Page 36 of Slow Hands Cowboy

“Walker, there is no one on earth that I would be less likely to fall in love with. You have nothing to worry about.”

Her words were like barbs, but he wasn’t fifteen, so he enjoyed them. A lot. There was something about the fire, something about the fight, maybe that it was unusual.

Maybe that she had fucked him over so good when he was a teenager that part of him would always crave this. As an adult, women threw themselves at him. Hell, even in high school it had happened, but he had existed in the realm of dirty little secret, rather than being someone that women were proud to be seen with, and he didn’t especially care, because he didn’t want to be anywhere with them outside of the bedroom anyway.

No offense to women, he liked them, but when it came to physical relationships he just didn’t need anything more than the physical. That’s why he was happy to chat with Laney but wasn’t tempted to take her to bed. He just liked to keep things simple and uncomplicated, and the idea that a relationship might become more than just sex was complicated. In a way that he really didn’t need.

He wondered if it was because of how young he’d been when he first felt an attraction to her, that it was all twisted up in his gut now. That it did things to him, that she did things to him that nobody else did.

He liked that as an answer, so he decided to accept it.

No point turning it into a great, vast mystery.

Just more potholes in the road that had put him in the place he was on his journey now.

That shallow, that deep, the end.

“You ought to stay at the ranch,” he said, happy to move on from this moment, even if it was giving him a little thrill. He didn’t approve of getting thrilled this way, not from her. He had given in to temptation there for a moment, but he didn’t need to wallow in it.

“I can go stay with Anna. Or my dad.”

“Yeah, I got that. You absolutely could go stay with them, but if you stay here it’s going to help reinforce what we’re putting out there.”

“Where am I going to stay?”

“We have any number of rooms here. Anyway, it’ll help you get out of his place as quickly as possible.”

“I… Thank you. What a nightmare. But at least…thank you for the help.”

“Thank you. You really should be more appreciative of me.”

She looked away for a moment, and looked back, seemed like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. He wanted to dig, but at the same time, he didn’t want to evince any extra interest in her than he needed to, for his own ego’s sake.

Mind, she was certainly at a low point and could probably use a little bit of boosting, but she wasn’t going to get it from him. He wasn’t going to leave her standing in the middle of the aisle, metaphorically or literally it turned out. He was going to do what needed to be done to help both his business and her campaign, but he wasn’t going to go any deeper than that.

After all, she was his nemesis.

At least in the ways that counted.

But she would be a good enough mayor, he supposed, or maybe more to the point he didn’t actually care who won. She might as well. And in the end, it would look good for the Painted Ridge Resort, and that was what mattered to him. That was his job. The marketing of this place, and therefore this was part of his job. Making her feel better about who she’d been in high school, the way that she had treated him during the planning of the wedding, none of that was his to do.

If she wanted to grovel at some point, that was just fine. Though, if she did, he would pretend he didn’t care.

“Can I tell my dad? And Anna.”

“I’d rather if you didn’t, for the security of my business, because I don’t want anything rebounding on me, but since you’re all tied up in this, I suppose so. They wouldn’t do anything to compromise your campaign.”

“No. Of course not. They both want me to win, badly. Anna has her own interests tied up in it. So does my dad, obviously.”

“What about your brother?”

“Jackson? I mean, he probably wouldn’t care.”

“About the campaign or about us?”

“Either one. He’s impossible to read. We aren’t really that… I mean we are close in the sense that we see each other often enough, but we don’t talk about anything all that deep.”

“All right then. Handle it how you want.”