Page 68 of Slow Hands Cowboy

She looked at him for a moment, and she really wished she hadn’t. Because when her eyes landed on that strong, gorgeous profile, his broad shoulders, his muscular chest, her stomach went tight. Oh, there was something else that she wanted to experience. Way more than she wanted to zip line.

She felt wicked for even thinking it, and not in a fun way. Sinful, like somebody in a Puritan outfit was going to pop out from behind one of the pillars in his house and point at her, call her a dangerous heretic or something.

But for the first time, right then, she wished that what she had told Alan wasn’t a lie. She wished that what they were showing the world wasn’t a lie. She wished that she had left that wedding and had transformative sex with Walker.

Because that was another part of herself that she didn’t really know.

She didn’t really know what she wanted. She and Alan had had... an adequate sex life, she supposed? She had decided that sex wasn’t all that important to her. And right now, that felt like... a compromise. Not in the true sense of the word, not that she had been compromising equally with him, but that she had compromised something within herself. That she had decided because it wasn’t all that satisfying, that she wasn’t allowed to care that much about it.

You don’t have time for any of this. You are running a mayoral campaign. You cannot get distracted by being hot for that man.

Except what was her life? What was it? If she couldn’t get distracted by it now, when could she?

She let out a sharp breath, and hoisted the duffel bag further up her shoulder, then walked up the wooden stairs. They were open, and provided a great view of the living room, with its soaring ceiling, and massive windows.

The place really was astonishing.

“Did you design this?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, walking behind her with that giant box. “With the help of an architect. Growing up, we didn’t have any space to call our own. So now I have a little bit too much, I suppose. But it’s exactly what I want.”

“Well, that’s... good.”

She thought about not having any space. She had been lucky that way. He was right. She’d always had material possessions, she’d always had her dad, and all of his material privilege. And it wasn’t like it had made her childhood perfect or simple, obviously she was more of a mess than she had ever fully realized, but... It hadn’t been like that.

She was beginning to get a peek behind the curtain. A look at Walker, and who he actually was beyond the facade. He didn’t seem like someone who was invested in what people thought about him, but he definitely wore a different face for the world than he did in private. It wasn’t the same as her, though. He didn’t seem to care quite so much if people thought he was good or perfect. It was about proving something, she supposed. Maybe even to himself.

She could understand that, actually. She had been raised to be suspicious of a big part of herself.

She had been raised to hate part of herself. Half of her blood.

That realization was so chilling that she had to stop walking for a second. Walker bumped her rear with the edge of the box he was carrying.

“Sorry. Didn’t realize you stopped.”

“No. It’s... Have you ever thought about how dysfunctional it is that other people made you hate yourself?”

She turned to look at him. He raised both of his pale eyebrows.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it in those terms. But yeah. It is.”

“Okay. Just... sorry. I think I’ve been in denial the last couple of weeks, and suddenly I feel like I’m seeing things a little bit more clearly. And it’s making me weird.”

“I’ve always thought you were weird.”

She squinted. “Me?”

“Yes. I have always thought you were a bit odd.”

She turned away again, not quite sure what to do with that. And then, she pushed open the first door, and stepped inside the room. It was beautiful. It had a four-poster bed, wood, that same reddish color as the rest of the wood in the house. The view might not be of the river, but it was a glorious view of the mountain behind them, and lush green trees.

She let out a breath. “This is lovely.”

“Thanks. There’s a bathroom right off the room here. Feel free to use it. If you want to go through the rest of your stuff later, that’s fine.”

“Yeah. I’d probably like that. Thanks.”

She had enough clothes and toiletries to take a bath, which was what she decided to do, instead of going back and taking inventory of all her things.