Page 3 of Make Me Crazy (Loco, Texas 2)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

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EPILOGUE

Chapter One

The Watering Hole was one of several bars in Loco, Texas but for some reason, it was a favorite among the ranchers and cowboys that populated the town. Maybe it was the old wooden floor that made slapping noises as boots walked across them or the relaxed atmosphere the old dive bar gave off. It didn’t matter what it was, it was the place where Miranda “Rand” Coleman liked to wind down and let off some steam.

And right now, her brain was like a pressure cooker about to blow.

Red Calhoun spewed his beer all over the table. “Did you just say married? You?”

Rand’s jaw clenched. The last thing she needed was her two pain in the ass best friends making a big joke out of her predicament. Especially in the middle of a bar, which, besides church on Sunday, was a breeding ground for gossip. It surprised Rand how men could sometimes be worse than women when it came to spreading stories, but she didn’t want to take any chances of this news getting out; it was too humiliating.

“Will you shut up? I don’t want this getting spread around and you know how this town is.”

“So do we congratulate you or send you our condolences?” Jake Hansen teased, his green eyes twinkling with such a mischievous light that made Rand itch to throw her beer at him.

Instead of violence that would probably get her thrown out, she just glared at him with enough heat to curdle milk, but he continued to smile like a simpleton.

Damn him and that gorgeous smile, he just thought he was too cute for words. Okay, so he was really nice to look at with his sandy brown hair and green eyes. Just because she wasn’t interested in men didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate a pretty face, but the one large drawback to Jake was his tom-catting ways. Not that she was interested in women; she just didn’t want any romantic entanglements. Romance lead to falling in love which lead to crying and heart ache. That’s what the first six years of her life had taught her, and she had no desire to repeat her mother’s mistakes. She’d stick with cows.

Red scratched his head and remarked, “I just don’t get why old man Coleman would stipulate you getting married. You’ve worked your ass off for that ranch since you were a kid.”

Rand pointed her beer at him with appreciation. “Thank you! See, a man who gets it.”

“So who’s it gonna be,” Red asked, his robin’s egg blue eyes scanning the room as if trying to pick someone randomly and Rand found herself studying Red. From the Roman nose to the square jaw, he was a good looking guy too. Red hair cut short drew more attention to the wide linebacker shoulders and muscular arms, all thanks to being bullied first by his four sisters, and then the kids at school for his name, his chubby frame, and his hair. Once high school hit and Red shot up to six-foot four and all that fat melted into a wall of muscle so thick Quarterbacks wet themselves when they saw him coming onto the field, the bullying stopped. At least from non-family members.

Rand looked away from Red to study the rest of the bar patrons and a bad taste formed in her mouth. There wasn’t a man in this room she would ever live with except for maybe Jake, but only because he didn’t snore like Red and had basic table manners.

Neither man was a viable candidate though. Red would expect her to do all the cooking and cleaning, the big ox. Hell, his mother, bless her, still did his laundry. He was loyal to a fault and had a sweet side deep down. Way deep.

Wasn’t worth having to wash Red’s dirty socks and drawers for a year though.

Jake was a clean guy. His single mother would have taken a whip to him for making a mess and leaving it for her. Jake wouldn’t treat her like a maid.

He also wouldn’t be able to keep it in his pants long enough to say I do.

Not that she would care usually, but it was only a year long commitment and the last thing she needed was to marry a man who would run around town with anything in a skirt, and have it get back to her granddaddy’s lawyer. For all intents and purposes, the marriage had to look real. No cheating, no living separately, and pretending like they were happy as clams.

Fat freaking chance of that!

She downed the last of her beer and shrugged her shoulders. “Hell if I know. Ain’t a man I’ve met that I’ve thought about spending the rest of my life with.”

“Not even Branson Alexander,” Jake asked seriously, watching her like he was trying to puzzle out an answer to some well hidden secret.

The subject of Branson wasn’t a secret though. She just couldn’t talk about the son of a bitch without feeling humiliated. Standing abruptly, she snapped, “Y’all want another?”

“Yep,” the two men said at the same time. Rand walked towards the bar, acutely aware of the male dominated atmosphere. Men surrounded her on a daily basis, but now, with her granddaddy’s will and everything it placed on her mind, it was like she was seeing every man for the first time.

And most of them were disgusting, she thought as she watched Jamison Kendrick spit his dip into an empty beer can and caught Bubba Laurie scratching his privates through his jeans.

No way. No way in hell. There had to be a way out of this clause. She agreed with Red about her granddaddy being out of his mind. Her whole life he had taught her to depend on herself. So why would he tell his uppity Yankee lawyer that she would lose The Double C if she didn’t marry in the next three months? Three months! Why hadn’t he just given the ranch away? How the hell was she going to find a man she could stand in so short a time? And worse, one that would stick around without wanting part of The Double C?

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