Page 3 of Slow Hands Cowboy

“I see,” Laney said.

“This is going to be a lot.”

“I hope all the food is perfect, or she’s going to go into the kitchen and spit in everybody else’s.”

Laney snorted. “Yeah, don’t worry, it’s amazing. She’s just lucky that I’m too professional to spit in her food.”

“No kidding.”

The truth was, she had been flawlessly polite during their dealings. She had just been all over the place. She had changed things for this bridal party and the wedding about nine hundred times.

Conservative estimate.

The decorations, the date, the location on the ranch, the menu — she had changed the menu so many times.

The cake, the flowers, the activities, absolutely everything, and he had been acting as wedding coordinator for a runaway train, but the runaway train had a hundred thousand dollars on it, and for the sake of their business, this wedding needed to both scream that it had cost six figures and entice other people with that sort of money to the venue.

He understood the assignment.

And one thing he could say about the years of bad treatment from Addison was that it had been what taught him to move through life with an impenetrable smile on his face.

If you showed people that you weren’t bothered, they wouldn’t bother with you.

By senior year, the power dynamic between them had flipped.

And he could still remember at graduation, when she had brushed past him very intentionally, and he had taken her hand to help her up to the stage. Their eyes met. She looked shocked, and he’d watched color flood her cheeks.

Then he’d smiled. Slowly.

“Congratulations.”

He could still remember how much it had cost him to say that word. But it had been worth it for her response.

He’d be damned — then and now — if she knew that he hated her. He would be damned if she knew that she’d hurt him in ways that had changed him forever.

The field inside his soul was sown with neglect, abandonment, and insecurity. So it had been extremely easy for a few seeds planted by an object of fascination in high school to mean more than they should have.

If he had a healthy field instead of a bunch of fucked-up crops, it wouldn’t have mattered.

But he’d been a mess going into all that, so what she had done had only made it worse.

The woman who appeared to be the maid of honor began to direct everyone to seats, and the hotel staff began to bring out an array of beautifully wrapped gifts that had obviously been inside in some sort of staging area.

The wedding was next week. The big bridal shower was today, and the bridal party was staying over the weekend for a bachelorette party. Which would involve a lot of wine and likely laughter at the expense of others. He could only assume.

Maybe he could offer to be the stripper.

That actually almost made him laugh.

If he thought he’d shocked her at graduation, showing up in full cowboy gear and offering to do a strip tease would probably send her into an early grave.

Appealing.

Very appealing.

“My staff is set to serve nibbles in five minutes, before the presents are opened, and then afterward there will be the cake.”

They hadn’t done the cake in-house; they had hired a local cake bakery and decorator. While Cara, their local baker, could do all of that, she didn’t like to do people’s big event cakes.