Page 7 of Her Cowboy Prince Charming

Everything in her went hot. “But you knew right where to go to the storage closet. And you sure weren’t hesitant.”

“Fine. No. I wasn’t going to question a beautiful woman setting her sights on me. Okay?”

Beautiful. He thought she was beautiful. That, she knew, was beside the point, but she kind of enjoyed the moment.

“Well, why is my moral character being called into question when you got into the exact same thing?”

“You said you didn’t want to leave alone.”

“All right. Maybe I thought... I just thought that...” She didn’t want to tell him that she had seen him and had immediately wanted him so badly that all her inhibitions went out the window.

He walked closer to the foot of the stairs, went over to the doorway and picked up her shoe. “I have the other one.”

“I know,” she said. Then she shook her head. “I mean. I don’t know. I... I did see you with it.”

“Did I hurt you last night?”

“No. You didn’t hurt me. I wasn’t hurt. I... I was embarrassed. Because of this. Look how you’re reacting. But I have just as much right to question your behavior as you do mine. It’s either that or neither of us have a right, because we were both there.”

“You didn’t know it was me.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because I said no to you, Jessie. You know that.”

That hurt. And it made her feel guilty, even though she shouldn’t. It hurt her, even if she shouldn’t let it.

“Because you didn’t want me?” she asked, pushing through the jagged pain that had risen up in her chest.

He looked away, and if it wasn’t for the never-ending, abiding horror roiling in her stomach, she might’ve felt satisfied. Maybe that wasn’t why he’d said no. Maybe it wasn’t.

Just imagining that night two years ago hurt.

She’d really thought...

Damien was her favorite person in the world, and she’d been in love with him since she was knee high to a grasshopper.

She could remember when she’d thought he might feel the same.

At her twentieth birthday party he’d swept some frosting up off her cake with his forefinger and had gone to brush it on her face, and she’d...

It was embarrassing now.

But she’d caught his finger in her mouth instead and licked it, sucked his finger into her mouth. It had seemed like a funny idea in the split second between when she’d decided to do it and when she’d actually done it.

Then her tongue had touched his skin, fire had risen up in his eyes and something had gone so tight in her stomach she could barely breathe. And it hadn’t seemed funny at all.

No one in her family had noticed that she and Damien had been caught up in an explosion.

So she’d thought maybe...maybe.

And it had taken her more than a full year after that to try and kiss him.

But he’d rejected her.

Hey, kiddo. Come on now. You don’t want to do that.

He’d practically laughed.

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