Once Upon a Cowboy by Maisey Yates

Author:Maisey Yates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: 2022-01-21T16:30:54+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

THEY DIDN’T SPEAK about that night. And Belle found it best. Because she was...outrageously wounded by it. And she had no reason to be. He was a grown man, and if he wanted to go out and...slake his animal lusts, that was his business.

He’d come home around five in the morning. She was angry that she knew that. Angry that she’d been half-asleep for the entire night, on tenterhooks, listening for his return.

And then she had been...she had been completely devastated by the idea that he had been with another woman. Which was ridiculous. He had never touched her, and he shouldn’t touch her. She was his employee. Well, she supposed that since Debbie was paying her, technically she was Debbie’s employee, but functionally, she was his, and it was actually...downright chivalrous of him to not acknowledge those strange, sparkly moments that had come up between them.

So they didn’t speak of that night. She did her best not to think of it.

She tried not to think about it every night when they sat down to dinner. And slowly, she decided that maybe it wasn’t the best idea if she ate meals with him. She started eating dinner in her room, and he didn’t question her on it. She felt resolved in that decision when she came inside from playing with the boys to find him lying on the floor in the living room with Imogene, the sleeves of his T-shirt tight on his biceps as he moved a doll around like she was walking, much to the amusement of his daughter. And smiled.

When he smiled it was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. When he smiled, it was a little bit like the beast had transformed into a prince. But was still also a beast. Which honestly, was better. The prince had always seemed a little bit insipid to her.

But she had found a way to keep some distance. Not having those meals with him, not falling into the trap of believing that she was part of the family. That they were much of anything.

And before she knew it, thirty days had come and gone. And they had never discussed it. She knew that it was going to be up to her. Because they really did need to talk about it.

She approached him one morning before he left for work, and she had woken up unreasonably early. As if she didn’t know why. As if she had started rising earlier and earlier because she liked to listen to the sound of his cowboy boots on the hard floors, the sound of him getting his coffee, leaving the house for the day. As if she didn’t find him the best part of waking up.

“It’s been more than thirty days,” she pointed out, reaching around him and losing her breath as she did, but grabbing a mug and beating a hasty retreat to the coffee maker, pretending that moment had not occurred.

“So it has,” he said, as if it had just occurred to him.

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