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“Got quite the earful when I tried to surprise you for lunch today.”
“Omigod that noise I heard out front wasyou? Listening in?”
“I couldn’t help what I overheard.”
She groaned and buried her face in her hands.
“Hope you had time to prepare that speech, cause I promise you’ll have my full attention when you deliver it.”
Cord retrieved thehappy hour tray from the porch. He’d forgotten about being nekkid, until he returned to the living room and saw his bobbing dick in the dining room mirror.
“If I didn’t like that dick so much I might be tempted to punch it,” AJ drawled. She watched him approach with those wary silver eyes.
Cord set the tray down on the floor. He added three pieces of split wood to the fire and snagged a pillow off the couch.
AJ had already drained the glass of water and poured them both two shots of whiskey. She’d also wrapped the fleece from the couch around herself.
He reached for the other blanket and settled it across his lap. They faced each other, but his wife’s gaze remained riveted on the ice cube in her glass.
After a big swallow of whiskey, he said, “AJ. I was kiddin’ about you giving me a speech. I heard everything I needed to earlier today.”
“Are you mad?”
When he paused too long, she finally met his gaze. “No, baby doll, I’m not mad. You’ve got friends, you’re gonna talk to them. But Iamconfused. Not about me bein’ an ass when you tried to talk to me, there’s no disputing that. I’m talkin’ about when you said I stopped showing you any affection and it’d been goin’ on for months.”
“It has been. That’s the problem. Youhaven’tnoticed.”
“When did all of this start?”
“During calving season.”
Cord raised an eyebrow. “It’s been goin’ on since February?”
AJ frowned. “Maybe the end of calving.”
“So April? When we went to Billings for Easter?”
“No. Things were fine then. Must’ve been around branding or when school got out.”
“We brand the first weekend in May. Kids got out of school at the end of May. So can you narrow it down?”
“I know things started to change after…well, it had something to do with cows or ranch stuff.”
And he’d been so confident his wife wouldn’t ever utterranch stuff. “Like when we turned the bulls out the end of June?”
“No. I remember it being hotter.”
“So during haying? Which started mid-July?”
“That’s gotta be it.” Her eyes narrowed. “Hey. What’s up with the twenty questions? Are you denying you’ve been distant?”
“I’ll admit to bein’ distantrecently, but you’ve gotta admit this disconnect hasn’t been going on forever, or months and months, like you told Ainsley. Baby doll, it’s only been sixweeks.”
“What? No. It’s been way longer than that.”
“Maybe it’s seemed longer, but I promise you, it’s only been six weeks.” He held up his hand to forestall her argument. “I know that, because the last six weeks have been a goddamned blur since both Colby and Colt decided to take family vacations, leaving me to figure out how to get everything done. I’m up at four a.m. which means I’m ready for bed after supper. Hard for me to watch TV with you when I’m asleep. We haven’t held hands because we’ve always got the kids with us and between the two of us, we only have enough hands to hold ontothem. And no offense, but it’s too damn stuffy in the kitchen in the summertime to steal kisses over a hot stove.”
She took another drink. “That’s what you meant when you said my memory wasn’t as reliable as I believed.”
