Page 20 of Risking it for the Cowboy

“Daisy’s mad at me. Talking shit about wanting to go home, all damn night. As if my place ain’t also hers.” No, a dingy studio with a man who couldn’t hold down a job and decorated with J.D. bottles was hardly a home.

This farmhouse that had once been in Charlie’s family for generations and becoming ramshackle, was still far more of a home than a deadbeat dad’s place would ever be.

“So, fine, she gets her wish. Like mother like daughter with so much attitude. I swear, if you’ve got Thaddeus McClintock hanging around, I’m going to flip my sh—”

She hung up. Ashen. Shaking.

Jason hardly adhered to his visitation with their daughter as it was, and now he was going to cut Daisy’s weekend short? Color her surprised. It was for the best anyway. She didn’t want her little girl anywhere near him, so he was doing them all a favor.

“You have to go.” She panicked, voice knotting tightly, whirling around.

Her eyes flitted up from her phone to McClin—Thaddeus? Trouble…

Her breath froze in her throat. Her Miss Lone Star sash hung contemplatively in his grip.

His straw-blond hair was boyishly tousled, sparkling gaze fixed upon her as his brow pleated. “Why?”

God, oh God, oh God. He couldn’t be here, looking like he fit. She ached that this wasn’t her life. That he wasn’t the man to put his boots under her bed at the end of each workday. Looking like they’d been meant to lie together teasing each other with cheesy lines on lazy Sunday mornings. And if he was the player Jason had accused him of being…

Jason was wrong about most things, but a broke clock was right twice a day. Did Trouble play women like he played guitar? Of course he did. Illness twisted her stomach. Still, he was so beautiful, his arm propped under his head, popping his suntanned bicep, his cattle-grate abs, and the treasure trail of blond that peppered over his navel beneath the disheveled sheets outlining the heavy bulge between his thighs.

It was all an illusion. Cute guys charmed girls; reeled them into their webs.

Jason, case in point.

What the hell had she been doing? Bringing a guy home?

She severed eye contact and hurried for her panties and tank top from the night before. His confused brow looked too real, too innocent, to process. And too much like the past repeating itself. A dropout? Couldn’t hold a job? A band frontman who would always be traveling and satisfying himself at whatever town he was in?

The wind was thrashing now, and the moonlight had vanished. A storm coming in?

He cleared his throat and sat up, the sheet falling dangerously low as he propped his knees up and rested his forearms across them, still fingering that sash. “I, eh, thought maybe I could, you know, take you to breakfast to talk about that proposit—”

“I’m serious. You have to go.” That proposition was just him leading her on for more action.

She threw on a pair of work jeans as her long hair tangled around her limbs, shimmying into them and buttoning them.

“You steppin’ out on a man, Flower Girl?” His voice cooled. “Is he on his way home?”

“What?” She whirled around, this time anger pricking. He was suggesting she was cheating? “I’ve never cheated on a soul in my life. I was honest, and faithful, while—while he—” Chewed me up and spit me out with his toxic infidelity.

“Easy … okay,” he said, pushing to standing like the tall, labor-muscled drink of water that he was and rubbing her arms.

God, she wanted to sink into the touch.

“No. I haven’t been with anyone since—” She shook her head to shut herself up again.

She owed him no explanation.

Steeling herself, she pulled away, grabbing his wallet, his jeans, wadding his plaid that smelled of bad choices and delicious mistakes and illusions that weren’t real, and this time, shoved his clothes into his hands, belt buckle dangling and clunking against her knuckles.

“H-hey now,” he croaked as if hurrying to placate.

She found his boots next, also shoving those into his hands as he tried to juggle everything and noticed his, his, oh he was a well-endowed man. Her eyes darted away, the soreness between her thighs reminding her just how he’d rocked her world with the tool in his belt.

“You’re really kicking me out?” And was there an ounce of shock in his tone?

Her eyes stung with tears at the sound of it.