Page 21 of Risking it for the Cowboy

“I thought we … I mean, it really seemed like we…”

Her eyes flitted back to his. She regretted it instantly. Because it wasn’t shock or anger marring his brow. The furrow was riveted with hurt. As if he really had wanted to stay. Was this charmer actually hurt by a one-night stand asking him to leave?

He huffed a wry laugh that was anything but humored and scratched his hair. “Okay, sorry I even said that about steppin’ out. It’s just … where’s that girl I met last night? The one who sang so pretty? The one whose face lights up touching a fossil, or collects magazine pictures in a scrapbook?”

“She doesn’t exist,” she whispered. At his look of utter sadness, she swallowed and closed her eyes. “Look, I don’t ever bring guys home but—”

Here goes. She inhaled deep. Exhaled. The kicker. Admitting she had a kid was usually enough to send a single guy hauling ass for the nearest exit.

It didn’t matter if her kid was beautiful and funny and innocent, loving unicorns and always begging for horses and chickens. All that mattered to a guy was that she wasn’t his. She hated the idea of this man fleeing like he was dodging a bullet, but Jason was never going to let her live a normal life, and the few guys she’d gone to dinner with since had stopped calling when she’d mentioned her daughter.

“I have a kid, and she’s coming home early from a, a sleepover—” She couldn’t tell him the line of fire he was standing in right now. Jason thought he could have whatever flings he wanted but there’d be hell to pay if she, too, moved on. “I’m not cheating on anyone. I’m divorced. I haven’t been with a man in years until you.” Her eyes bounced away, because he was so much more experienced than her. “I can’t let her see someone rolling out of my bed. She’d never understand…”

“Okay … I get that. I’m sorry. But…” He was nodding, but more to himself, as if she’d validated something for him, and guilt sliced through her.

No. No guilt.

This was no strings. Two consenting adults who’d made no promises. She never got babysitters. She’d worked so hard to get her research study off the ground, since it was the one thing Jason couldn’t destroy. She was raising Daisy alone—except for when the courts dictated visits to a dad who couldn’t even be bothered to pay his child support.

There was nothing wrong with wanting to feel wanted on a rare night.

His brow twisted. She reached out to wipe away his concern, feeling her own furrow with unshed emotion she always held within, but stopped herself and her hand dropped. “I need you to understand. I just—”

“Can I call you, then?” He didn’t care that she had a kid?

Despite the resignation in the man’s eyes, a spark of hope still dwelled there.

“Me being a mom doesn’t bother you?”

“Is it supposed to?”

Her texts buzzed. Five minutes. Get him out of the house or so help me God, Charlie, there’s gonna be hell to pay.

“God, God, God,” she whispered, then tossed down her phone on the rumpled sheets and knotted up her hair.

Single moms didn’t get second chances. And anyone who’d endured Jason Thompson should know better than to trust a smooth-talking showman in a country band. They fired up a girl’s heart then smashed it like a guitar at the finale.

Her heartbeat ratcheted up as she raced to the door, opening it, hurrying him through as he, too, fought to get his legs into his jeans and into his boots, cramming his socks in his back pocket and still holding his wallet and his wadded flannel, stooping to snap up his beat-up Stetson from the corner.

At her silence, he glanced away as tight-lipped, the muscles beneath his ears pumped. He slipped between her and the jamb, pausing in the doorway, chest to chest, so close, as his jaw pumped and his blue eyes burned down on her.

“I knew you had a kid the moment I mapped those pretty stretch marks on your stomach.” A thumb touched her stomach, hand gentle on her waist, and why was he making this so hard? “It only made you more intriguing. Made me wonder where the daddy was. Why you were alone.”

He patted for his keys, his jeans still slung open and belt buckle dangling from those vees of ligaments she’d scored with her nails all night, then slipped away and trotted down the stairs like a batter walking first. He might be a pretty boy beneath the flashing stage lights, but he worked his body, honed into a machine…

He thought they were pretty?

He clopped across the old planks to the front door, as she grabbed her oversized thrift store cardigan and threw it around her, when she spied that picture, torn off the photo booth strip, on the table beneath the window. Swallowed hard at the lump in her throat and stopped in her tracks.

She picked up the picture, noting a wadded white T slung over the back of the chair.

His shirt? She brought it to her nose and inhaled. As she heard his boots creaking downstairs, heard Artex’s jingling collar as the furry monstrosity heaved himself up, shook, and ambled across the hall to greet him.

She pressed the cotton to her cheek as she absorbed the photo between her finger and thumb. The reverent way his knuckles traced her downturned face in the picture, the way his cheek divoted, amused by what she was laughing at and yet, looking at her as if seeing a world unfolding before him. She’d never been looked at like that before.

Jason said Thaddeus chewed up women and spit them out … her biggest fear. But what did her gut say? Why was she letting old fears Jason liked to stoke take over?

She rounded the banister just in time to spy Artex licking Thaddeus’s hand, tail wagging. He spared a scratch behind the ears for the dog and muttered softly, “At least you still like me. Guess my radar was off about her, huh? I never had a chance, did I, big fella?” He paused, stared at something.