Page 29 of A Forever Kind of Rancher

“But you’ve been looked down on.”

She nodded slowly. She felt exposed, and he could see that. Quite so easily.

“Yes. I have been. I grew up in a community where being the daughter of a cleaner made me a certain thing to other people. Mostly, the worst part about my mom’s job was that sometimes the people she worked for tried not to pay her. And that would create gaps between paychecks. And she was never quite in a space where she could just walk away from that work, not while they were dangling money owed over her head. There was no protection. No rights. No power. It’s the kind of thing you never forget. And I never wanted to be in that position. I never want my girls to be in that position. And here I am. We don’t have a prenup or anything, and I know he’s going to have to pay child support of some kind, but the truth is I earned so much of his money for him. Right now, I don’t want it. I want to wash my hands of him and walk away. But I know that in the long run that isn’t the best decision. I know it isn’t going to serve me. It isn’t going to serve my daughters, so it isn’t the way I can treat this situation. But I want... I want to find myself. I want to be myself. Whatever that means.”

“I know who you are,” he said. “You’re the woman that showed up with the baseball bat and smashed the hell out of that asshole’s truck. Even though you could’ve gotten in trouble for it. Even though it destroyed a perfectly good vehicle. You’ve got a lot of passion. And you’re right, you have a lot of what you have because of that passion. Because you got him all those deals, because you were so good at building him up. And what did he do with that? Tried to tear you down. If you need anger to motivate you, to kind of guide your way...why not use it?”

“Well, the problem is, I’m not all that angry right now. I’d like to be. But anger just implies a level of passion I’m not sure is there. I felt scorned. I felt tricked. And that made me mad. I felt disrupted. That made me mad. I’m not heartbroken, though.”

Something in his eyes sharpened. “Really?”

“Really.”

This was dangerous. She had tried to steer them back into something mundane. Tried to think about socks and turkey sandwiches, but he had gone and changed everything when he had made the sandwich for her.

Her husband had found it a turnoff for her to talk about her past. And yet here he was, listening to her, and he didn’t seem turned off.

“No. Because I think that I love the life I had as a result of my marriage a lot more than I love my marriage. Or maybe seeing a picture of him quite literally sticking it in another woman did it for me. That could also be it.”

“I’m sorry. It was a terrible thing.”

“It was. But you know the truth... There have been very few moments in my marriage when I haven’t wanted another man. You know that.”

She was being so dangerous right now. So very dangerous. “And I might not have acted on it... But the truth remains... I was with Daniel and the whole time I wanted someone else.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice suddenly gruff and strangled.

“I was poor,” she said. “And I’ve been shaped by that. The way you saw me react to my divorce, it was all the anger that had built up inside me all those years. All that hunger. Because I know what it’s like to have an empty pantry and I never wanted that for my girls. Because I didn’t have a father growing up and I didn’t want that for them either. So I clung to the shape of my life because it was the shape I wanted, even if the content was never quite what I had fantasized about it being. It didn’t matter. I found a man, and I thought that was going to keep me safe, so I clung to it. And even though I know better, I’ve seen better—in all these years I’ve learned I don’t need him to keep me safe, I don’t need him to make me money—I was afraid that by walking away from the marriage I was walking away from security. And so, when he ripped it out from under me, I was furious. Because I felt like he was taking from me the one thing I cared about the most. My security. That was why I was so angry.”

“As you should be,” he said.

“Does it bother you? To think of me that way.”

“In what way?”

“Does it bother you to know that the woman you met, the woman who was dressed nicely, who looks like she’s never known a struggle, isn’t real?”

“Why the hell would that bother me? You’re strong. And I like that about you. I always have. Did you really think I was responding to a certain brand of cowgirl boots? Did you think I was responding to the rhinestones on your jeans? I don’t give a shit about that. It’s your backbone. There are a lot of beautiful women, Wendy, but I haven’t spent fifteen years fantasizing about what it would be like to get them naked. It isn’t just how pretty your eyes are, or the shape of your mouth, though I think it’s beautiful. It isn’t just the way your tits look in what I assume is a pretty expensive bra. Though I like that too. It’s not your ass. Though again, I like it.”

His words were the single most erotic thing she’d ever heard in her life, and maybe that made her simple, but she didn’t care. She just did not care.

“It was always the spark in your eyes. It was always that little bit of wicked in your smile. The way your ass moves because of the way you walk, which has nothing to do with the shoes or how expensive they are, but with the way you carry yourself. You’re strong. And he never gave you any of that. And he does not have the right to take any of it away. No. Finding out that you were broke when you were young doesn’t turn me off. It just explains what I saw in you already.”

“He didn’t like to hear about it,” she whispered.

“He’s a weak man,” he said, restating it.

“And you’re not.”

“I’m just a man,” he said. “I’m a man who wouldn’t dream of turning away from my responsibilities, not on the level he has. But also, I don’t take on shit I can’t hang on to. I don’t try to carry something I can’t hold.”

That felt like a warning more than a promise. And she should be grateful. Because she knew it was foolish to go straight from a marriage into another relationship. Hell, it was foolish to go straight from a marriage into Boone’s arms, but suddenly it seemed like maybe it was a stupid thing not to do.

“Fifteen years,” she said. “That’s how long it’s been since I walked into that bar and saw you,” she said. “That’s how long it’s been since I...since I looked down at my wedding ring and wanted to take it off. I didn’t want to do that all the time. Not for the whole fifteen years. But pretty much every time I was with you. I wanted to break my vows for the chance to know what it was like to have your hands on my skin, Boone Carson. Do you know what kind of insanity that is?”

He moved closer to her, his blue eyes blazing. And there was no counter between them.

“Yes. Because it’s the same kind of insanity I felt since the moment I saw you. Forget friendship and all of that. Because I just wanted you.”

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