Page 55 of Cowboy in Colorado

I shake my head, my mouth closed shut. I stand up and storm out of the room.

I make it to the hallway and thank god no one is around. My eyes are blurred, my lungs seized. I’m a complete and utter mess.

“Brooklyn.” His voice is right behind me, that low soothing murmur, and I hate the way it works on me.

I twist away to face the floor-to-ceiling windows. A crow flies by, floating on a breeze. Sunlight shines and glitters off the glass of the high-rise buildings around us, and even the multi-million-dollar view of the glass canyons of Manhattan are dull compared to the roaring of my nerves, the screaming of my heart, the gibbering terror in my brain—the blazing, pounding, pulsating heat between my thighs. And this is just from his mere presence.

I feel him behind me and he guides me back into my office. I hear the door click closed. The lockchunksinto place.

I hear steps on the carpeting, drawing closer. I tense as I feel him move up behind me.

“Brooklyn?”

I shake my head. “You don’t get to do this,” I whisper. “It’s not fair.”

“Ain’t a single thing about life that’s fair, Brooklyn.” His voice is nearly inaudible, but Ifeelhis voice, his words. “You think I wanted this? You think Iwantedto fall in love with you? With a rich city girl? And that was before I realized who you were. We’re the most different people who could ever meet. From totally different worlds. I don’t understand what motivates you, what you’re scared of, what you want. I don’t know the first goddamn thing about you, Brooklyn.”

“So then where thefuckdo you get off using that word?” I hiss, whirling on him—I know I don’t have to explain which word I mean.

Mistake. Big mistake.

His eyes are a blue flame, rife with conflict, fueled by fear and uncertainty and boldness of conviction. “Because I don’t know what the hell else to fucking call it!” he snaps. “What else do you call the fact that I can’t sleep at night—that I haven’t slept more than three hours at a time for almost two months, because whenever I fall asleep, I dream of you. What else am I supposed to call it when I can’t stop thinking about you while I’m awake? Everything on that damned ranch makes me think of you. The whole cabin smells like you. My sheets smell like you. Even my goddamn horse is mopey because he misses you.”

“Dammit, Will,” I whisper.

“I didn’t want this,” he whispers back. Louder, then. “I don’t know the first thing about you, but Iknowyou inside and out, somehow. I know you hate me for how I acted, and I deserve it. I was a goddamn coward and I oughta be horsewhipped for how I treated you, and I can only ask you to forgive me.” He turns away, raking his fingers through messy blond hair.

A long, hard, tense silence.

He spins back to face me, finally, agony on his face. “I’m losing my damned mind. I’ve lost my touch with horses.”

I frown. “How do you mean? And why does it feel like you’re suggesting that’s my fault?”

“Horses are empathic,” he explains, sounding annoyed at himself for falling into lecture mode. “They feel what you feel—they pick up on your energy. If you meet your friend for drinks, and she’s in a terrible mood, she’s obviously had a bad day, and you can feel that. Now multiply that by a hundred. Horses can pick up on the smallest change of your emotions. You bring a bad mood to the stable, try to ride your horse, or even groom him while you’re in a bad mood, he’ll know. You have to bring a calm to the stables, or the horse will act up.” He shakes his head. “I’ve been a fucking disaster. Treated everyone around me like shit. Haven’t even dared get near Demon or the herd for fear my bad mood will infect them. Gopher has been my primary horse for so long he can work through my moods, and he’s honestly the only thing that’s kept me sane.”

“Will—”

He blows out a breath, shakes his head again. “I don’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to come here. Didn’t want to face you. Didn’t want to hear your business plan. Didn’t want to say any of this. But I couldn’t not.” He sidles closer to me, and I back up away from him. “I don’t know what to do with this any of this. With how I feel. I thought at first it was just…physical. You know? Like, desire. The sex, right? That’s all it was—that’s what I tried to tell myself again and again.”

He comes closer, and I back away again until my back bumps up against the window, and I’ve got nowhere to go.

“I thought, maybe if I just got one more night with her—not even a whole night, just once more, you and me, we’d get it out of our system.”

I laugh, a nervous, hysterical giggle. “That won’t work.”

He smirks, shaking his head. “Exactly. You see the foolishness in that.”

“It wouldn’t work.”

He laughs. “No, it wouldn’t.” Closer yet, until you couldn’t fit a piece of paper between his chest and mine; he’s serious, now, no laughter, no smile. “Why wouldn’t it work, Brooklyn?”

“Because—” I shake my head. I can’t get it out, can’t go there.

“Say it.”

“Once wasn’t enough the first time,” I whisper. “Once more wouldn’t get it out of our systems.”

“Why?”