Page 37 of A Forever Kind of Rancher

By her. By them. By this.

And all she could do was hang on to him in the aftermath. Clinging to his sweat-slicked shoulders as she pressed her head to that curve right there at his neck, as she tried to keep herself from weeping.

“Boone,” she said.

“It’s about damned time,” he said.

And she laughed. Impossibly, because nothing felt light or funny.

Except it was just the truth.

It had been so long in coming, that it was nearly a farce.

Had it always been inevitable? She supposed there was no good answer to that question. The decision as to whether or not they would do something to violate her vows had been taken away from them. And they had certainly kept themselves away from any sort of temptation they couldn’t handle for long enough that they deserved a medal.

But it had been taken away from them, the need to resist. And so they didn’t.

Lying there with him felt inevitable.

But maybe it was Daniel’s betrayal that had always been inevitable, considering he had never once seen a need to be faithful to her.

Maybe that was the thing that had always been set in stone: the failure of her marriage. Maybe it had been fate that day that had brought Boone into her path and said, Here is the better choice.

For all the good it had done. Because she had been so bound and determined to do the right thing, she hadn’t taken the destined thing.

Except now, in the aftermath of what had been fairly spectacular sex, she was left with the reality that sex was hardly destiny.

It had been amazing. Surpassing anything she had even thought could exist.

But she still had all the things in her life to take care of. And kids to pick up from school in... She looked over at the bedside clock. Thirty minutes.

For a moment she had felt free of all her responsibilities, but she wasn’t. Not really.

She still carried them all. She still had to be Wendy Stevens. Mother, a woman in the midst of a divorce.

She still had to figure out where she went from here, and what she did next. Not even three soul-shattering orgasms could take that away.

Because bodies meeting wasn’t a promise. Not forever, not really anything.

And in the place she was in life, she could hardly ask Boone for promises.

He looked at her, and she wanted to.

But she didn’t.

They had known exactly what to do.

It was funny that neither of them seemed to know what to say.

“I have to go get the girls. Soon.”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t... You know I can’t be over here at night.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“I just can’t have them knowing.”

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