Wrangling The Rich Rancher

He broke off a piece of its smile. “I’m sorry if I’ve been such lousy company since you met me. I’m not always this difficult to get along with.”

She ate more of the flower, dropping crumbs onto the table. “I expected you to react to me with resistance. I just didn’t expect for us to...”

Fall into lust with each other? “We already agreed to put that to rest, so there’s no point in rehashing it.”

“You’re right. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Yeah, he thought, but were they fooling themselves in believing that they would never do it again? Even now, as she made a pretty little mess out of her cookie, he was fixated on her mouth. Forgetting that he’d kissed her was proving to be impossible.

“Where did you get married?” she asked suddenly. “Was it on your ranch?”

The hits just kept on coming with this girl. Sucker punches to the gut. “Why are you asking me about my wedding?”

“Because I’m curious about you, and the couple on top on the wedding cake at the bakery sort of looked like us.”

“I didn’t see a cake like that.”

“You weren’t paying attention.” She gestured to the other side of the street. “It’s in the window.”

He didn’t turn to look, not from this distance. “If I tell you about my wedding, then you have to tell me about yours, too.” He wasn’t going to stab himself in the heart without making her do the same. “Turnabout is fair play, or however that saying goes.”

“All right. But I asked you first.”

“Then no, I didn’t get married on the ranch.”

“Why not?” She gazed at him from across the table. “It seems like the perfect place for it.”

“Sandy didn’t want to get married in this area. She wanted to go away, to elope. So she left her kids with her parents and we flew to Las Vegas. She didn’t tell her folks or anyone else what we were doing until we got back. I kept quiet, too.” He’d respected Sandy’s wishes. “She wanted it to be different from her first wedding. No prepping or planning, no guests, no fuss, no muss, no hoopla.”

Libby angled her head. “Did any of that matter to you?”

“Not really. I just wanted to have a family—her and the kids. But I should have sensed that she was trying too hard to make it different from her first wedding, with us going to Vegas and whatnot.”

Her eyes grew wider. “You didn’t get married by an Elvis impersonator, did you?”

He stifled a laugh. Trust Libby to say something funny. “It was just a normal minister in a quiet little chapel. They provided the witnesses, but none of them looked like Elvis, either.”

“Did you get a honeymoon suite at your hotel?”

“No. We just stayed in a regular room.”

“Was that Sandy’s idea, too?”

He nodded. “She didn’t want the hotel making a fuss over us. At the time, it seemed okay. But if I ever got married again, I would have the wedding right here in my hometown and make it a celebratory occasion.”

She removed another cookie—a frosted cowboy boot—from the box. “So you’re planning on having another wife?”

“Someday, maybe. But she’s not going to be someone who’s hurting over another man. I’m never going to put myself through that again.” He leaned back in his chair, playing it cool, hating how exposed he felt. “So I guess that leaves you out, huh?”

She wagged the boot at him. “Is that supposed to be a joke? I told you I was doing fine in that regard.”