Page 4 of Things Good Girls Don't Do (Rock Canyon, Idaho 1)

Katie could hear exasperation in Steph’s voice. “Katie, you cannot sit at home all the time and mope. You need to go out, have fun. Get your mind off Jimmy the Jerk-off! Maybe even meet someone new.”

Katie choked. “I don’t think I’m ready for anyone new yet. Still getting over the old one, and pretty sure I’m not going to meet anyone new in Rock Canyon.”

“So maybe you’ll meet the right one. Maybe you’ve been so blinded by Jimmy and his deceitful charm that you haven’t noticed him,” Steph suggested.

Maybe the right one doesn’t exist. “Maybe, but I doubt it. It’s a good thing you met Jared in kindergarten, otherwise you’d be fishing in the same slim-pickins pool as the rest of us.”

Steph and Jared had known each other their whole lives, started dating freshman year of high school, and married right after graduation. They’d gone to college together and were the epitome of what Katie wanted: her better half. Her soul mate.

Instead she’d gotten Jimmy, and now she didn’t even have him anymore.

“Hey, if I was single, I would be making waves in that pool, let me tell you! Your problem is that you’re such a good girl, you just try to please everyone. Name one thing you’ve done wrong. One person you’ve pissed off besides me or your mother.”

“As much as I’d love to play let’s-make-Katie-feel-worse-on-the-third-crappiest-day-of-her-life, I’m going to go. Maybe drown myself in a bathtub,” Katie said, emotionally drained.

“Shut up, you will not. Seriously, if you’re feeling that bad, I’ll be there in five.”

Katie took a deep breath and counted to ten. She adored Steph, but she hovered sometimes. What Steph needed was a couple of kids to worry about; then maybe she wouldn’t worry so much about her love life. Or lack thereof.

“I’m just kidding! I love you, but I just want to be alone,” Katie said as she opened up her bare cupboard to reveal a lonely can of green beans and a box of cake mix.

“Okay, okay, but you know I love you, right? I just like to give you a hard time. After all, someone’s got to shake up that goody-goody thing you’ve got going on.”

“Good night,” Katie said.

“’Night! And don’t . . .”

Katie hung up the phone without waiting for Steph to finish, but she already knew what she was going to say: don’t mope.

“I don’t mope,” she muttered to herself as she searched through her fridge for anything edible. There was something green and fuzzy growing on the fajitas from three days ago. Ick.

She grabbed her notepad off the counter, a pen from her pink poodle mug, and started a grocery list. She hated having to go out again this late, especially after being on her feet all day at the salon and then dealing with Mrs. Andrews, but she was starving and the occasion called for alcohol. Quite a bit of alcohol.

Suddenly, a better idea struck her. Dropping the pad on the counter, she grabbed her purse and headed back out to drown her sorrows in mojitos and fries at Buck’s Shot Bar. Drinking alone at a bar on a Monday was better than grocery shopping. The grocery store held sympathetic looks and well-meaning advice. At least at Buck’s she’d be left alone to dwell on her future of twelve cats and spinsterhood.

CHASE TREPASSO HAD thought a city of 19,000 people was small, but the culture shock of Rock Canyon’s barely 4,000 citizens was crazy. It was like Mayberry married the NRA and they had a baby: that would be Rock Canyon. He’d laughed the first time he’d walked into the liquor store and saw that you could buy a gun with your beer.

Moving here had been on a whim. He’d been looking to sell his tattoo parlor in Elko, Nevada, and relocate, so he’d grabbed his map and started searching. When his finger had fallen on Rock Canyon, he’d checked out the real estate and the town, figuring a little small-town charm was just what he needed. That first month of getting everything set up had been hectic, but it was worth it for the peace. Now he was able to work on the next issue of Destructo Boy, the comic book series he’d started when he was eighteen, which was due to his editor later that month.

It was a benefit and a curse, that peace.

He’d spent a lot of time at the parlor, or at one of the local haunts, Buck’s Shot Bar, networking and making a few friends, but he was finding it hard to break into a new town. Especially one as close-knit as Rock Canyon.

Despite the size of it, the people who lived there were the same as every other town he’d lived in. The same narrow-minded older generation, same tough college kids wanting something “cool” on their biceps, and the same women looking for a man to take care of them.

He’d tried to avoid those types by going out with a few bad girls, or as bad as they got in a town like this, but all of them had been the same. Girls who drank too much, dressed a little wild, and were up for anything. But in the end they’d all wanted the one thing he had no desire to give: commitment. He just didn’t seem to have it in him. He couldn’t even believe he’d actually bought a house in Rock Canyon. He’d always rented, but something about the old farmhouse had spoken to him. Still, just because he was thinking about settling for a while didn’t mean he wanted to settle down for good. Especially not with any of the girls he’d dated so far.

Chase tried to stop thinking about his love life and take his pool shot, but then Katie Connors walked into Buck’s Shot Bar, her honey-blond hair curling over the shoulders of her red short-sleeved top.

She smiled at Grant Henderson, the bartender, and said something to him before moving on to one of the booths. Katie was put together real nice: just enough up top to balance out her bottom half, and with hair so thick and long Chase couldn’t help imagining what it would feel like to have his hands buried in it.

The first time he’d met her, he’d been very attracted to her, but he knew her type. An angelic good girl on the outside but nasty and self-righteous on the inside. He avoided girls like her for a reason, and so, after handing her his card, he’d moved on.

Not for very long, though. In a small town like Rock Canyon, it was hard to avoid someone, and Chase found himself bumping into Katie everywhere: at the grocery store, the gas station, the coffee shop, and especially at Buck’s. It also hadn’t taken him long to learn that whatever his preconceived notions had been, there wasn’t a mean bone in Katie’s body. He’d watched her help an older lady out with her groceries, just to be nice, and when someone’s dog had been running down the middle of Main Street, Katie had rescued it. He only knew that because he’d watched her crouch in the middle of the road, pat her legs and call the mutt to her. After that, he had doubled his efforts to stay clear of her. A good girl with a kind heart? Both were too easy to break.

A couple weeks ago, he’d joined Katie for a game of pool with her friends Steph and Jared, telling himself that no one else was playing, but when she’d missed her shot, he’d been an idiot and offered to show her how to make it. The smell of her hair and the way her butt had fit back against him had given him an hour-long stiffy and an even longer conversation in his head about why getting involved with Katie Connors was a really bad idea.

Despite his resolve to ignore her, he’d caught himself studying her today when he’d dropped his check off. The way she bit her lip when she’d obviously had something to say to the cranky old hag, Mrs. Andrews, but held it back, even when she was irritated. He’d seen her do it before with others and wondered why she kept it in. She was never obvious with her annoyance, but it was there, just a slight tightening in her smile. Did she keep quiet because she wanted everyone to like her? Because they did. People in Rock Canyon might walk all over her, but they held Katie Connors up as all that was goodness and kindness.

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