Page 4 of Slow Hands Cowboy

If it were cupcakes or smaller things, they could badger her into it, but she wasn’t one for a whole lot of fussy icing.

He didn’t need to stay for the whole thing, but he did feel like he needed to supervise it getting rolling.

He was the coordinator, whether he liked it or not.

This was all still an evolving role.

He worked in public relations and marketing for the ranch.

After he’d finished with the rodeo, he’d actually gone and gotten a degree.

Just because he wanted to. Because he was tired of people acting like he was an idiot. Because it felt good to be able to brandish a piece of paper at them to prove that he wasn’t what they assumed.

At least, he thought that it would feel good. He still liked to pretend that it did. That it did something to banish that feeling of inadequacy down in his soul.

It should. And he was very good at pretending.

Very good at smiling.

“All right,” he said, turning away from the proceedings. “Let’s make sure everything goes off without a hitch.”

Chapter Two

She was almost a hundred percent sure that she could feel him watching her.

A certainty that made absolutely no logical sense.

Of course she couldn’t feel him watching her. You couldn’t feel the gaze of another person, she was almost entirely certain. That was the stuff of horny novels, the kind that she didn’t even read, and she wasn’t going to start believing in that sort of thing now, whilst sitting on the lawn at her bridal shower.

Everything was perfect, she had to give him that.

It had to be. If it wasn’t perfect, then it felt like an omen for the wedding.

Walker was impossible to agitate, and she should know. Back when she had been a moronic teenager who hadn’t had the sense that God gave a parsnip, she’d made it her mission to agitate, irritate and otherwise infuriate him, and she’d never managed to do it.

Walker was untouchable, impenetrable, and far too handsome for everyone’s own good. As long as she’d known him, she’d felt the urge to needle him, though, she didn’t really know why. He was there, and it was like his presence demanded a response from her and she’d never been able to figure out quite what that response was.

Not that she needed to litigate that right now. She wouldn’t be thinking about Walker, not in any capacity, if it weren’t for the wedding being held here.

Maybe she should’ve pushed back against this as a venue. But her father and her fiancé had both identified it as the most visible location for a wedding in Mustang River, and she had been planning on having her wedding over in Bend, but given the mayoral race, her father had felt that it was really important she do something in the community. Really important that her wedding be local, and bring money into the local economy, which she understood, she would’ve been happy to have local people go out to the venue in Bend, but she could also see where her dad was coming from.

It was good optics for the campaign. She needed to get better at that.

She really felt like she was suited to the position. Her father had been the mayor for years, and then he had retired, and the current mayor was passive. Coasting on the progress her dad had made with tourism, and just letting it all stay the same.

And this wasn’t the moment to be passive.

It was a changing economy, and when tourism had really started to catch on in Mustang River about a decade ago, she could remember being surprised. More than surprised, she had been baffled. Because she had grown up here.

As disaffected youths they’d called it Mustang River, Boregon.

No one had been impressed with this place. No one had been able to imagine why anybody would come there for a vacation.

Now, with some maturity, she could understand.

Now that she had spent a little bit of time away, having gone to college down in California, she could understand the charm of the small town and four seasons. Then, once she had gotten into business on the town’s main street, she had really found herself invested in contributing to that tourism economy, making it healthier, helping it thrive, and the Painted Ridge Resort was one of the biggest assets the community had gained in these last ten years, so having her wedding there made sense.

She couldn’t deny it.