Page 92 of Riding the High

I smirk, pressing my palm to his chest and looking him straight in the eye.

“For the record, being with Mabel is easy and …” I stand up on my tiptoes to kiss his lips softly. “I like you too, Cole.”

I slip from his grasp, throwing one last glance his way, before I head out to join Mabel in the yard.

We spend the next ten minutes checking all our plants in the garden.

“Should we tie these ones up?” Mabel asks as she spies two stalks of tomatoes that are leaning hard to the left.

“Yes, good idea,” I tell her, looking around me for our supplies. “Shoot. I forgot the twine.”

I turn to Cole, who’s standing in the doorway, his muscular arms crossed over his chest.

“Be a good teammate and get us the twine from my purse? It’s on the kitchen table,” I say with a wink.

“You almost ready to go, Mabes?” he calls a few minutes later when he comes back outside. “I have to go to work soon, buddy.”

“We just need to tie these and then she’s ready,” I answer for her, meeting him in the middle of the yard. “You’re the one who took so long.”

“There’s lots in that purse, Ginger. I had to dig around through lip balms, hand creams, bar menus …” Cole whispers with a grin.

I look up at him, and the smug facial expression he’s wearing tells me he saw the letter I wrote to myself on the bar menu in Vegas. The one where I declared I would quit Cole cold turkey. I mentally berate myself for never cleaning out my purse.

Shit.

Cole doesn’t say anything, he flips the menu over and notes where it’s from, all the dots connecting in his head as he stares deep into my eyes. I narrow mine at him in response.

“What?” I ask. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

A flush of embarrassment creeps up my neck.

“Just doing my best to turn you into a ‘puddle of scientific matter,’” he says with a grin, using my own words from the letter against me. I make a scoffing noise as I turn away from him.

“I wrote that as a joke,” I say, walking back to Mabel.

“No you didn’t, Vixen,” he notes confidently. “And we’re going to talk about that.”

“No, we aren’t,” I retort.

Mabel and I finish what we’re doing in the garden and, when I turn around to guide her to the door, Cole looks like a rooster puffing out his chest. Though the look he’s wearing isn’t cockiness as I move toward him. It’s … pride?

He knows I’m crazy about him and he seems tolikeit. I saw this look yesterday too; every time he glanced at me during Nash and CeCe’s wedding, as we danced through the night together, and especially when we got home and he took me twice before he got up and made us our coffee at five. There’s no denying these deep feelings between us.

I give in and smile at him, shrugging as I walk by. “Guess you know my secret,” I tell him, not even ashamed to admit it anymore.

We started this summer as friends with a clear plan to rectify a drunken mistake. But now? Now Cole Ashby is looking at me the same way I’ve been looking at him for years.

Fucking hell.

That sangria and my girls can’t come soon enough.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Ginger

The Horse and Barrel is packed with the usual crowd that frequents ladies’ night. There are also quite a few men here who I can only assume are on the prowl—a bunch of Silver Pines cowboys included.

Haden Westbrook, Wade’s right-hand man, and three others take up a booth in the far-right corner.

---