Page 1 of Slow Hands Cowboy

Chapter One

Perfection was essential when planning your enemy’s wedding. Walker Grayson was certain of that.

One thing about Walker was that if he was certain of something, then he saw it through.

The kind of life he and his siblings’d had growing up didn’t leave room for uncertainty or moral quandary. He’d been willing to shoplift, grift, whatever he had to do back when he’d been a kid to make sure he and his brother and sister could eat – and he would always be proud that he’d done it.

Always be confident in those choices, because they were choices that had helped them survive.

Now, though, he was doing more than just surviving. He owned this place – along with his siblings – and they’d made something of themselves in a way that meant the whole town of Mustang River had to take notice.

And take notice they had.

Enough that the Painted Ridge Resort was playing host to the town’s wedding of the season. The wedding of Alan March, local doctor and former high school golden boy, to Addison Carey, daughter of the former mayor, current mayoral candidate, and ever-present pain in his ass.

But that was fine. His whole life he’d had to smile, make nice while people judged him, looked down their noses at him and he just smiled back. Unruffled. Unbothered. Because what he’d never do is let one of those people know they got to him. Not ever.

He surveyed the scene before him with a small measure of pride and a heaping helping of hostility and irritation, which he kept off of his face, thank you very much.

Pink flowers. Pink flowers in vases, fashioned into an arch, draped in a garland over a table.

Pink flowers everywhere.

And two white peacocks roaming the yard looking content if pointless in his opinion.

People seemed to be obsessed with them regardless of how pointless he found them.

Or maybe it wasn’t people in the general sense. But a certain sort of bride. The kind who needed an entire yard decked out in a manner that was befitting a princess.

Perhaps, because it was.

The princess of Mustang River, who was marrying her Prince Charming.

His gut burned with irritation. Rage, even, and who could blame him? For the last few months, his entire life had been dominated by Addison Carey, and he hadn’t wanted to have a thing to do with her since high school.

He had wanted her, and to this day, she was the only woman that he had ever wanted that he’d had to yearn for.

He wasn’t an asshole. No meant no. He didn’t chase down women that didn’t want his attention. It wasn’t that.

There was a spark between them; there always had been, she had taken that spark and turned it into something pointed and sharp. Had fastened it into a knife’s blade that she flicked beneath his skin and expertly separated it from his bones.

He didn’t like that.

He was a man with a healthy amount of pride, especially now, and the way that she’d acted back then had been like torture.

Everyone had seen her as this beautiful, shimmering light, but he knew exactly what she was. She was mean as a snake.

And now she was running for mayor, which he found particularly hilarious, and he wondered if it would affect her campaign at all if he exposed the fact that she had asked him to prom in eleventh grade and then ghosted him.

Yeah, that had happened. It was embarrassing.

Because in so many ways, Walker had always been cynical.

But with Addison, he hadn’t been, even back then. He had been an unruly boy who had been… Well, he felt like he was in love. It hadn’t even felt like lust.

Which was a testament to how powerful a seventeen-year-old boy’s hormones were. Truly.

And that was the only way he could’ve been suckered into a date that he should’ve known at that point was a trick.