Page 27 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

“Enjoy your downgrade, Sierra,” Matty said. “But let’s be clear about something. There won’t be any crawling back.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Boone assured him, with a friendly grin that he reckoned Matty knew wasn’t friendly at all. “If you start crawling anywhere near her, I’ll treat you like any of the other predators that try to come onto our land. In fact, Matty, I sure hope you give me that opportunity.”

Matty sneered at him. And Sierra didn’t get into anything with this man who was now her ex, which Boone was pleased about—though he wasn’t sure it was healthy. Surely people should have more to say to each other at the end of a marriage. Or why had they been married all this time?

Then again, she’d told him why, hadn’t she?

If he let it, he thought it might crush him.

In the truck, they both sat in silence as Boone pulled away from the curb and left Matty still standing there in the driveway with that flat look on his face.

“I’m sorry,” Sierra said when they got back on the road that led toward Copper Mountain and Cowboy Point. “Really. I just… I’m really sorry, Boone.”

He slid a glance her way. “I don’t know what you have to apologize for.”

“What Matty said.” Her breath sounded ragged. “He’s been obsessed with this fantasy of his since high school and no matter how many times I told him that we’ve never been anything but friends, he’s never believed it.”

Boone wisely kept quiet on that one.

Sierra let out a sound that he wouldn’t quite call a laugh. “I don’t remember when he started to claim that all the cheating he did was fine, and didn’t matter anyway, as it wasn’t likehehad an ongoing relationship with another man.Hewasn’t the one who was intimate elsewhere.”

“He has a point there,” Boone said. “I don’t think Matty Quealey has had single friend in the whole of his life. Mostly that’s because he sucks. Only thing he had going for him was the fact that he convinced you to marry him. Now?” Boone shook his head. “He’s not going to be able to hide the fact that he’s an empty shell of a human being.”

“He didn’t think we were actually friends,” Sierra said. “If I had a dollar for every time he accused me of sleeping with you.” She laughed again then, and reached over, putting her hand on his arm, like this was all silly. So very silly. “Honestly, I probably should have. I got in trouble for it either way.”

At that, something inside Boone finally… snapped.

With a crack so loud it sounded like an avalanche inside of him.

And as it roared through him, he wasn’t sure that there was any coming back from it.

Chapter Seven

Sierra felt Boonetense beneath her hand. She thought he would laugh, but instead, it was as if he was suddenly a furnace. A blasting, hot furnace.

She pulled her hand back, feeling as if she’d gone and put her hand on the cold stove only to find it was actually red hot.

“Sierra,” he said, after some time, as if it was difficult to pronounce her name, suddenly. He was driving the truck and his hands gripped the wheel as he stared straight ahead, all of which was appropriate as he headed onto that windy road, except she thought his grip was little too tight. And the way he was staring out the window seemed… significantly less relaxed than the Boone usually was. “Sierra, you’re going to have to try to go easy on me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“I know you don’t.” Boone laughed, but it wasn’t that usual joyful sound that he made. That low, long rumble. “Believe me, I know that you don’t know what I’m talking about. And it baffles me. But I beg of you, please do not tell me that you fought with your worthless husband about sex with me that you never had.”

“But we did,” Sierra said, confused. “I would have told you, but it was so… It was just so embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing.”

Sierra felt herself getting flustered, and she didn’t understand it. She was usually so good at staying calm while people around her lost their composure, but this was Boone. He never lost his composure.

She didn’t know what to do with the fact that he seemed to be… pissed at her?

Something in her shook at that. It seemed related, somehow, to that shimmering thing she still couldn’t identify.

“I don’t know why we’re focusing on things that Matty said,” Sierra got out then, hurriedly, before all that shaking and shimmering took hold. “It’s amazing to me that I spent as long with him as I did. Although, when you start to break it down, we really didn’t see each other that much. He was always off on a business trip. He spent a little time in Marietta as possible. Even his CrossFit gym is in Livingston. Even when he said mean things to me about why he stayed away so much, he still stayed away. I didn’t have to put up with him too often, really. The only time we really saw each other every day was in high school—”

Boone muttered something under his breath that that sounded a whole lot like a prayer for deliverance.

Then he pulled over, sharply—right before he started up the side of Copper Mountain. There was a creek that ran down alongside the road in spring and summer, and he drove them down to the water, then got out of the truck.

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