Brokedown Cowboy

“I’m not in the market for anything.”

“That woman was not in the market for a relationship, Connor. She just wanted...you know, naked stuff.”

“I’m not really in the market for that right now.”

She should not be happy about that, and she should not be interested in exploring the topic further. “Not at all?”

“No. And don’t try to change my mind. You said that you were going to support me being where I wanted to be. Eli has already pushed me about it. Jack won’t shut up about it.”

“I just... I figured...”

One of the new waitresses, someone Liss didn’t know, set their food down in front of them. Both in red baskets, piled high with french fries. “What did you figure?” Connor asked, eating a fry.

“Well, I figured at this point you would be in the market for that. If you had not...gone to market already, so to speak.”

“I don’t have enough energy to fill out my insurance paperwork. Why would you think I had the energy to screw somebody?” He took the top bun off his hamburger and started squirting ketchup on the patty.

Her stomach twisted, and she did her best not to examine it. “Because, typically, it’s something people make time for.” She should talk, since she’d been single for two years, and there had been no screwing.

Connor shrugged and took a bite of his hamburger. “I didn’t come here to get a psychological evaluation. I came here to take out my rage on the cows by eating their brethren. So we can drop the subject now.” He set the hamburger down and looked at his thumb, which had a spot of ketchup on it.

He raised his thumb to his lips and licked the red sauce from his skin. The sight of his tongue moving over bare flesh, even his own flesh, sent an arrow of longing straight down between Liss’s thighs.

“Okay, fair enough.” Yes, she was more than happy to abandon this line of conversation.

“Hey, guys.”

Liss looked up, and Connor looked behind him, to see Jack standing there. “Mind if I pull up a chair?”

“Please,” she said. Anything to break the weirdness of this moment. Why were things weird? Was it because she had moved in?

“Glad you’re here, Jack,” Connor said. “As soon as I finish eating, I’d love to kick your ass at darts.”

“You’re welcome to try.”

Jack joining the group added an air of familiarity, of normalcy. A much-needed injection of it, after the roiling jealousy she’d experienced watching Connor get hit on, and the flash of heat that had assaulted her only moments later.

She had to get a grip. Because, like Connor said, he was in no place to hook up. And even if he were, it wouldn’t be with her.

She wouldn’t want it to be her, anyway. Some things in life are too important to screw up with sex. Her friendship with Connor was one of them. She had decided that years ago, and other than one brief lapse, a few months where she had thought things might be changing between them, she had always thought that.

It was true then; it was true now.

Connor was the best friend she’d ever had, and she would do anything to protect that friendship. Anything.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_e3f59eec-c938-54de-a79b-0cf7d551d280)

CONNOR WAS GETTING a late start to the day. Fortunately, his team was good, and he knew that the animals would be taken care of. Still, he hated oversleeping. But he, Jack and Liss had stayed way too late at Ace’s last night, flinging darts at the board, laughing about stupid stuff and in general ignoring the reality of life.

Reality that had slapped him in the face pretty hard this morning when his alarm had gone off. It wasn’t just the fact that they had stayed at the bar late. Once they’d made it home, Connor had had a hell of a time sleeping. It had been as if something was sitting on his chest, making it impossible to breathe, impossible to do anything but lie there, sweat beading on his brow, panic rising in his throat.

Not for the first time, he wished he had accepted medication for his anxiety.

But when the doctor had offered it a couple of years back, Connor had just laughed it off and said he didn’t need a pill when a beer would do the job. But he was getting tired of the hangovers. He was tired of the anxiety, too. Hell, he was tired of all this shit. He would never have thought he’d be the kind of guy to become a head case over a little grief. Or a lot of grief.

It seemed as if he might be, though.

I don’t have enough energy to fill out my insurance paperwork. Why would you think I had the energy to screw somebody?

A flash of last night’s conversation popped into his mind. Had he really said that to Liss? Yeah, he had. He didn’t suppose it was normal to still be this tired. To still be this overwhelmed by what was left. But then, there was nothing normal about losing your entire future. All of your plans. Everything you were.

The finality was the worst part. It just happened. Unexpected, fast. Jessie had gone out to visit with her friends. A normal night, nothing unusual at all.

And she hadn’t come home.

Just like that, every plan for the future gone.

And he was sort of stubbornly sitting here in the present, afraid to plan for a future he’d never wanted in the first place. One where he was alone, single. But here he was, and now... He couldn’t readjust, not again.

He let out a heavy breath and walked to his dresser, jerking open the bottom drawer and digging for some underwear. And there were none. Because he didn’t keep up on his laundry, because he sucked. He sucked at taking care of himself, and he had sucked at taking care of his wife.

Of course it was too late to fix a marriage that had been put asunder by death. But it wasn’t too late to fix the situation with his underwear.

He walked downstairs—wearing nothing but yesterday’s underwear—and headed toward the laundry room. Hopefully there was something in the dryer. He was not the best at keeping up on laundry. Because laundry was terrible. But sometimes he ended up with one or two baskets full of clean clothes, just sitting in there, because he hated to put things away.

Liss had accused him of being a man-child on more than one occasion. He was starting to think she might be right.

It was a pretty sad-sack thing, now that he thought about it. A grown man not being able to see to his own household. But Eli had always done that when they were growing up, after their mother had left. And then Connor had married Jessie, and she had handled all of it. It wasn’t a great excuse. He had always expected for it to be taken care of, and it had been. While he had spent his days working himself blind on the ranch.

He’d intended to change. Because Jessie had asked him to. And because she deserved for him to.

Only then it had been too late.

So he’d gone right back to how he’d always been. Because there was no one to be different for. No one to be better for.

And because of that, he had no clean underwear.

He opened up the laundry room door and saw two baskets filled with clothes on the floor. He opened up the dryer door, and there was a full load in there, too. Okay, he was bound to come up successful in this pursuit.

He started to dig through the dryer and realized pretty quickly he wasn’t looking at his own clothes. He grabbed a basket and stuck it underneath the opening to the dryer, pulling the clothes that were inside out and into said basket.

His hand got caught around something lacy and flimsy, and he looked down and froze. Well, he had found clean underwear. They just weren’t his.

For a full ten seconds he sat there and looked at the mint-green panties that were in his hand. They were delicate, feminine. And very, very tiny. He had never imagined that Liss wore underwear like this beneath her rather sensible outfits. Well, in fairness, he had never thought about Liss’s underwear before.

But he was thinking about them now. He couldn’t stop himself from running his thumb over the soft, flat waistband. He swallowed hard, lifting them up so that he could see the shape.

It was a thong, which was very unexpected. Even more unexpected was the quick image that flashed through his mind of what Liss must look like wearing them. A shadow of copper curls beneath the flimsy lace, and the round, shapely ass that would be displayed to perfection.