Slow Burn Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  So that she didn’t look like she was running.

  Even though she was. She absolutely was.

  He didn’t say anything, but she could hear the weight of his footsteps behind her, crunching on the gravel. More than that, she could sense his presence, and that just weirded her out even more.

  When they came up to the house, she stopped on the bottom step, flinging her arms to the side and turning to face him, grabbing hold of the railing, forming something of a human blockade. “Thanks for coming by,” she said.

  He blinked. “Okay.”

  “It’s late,” she said. “And I have some work to go over. Things for tomorrow.” She was lying. “Because, you know, the subscription boxes.”

  “Right,” he said.

  “And I’m going to go to bed early. And probably, I’m going to wash my hair. I have to do some cuticle thing, with my fingernails. And scrub the dry skin off my feet. I have a pumice stone.” She wanted to grab all those words and stuff them back into her mouth. A pumice stone? She had no idea what was wrong with her. Except, if what had just happened down by the tree was actually sexual tension she had probably killed it forever.

  She had just mentioned dead foot skin. She had a feeling that was in the handbook for how to turn a man off permanently.

  Not that Finn had been turned on. Absolutely not.

  “Okay. Well, I guess I will leave you to your...pumice stone.”

  “It’s a real thing,” she said, immediately wanting to brain herself.

  “I don’t doubt you. Maybe you should put them in your subscription box.”

  She took a step back, up onto the next step. “They aren’t a local thing. I mean, this is a pretty volcanic region, so I imagine you could probably... But, they aren’t specific to Copper Ridge. Which is kind of the whole idea.”

  “Right,” he said. “I’ll see you later, Lane. Thanks for the swim. I needed it.”

  “Sure. Anytime,” she said, taking another step away from him. “Later.”

  He turned away from her and walked to the truck, and she wasted no time scampering back into the house and closing the door behind her. She leaned back against it, pressing her hand to her chest, waiting for her heart rate to go back to normal.

  She made her way back toward the kitchen, the silence of the house settling around her. It didn’t feel like a refuge right now. It just felt like a big echo chamber of every stupid thing that had gone on in the past hour.

  She heaved out a long, vocal breath, going to the fridge to retrieve her berries. Then she stopped and swore. She caught sight of the calendar that was hanging there, and the girl’s night she had written down on it. Unlike their casual catch-up dinner the other night, this was their official monthly let’s-never-let-life-get-too-busy-for-friends night.

  They were all supposed to go to The Grind tonight for their Main Street get-together. She, Alison, Cassie and Rebecca all owned businesses on Copper Ridge’s Main Street and as female business owners they had all bonded pretty quickly.

  Usually, she didn’t take a day off on girl’s night, but everything was all jumbled up in her head so her decision-making had suffered.

  She could skip tonight. She could legitimately stay home with a pumice stone.

  But no, that was a bad idea. If she stayed home alone there would be nothing in the house with her except the memories of today’s events, which she would undoubtedly play on an endless loop, combined with that loose thread. Which she would pull out endlessly until she had finished the damage external events had already started.

  She didn’t want to sit at home alone. She didn’t want to feel sad. She didn’t want to feel regret. She didn’t want to feel at all.

  So, the alternative was going out. And that was exactly what she was going to do.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SHE WAS EXCEEDINGLY grateful that she had decided to come into town. Spending time with a group of friends was precisely what she needed to lift the dark cloud that had fallen over her lately. She was being overdramatic. About everything.

  Spending time listening to other people talk about their lives had given her some much-needed perspective.

  Maybe the real issue was that she was working too much. Not that she needed to work harder. She needed to do something to get out of her head, most likely.

  “I know he’s going to propose,” Rebecca said, talking about her boyfriend, Gage.

  “That’s great!” Lane said.

  “How do you know?” Alison asked, folding her arms and leaning forward on the table.

  “You just do,” Cassie said pragmatically.

  Cassie had been happily married to her husband, Jake, for a little over three years, and of the group, was definitely the expert on relationships.

  “Well, that and he’s terrible at keeping secrets,” Rebecca said. “He left a receipt for the ring in his pants pocket, which I found...”

  “When you were doing laundry?” Alison asked.

  “No,” she said, “when I was going through his pants pockets.”

  Lane snorted. “Well, then that wasn’t too indiscreet of him.”

  Rebecca shrugged. “He had better never have an affair. He leaves too clear a paper trail.”

  “You’re not actually worried about anything like that, are you?” Cassie asked.

  Rebecca shook her head. “No. And I was kidding about going through his pockets. I trust Gage.”

  She said it so easily, so matter-of-factly. As if there was nothing huge or concerning about a statement like that. About trusting another human being so completely.

  Lane didn’t even trust herself.

  But, instead of pondering that any deeper, she smiled a little wider. “Are you going to say yes?” she asked. She already knew the answer, but she was enjoying the conversation.

  “I might make him suffer a little bit,” Rebecca said, a smile playing with the edges of her mouth. “But there’s no one else for me. He knows that. And I think... I think there’s no one else for him. It’s kind of an amazing feeling. To find the person that just fits with you. I didn’t think that person existed for me.”

