Page 47 of Her Cowboy Baby Daddy
“Well. Really well.”
“Then I guess she’s lucky that Carter Hunt can’t take criticism.”
“It did all work out in the end,” Hayley agreed. “Too bad that doesn’t happen all that often.”
“Maybe it’s a time thing.”
“How so?” She shot him a curious look.
“You know... it may not be the end yet, so you don’t know if things have worked out or not. I’m sure that Andie thought that getting fired was the end.”
“And it was.”
“But with time, things worked out. Like they tend to do.”
“Well, aren’t you the optimist?”
Spence laughed. “You make it sound like a fault.”
“No. Not at all. It just smacks of... dare I say it?” She lifted her eyebrows in a serious way. “Romanticism?”
“What makes you think I’m not a romantic?”
“Are you?”
Her skeptical tone made him want to smile, but he kept a straight face as he said, “I have my moments.” Not many, but some. He eased himself off the warm tailgate and tipped his bottle back one last time before capping it.
“Give me an example,” Hayley said.
“You want specifics?” he asked as he turned toward her.
“I don’t want to know about your love life,” Hayley said with a wrinkle of her nose. “I want to hear about a romantic gesture or belief.”
“I believe in happy endings,” he said simply.
She blinked at him as if those were the last words she expected him to say. “I don’t.”
“For real?”
“I don’t believe thatromantichappy endings are a given,” she amended. “Or common. So that makes me a...”
“Curmudgeon,” Spence said solemnly.
Hayley burst out laughing, distracting him from the whisper of regret he’d felt at her assertion that she didn’t believe in happy endings. Everyone should believe that things can work out in the end. If you don’t, then...
He didn’t know, but he went against the promise he’d made himself and moved closer to where Hayley sat on the tailgate, coming to stand directly in front of her. She met his gaze as he set a light hand on each of her knees.
“Things do work out, Hayley. Look at my parents.”
“The exception that proves the rule?”
He cocked his head at her. “If you put your mind to it, you can think of other examples.”
“Few and far between.”
“But worth trying for, don’t you think?”
She gave him a mild look that belied the steel beneath her words as she said, “I do not.”
