Page 22 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

It was so brutally efficient that when she was back in her car and driving home, it was hard to believe that it had really happened at all.

She’d been mixed up with Matty for half her life. Now she was free of them. When her phone buzzed beside her as she parked outside the barn, she looked down to see a message from him, which she supposed wasn’t particularly surprising. He always had liked to get the last word.

When she opened it, she laughed when she saw the message.

You have three days to pick up your shit or it’s out on the curb, said the message.

That was it. It was done.

She didn’t cry, though she sat there a moment because she wondered if she should. But maybe Kendall had it right. Maybe she’d spent all the emotion there was to spend over the course of all these years. She saw Boone moving around in the barn, but she didn’t get out of her Jeep. She didn’t feel quite right. A little jagged, a little edgy.

Sierra heard Cat’s voice in her head. She thought,I’m actually single. The last time she’d been single, she’d been a teenager—and a good girl, at that. Now she was much older and if he wanted to think aboutgetting underanother man, she not only could go right ahead and do that, she could probably make that happen fast.

But the truth was, there had only ever been two men in her life. She’d never had the faintest interest in another one, to date or as a friend or at all.

And she didn’t think she wanted toget underBoone. She couldn’t imagine that either. He was such a sweet, kind man. He wouldn’t know what to do, she was almost positive.

But she did feel that she needed to mark this occasion.

She swung out of the Jeep when he came out from the barn. He had his gaze trained on her, those dark gold eyes of his tracking over her the way they always did. Seeing everything. Probably standing there coming up with ways to support her before she even needed him to.

Just an angel, this man.

“You okay?” he asked. Gruffly. Because he was being careful with her.

“Never better,” she told him. “Totally divorced.”

Something shifted on his face, but she couldn’t really track it. It wasn’t an expression she’d ever seen before, but she waved that away. She went and launched herself toward him, the way she always did, because she knew that he would catch her.

Because he always caught her.

He caught her this time, too. And she thought that a hug would do it, but in these bizarre first moments of freedom, she figured that it deserved a little bit more.

Notunder—but her version of it, she guessed.

And as he held her up against him she way he always did, she wrapped her arms tight around his neck.

“What are you doing?” he asked her, with very little inflection in his voice. And that odd look in his eyes.

“Boone,” she whispered, “I have to do this.”

Because this deserved a celebration and he was it.

So she leaned in and kissed him.

Chapter Six

Boone froze.

Sierra’s mouth was on his.

He couldtasteher, God help him.

She had told him she was divorced and so he’d just realized that he hadn’t actually believed she’d go through with it, and now he could feel her pressed up against him in one of those torturous hugs that he’d managed to keep platonic all these years.

This one felt less platonic with her mouth on his, as sweet as this kiss was. It would be easiest thing in the world to angle his head to make this kiss… something else. To take it deep, get his hands in her hair, and lose himself in her—something he’d been imagining pretty consistently since the day he’d met her.

He could feel her, everywhere.

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