Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 140604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 703(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 703(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
“Like we haven’t hit a bar before when times are tough,” Garrett shot back, having to talk louder over the music.
He didn’t think this qualified as tough times. Her ex was back, but she had a plan and they were willing to go along with it.
“We were in the middle of a discussion.” That was what truly bugged him. She hadn’t told them she needed time to think about what they were offering. She hadn’t given them her own plan. Hadn’t explained that she would like to talk this whole thing through with her friends. Hadn’t even told them good-bye. Just left them sitting there like idiots.
He was going to have such fun slapping that gorgeous ass of hers.
They had barely gotten to real discipline the night before, and she seemed to love it. He could give her so much more.
If he could find her in this place. It looked huge. There seemed to be a couple of different bars and a part of the building that served as a sit-down restaurant, and apparently a dance hall, if all the hooting and hollering was any indication. It was a massive East Texas redneck paradise. Which was different from the town. They’d taken a tour of the town, and it seemed quiet and a little uptight. While Gwen had driven them around Olivia’s regular haunts, she’d imparted an enormous amount of wisdom about Willow Fork. And by wisdom he meant gossip.
“And she got scared.” Garrett stopped him before they could get to the hostess station. “She needs time. Maybe we should listen to Bobby. I think we shouldn’t push her.”
But she was begging for it. If she didn’t want to be pushed, she would have explained calmly that she needed to think about the situation and she would have gotten her purse and her cell phone. Instead, she’d run away like a bride who figured out she wasn’t ready to get married. She created drama, and from what he could tell that wasn’t something she did most of the time.
So deep down he suspected this was some kind of a test. Even if she didn’t realize it was.
Bobby might know her, but he didn’t know the sexual side of the woman, the intimate side, the submissive side.
It occurred to him that Olivia had been left behind by a lot of men she cared about. Not her family. They were solid, but just because she had wonderful fathers didn’t mean other men hadn’t hurt her. It didn’t mean she wasn’t reluctant to throw her whole self into a new relationship.
She had men who loved and adored her, but none who spoke to her submissive side. This felt like a plea for discipline to him. If she was rejecting them, she would say it. She wouldn’t sugarcoat it. She wouldn’t hesitate. She would kindly tell them it wouldn’t work for her.
That wasn’t what she had done.
“Hello. Welcome to The Barn,” a cheery hostess said. She was dressed in jeans and a Western shirt, a pink cowboy hat on her head. She might be twenty. Maybe. “Would you like a seat in the bar or the dining hall? We have a short wait on the dining hall, but the bar has some spots since karaoke already started, and the special tonight is the best brisket you’ve ever had. Also, the beer of the week is a lager.”
“That actually sounds pretty good,” Garrett began. “I checked the fridge and it feels like no one’s been to the store.”
He was always hungry. Keane ignored him. They were on a mission. “Have you seen Olivia Barnes-Fleetwood?”
The petite hostess’s eyes widened. “Of course. She’s a regular around here. You know her father is the reason The Barn opened in the first place.” She gestured to a large portrait that hung behind the hostess station. It was four people, three men and a woman. Two of them were very familiar. Jack and Sam. They stood in front of a building that was somewhat similar to the one they were in now, only much smaller and without all the luxuries.
“Her dad owns the place?” Garrett asked.
Keane was pretty sure Jack Barnes owned most of this world, and anything he didn’t Julian Lodge did. It was something that should scare him more than it did.
“A part of it. My parents own the other part,” the young woman explained and then cleared her throat and seemed to go into a rehearsed speech. “The Barn was established over twenty years ago when two ranchers sought a nice place to have a beer without the judgment of the community. Mr. Fleetwood had some trouble in town, and Mr. Barnes came up with a solution. To build their own watering hole. They reached out to a couple with experience running a bar and were surprised to discover that despite Willow Fork’s reputation for sobriety, there was a thirst for beer that had been unquenched to that point. So The Barn opened on unincorporated land to get around the local alcohol laws. We like to think of it as our own speakeasy.”