Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 115683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 578(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 578(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
I’m doing something right. Feels good.
“Thank you so much for the invite,” Lainey says. “I’ll have to talk to my parents, but I’d love to stay. Y’all really pull out all the stops when it comes to hospitality. I’m just honored to be included.”
“You do fit right in,” Beck says, raising his brows at me.
Dean claps his hands. “I hope you can stay, Miss Lainey. Do you think they have Thanksgiving LEGO sets?”
We laugh at that.
“I’ll do some research,” Lainey replies.
“I make a mean beef tenderloin,” Beck adds. “It’s not to be missed.”
Lainey chuckles. “I see humility runs in the family.”
Beck grins. “Not a lick in these genes. We do, however, have big—”
“Hearts,” I finish for him. “Brains.”
“Muscles,” Dean adds, lifting his arm.
“Muscles. Right,” Beck teases. “That’s what I was going to say.”
Lainey’s laughing, her cheeks flushed pink. She looks so pretty like this—relaxed, enjoying a meal, enjoying my family—that it’s all I can do not to reach across the table and pull her in for a kiss. Right in front of everyone.
Soon.
For right now, though, I’ll take her smile and the way her eyes dance when she says, “Wouldn’t miss it. Count me in.”
CHAPTER 26
Women Make Weak Legs
COLT
I move through the week like I’m walking on sunshine. I haven’t been getting much sleep, but you wouldn’t know it from the burst of energy I wake up with every morning.
Our old farrier used to say that “women make weak legs,” meaning you’d be sapped after sex.
I beg to differ. Yeah, I’m so spent at the end of the day after Lainey and I hook up that I practically face-plant into my mattress. But I feel stronger—healthier—than I have in years.
Lainey comes over for dinner every night. Last night, she and Dean went through her notebook together again and spent an hour drawing in the pages using her fancy set of colored pencils. I’m still not over how talented she is—I totally underestimated her. He helped her draw some cowboy boots, and she showed him how to spell Double U.
Then we put him to bed and I took her to my bed. Despite the fact that we had to keep it quiet, the sex was incredible. The kind I wanted to have again in the middle of the night and again first thing in the morning.
We can’t, of course, because Lainey had to leave. But God, I miss morning sex. I gotta figure out a way to make that happen without Dean finding out. Last thing I wanna do is confuse him or break his heart. He’s already half in love with Lainey. I can only imagine how hard he’d fall if she were around all the time.
If she weren’t leaving, I’d ask her to be exclusive. But I don’t know what her plans are when her contract is up, so I don’t talk about the future and neither does she. I’d like to think it’s not so much us avoiding the subject as it is us enjoying the present.
But yeah, every once in a while, I’ll think about what life will be like when she leaves. The idea of going back to business as usual, back to how it was before she came barreling into town—
Fuck.
I don’t got a choice, though. It’s not like I’m gonna give up everything I’ve helped build here to follow a twenty-four-year old to some sprawling Texas suburb. And Lainey may be many things, but a country girl ain’t one of ’em. Even if she is becoming a decent rider. And all our ranch hands know her name now because she’s always asking to help them out.
Still, Lainey and I are different. But if there’s one thing we do agree on, it’s honesty. Authenticity.
That’s what makes me think I shouldn’t be so scared to open myself up, because not everyone is going to lie to my face.
Not everyone is going to betray me.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
I blink against the ardent morning sunshine that slants across my face as Beck and I ride out to fix a fence in the northwest pasture. “Pardon?”
My brother smiles, giving his reins a gentle tug to slow Stilton, his five-year-old palomino. Only my foodie brother would name his horse after a stinky cheese from England.
“She fucked your brains right out of your head, didn’t she?”
I bite back a smile. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
I gotta kiss that girl at least once before she goes.
“You like her. A lot.”
My first impulse is to throw up my walls again. Deny, deny, deny. It’s nobody’s business how I feel about Lainey.
But she’s teaching me how good it feels to air shit out. I say I like people who aren’t bullshitty, but I hadn’t realized how bullshitty I’ve been until recently. Lies by omission.
I’m done keeping it all inside. The anger and the pain.
The joys and the wins.