Page 88 of Bad Decisions & Back Roads

I shut my eyes.I hadn’t realized how badly I needed somebody to touch me like this.

Her voice brushed across me soft as breath.“What did you do?”

I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her in hard, burying my face against the top of her head.I breathed her in like a drowning man coming up for air.Soap.Horse.Sunshine.

“She’s been after me to go out for a while,” I admitted roughly.“So I…” My grip tightened on her.“I agreed.”

Gia went still.Not stiff exactly.I felt the change immediately.

She pulled back enough to look at me, and the warmth that’d been in her face moments ago had shuttered behind something tighter.“You asked her on a date in exchange for permission to use the surgery suite?”

The question came out controlled, but I could hear the hurt underneath it.

“I didn’t have a choice.One date.I agreed to her demand.”

Something sharp sparked alive inside me despite the nausea.I tilted my head slightly.“Wait.”I stared down at her.“Are you jealous?”

She released a disbelieving little laugh that sounded half angry and half hurt.

“Am I jealous?”She leaned forward and buried her face in my chest for a moment, then pulled back a bit.“The man who just moved heaven and earth to save a girl’s horse promised to take another woman to dinner instead of me.”

Did that mean she forgave me for stalking away full of shock and a betrayal so deep it stopped me from reaching out?

“You walked into chaos and fixed everything,” she whispered.“You got Hudson a surgical suite.You found a trailer.You handled Ken.You saved Shay from watching her horse die in a field, even though the mare might die in surgery.”Her fingers curled in my shirt.“That was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”She lifted a hand and played with the hair on my neck.“This is so beyond jealousy, Rye.I’m downright murderous at the thought of you touching someone other than me.I need for you to get over your stewing and decide if you’re going to let me spend time in your bed or if you want me to be looking elsewhere.”

She pulled me by the back of the neck toward her and kissed me.

I made a rough sound against her mouth and hauled her tight to me, backing her into the stall wall.When she finally broke the kiss, both of us were breathing hard.

“I don’t want her.”The answer came out fierce.I slid my hand into her hair and kissed her once, slower this time and deeper.“I’ll go to dinner if I have to, but I’m not touching her.”

Gia searched my face.“I might crash your date like you did mine.Spiky boots and all.”

“Only if I get to take everything but the boots off later.”I kissed her again.“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”she craned away.

“For not being there when you were hurt.For not being the one to drive you over the mountains.”

“I think that was the only way it would’ve ever worked.Right now, we’ve got other things to focus on than feeling sorry about things that have already happened.”She paced out of the stall.“We need to get that cow back in the field and get to the clinic.How’d you like to come watch me be amazing?”

“And you think I have an ego?”

She rolled her eyes.“Come help me with this cow.”

ChapterThirty

GIA

Gowned in,an hour into surgery, the mare was holding steady.Hudson was finishing the final sutures to close the abdomen after removing a sand impaction.The anesthesia monitoring machine kept up its steady electronic beeping.One of the techs at the horse’s front end gave her breaths periodically.

“Don’t get involved with him again,” Hudson said quietly, keeping his voice low enough the anesthesia techs wouldn’t overhear.“He’s not good for you.”

Not good for me?I’m the one not good enough for him.“He organized all this, which is something.”My gaze drifted to the viewing gallery above us.The surgery suite had been built like a theater—bright lights below, giant glass wall above so owners could watch every terrifying second.

Timothy stood on the other side with a phone pressed to his ear, pacing two steps one direction, then back again.He’d been doing it off and on the entire surgery.Probably handling one work crisis after another while pretending he wasn’t losing his mind.

Hudson snorted.“He didn’t do this for Shay or this horse.”