Page 6 of Caught Up In You

I’m sizing up a strapping farm boy who looks like he was bred to play Indiana basketball and drive a tractor when the kitchen door swings open and a barrel-chested, grizzled older man steps behind the bar.

“Oh my god, I thought you’d skipped town,” he says, his voice a nicotine growl. He leans across the bar and grabs me by the shoulders. “Get over here, girl.”

And before I know it, I’ve been lifted off my feet, wrapped in a bear hug from Glenn Fielding, the bar’s owner.

“My sister had a baby,” I tell him once I’ve settled back on my stool. “And let me tell you, that shit is no joke.”

“I’ve got four sisters, and all of them reproduced like they need kids to work the farm,” he says with a laugh, slinging a dishrag over his shoulder. “Trust me, I know from babies.”

“Well, this is my first night out in months, but I’m not sure if it’s going to be, uh…” I glance at the sad collection of subpar dick.

“Fruitful?” He follows my gaze around the bar. Most everybody either came with someone or is old enough to be well outside a fun age gap. “There’s a Pacers game, a Grinders game,andan impending ice storm. I think this is about what you’re gonna get tonight.”

He glances up as a gust of cold air whips through the open door of the bar. “Or maybe I spoke too soon…” Glenn waggles his eyebrows, pretending to pant like a dog.

“Glenn! I’m gonna tell Michael on you,” I say, laughing, but the sound catches in my throat when I spin on my barstool and spot the figure standing just inside the door, his glossy dark hair lit by the red Budweiser sign over his head. He’s looking down, and when the phone in his hand lights up, it illuminates the dark scruff on his face.

I gasp.

Owen McBride has ditched the khakis tonight. Instead he’s wearing a pair of dark jeans, a wine-colored Henley stretched across his chest. His caramel-colored Carhartt jacket is open, a navy scarf loose around his neck. He pauses on the mat just inside the door, and though I can’t hear it over the music, I can practically feel the stomp of his heavy leather boots somewhere deep in my belly.

I turn back to the bar, where Glenn is smirking at me. “Looks like tonight might be your lucky night after all. You know him?”

“Only well enough to know he’s not for me.”

He scoffs. “And why’s that, now, sugar?”

“That guy is the golden boy of my town. Perfect in every way and very much not my speed,” I reply. “I bet Owen McBride is a perfectly sweet and giving boyfriend, but you know that’s not what I’m looking for, Glenn.”

I take one last peek over my shoulder and watch Owen settle at an open two-top, his nose still buried in his phone. When he sits, his muscled thighs test the seams of his jeans. It’s a shame he’s too buttoned up for me. That body looks like an adult playground.

“Sometimes the nice ones…” Glenn trails off, and I know his eyes are tracking Owen. Glenn’s been with his husband for thirty years, but he still appreciates a fine specimen. “Gentleman in the streets, something else entirely in the sheets.”

I snort. “Only in my wildest fantasies, Glenn.”

CHAPTER 3

OWEN

I’m already stepping through the door of this middle-of-nowhere bar when Francie’s text lights up my phone.

Francie

Friday the 13th strikes again. ER is a nightmare. Rain check?

I groan. This is the first time in weeks that I haven’t had to worry about calls from patients, and I drove for damn near an hour under threat of an impending ice storm just so I could wind up in a dive bar by myself.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Of course, I’ve got no right to be mad. Last time I was supposed to meet up with Francie, my ex-girlfriend turned best friend, I had to cancel because of a pink eye outbreak. And the time before that an entire fourth-grade class came down with COVID.

But just before Christmas, when a third bout of pink eye ripped through the elementary school population of Cardinal Springs, I finally broke down and hired another pediatricianfor the practice. Dr. Fatima Adebayo just finished her residency at the Children’s Hospital of Atlanta. She’s smart and conscientious, and after training her on our office protocols for two weeks, I’m letting her take shifts on the after-hours phone.

But I’m only marginally relaxed about it, and the flickering neon lights in this place are already putting me even more on edge. The jukebox in the corner finishes playing the last clanging guitar riff of John Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good” and launches into the clanging guitar riff of…John Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good.”

“Dylan, I told you if you don’t cut that shit out, I’m tossing you out on your ass,” calls a grizzled old bartender with a gray beard long enough to braid. A young guy in a trucker hat surrounded by other young guys in trucker hats dissolves into the most undignified giggles I’ve ever seen.

I sigh.

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