Page 2 of Home Town Knight

“You don’t have a call sign from your Marine days?” I asked.

His smile flickered. “It was Bullseye. But I don’t go by that anymore. Just Dean.”

I wanted to ask more, but his tone told me not to, so I left it alone. Noteverythingwas my business.

With his tanned skin, messy hair, and laid-back aura, I could definitely picture Dean shredding the slopes on a snowboard. Cute, but nowhere near as compelling as the man beside me. They were both in their early thirties, tall with muscle to spare, but Mr. Handsome was more my type. Something intense about him. Rugged.

“Didn’t expect to see you tonight,” Dean said. “I thought you were still visiting your grandparents.”

“Had to head back a few days early. Figured I’d stop here to say hi instead of driving all the way back to town in the snow.”

“I hear you. What can I get you?”

“Whatever IPA you have on the rotating tap, and the same dinner special she’s got?”

“Sorry, man. We’re out of the special. She got the last one.”

They both looked at me. “Should’ve gotten here sooner,” I said.

This was more attractive male attention than I received on the typical day. Good thing I wasn’t easily flustered. I wouldn’t have made it very far as a reporter otherwise.

My day had started out far rougher than this. Until yesterday, I had been covering a public corruption trial out of Boulder. Officials accepting bribes, handing out sweetheart contracts. The guilty verdict had come down in the afternoon, and I’d spent hours afterward interviewing the attorneys and even some of the jurors, those who would talk to me. The article I’d turned in this morning had been stellar. If I said so myself.

But was my editor impressed? Hardly. All she’d wanted to know was what I had coming down the pipeline next. Because it was all about the content and the clicks, and I had my daily quota to fill.

Hey, I knew how lucky I was to have an actual job at anewspaper. Those were hard to come by these days. But it was hard for an investigative journalist to actuallyinvestigatewhen my editor only cared about creating fresh fodder for theDenver Dailywebsite.

So I’d gone back to a story that I’d been working on and off. Some fishy goings-on in Hart County on the other side of the state.

I’d written a few articles last year about the sheriff’s department. There’d been multiple suspicious incidents in Hartley, including a criminal conspiracy involving the sheriff’s own family. Then bombshell revelations of a cult engaged in human trafficking, where their leader had conveniently gone missing before a police raid. The sheriff also had a bad habit of deputizing his friends, which made his activities sound less like proper law enforcement and more like employing vigilantes for his own purposes.

Then, just recently, one of my trusted sources had passed on documented evidence to back up my suspicions. There was something rotten here. Something that randeep. Which meant it wouldn’t be easy to uncover. I’d come to Hart County to drum up new leads and momentum on the story. I prayed this trip would lead to a juicy enough exposé to get me a promotion to a bigger-name paper that cared more about substance than clicks. Ireallyneeded this trip to go well.

I hadn’t expected to find myself cozying up to a bar with a delicious dinner and an even more enticing man in the next seat over. Still, I planned on an early bedtime. I wasn’t going to get distracted by a set of deep blue eyes and a square jaw…or a couple of thick thighs that filled out those jeans to a scandalizing degree.

But this wasn’t a bad start to my trip. Not at all.

Could things be looking up for beleaguered reporter Genevieve Blake? Find out at eleven.

I took another bite of short rib. “You should add this to the regular menu, Dean. Worth driving all the way from Denver for.”

“Rub it in, why don’t you?” Tex sighed. “Guess I’ll have the burger then.”

The bartender poured Tex’s beer, then handed it over with an up-nod. It seemed like the two of them were communicating more through their silence than they’d spoken aloud. I studied their exchange, but it was a mystery to me.

“Hey, we getting those drinks sometime this year?” barked one of the men at the corner table.

“Coming right up,” Dean said loudly. “Just have to finish these Mai Tais first for the rowdy idiots in the corner,” he muttered under his breath.

Tex glared at them over his shoulder, then turned back to the bar. “That group been a problem tonight?”

Dean shrugged as he poured rum into a shaker. “Just noisy. They arrived a couple days ago. Been out hunting for something-or-other, without success. I’m planning to cut them off after this round.”

“Wise choice.” Then Tex nodded at me. “They haven’t been botheringyou, have they?”

“Nope, they haven’t said a word to me. I can take care of myself, though.” I held up my hand, showing off my pointy pink nails. “My claws come out when I need them to.”

“I’ll have to watch myself then.” Tex looked at my hand, his gaze lingering, and I realized what he was checking for. A wedding ring. And because I was endlessly curious, I checked out his left hand. No ring. No tan line.

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