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Six
Emery
What was his angle?
Holden offered to help clean up the kitchen. I shamelessly took advantage of it so I could get the kids ready for bed. Mostly, I needed a moment to myself. Holden did that to me.
He was in my house. My one-night stand was wiping down my table. The guy I thought I would never see again—and then when I did, I’d assumed I had thoroughly scared him off—had eaten supper with us.
And he hadn’t ditched as soon as he’d eaten the last bite. What did that mean?
I was perched on the toilet lid while Afton toweled off and Riley splashed in the bathtub.
“Can we see Coach B’s horses?” Afton asked as she shrugged into her nightgown.
“Probably not, honey.”
“Why not?”
Because Holden was supposed to be uncomfortable around kids. He was supposed to be a commitment-phobe. He was supposed to be a one-night stand I wasn’t going to see again.
He was in my house.
Why had I been so naive about hookups that I thought we wouldn’t cross paths? Crocus Valley wasn’t far enough away. I should’ve driven to South Dakota. Or Canada.
It was hard to argue it wasn’t worth it, though.
“I don’t know, Afton. I’ll talk to him.” But not about what I really wanted to know.
Like, what was he doing here? He’d checked on Landon. He’d stayed for supper. And now he might do riding lessons.
He was too good to be true. I didn’t trust it.
Afton slipped out of the bathroom, and I pondered the big man in my house. I wasn’t delusional. I wasn’t that good of a lay that a guy would jump through those hoops to get me again. We’d had a frenzied fuck in the back seat, undressing only as much as necessary. For him, that was completely dressed with his fly open. For me, that was my pants pulled down far enough for him to spin me around and thrust in behind me.
It was like he’d surrounded me that night. What could’ve been impersonal had been hot and erotic, and his hands had been all around me, down my pants, up my shirt with his mouth at my neck—
I wiped off my brow. Was the furnace on?
The room wasn’t hot; I was. The libido I had thought had been destroyed by work and kids and a cheating ex hadn’t left. And it hadn’t been a one-time flare-up that night at the bar.
Or maybe it was just Holden.
Riley tried to stand up. A little reminder that I couldn’t lose my head over a guy like I had with Henry.
“No, honey. Sit until I get the towel.”
I helped her out, dried her off, and dressed her in her pajamas. I’d cooled off by the time I ushered her into the living room.
Holden’s voice drifted out from the kitchen, bringing back the flush all over again. “Appaloosas are the spotted horses.”
“Are there Oreo horses?” Avery was all in on the horses. I should go save him. But it’d been months since I’d seen her avidly interested in a subject. She was at the precipice of outgrowing toys, but no new interests had cropped up.
“I guess a black horse with white markings could look like an Oreo. There’s a special kind of beef cattle that looks like it’s got a white belt going all the way around, but sometimes you see a Holstein look like an Oreo cow.”
“What are Holsteins?”
I wandered in with Riley on my hip as Holden replied, “The big cow statue you see off the interstate at New Salem.”
