Chapter One

“Tell me again why we’re going out into the middle of nowhere for a bonfire? That’s like holding up a sign begging some ax murder to come along and mass murder us.”

Jules Rodriguez kept her eyes on the road—sad excuse that it was. Her truck rocked and shuddered as she muscled down the deep ruts. “We’re not going to get mass murdered.” Though her best friend, Aubry, had a point about it being in the middle of nowhere. They’d been working their way off the main road for almost twenty minutes, and there wasn’t so much as a taillight in sight. She pushed down the knot of anxiety for the seventeen millionth time today.

“How do you know?”

Across the bench seat, her best friend had her knees pulled up to her chest and was staring out the side window like she expected that ax murder to come sprinting at the truck at any second. She wore her favorite pair of black jeans and one of her nerdy T-shirts with puns most people didn’t understand, and she’d even picked out a pair of red tennis shoes instead of her normal boots.

Probably because she thinks she’s going to have to run for her life at some point.

Aubry pointed at the passing trees. “I think I hear banjos.”

“You live in Devil’s Falls. I would think you’d be used to the banjos by now.”

Aubry frowned, her pale face standing out against the darkness of the cab. Despite living in Texas for years, she managed to avoid anything that might resemble a tan. “I do my best to pretend they don’t exist.”

“Denial. It’s not just a river in Egypt.” She finally caught sight of light through the sparse trees. “There!”

Aubry pushed back her long, fire engine–red hair and snorted. “Who invited you to this thing again? Because if we’re not going to be mass murdered—and I’m still not convinced on that note—they could be luring us in for some sacrificial killing.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you have a deeply troubled obsession with murder?” Jules pulled in next to the open space at the end of a line of trucks. She recognized most of them from around town—Devil’s Falls wasn’t exactly a place hopping with new people. The last person to move in from out of town had been Aubry, and that was five years ago. “Besides, a sacrificial murder requires a virgin, and that ship sailed for both of us years ago.”

“Good point.” Aubry let loose a melodramatic sigh as she turned off the engine. “Remind me why we’re doing this again?”

“Because Grant’s back in town.” Jules hadn’t seen him since he dumped her ass on his way out of Devil’s Falls after graduation—he hadn’t even come back for holidays. Nine years later and his parting words were still ringing in her ears. I don’t want a life that’s going to bore me into putting a gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger before I hit thirty.

She clenched her hands around the steering wheel, counting to ten twice. It didn’t do a damn thing to stop the anger eating away at her. There wasn’t a single thing wrong with Devil’s Falls and the life she had here. Wanting to settle down and raise a family here—eventually—while being surrounded by the people she loved was a good thing. It didn’t make her boring.

A subject she and Grant disagreed wholeheartedly on.

“Yeah, you mentioned that jackass showing up earlier, right before you started pummeling that poor loaf of bread at the café. Personally, I’m still waiting to hear what your plan is.”

She didn’t have one, not that she was going to let that stop her. It never had before. “I just want a look.” Maybe he’d gained the freshman fifteen—and another twenty for law school. Or something. Something to prove that she was better off having been dumped so unceremoniously.

“I thought we agreed that your ex is a douchecanoe.”

“We did. And I’m past it.” Mostly. Past him, definitely. Past how he’d made her feel about herself, not so much.

Aubry snorted and opened the door. “Right. You’re so past it that you’ve dragged us out to be maybe killed, maybe sacrificed to hang out with people who are still clinging desperately to their high school glory days.” She looked around, her brows drawn together. “Because, seriously, who goes to bonfires when there’s a perfectly adequate bar in town? Two, in fact.”

“The cool kids?” That was always who’d been out at bonfires when she was in school. She’d avoided the whole scene, though, despite Grant’s protests. They came out here as an excuse to drink without the town sheriff bothering them, and that had never been Jules’s thing. She barely drank the hard stuff now, let alone when she was sixteen. And trying to navigate the roads back to town while buzzed? No, thanks.

That may or may not have also contributed to the whole Jules-is-boring thing.

Aubry scrunched her nose. “Ten to one, someone’s wearing a decade-old letterman’s jacket and talking about that one football game where he threw the winning pass.”

