Page 76 of Wild, Wild Cowboy

And then I remembered her tears.

My girl felt something for me, and it terrified her.

I couldn’t even blame her for that. The way I felt about her…shit. It scared me, too. And I hadn’t even been forced to marry a family member at fourteen years old.

So, yeah. Love was fucking terrifying.

I dropped Hannah’s sweater over my face to black out the world, especially my two annoying brothers who didn’t seem to understand the conversation was over.

“It can’t be a girl.” Adam sounded like he was trying to convince himself it was true. “The only woman he’s spent time with since the accident is that librarian. Hannah.”

“Hannah?” Brax echoed. There was the heavy thump of his boots against the wood floor and then the sweater was unceremoniously yanked off my head. “What did you do to her, Zack?”

Nothing except teach her how to orgasm with a man and fall in love with her. “Nothing,” I grunted. I lunged for the sweater.

Brax held it out of reach and glowered down at me. “Then why did she look like hell today when she came to my office to sign rodeo paperwork?”

“She looked like hell?” My gut twisted. Was I happy that there was the slimmest possibility that Hannah was as miserable as I was? Of course not. But I wasn’t unhappy about it, either.

“Dammit, Zack,” Adam snapped. “She’s friends with James and Essie. You can’t just—” He scrubbed a hand over his scruffy jaw. “She’s a librarian, for fuck’s sake. She’s not one of your buckle bunnies who wants a quick fuck and won’t care if you never call her again. She’s nice.”

Rage boiled over.

“Don’t you fucking tell me what she is. I know her, okay? I know she cares so much about libraries because she believes income should not be a barrier to knowledge. I know she calls her cat a slut and doesn’t mean it as an insult. I know she likes to make up stories about strangers and she loves that women win in romance books and if a friend needs help, she’ll drop everything to drive across the fucking country to rescue a horse. And for the record, she’snotnice, but she is kind.”

I stood to face my slack-jawed brothers and stepped toward Brax. “Now give me that fucking sweater or I’ll rearrange your insides so bad it will make what Hurricane Red did to me look like nothing.”

Silently, Brax handed me her sweater and I immediately wrapped it around my shoulders and breathed in Hannah’s scent.

“Holy shit,” Adam said. “Holy shit, you’re in love with her.”

“It doesn’t matter if I am,” I muttered, turning my back to them both. “She doesn’t feel the same way.” She didn’t think she did, anyway. And even if that was just the fear talking, she deserved to have me take her at her word. She had done the same for me, over and over—until now, anyway.

You could marry me.

If I could have gone back in time and duct taped my mouth shut, I would have. Not because it wasn’t true. I hadn’t meant to say it, but I meant every fucking word of it. But she wasn’t ready to hear it.

“So what are you going to do about it?” Adam asked. “You can’t stay in here forever. It’s only been two days and it’s already starting to smell stale in here.”

“Don’t forget what the doctors said,” Brax put in. “Lying around in bed all day is only going to make everything hurt worse.”

“I’m not lying in bed. I’m rotting on the couch.”

But he wasn’t wrong. Everything hurt. It was just that none of those aches and pains in my muscles could hold a candle to the ache in my chest.

If Hannah were here, she would have been on me to make that appointment with a massage therapist. And then she’d remind me about theotherpromise I made her.

Fuck.

I’dpromised.

I heaved to my feet with a groan.

She had broken my heart, but I’d be damned if I would break a promise to her.

31

HANNAH

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