Page 6 of Rogue Cowboy (Montana’s Rodeo Cowboys #3)

She tried to formulate another argument to push him away.

She felt so off-balanced by his appearance.

Getting clocked by her brother. And now Cole saying he didn’t want his freedom.

But she had to cut him loose. Stop her girlish fantasies, because she was as flawed as a woman could be—she couldn’t imagine being…

like that with a man, trusting a man like that, having a child.

And Cole would want and deserve all of those things.

She jerked her shoulders back, straightened her spine and raised her head, drawing on her inner fire, her cowgirl like she’d done every time she competed in a race or exhibition, mounted a stage with just her guitar.

“Cole,” she began, but her stomach rumbled—loudly. She crossed her arms over it, cheeks heating, and heard the first laugh out of Cole that she could remember.

“We have time, Riley,” he promised. “I’ve left the service.”

“What?” The hits kept coming.

“Let me court you as you deserve. We’ll get to know each other as we are now.”

He ran his thumb along her bottom lip. “You have such a beautiful mouth, such a temptation.”

She blinked. No one had ever said that to her, ever. Not even guys in high school who were trying to cop a feel so they could brag about it later.

“But no pressure or expectations. Instead of kissing your lips like I’ve dreamed of, let me buy you breakfast. A date.”

She wasn’t touching the word ‘date.’

He swung open the trailer door and stepped back. “You first, Riley Jameson.”

“Shshsh.” She jerked to a stop on the first stair and pressed her fingers over his mouth. “Telford. No one knows and I intend to keep it that way.”

“Hard secret to keep.” He nipped at her fingers.

She yipped and jerked away, but he caught her hand, kissed the pads of her fingers one through four while she just stared at him, helpless at the sensuality that softened his features to something she barely recognized but that stirred something deep inside of her like an ancient spring beginning to flow.

“But we will.”

“For now,” he said, and relief shafted through her.

*

Cole watched Riley tuck her cute pink polka-dot socks into her turquoise cowboy boots then cuff her boot-cut jeans.

She sat on a large flat rock partially in the Marietta River that looked closer to a creek at this point of the summer.

Her toenails were painted clear with a white stripe at the top of each nail.

He’d seen a similar design on women’s fingernails on various bases or in bars or restaurants over the years, so it probably was a style with a name.

Seemed too plain for Riley. She’d been a burst of a vivid kaleidoscope of colors, words and energy when he’d first seen her on a stage at an outdoor concert in a large park.

She’d captivated him from the moment she’d taken the stage and looked out over the crowd, a light in her eyes and a snapping, shimmering energy around her that had hooked him like a fat trout.

She wasn’t the woman he’d dreamed of settling down with. He didn’t have that good of an imagination.

That first night he’d taken her to dinner—fish tacos on the beach and some kind of California-inspired twist on horchata that had been almost as delicious as the taste of her skin after she’d shocked him stupid peeling off her dress and running into the ocean in her bra and panties.

Riley had been unlike any woman he’d ever met.

Pure spirit and magic, and he’d been a goner before he’d even managed to introduce himself and tell her that her brother Rohan had sent him to check on her as he’d been delayed.

She’d been a young woman, playing at being a grown-up, and he’d been as fascinated as he had been protective.

She’d been the sun to his cool night, warming and waking him to a whole different way of seeing the world.

He’d wanted her more than his next breath and yet had known he wasn’t the man for her. Not only had he been too old at twenty-six for her bright-eyed, idealistic nineteen, but her dreams would take her far from him, and he wanted the world for her.

The days they’d had together before her world had imploded, he could count on one hand, and yet in all the dark, empty days after, he still remembered her laugh, the way her eyes lit up with mischievous mystery when she’d stripped and run toward the Pacific, looking back and smiling, challenging him to join her.

And he had.

Riley opened her eyes, sighed heavily, and then reached inside the bag to unwrap his bacon, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich on a bagel and handed it to him along with a napkin. Then she unwrapped her sandwich—egg, avocado and something that looked like mutated grass called arugula poking out.

She placed the sandwich beside her, tilted her head back and closed her eyes again while the morning sun bathed her in a golden light that highlighted the myriad of blondes in her hair—silvery white, gold, honey, summer straw waved down her back and brushed the rock.

