Page 22 of The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride

She just looked at him and she wrecked him.

And he understood in that moment that he was kidding himself.

The music kept going. She twirled back to her friends.

And somehow, he managed to get a smile on his face, even though he thought it should have been obvious that he was ruined. He made himself nod at the folks he knew, and told himself he was leaving. They’d think he’d parked down the road and was walking by. He’d salvage this whole night by going home and pretending it hadn’t happened.

But somehow he didn’t turn around and leave the way he should have.

He told himself it was no good for the unexpected wounds she’d inflicted on him, but that didn’t stop him from capitalizing on an opportunity. And so when she stepped around the side of the building, likely heading for one of the bathrooms that were set apart from the barn, he followed her.

Because that tracked with the rest of his choices tonight.

He followed her around the side, took her arm, and pulled her deep into the shadows behind the barn where no one could see them.

Wilder didn’t even know what he meant to say. Once he had his hand on her, he steered her around to get her back up against the side of the barn, back here no one would find them or see them, and then his palms were on either side of her head as if by their own devices.

“I waited for you,” he told her.

“Did you?” There was a look he’d never seen before in those blue eyes of hers, and he didn’t like it. Like she was hurt. Like he’d done that. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have looked right through me like I didn’t exist.”

“What did you want me to do?” He didn’t pretend he didn’t know exactly what she was talking about. “Tell my brother to stop the car so I could come over and treat you like this in the middle of the main road?”

And then, even though they knew entirely too many people just a short few steps away, he kissed her.

It was stupid.

It wasspectacular.

It was very, very hard to remember that they were not alone, stranded out in the middle of the woods the way they normally were. That they were only a breath away from entirely too many people they knew.

There were no real secrets in a small town. There were only lies a man told himself to make him imagine he could keep things to himself.

Wilder knew all this.

But still he kissed her, keeping his hands flat against the barn at either side of her head. She made matters worse by reaching over and hooking her fingers in the waistband of his jeans, then tilting herself up.

Closer, then closer still.

He knew that he should stop this. Now. He knew it, but he didn’t.

Instead he took one hand off the wall and slid it to her jaw, so he could move her mouth where he wanted it and plunder it to his satisfaction, except none of this was satisfying, precisely—

There was a sound, much too close, and both of them jumped.

Wilder moved instinctively to block her with his body, looking back over his shoulder—but no one came into their dark little alley. And a few moments later, somewhere past the racket of his own heartbeat, he heard the clang of metal and realized what was happening.

“I think they’re taking out the garbage,” he said in a low voice, to Cat.

She didn’t say anything. Her eyes fluttered closed and she tipped her head into his chest. And they waited like that, otherwise completely still, until they both heard the back door to the restaurant slam shut.

“Look,” he began.

She tilted her head up and glared at him. “I didn’t like how that made me feel,” she told him, and there was something so frank and direct andinnocentabout it. No game playing. Straight to the point. She was going to kill him. “It hurt my feelings.”

His breath left him against his will. “Cat. Don’t go saying that kind of thing. There are men who prey on admissions like that.”

“I don’t feel that way aboutmen. I feel that way aboutyou, specifically.”

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