Page 28 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

He slammed the door behind him, and she watched him walk around the front of the truck until he could stare into the water as it tumbled along, here in the tall grass at the base of the mountain.

But he didn’t look like he’d stopped to take in the pretty view. He looked… agitated.

Sierra sat still in her seat, vibrating—though she still couldn’t have said why. She didn’t understand what was happening.

Never, in all the time she’d known him, had she ever seen Boone so much as indicate that he had access to a temper. Not any sort of real one.

He never got upset. He was the soul of patience. She could hear Matty sneering in her head,yes, Boone Carey is a freaking paragon.

But he was. He always had been.

Sierra got out and followed him down to the creekside. And she knew exactly when he realized that she’d come to stand beside him, because she could see it. He stiffened again. He crossed his arms over his chest.

She couldn’t say she liked that reaction much. Or maybe it was more that she didn’t understand it.

“I’m obviously saying all the wrong things,” Sierra said quietly. “I know it’s offensive that Matty said all that stuff and I’m sure that’s part of why I didn’t tell you in the first place. I shouldn’t have told you now. It’s put upsetting images in your head and it must be difficult, because of course I’ve never had a single thought about you that was in any way romantic—”

“That’s the fucking problem!” Boone thundered out.

So loud that it seemed like that deep voice of his echoed back from the mountains all around them.

Sierra stared up at him in shock as he turned toward her. She kept staring as he leaned down so he could put his hands on the high part of her arms again—and it was true that she feltentirelytoo much when he did that.

She could feel that toucheverywhere, just like before.

It was zinging all the way through her, like some kind of electricity. She didn’t understand what it was. She didn’t understand how she felt so weak suddenly and yet lit up from within.

“I’m sorry that Matty said those things,” she managed to continue, tripping over her words. “Especially the part about finally getting what you want. I’m really so sorry. I just have to say that, and then we can go back—”

“He was right, Sierra,” Boone threw at her, sounding a lot like a man at the end of his tether. But how was that possible? How could he be at the end of a tether she hadn’t known existed? “He was absolutely right. I’m delighted that you’re divorced. But that’s not going to change the real problem, is it? You don’t feel a single romantic thing about me. And you never will.”

His gaze was coppery now, and dark, and it seemed to crowd its way inside her, expanding along with those words that didn’t make any sense. “And that’s okay, but I’m begging you,be careful. Because when you start talking about sex and you start kissing me on my mouth, you start blurring the lines that we’ve kept in place for half our lives. That happens, Sierra, and other shit is going to get blurry too. Do you understand me?”

“No,” Sierra whispered, though she could barely hear her own voice over the pounding of her heart. “I don’t understand any of this.”

Boone made a low noise, as if he was in pain, and he stepped back. That meant he dropped his hands, and Sierra suddenly felt cold despite the sun beating down on them from the cloudless, perfect blue sky high above.

“I’m not mad at you,” he told her, making it sound like every word was deliberate. Careful. “Being your best friend is an honor and a privilege, Matty is an idiot. All I’m asking you to do is remember what friends do and don’t do. Okay?”

Sierra knew he was right. She was taking advantage of their friendship and he wasabsolutely rightto call her on it. She would have to do better. Because God knew, she couldn’t possibly lose him. The very thought of it made her feel like crying.

“I understand,” she said, as solemnly as she could. “Again, I’m sorry.”

He muttered something she didn’t quite hear and then motioned toward the truck, so she went back and climbed into her side. When he got back behind the wheel, he seemed like her Boone again. Calm. Placid.

Except now she’d seen that other part of him, and as he drove them up over Copper Mountain, she found she couldn’t relax entirely the way she would have before. She was too aware that there were other things simmering there inside of him.

Even later that night as she lay in her bed, Boonewith a temperkept coming back to her. Boone with that wild look in his eyes and his voice echoing back from the Rockies themselves.

She kept shivering when she thought about Boone with his hands on her arms and his face bent down close to hers.

A few days later, when Cat texted to ask if she wanted to come down into Cowboy Point to grab a drink with Cat and Cat’s boss, the doctor who’d opened the new clinic in town, Ramona Taylor—and also give Cat a ride back up to the ranch later—Sierra agreed. It wasn’t that she needed toescapethe dairy or anything, because she didn’t. If anything, she loved the business more all the time.

But she’d expected everything to feel normal with Boone again, and it hadn’t. It was like they really had crossed some line and she didn’t know how to cross back.

Maybe a night out with Cat would help. Maybe a change of venue would allow her to figure out how to get her and Boone back onto solid ground, or, failing that, maybe it would just be fun if she forgot about it for a while.

It was worth trying either way.

---