He took a bite of his sandwich to remind his body how to function since he was stunned stupid by her ethereal beauty and furious by the pain that radiated from her.

He’d taken her home because she’d asked.

He thought home, family, time would help her to heal, yet his fears that her recovery had stalled seemed justified with just an hour in her presence.

Her texts over the years had often held a touch of reflective sadness that he hadn’t been able to convince himself were grounded in her maturing. He’d been right to worry. And wrong to not have come sooner. Nearly six years later Riley seemed half alive, miles from the young woman he’d first met.

She hadn’t processed or healed. She’d hidden. And that was going to stop now.

Yeah, he was here on business for his family.

He didn’t particularly want to be a stock contractor, though he’d be what his family needed.

But he was here for Riley. Yes, it had been a marriage of convenience to protect her, but in his world, marriage was forever.

Family was everything to the Jamesons. You sacrificed and bled for it, and it fed you.

And Riley was family. She came first, starting today.

She sighed and slid her feet into the water and began humming, a melodic tease that brushed his senses.

He took another bite of his breakfast sandwich and chewed.

Wished she’d eat. She’d been in the last vestiges of her teenage years when he’d first seen her, broke all his rules by kissing her, their last night together. She felt more off-limits now than then.

What the hell was he supposed to do now? How did he fix someone who didn’t want to be fixed?

“What is that song?”

“New Jason Isbell—‘Bury Me.’”

He took another bite, so he’d shut down the swear word that poked to get out. “That sounds cheerful,” he spoke with his mouth full.

“That’s what Rohan said this morning,” she said.

He looked for the telltale whisper of dimples he remembered when she’d been about to say something to try to make him smile. Or laugh. She said he didn’t laugh enough and now that made two of them.

“You still look like a mermaid.”

She sat up, kept her gaze across the Marietta River that should really be called a creek this time of year.

“Always pictured you in the ocean.”

“I loved the ocean,” she said. “It’s the only thing I miss.”

Past tense. Not performing. Not singing. Writing songs. His chest felt the same as when he’d been hit by the hoof of a bull when he hadn’t rolled quick enough at fourteen.

“Night swimming.”

“I’ll take you to whatever ocean you want to swim in,” he promised. “Delayed honeymoon.” She deserved that.

She jerked, eyes and mouth wide. Yeah, he’d be the jerk who pushed.

“Don’t say stuff like that.”

“Why?”

“You know why.” Now her voice had energy, and her eyes glittered.

Hallelujah. A spark of the girl he had to find and drag out kicking and punching in protest.

Now they were in a stare-off. He took another bite and waited.

He’d mastered waiting and watching since he’d been a little boy, not able to comprehend death, waiting to hear his sister Carli bossing him about something, or his brother Carson’s voice shouting at him to grab his baseball glove, or feel his mom’s soft hand brushing his unruly cowlick away before she’d sing him a song or read him a story before bed, or to hear the low mooing of the cows and their calves as he rode his daddy’s shoulders out to the barn to saddle up and ride out to check on the cattle.

“You only married me because I might have been…you know.”

“Pregnant,” he finished.

“Oh my God,” she breathed and pressed her face against her thighs. Her voice held no heat. “Don’t talk. Don’t say anything.”

Cole had spent most of his life shutting up. It had worked well for him. But not now. Not with his wife. Dammit she was his wife, and it was his job to take care of her even when she preferred to hide in whatever hole she’d dug.

I let her dig. Hide.

Guilt and anger collided.

“You weren’t. You would have told me. We’re still married.” Facts.

But something about her stillness, her tension, blared the alarm of his instincts.

“Riley.”

She looked up at him. Ravaged. “I was. For a few weeks. And I lost the baby, and I was relieved and sick and sorry and…and…my parents don’t know about any of it.” Fat tears rolled down her face.

He stayed still. For one of the first times not sure what to do. Rage at his incompetence rose fast and he breathed it away. He pushed his food aside.

“It being…?”

“Fine,” she practically spit. “You want me to say it. I’ll say it.” She was flushed and breathing quickly, and she looked around and lowered her voice. “My drinking in LA. The industry parties. The…the drugging, the…rape…the…bbbbaby and miscarriage.”

He could barely comprehend her words. “I thought you were close to your family.”

“I am. That’s why I didn’t tell them. I can’t hurt them that way. And you can’t tell them either.”