Ten to one it’s Grant himself.

Jules looped her arm through her best friend’s. “An hour. After that, we can go back to town, grab a bottle of wine, and play that horribly violent game that you love so much.”

“Deal.” Aubry grinned. “And don’t act so put-upon. You love it as much as I do—you just suck at it.”

“Truth.” She pulled them to a stop at the edge of the clearing. There were trucks parked in here around the fire, too, their tailgates down and people situated around them, chatting and drinking and a few women even dancing. It looked like something straight out of a country music video. She picked out a dozen people she’d gone to high school with, the ones who’d stayed behind and never wanted to leave, and another dozen who had left with stars in their eyes but had filtered back into town in the years since graduation.

“Jules? Jules Rodriguez?”

She froze. There was no mistaking Grant’s deep voice. Too soon. I’m not ready. But since the only other option was dropping Aubry’s arm and fleeing into the night, she turned around with a smile pasted on her face. And there he was, standing a few feet away, his dark hair shorter than she remembered. No freshman fifteen there. Damn it. He looked like he’d been spending quite a bit of time in the gym, in fact.

Bet he spends the whole time he’s working out checking himself out in the mirror.

The snarky thought didn’t make her feel any better. There was nothing worse than being caught flat-footed by the ex who left her in the dust, only to find out that he hadn’t developed some unfortunate skin problem in the intervening years.

“Grant.”

He moved closer. “Damn, you’re a sight for sore eyes. You look good, Jules.”

“Oh, you know, Pilates,” she answered breezily, already searching the crowd around them for an escape. She cleared her throat. “So, uh, how are things?”

“Great. Better than great. I just graduated from Duke. Top of my class.” He gave a smile that was all teeth, like a politician. “I have a position waiting for me in my father’s firm here in town.”

“Imagine that.” She couldn’t even bring herself to pretend to be surprised. Grant always had been fond of riding his daddy’s coattails. For all that he was determined to live the big life off in Anywhere but Devil’s Falls, he liked being a big fish in a little pond more.

“And you? I think I heard that you opened up some sort of cat café?” He laughed. “Can’t say that’s surprising.”

Beside her, Aubry went ramrod straight. It was only a matter of time before her friend went postal on his ass. Jules smiled, and though she wanted to holler at him something fierce, she managed to keep her tone even. She was not ashamed of Cups and Kittens. “It’s been a real hit with the locals.”

“I bet.” He looked her over, head to toe and back again. His appraising gaze made her skin crawl. “I hear you’re still single. You want to go get a drink sometime?”

Suddenly, Jules was a whole lot less worried about keeping Aubry back than she was about pressing her lips together to keep from laying into him. She looked around at the people circling the bonfire. A full half of them were watching this little drama play out.

Did he seriously just ask me out?

No. No, absolutely not. Nope. Never.

She had to do something, and fast. Jules wasn’t a particularly violent person, but she also wasn’t above hunting down Grant’s truck and slitting the tires.

And maybe scrawling something witty in the paint with her keys.

No. That’s not going to solve anything, and you’ll just prove to him and everyone else that he can still get under your skin without even trying.

There had to be a better way to put him in his place.

Her gaze landed on her cousin across the way. Daniel stood next to a lowered tailgate next to his friend Quinn. And with them was a tall drink of water if she ever saw one. He had his back to her, but the way his shoulders filled out his T-shirt, tapering down to a lean waist and… Good lord, his pants were the very definition of painted-on jeans. Daniel said something, and he shook his head, turning so she could see his granite jawline and…

She blinked.

Holy shit, it’s Adam Meyers.

He’d been around while she was growing up, always running with her cousin and their other two friends, but he’d always seemed wilder than the other boys—more restless. Even when he was standing still, there was a look in his eye like he was just waiting for the right moment to burst into motion.

Sure enough, the first chance he got, he blew out of town and up and joined the rodeo. Or that was the word on the Devil’s Falls gossip grapevine.

He must be back in town to take care of his mom. Sympathy rose, blotting out her anger at Grant. Jules didn’t know what was wrong with his mom, but she didn’t have to be a doctor to know the woman was sick.

