Page 33 of Slow Hands Cowboy

“I don’t know,” she said. “Would you rather have sex or would you rather have your business boom a bit?”

“Difficult to say,” he said.

“Well,” she said, her throat suddenly feeling scratchy, her face hot, from saying the word sex in front of him, “I think that this is probably a bigger opportunity, a more unique opportunity for you than getting laid.”

“What’s the endgame?”

“We both get what we want. It’ll be an amazing story, it’ll help me with my campaign, and it’s going to turn this into a love story. Baby, just say yes.”

He glared at her, hard, arms crossed, his irritation high.

The trouble was that it wasn’t a bad idea. Not at all. He could see immediately what she was pitching.

It was spinning all of this into a twist of fate, something serendipitous. The high school bad boy, and the golden girl in the town finally finding their way to each other because the groom ran away. The much-maligned and mischaracterized bad boy’s heroics finally creating the ideal situation for them to find love with each other.

And then, once she got elected, once the story had faded from any kind of headline that extended beyond the town, the two of them would manufacture a breakup.

“Okay. I mean, I can understand where you’re coming from.”

“We may end up on the news,” she said. “But wouldn’t you rather be in control of the story?”

“I’m not going to lie to you, I look pretty cool in the current story, so it’s not me that’s urgently trying to spin this.”

In spite of himself, he felt like a little bit of an ass when those words exited his mouth. Because she looked upset. She looked like she was genuinely grappling with the realization that she had no control here. That everything was in fact pretty terrible for her, and not even half as terrible for anyone else.

Yes, things looked pretty bad for Alan, that was true. But he was going to come out of it way less injured than she was. He was a doctor in a small town. It wasn’t like people had a lot of options as to who they could go to.

Also, she was a woman. So flat out, hands-down, she was going to get the shorter, sharper end of that.

“My business is in danger, and I figure that I can make sure it’s in no danger. Spin it so that the ranch looks as good as possible. But I personally? I’m fine.”

“Well, very glad for you and your roping skills.”

“My roping skills have gotten me a lot.”

He looked at her, and he didn’t think he imagined that little glint of something in her eye before she looked away.

No. He couldn’t imagine Addison thinking that he was speaking in double entendre, because she would probably burst into flame.

“Okay. So, I think what we should do is begin to soft launch this. We should go to dinner, maybe in a week or so.”

“Nope,” he said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Exactly what I said. No. Going in with a whimper isn’t going to do anything for you, isn’t going to let you control this how you want.”

“What do you mean?”

“Right now, everyone is watching, so capitalize on it now. Next week there will be a whole new bunch of viral videos, and you’ll just be the girl who got left at the altar.”

He felt a little mean saying that, which annoyed the hell out of him because nothing he’d said to her was mean in a way that matched the way she’d treated him back in the day. But she was like a wounded little creature now and he couldn’t go crushing her.

That statement, he could see, had crushed her a bit.

“Sure, in the wider world. And this being a story in the whole world embarrasses me, yes, but town is where everybody knows you, and everybody knows me. Town is where that’s going to be a story.”

“You’re thinking too small,” he said, crossing his arms and rocking back on his heels.