Untamed Cowboy

“I was on a date, Bennett,” she said, articulating the Ts a bit more sharply than necessary.

“Were you?” he asked, crossing his arms over his broad chest and leaning against the truck.

She pushed her now-completely-tangled red hair off her face. “I was.”

“Anyone I know?” he asked, his tone overly casual.

He was asking so he could cast aspersions. It was what he did. And it rankled. He was never going to be her boyfriend. And yet he took great delight in judging every single one she’d ever had and finding them unworthy.

“Depends,” she said, keeping her tone sweet. “Do you know Clarence the dachshund?”

He arched a brow. “I do not.”

“Well, I had a date with Clarence’s owner. And since you don’t know Clarence that doesn’t mean anything to you.”

“I didn’t think we dated the owners of patients,” he said, frowning.

“Well, that’s much easier for you, Bennett. If I eliminated every man in town with a pet then I would never be able to date.” She pretty much didn’t. And actually, tonight was the first time she’d been on a date in over a year.

Bennett let out a very masculine-sounding sigh, and she ignored the slight shock wave it sent through her. “Do you want to come over and have a beer?”

She really, really needed to say no. She was supposed to be on a date with another man, she was definitely not supposed to end the night platonically hanging out at Bennett’s house again. It was her default. She did it too often.

She had done it all throughout his dating Olivia Logan, feeling so pointlessly jealous of everything the cute, petite woman was. Certainly everything that Kaylee wasn’t. Refined. Fine-boned. Short. Definitely able to wear giant heels around any man without towering over them. Not that she would tower over Bennett in heels.

At six-four he was definitely tall enough to stand next to her in most shoes. Which had made his association with Olivia even more irritating, since the woman was barely five foot three. That was how that always worked. Tall men with tiny women. Irritating for women like her.

But he and Olivia had broken up a few months ago when Bennett had failed to propose quickly enough for Olivia’s liking, and then, much to everyone’s shock, Olivia had gone and fallen in love with Luke Hollister, who was her polar opposite.

She was from the town’s most prominent family. She was prim. Luke was...not.

She hadn’t really been able to gauge how Bennett felt about it, and selfishly, she hadn’t really wanted to either. She was just relieved. Relieved he hadn’t married her, because even though she didn’t harbor hopes of marrying him herself, if Bennett did get married, things would change.

She didn’t want that.

“I...”

Bennett’s phone rang, and he fished it out of his pocket and answered it. “Hello?” He frowned.

Kaylee took a moment to take stock of her appearance. Her dress was rumpled now, and she was...well, she was a mess. And Bennett still wanted to have a beer with her. Well, because she was like a guy to him, really.

He would invite a guy over to have a beer even if he was dirty.

“Really?” Bennett sounded suddenly irritated. Or maybe, irritated wasn’t quite right. Intense. “Really,” he repeated. “We’ll talk about it later. I’m out dealing with a calf.”

He hung up the phone, and looked at Kaylee. “That was Wyatt.” Wyatt Dodge was Bennett’s oldest brother, and the boss at Get Out of Dodge Dude Ranch.

“Really?” She unconsciously parroted Bennett. “What did he say?”

“Luke called him. Apparently, he and Olivia are having a baby.”

CHAPTER TWO (#ud9cbd981-cf4a-5971-abd2-905948ff5127)

BENNETT COULDN’T BEGIN to untangle the whole mess of feelings rioting around inside him like coiled-up snakes. He wasn’t in love with Olivia. He never had been. But she had been his girlfriend for a year, and he had been planning on marrying her. They’d had an arrangement that had suited them both.

It hadn’t been a love match in a conventional sense. Her father had asked for him to take care of her after a health scare, and Bennett had thought...

He’d thought she was damned near perfect. He didn’t want a passionate love affair, he wanted stability. Wanted the kind of life he could plan. Put in careful order. And Olivia had seemed to want that too.

But right toward the end, he’d been putting off proposing. He’d known what she wanted and he just...

There was part of him that worried she wanted more than he was giving. At first he’d thought she wasn’t any more in love with him than he was with her. Hell, they’d never gone past second base, at her insistence. And she’d never seemed tempted to go further. He’d respected it, respected her. Hadn’t touched anyone else the whole time they were together, because he was a man of his word.

Then, she had broken up with him over the fact he was dragging his feet, and she had gone and slept with Luke Hollister. Who Bennett would have said was about the worst bet in the entire world. If asked, Luke would probably have agreed he was a bad bet too.

But apparently, not when it came to Olivia. Because that bastard had proposed to her in record time. And apparently had gotten right on starting a family with her too.

It was what Olivia wanted. He knew. Well, not to be pregnant out of wedlock. That would bother her. He had a feeling the wedding was about to get moved way the hell up.

But a family. That was what Olivia wanted. Domestic bliss and all that.

“Are you all right?”

Kaylee was looking at him with wide amber-colored eyes.

At the moment she made a pretty comical sight. Wearing a dress a hell of a lot fancier than he was used to seeing on her, the delicate floral material swirling around her long, pale legs.

And her arms were streaked with afterbirth.

Her red hair was disheveled, a smudge of something across her cheek. But she was also wearing makeup.

Frankly, the dress and the makeup were a lot more out of place than the afterbirth.

Kaylee wasn’t a girly girl. She never had been. Kaylee had run with the boys from junior high on. She had been one of his best friends ever since then. The kind of friend that he called if he needed someone to help at two in the morning. The kind of friend who would leave a date—apparently—to come and help him birth a calf.

The kind of friend who knew everything about him.

Almost everything.

“I’m fine,” he said, lying.

But he couldn’t exactly articulate all the things this was bringing up. Because it wasn’t just Olivia. There was something else churning deep beneath the surface and he didn’t want to get into that. He knew what it was. Whenever pain pushed up against that locked door down in his soul, he knew what that pain was. Loss.

All that loss in his life.

And mistakes. Regrets. A time in his life when he hadn’t planned a damn thing, when he had lacked for control and decency, and had paid the consequences of that behavior. Consequences no one, not his family or Kaylee, knew about.

He was different now.