Page 45 of Rancher's Return

She let out a long, heavy sigh.

“Oh, I feel so much better,” she said.

And then she laughed.

He withdrew from her, lying on his side. “Me too. But I’m glad that it’s mutual.”

“Was that really stupid?”

“I don’t feel stupid. I feel fucking amazing.”

“Me too,” she said. “I don’t want to... This doesn’t have to be dramatic. I just... I haven’t been with anybody in a long time, and I don’t want to get married. I don’t even want to have a boyfriend. I don’t want to share my house with a man.”

“Great,” he said. And he couldn’t quite pinpoint why an element of what she said made him feel a little dissatisfied.

“I just want... I want this. This that just happened. I like you. I know you came here to work with me. And we can do that. Now. We can talk about business. And then we can get dressed and go to our respective houses. Maybe we can even have dinner with the kids again. But they don’t need to know.”

She echoed every thought he had about this. It seemed perfect, and it seemed completely logical.

He loved it.

What wasn’t to love?

“Friends with benefits,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “Friends with benefits. I think it’s a great idea.”

“Fantastic,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“All right. So let’s go over what we need to go over about the business.”

“I’ll go get my binder.”

He chuckled, and lay back in the bed. Wholesome. Almost.

Everything was going to work out fine. They both knew what they wanted, and what they wanted was essentially the same thing. There was absolutely nothing that could go wrong here.

Absolutely nothing.

Marigold was trying to chop celery, but she kept spacing out.

And when Lily came home, Marigold startled at the sound of the slamming door, like she hadn’t been expecting it. Because she had forgotten where she was. She might have forgotten who she was. The afternoon felt like a complete and total fever dream.

He’d come to her house, they’d had sex, and then they had lain in bed and pored over her planner like they weren’t naked, and then they had ended up making out, and he had to run to the store to buy a box of condoms. Which they had made good use of.

They had made love and worked on their plans off and on for the whole day, until it was time for him to go and get his kids from school.

And she felt... Changed. Which wasn’t how friends with benefits was supposed to go, she was sure. But she didn’t know if there was a woman alive who could keep her head on straight when she was being thoroughly...rustled by Buck Carson.

She paused for a long moment.

Buck Carson. He was the object of so many complex emotions in her life.

This friends-with-benefits situation felt like acting out against the past. Against the pain she had once felt, against things that had been taken away from her.

And maybe it was acting out.