Untamed Cowboy

“I didn’t know Jamie was going to be here,” he said to Wyatt.

“Where else would she be? Anyway, you didn’t ask.”

“I just came over for a drink,” he said pointedly, “not a talk. If I had wanted to talk, I would have had Kaylee come over.”

“You should have had Kaylee come over here,” Jamie said.

Jamie wasn’t a whole lot more of a girl’s girl than Kaylee was, and the two of them got along pretty well now that Jamie wasn’t a kid. Though, at twenty-three she still seemed a lot like a kid to Bennett.

“She was tired. She had to leave a date to come help me deliver a calf. It was breech.”

“Did you save it?” Grant asked.

“Yeah,” he responded. “Hopefully it makes it through the night. But at this point I don’t see why it wouldn’t. Everything was good when we left.”

“She left a date to come and help you deliver a calf,” Wyatt said, his eyebrows raised.

“It was a life-and-death situation,” Bennett said. “It’s more important than dinner.”

“Sure,” Wyatt said, “but couldn’t you have called someone else?”

“No,” Bennett said. “She’s the only person I can count on in a situation like that. And anyway, I didn’t know she was on a date.” Though, he probably still would have called her. Kaylee was always there when he needed her.

It wasn’t like he’d needed help choosing a tie. He was trying to save a life.

“Careful,” Wyatt said, “or she likely won’t be at some point. Not if you keep taking advantage of her.”

“I don’t take advantage of her. First of all, we run our business together. So, she benefits from the extra time I put in and in the middle of the night. Second of all, she’s my friend. And I would do the same for her, and she knows it.”

“Still,” Jamie said, her tone sly, “you have a history of losing women now, Bennett.”

For one blinding second Bennett wished that he were still fifteen. Because if he were, he would have yanked on Jamie’s braid until she apologized for that.

“I do not have a history of that,” he said. “One girlfriend broke up with me.”

“And now she’s having Luke’s baby,” Grant pointed out. “Which I feel like is why you’re here, even though you don’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Bennett returned.

“That’s fine,” Wyatt said. “We do have more important things to discuss than your lack of a love life.”

Of course, Bennett hadn’t had a love life when he was with Olivia, not that his family knew that. Olivia had said she wanted to wait until they were engaged to have sex, and he had honored that. It just wasn’t the kind of thing that you discussed with your older brothers. Well, it wasn’t the kind of thing you discussed with anyone, first of all, because he wouldn’t go talking about Olivia’s business like that. But second of all, because he had no desire to get harassed. Not that Grant was in any position to harass anyone on that subject.

Since the death of Grant’s wife eight years ago, Grant’s love life had been in the deep freeze. Grant hadn’t even gotten close to having another woman in his bed, let alone in his life. At least, that was the impression that Grant gave to his family.

They tried to get him to go out when they could, hoping to do something to heal that hollowed-out look in his eyes. But nothing ever did.

Though, that likely explained why his siblings enjoyed giving Bennett such a hard time about the situation with Olivia. It wasn’t fatal. Not even close. It was just one of those things.

“Much more interesting,” Wyatt supplied, “is the fact that we got our first few bookings online today.”

“That is great,” Jamie said, almost shimmering with glee.

His younger sister wanted this business to take off almost more than anyone. Because the opportunity to ride horses for a living didn’t present itself often, and this was her chance to do exactly what she loved to do. He respected that. Understood it. Because this might not be his dream, but he certainly wanted his family to work it all out. And anyway, he had his work dream. So he wanted them to have theirs too.

“We’re set to open with a big barbecue by June. Kind of a grand opening with tours and all of that, and then afterward, it looks like we’re already halfway full.”

“Fantastic,” Jamie said.

Grant nodded. Grant didn’t do much in the way of enthusiasm.

“You seem thrilled,” Wyatt said, directing that comment at Bennett.

“I am,” Bennett said. “But my primary focus is still my veterinary practice. You know I support this, but I have other things on my plate.”

“I never said you didn’t,” Wyatt said. “But you do have a stake in Get Out of Dodge. I figure you don’t want to lose all your money.”

“I’m fine,” Bennett said.

“Right. So you’re fine if I take a stack of your cash and light it on fire? And you’re fine with Olivia being pregnant?”

He really wasn’t fine with any of that. But since Wyatt wasn’t going to burn a stack of his cash, and Olivia was going to remain pregnant regardless of his feelings on the matter, he didn’t see the point in rising to Wyatt’s bait.

“Doesn’t worry me,” he said, grabbing a beer out of the fridge. He had every intention of drinking more heavily here. But he didn’t want to expose the fact that he was bothered by all of this. He really should have stayed with Kaylee, who would have imagined that he was heartbroken or wounded in some way. He wondered if that was what his brother thought too. That Olivia had broken his heart. She hadn’t. It was dredging up a past he didn’t like to think of.

He wondered if it would be like this if he ever had his own children.

That was a strange thought. Because of course he had been planning on having children with Olivia. But it had seemed an easy thing. Part of that normal life he was planning for.

He hadn’t anticipated that it would make him think of his first girlfriend and the baby that they had lost all that time ago. The baby that nobody knew about.

Nobody but Cole Logan—Olivia’s father and Quinn Dodge’s best friend. He’d been like an uncle to Bennett, and far enough removed from the situation for Bennett to feel like he could go to him for help without being terrified of being seen as a disappointment.

Not even Kaylee knew.

There was no point talking about something that had never become anyone else’s problem. He had intended on bringing the issue forward with his family when it had become something they couldn’t deny. But he’d been sixteen, and he’d been an idiot. He’d been caught up in feelings, and he sure as hell hadn’t been thinking.

The acrid, burning shame of failure still sat in his gut all these years later. For that loss of control.

He had never acted like that ever again.

He had gotten caught up in passion, and he hadn’t taken care of Marnie. Hadn’t protected either of them.

And after all the emotional turmoil of going over what they were going to do, of deciding that he was going to put all of his dreams, his life on hold, so that he could do the right thing and marry her and make a home with her, she had lost the baby. Then she had broken up with him and left town, unable to handle the pain of what had happened.

He hadn’t heard much about her since. She didn’t stay in touch with her parents. He’d heard once through the grapevine she’d been arrested.

She hadn’t been that person before. Not when they’d been together.