“I am a jerk,” Jack said. “It’s like you haven’t known me since I was twelve.”

“As you so eloquently put it, or...as you should have put it, I keep my sex life away from here. Far, far away. I’m not going to pursue a woman who has a five-year contract to live on my property. That’s a degree too close to marriage for my taste.”

Jack laughed. “Okay, I get that. So does that mean I can...?”

“No,” Eli growled. “You can’t. Mainly because I don’t want to catch sight of your bare ass through any open windows. That is guaranteed to get you shot.”

“You’re not allowed to shoot my friend, Eli,” Connor said. “I only have two of them. I can’t afford to lose any.”

Eli looked at Sadie and watched as she cocked her head to the side, blond hair spilling over her shoulder, the fluorescent lights from the Mirror Pond Ale sign behind the bar casting a yellow-and-blue glow over the pale strands.

Ace was behind the bar, big and bearded and wearing flannel, which women seemed to be giddy over these days. And Sadie was obviously no exception, with the way she was giggling and smiling and...dammit, touching the guy’s forearm with her delicate hands. Hands that were, incidentally, not covered with soil from planting an azalea.

Annoyance coursed through him. She’d just kissed him last week, and now she was in here flirting with Ace.

And so what?

So, it pissed him off. Which made him even angrier. Because he shouldn’t care. He wasn’t jealous. He was never jealous because jealousy implied that he cared, and he never cared.

Not that he didn’t like the women he had relationships with, but he didn’t quite care what they did when he wasn’t around.

This Sadie thing was messing with his head. Not only was wanting her simply a bad idea, he was sitting here pondering ways to remove Ace’s arm.

“Excuse me,” he said, getting up and pushing his chair back, leaving his beer on the table. He could feel Connor and Jack staring after him, and he knew that they were probably ready to discuss conspiracy theories about whether or not he’d been brainwashed or body-snatched.

And he didn’t really care. Because right now he had Sadie in his sights and he was going to walk over to her and do...something. He would figure it out when he got there.

Hopefully.

His feet hit the wooden floor harder than necessary with each step and he knew that people were looking at him, because he was Eli Garrett, current candidate for county sheriff, walking across a bar like he had sex and murder on his mind.

Both of which were strictly true.

“What brings you into town, Sadie?” he asked, leaning against the bar next to her.

She jumped and turned, blue eyes wide. “What brings you here to talk to me voluntarily, Eli?” she asked, her expression schooled into something casual now, covering up the moment of shock.

Ace looked at them both and turned away from Sadie, pulling a drink from the tap and walking down to the other end of the bar.

“Curiosity,” Eli said.

“It’s not that weird that I’m at the bar,” she said.

“But you’re alone.”

“Who would I be with? Anyway, I was just stopping by because I wanted to feel out the best local brews and find out if Ace had any contact info for me. For the Fourth of July thing.”

“Right,” he said. “You’re on a first-name basis with Ace?”

“I remember him vaguely from school. Also, I called in earlier.”

“Okay,” he said, sounding a lot more uptight than he would like.

“Why do you care?” she asked, tilting her head to the side like he’d watched her do earlier.

“Honestly? I don’t know,” he said. Honestly? Why had he been honest? Honesty in this situation was a terrible idea. Because it was ceding the upper hand. It was admitting he was out of his depth and that was not acceptable.

Her expression changed. Not wide-eyed shock or practiced casualness. She lowered her lashes, her lips more relaxed, her gaze falling to his mouth. Each shift almost imperceptible, and quick. And yet, he saw it. Was so painfully aware of it, as if he could hear each change like the cocking of a gun. It was clear, it was intentional. And the only thing he wasn’t sure of yet was if she was shooting to kill.

“Is it because you want to kiss me again?” she asked.

She was shooting to kill. This shot had hit square in his gut, radiating down to his groin. He’d only had a half a beer, so he couldn’t even blame that.

“It’s more because I don’t want him to kiss you,” he said, leaning in, his palm flat on the bar. “I don’t want to kiss you. I wish I hadn’t kissed you the first time and trust me, Sadie Miller, I sure as hell don’t want to do it again.” He angled his head and moved in closer, conscious that they were being watched by almost everyone in the bar. Aware that he had to be close enough to make his point, but far enough away that no one would be planning their wedding by tomorrow. “But I’m starting to wonder if I will. If it’s inevitable.”

She drew back, her breasts pitching sharply with the harsh breath she drew in. “I’m not sure how something like that could be inevitable. I mean, either you want to kiss someone or you don’t. If you do, you do. If you don’t, you don’t.”

“I thought it was that simple. Until you. You’ve completely screwed up my kissing theory.” Damn, maybe he was drunk.

“That’s more than thirty years of kissing theory messed up by one woman,” she said, her voice sounding lower, thicker all of a sudden. “That’s...a lot of power.”

“It is,” he said, his own voice following the same path hers had.

“Are you drunk?” she asked.

“I wish.”

“Wow. You really, really know how to turn a girl on.” Sarcasm tinged her tone, but the huskiness in her voice told him that he actually was turning her on, and he had no idea how to feel about that. “Telling me you don’t want to kiss me and you wish you could excuse your being over here with your being drunk.”

“That’s because I’m not trying to turn you on,” he said. And that at least was true.

“I wish I could say it was working.”

“Me not turning you on?”

“Yes,” she said, looking down at the bar.

“Are we flirting?”

She looked back at him, her pulse beating hard at the base of her throat, hard enough that he could see it. “I don’t think so.”

“You’re probably right. I don’t think I know how to flirt.”

“You’re just trying to keep me from getting flirted with.”

“Sounds about right.”

Ace came back over to their end of the bar and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “He’s not bothering you, is he, Sadie?”