whatever it was they were doing—had quadrupled in size. Jenna froze, virtually paralyzed at the thought of braving the writhing bodies to find a table or even finding her way to the exit. Forget deep breathing. What she needed was an airlift right out of their before she passed out.

Before she could work herself up into a full on panic attack, a pair of strong hands firmly gripped her shoulders and led her away from the bar.