Knowing him, though, he won’t stick around for long.

Just like that, a plan clicked into place. A stupid, reckless plan guaranteed to shut Grant down for at least a little while.

Speaking of, he was still waiting for her to say yes and fulfill his high-handed expectations, but she managed a laugh. “That’s really sweet, Grant. It was great seeing you, but my boyfriend is waiting for me.”

He frowned. “Boyfriend?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s a new thing. We haven’t exactly gone public with it—you know how Devil’s Falls can be—so you wouldn’t have heard.” She gave him a pat on his arm. “It was nice seeing you. So great. Really, we’ll have to catch up sometime soon.” And then she stepped around him, dragging Aubry behind her.

“What are you doing?” Aubry whispered.

“Winging it.” She stopped by the trio of men, all too aware of Grant watching her. “Hi, Daniel. Quinn. Adam.”

They raised their beers. Daniel looked over her shoulder with a frown. “Is that your piece-of-shit ex-boyfriend I see?”

“The very one.” She disentangled her arm from Aubry’s. “Speaking of, I need a favor.”

“Anything for you, kid.”

She tried not to roll her eyes at him calling her kid. He was a whole seven years older than her. Not exactly ancient. “Actually, it’s not you I need the favor from.”

Before she could talk herself out of it, she sidled up to Adam and put her arms around his neck. To his credit, he didn’t shove her on her butt in the dirt, merely raising his eyebrows. Jules kept her voice low so there was no chance of Grant overhearing. “So as you’ve noticed, my ex is watching me really closely right now, and I might have told him a tiny white lie about me dating someone in order to avoid a devastating dose of humiliation. And since I can’t date Daniel and no one would ever believe I’d date Quinn—”

The man in question frowned. “You really know how to hit a man where it hurts, Jules.”

“—that leaves you.”

Adam’s face remained impassive. “I see.”

There wasn’t a whole lot to work with in those words, but he also had let his free hand drift down to settle on her hip, so she just kept talking. “If you could just play along and maybe kiss me like you want to do filthy things to me in the bed of your truck, I’d really appreciate it.”

If anything, his eyebrows rose higher. “That guy really got under your skin, didn’t he?”

“You have no idea.”

Next to them, Daniel made a sound suspiciously like a growl, but neither of them looked over. Adam’s hand pulsed on her hip, the heat of it shocking despite the warmth of the night. His calluses dragged over the sensitive skin bared by her T-shirt, and she shivered. Maybe this was a terrible idea.

She didn’t have time to really reconsider, though, because he set down his beer, cupped the back of her neck, and dealt her the single most devastating kiss of her life. No, not a kiss. He took possession of her mouth, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips and then delving inside. He tasted of beer and something darker, something that hinted at exactly what she’d asked for—like he wanted to do filthy things to her in the bed of his truck.

She closed her eyes, giving his tongue a tentative stroke, and had to fight down a moan at the way the move made her entire body go tight.

More.

He lifted his head, breaking the kiss and slamming her back into the real world. She blinked up at him, all too aware of her body pressed against the entirety of his, of how he was hard in all the places she was soft, of how goddamn good he smelled. “Wow.”

There went that eyebrow again. “You think it was believable?”

She’d almost forgotten she was kissing Adam Meyers because he was supposed to be her boyfriend to prove a point to her real ex-boyfriend. Liar. You 100 percent forgot that this was pretend, and if he’d offered to drive you out into a field to get down and dirty, you wouldn’t even hesitate.

He hadn’t offered, and this was pretend. Remembering that was important if she wanted to avoid compounding one potentially humiliating situation with another even more potentially humiliating situation.

She licked her lips. “Um, yes. Totally believable. Thank you.”

He still didn’t let her go. Instead he turned and lifted her onto the tailgate as if she weighed no more than a paper doll. “You want something to drink?”

“Uh, sure.” She should get down and walk away…which she absolutely would do as soon as she got control of her shaking legs. It would have taken a stronger woman than she was to not stare at Adam’s ass in those tight jeans as he ambled over to the cooler.

She turned to find Aubry doing a silent slow clap. “Don’t judge me.”

“Oh, I’m judging.”