I am Not Your Melody: (steamy cowboy romance) Read Online Free PDF Page B

said. “You don’t know me.”
    “I’m gettin’ to.”
    Ugh. It was true. He was getting to know the part of her she’d hoped to keep hidden — the part that was scared to death about taking on a project this huge on her own. The part of her that worried she wasn’t going to be able to move on and make a life for herself without her ex-husband.
    “What are you gonna do now, Allie?” Bill slowly, carefully, relaxed his grip on her wrists. He slid his hands up to cradle her own. “You gonna back out now?”
     

Chapter Four
     
    “No,” she whispered. “I’m not going to back out. Running this bar is my future. This has to work.”
    “It will,” he said. “What’s done is done. Uncle Freddy was another father to me. Losin’ him was —” Bill shook his head, as if to stop himself from saying too much. “I didn’t think of it as ruinin’ his livelihood. I just didn’t stop folks who still wanted to use the place, ‘cause we all missed it. We missed him .”
    His anger before, she knew, was a thin veneer over the pain he had felt when his uncle had passed. And the passing of his wife not too long before that…
    “Let’s go inside,” she said.
    “All right. But if you start scoldin’ on me again we’re gonna have a problem.”
    She shook her head, just enough to acknowledge him. Yes, he was acting like a prick, but he’d been through a lot. And maybe, judging by the sorrow he exuded behind his don’t-fuck-with-me façade, he was still going through it.
    “Go on in,” he said. “Door’s…unlocked.”
    She held up the key he had tossed at her back in his office. “Guess these were just ceremonial, then.”
    Bill shrugged. “You looked like the kinda girl who means to keep things locked up.” He smiled — a glimpse of the man she knew from his emails.
    “Okay then,” she said simply. “Bar time.”
    Please don’t be a complete tear-down .
    The door opened with a creak. Fix noisy door , she noted.
    Inside the bar, white sheets covered chairs, which had been stacked up like small barricades around the room. What had those chairs been for? There were no tables that she could see.
    The actual bar top itself took up the entire back wall. It too was covered in white sheets, to keep the thick layer of dust that had accumulated on the sheets off of the wood.
    Above, the shelves for the alcohol held various random items instead: a rifle; a small pile of matchbooks; a football, worn with age.
    “Where’d all the alcohol go?” Allie asked. “I mean, when your uncle died, wasn’t this place still running and stocked? Did someone steal all the booze?”
    “No,” Bill said. “Nothin’ like that.” He gave her a look from under his hat. “We didn’t sneak in and drink it, either.”
    She widened her eyes innocently, as if that wasn’t exactly the thought that had gone through her mind.
    “Uncle Freddy got sick about a year before he died,” Bill explained. “The bar closed when he had to take an early retirement. He sold everythin’ he could to pay for his medical expenses. That’s why all the tables are missin’, and half the chairs. There used to be couches, too. It used to be a good place to sit and drink.”
    “How come he didn’t sell the bar himself?” she asked.
    Bill looked at her like she was crazy. “This is the family bar. It belongs in the family. That’s why he left it to me — he wanted me to take over right then an’ there, but I couldn’t. Not with me an’ Melody havin’…problems. I was just tryin’ to do right by my wife.”
    His face stilled, as if he had said too much.
    “You probably have enough money to not need to take on a partner like me,” Allie said, walking around the bar, studying every detail. “I imagine you could have taken your money and renovated it yourself, and hired a bartender to manage it on your behalf — without giving up your full ownership.” She nudged a chunk of plaster with her foot before looking at him. “Why take me