  Cassie was smiling and nodding in a knowing fashion.

  Lane shared a glance with Alison. She knew their thoughts on the subject of romance were similar. Although Lane had never known Alison to date at all.

  Ever since her marriage had ended in divorce, her abusive husband driven out of town, Alison had sworn off the male species.

  Lane couldn’t really blame her. She had certainly suffered her own brand of pain at the hands of a man. But it wasn’t like what Alison had been through. Lane couldn’t even imagine. To love someone, to marry them and to have them betray you like that. To have them turn into this whole different monster.

  It was nice that Rebecca had someone now. It was nice that Cassie had someone. But sometimes Lane wondered if she and Alison had just been wounded too deeply to ever take that kind of chance again.

  Oh, Lane dated. Casually. She liked men. But she liked them in their own space, and not in hers. She liked them to fill a manageable portion of her life. To fulfill a physical need and that vague emotional craving for romance that she sometimes got, particularly around Valentine’s Day or the holidays.

  Someone to go to parties with. Someone to go out to dinner with. Someone who might bring her flowers and tell her she was pretty. To kiss her and make her feel good.

  She’d had boyfriends since leaving Massachusetts. Some of them had even lasted quite a while. But they had never been serious. Not in the sense of her imagining they would become anything long-term.

  The very idea of a husband, of children, made her feel sick inside.

  It was a future she couldn’t have.

  A future she didn’t deserve.

  Without
permission, a vision of Cord McCaffrey and his family flitted in front of her mind’s eye. His beautiful wife, his two darling children.

  Her throat tightened, bile rising in it. Why did it hurt so much? Why did it still hurt so damn much?

  Or rather, why did it hurt again after so many years of lying dormant? It was his fault. For being in the public eye like this. For bringing it all up again.

  “Well,” Alison said, too brightly. Lane figured she had been traveling down her own dark road just then. “Congratulations, Rebecca. I can’t wait for you to officially accept his proposal.”

  “Me either,” Rebecca said. “I would never have thought... Well, I would never have thought that I would get married. Not in a million years. And I really never thought that I would marry him. For obvious reasons.”

  The reasons being that Gage had been responsible for a terrible accident that Rebecca had been in when she was a child.

  Lane didn’t possess that kind of capacity for forgiveness. But she had to admit that theirs was a rare case. Where both of them had been lost in the past, continually punishing themselves for something neither of them was truly at fault for. So in the end it was better they had let it go.

  Lane just couldn’t quite fathom how they had let it go with each other.

  More power to Rebecca, though.

  Nothing had proven more clearly to Lane that she still had an iron grip on the past than Cord’s recent resurgence.

  “Crap,” Alison said suddenly. “I was going to bring a couple trays of chocolate croissants that I had left over in the bakery. Can someone help me carry them?” Alison was looking meaningfully at Lane.

  “Sure,” Lane said.

  “Be right back,” Alison said, leading the way out of the small coffee shop.

  It was dark outside, and the streetlamps—made to look like old-fashioned gas lamps—were lit, casting a bright orange glow on the sidewalk. Most of the cars were gone, and the ones that were parked up against the curb likely belonged to people who had walked down the street to Beaches, Copper Ridge’s fanciest restaurant.

  Or they had all done a park and ride to Ace’s bar or brewery.

  Lane tugged on her sweater, pulling it closer to her skin. Once the sun sank into the ocean, nights were cold and invariably a bit damp when the mist rolled in off the sea. “I thought you might need a little bit of reprieve from those who are one half of a happy couple,” Alison said, her tone dry.

  “Is it that obvious?” Lane asked, keeping step with her friend, then pausing while Alison unlocked the door to the bakery.

  “Not really. I just assumed you might feel like I did. Come on in.” Lane walked in behind Alison, the room cast in darkness, the tables and chairs inky shadows on the light wood floor. The bakery case was empty, as were all the display cases that were normally full to the brim of pastries and breads.

  “I really do have a tray of croissants,” Alison said, setting her keys on the table before heading into the back. Lane lingered in the main dining area for a while, and then followed her friend.

  “Admittedly I’m a little bit of a relationship Scrooge,” Lane said, leaning against the kitchen door.

  “I’m a lot of one,” Alison returned. “Here,” she said, handing a wide bakery tray laden with croissants to Lane. Then she turned back into the kitchen and reappeared a moment later holding her own. “See, I’m not a liar. I just have a convenient memory.”

  They both walked back out into the dining room and Alison set the tray down for a moment so that she could grab her keys.

  “Do you think you’re ever going to date again?” Lane asked.

  She couldn’t see Alison’s expression, but she had a feeling it was a frown. “I don’t know. I like being by myself,” she said finally. “Nobody gets to tell me what to do. Nobody makes decisions about what I’m going to wear or where I’m going to go. I lost myself in Jared. So deeply that I never thought I would find me again. I wasn’t even sure who I was. It took so long to resurface. To let go of all that fear, that baggage... I don’t know. The idea of sacrificing any of my freedom just seems crazy to me.”

