Page 7 of Still A Cowboy
Cal shook his head, still half-smiling. “I’ll pass on the coffee. I was actually heading to the grocery store. Figured I’d stock the apartment. Also, any good breakfast spots in town?”
Before Willa could answer, Fia jumped in. “Willa can fix you something. She makes great pancakes. Guaranteed to seal the deal.”
Willa let out a breath, already done with this conversation. “Okay, time to go.”
She stepped out into the hall, still wearing the baggy sweatpants and Green Day t-shirt she had slept in. Cal followed, and she pulled the door shut behind her, muffling Fia’s giggling on the other side.
She crossed her arms and leveled him with a look. “Fia is just the start. You’re going to get the soulmate thing from half the town. Some people will be serious about it, some will just want to poke fun of it. Either way, your best move is to laugh it off and change the subject.”
Cal leaned against the opposite wall, his weight settling onto his good leg. He smiled, and there was an easy heat in it that didn’t help her pulse at all.
He was hot.
Like, unfairly hot. The kind of hot that made women say reckless things in crowded saloons.
“Laugh it off?” he repeated. Heck, even that cowboy drawl was hot.
“Yeah,” she managed.
He studied her, long enough that she had to stop herself from fidgeting. “You’re not laughing,” he pointed out.
The low spark of heat that had been simmering in her gut flickered again, sharp and unwelcome. She shoved it aside.
“It’s not funny when it’s aimed at me,” she pointed out. “You won’t think it’s funny either after another couple of hours.”
His gaze dipped briefly, not in a leering way, but just enough to remind her she was barefoot and wearing sweatpants with a hole at the knee.
The heat twisted again, traitorous and annoying.
Willa cleared her throat, forcing her brain to work again. Time for a change of subject. No more soulmate talk. “Do you plan on seeing Eden today?” she asked.
He straightened, his expression settling into something a little more careful. “Yeah. I figured I’d give her a call later.”
Willa hesitated, the words pressing against her tongue, fighting to stay put. She won that particular fight though. “You’ll hear this soon enough,” she said, voice steady but slower now. “So I might as well tell you. About the curse.”
His brow lifted, waiting.
“I was engaged once.” Willa forced her arms to stay loose at her sides, even though everything in her wanted to cross them like armor. “His name was Brent Larkin.”
“Brent Larkin,” he repeated as if testing it to see if it rang a bell. And it obviously did. “He handles a lot of the rental properties in the area?”
“That’s the one,” she muttered.
“I emailed back and forth with him,” he said, his mouth tightening a little. “Didn’t know he was your fiancé.”
“Ex-fiancé,” she emphasized. There was a twist in her gut, a warning she had ignored the night Brent proposed. She should have trusted it.
She pushed through with the explanation. “After the engagement ended… my ex and Eden… uh, dated.”
His eyes flickered with something she couldn’t quite read.
“They dated,” he repeated, like that explained everything. It didn’t, but it was all she was going to say about that.
He paused, long enough to make her skin itch. Finally, he asked, “What’s the curse?”
She sighed. Of course, he would want details about that. “It’s stupid…as curses tend to be.”
He waited, not moving.