  Lane chewed on her bottom lip. “I totally understand that. But sex.”

  Alison laughed. “Yeah, that’s a whole separate issue.”

  “Have you... You know, since?”

  Alison shook her head. “No. Like I said, it took a long time to sort out my own stuff. So, for the time being I’m committed to... Sorting out my own stuff. In every way that applies.”

  Lane thought back to all of the tension from earlier. To what had happened with Finn. How she had felt jittery and hollow, and needy in a way that she hadn’t really associated with wanting sex before.

  She grimaced. “I guess that’s why some industrious person created vibrators.”

  Alison laughed uneasily. “I don’t have one of those.”

  “Seriously?” Lane rocked back on her heels. “Doesn’t every woman have one? Every red-blooded single American woman with a career and not enough time for a man?”

  “Not this one,” Alison returned.

  “Me neither,” Lane admitted. “Which I always thought was weird. Because according to every romantic comedy I’ve seen in recent years we should all have them.”

  “Vibrator hype,” Alison said. “I would rather have the real thing.” She shook her head. “Of course, I’m much more likely to get a vibrator than an actual man.”

  Lane sighed heavily. It had been a long time since she had dated anybody. Which translated to it being even longer since she’d had sex. More than a year. Way more.

  “I think that’s my problem,” she said finally.

  “You have a problem?” Alison asked.

  “Not a big one.”

  But for some reason, those words forced every incident that had gotten under her skin in the past few days into the forefront of her mind. From getting a glimpse of Cord on the news to every touch, every flash of strangeness and every lingering look that had occurred between herself and Finn.

  Suddenly, they felt insurmountable. Like pebbles that had been stacked on top of each other and turned into a giant mountain.

  “Just enough of one?” Alison asked, wrapping her arm around Lane’s shoulders and drawing her into a quick hug.

  “Yes. Just enough of one.”

  “If you ever want to talk about it... I’m kind of the master of the unpleasant topic that everyone would rather ignore.”

  “Is that what you feel like? Like you have something big to deal with that nobody wants to talk about?”

  Alison lifted a shoulder, then went and picked up the tray of pastries. “It’s complicated. Because sometimes I feel like I can’t escape it. Like everyone looks at me and sees someone weak or damaged. Even someone that deserves contempt. Because I stayed for so long. Sometimes I want to pretend it happened to somebody else. I want to pretend that my life started when Pie in the Sky opened. That nothing else happened before then. Other times...”

  Her words reached inside Lane and grabbed hold of her stomach, squeezing her tight. She related to that more deeply than Alison could possibly realize. That desire to talk about the horrible thing that defined who you were, and the desire to make it go away, fade into the distance, vanish into nothing.

  That big thing that defined everything you were, that was necessary, because you wouldn’t be standing on your own two feet without it, but that you despised more than anything else.

  “If you ever want to talk,” Lane offered, “you can always talk to me. Don’t feel like you can’t. I know that I don’t...that nobody wants to make you talk about something that could be painful. But if you want to you can tell me. You can tell me whatever you need to tell me about him. I don’t judge you for staying.”

  Alison set the tray back down on one of the tables with a clatter
, and then, she wrapped both of her arms around Lane and hugged her close in earnest. “Thank you,” she whispered finally.

  Lane wrapped her arm around Alison, then set her tray down with one arm, freeing up the other. And while she hugged her friend, she felt like a fraud.

  Because Alison was being raw, was being vulnerable, and Lane had nothing but mountains of secrets that she didn’t share with anybody. Her past had happened outside of this little town, and here she was insulated from her downfall, with Copper Ridge acting as salvation.

  For Alison, it was both. The source of her pain and the source of her relief. Everyone had witnessed both.

  For Lane, there was escape.

  And even though part of her wanted to tell Alison everything, there was another small, selfish part of her that couldn’t bear to bring the past any further into Copper Ridge than it had already come in the form of Cord McCaffrey on a TV in Ace’s bar.

  So, she just let Alison be vulnerable. And when she was done, the two of them picked up their trays and walked back to The Grind with smiles pasted on their faces and not an outward sign to be seen of what had just passed between them.

  CHAPTER NINE

  FINN HAD A strong suspicion he was hallucinating. The sun wasn’t up yet and he could hear voices and the sounds of clattering dishes coming out of the kitchen. That meant there was a strong likelihood his brothers had woken up before him. That was unacceptable.

  He looked at the clock and saw that it was after five. Then he swore, grabbing his hat off the top of his dresser and heading down the stairs.

  Partway down he met Cain, who had clearly also just woken up.

  “What the hell is going on?” Finn muttered.

  “I thought this was all normal for you,” Cain grumbled.

  “Not the noise.”

  Then he heard feminine laughter. And he was left in absolutely no doubt as to who it belonged to. He frowned.

  When he got into the kitchen, he saw Lane standing there at the stove scrambling eggs. She was also talking cheerily to Alex and Liam, who were sitting on bar stools at the big marble-topped island eating pastries.