Page 17 of The Cowboy's Second Chance Bride

I tucked my phone into my jacket pocket, glad my name hadn’t been mentioned. I thought about Cal at the elevator.

“I’m the guy who took your virginity,” I mimicked. I threw up my hands in frustration and disbelief. “Well, duh. What did that have to do with anything?” I mean, sure I’d chosen him to give it to. I’d chosen him because he’d be the one. Well, jokes on me.

If that fun fact hadn’t meant anything when he was dumping me with no explanation, it certainly meant nothing now. He’d wielded it like a sword intended to cut me. All because he’d been surprised that I had come willingly to match him.

I might not have gotten the closure I’d wanted, but I had gotten under his skin, and I took pleasure in that. The infuriating ass.

Seeing Cal again had been the worst kind of wonderful. He was a glass of cold water, and I’d been parched. As ugly as his reaction had been, seeing him had been weirdly refreshing. I hated myself for feeling that way. But maybe that was the power of first loves.

I stared out at the Seattle skyline, curious to know what had brought him to this city after college, when he was either going back to the family ranch in Wyoming or to Denver, where his dad’s company was headquartered. He’d been groomed to do either. Yet he’d gone in a completely different direction. His Wikipedia page said he’d spent four years working for a private security firm before starting his own.

The rumbling of a motorcycle downshifting caught my attention, and I looked toward the street. Three floors up gave me an advantage. I could see both the ground and the skyline.

A motorcycle idled at a red light, and the biker’s attention was on my hotel. I didn’t need to guess who rode the bike. By the length of his long legs and the way he stretched them out to balance the bike, I could tell it was Cal. There was something so familiar about the way he moved. He’d always had the agility of a cheetah, fluid and smooth and quick to respond. After all these years, I still knew his body.

Jace was right. Cal seemed to have a death wish. Because who rode a motorcycle when, just hours before, they’d been wounded by gunshot? A person who punished himself with pain, that was who. And his presence was confirmation that I’d gotten to him.

Okay, Calvin Beckett. You’re not going to let me walk away with the last word.

I gave him time to park his bike. Game on.

ChapterSeven

SABRINA

Ididn’t have to see Cal to know where he was. I felt him as soon as I walked out of the hotel. This had always been the magic of Cal. As if he were a proton and I an electron, our opposite charges created an irresistible force of attraction, drawing us together like two halves of a whole.

Without looking over my shoulder, I said, “Why are you here? Gonna make sure I leave your town?”

“Why would you stay?”

“Precisely. My daddy didn’t raise a fool.” I stopped, feet from the porte-cochère, set down my carry-on bag, and surveyed the street for a taxi. My backup plan was an Uber.

Cal cleared his throat before he spoke, his voice so low I almost didn’t hear him. “I was sorry to hear about Travis passing.”

I pressed my lips together and swallowed because, even five years later, it still hurt to think about my dad’s death. He had been my last living relative. He had been my rock.

Pushing back my grief, I hid it by adding bite to my words. “Funny how I knew nothing about you. I didn’t know you had a company or if you’d married or not. I never once googled your name.” I looked over my shoulder. “I can see that’s not true for you. You were the one that left. Why do you care?”

“I did say I was sorry. You know, back then.”

With one exhalation, my grief was replaced by fury. I swiveled, leaving my bag behind, giving him a cold stare as I marched the handful of steps toward him. He had tucked himself off to the side where the shadows gathered and made it difficult for him to be seen through the lobby windows.

When I was barely a foot away I jabbed him in the chest with my finger to punctuate my every word. “‘I’m sorry, Reenie, this isn’t gonna work. It’s best if we go our own ways, Reenie.’ That’s what you think counts as an apology? That’s not an apology—that’s a cop-out. You used ‘I’m sorry’ like a buffer, hoping it would somehow make things better, but it didn’t work.”

He looked down at my poking finger.

“There I am, thinking we’re about to get married. I’m on top of the world, then you show up to say we have to go our own ways when just a few hours earlier we were picking out rings.”

The tip of my finger began to throb from the contact, so I flat-palm slapped him square in the solar plexus. He didn’t even flinch. I pulled back, preparing to land another. He grabbed my hand, his large one swallowing mine, and held tight. Using his hold, he jerked me closer. Neither of us moved as we stared each other down.

“Stop slapping me,” he growled.

“You’re more solid than you used to be in college.” Solid was an understatement. The man’s chest was like a Kevlar vest, tight and hard.

His lips twitched. “A lot less beer pong and far more weight lifting.”

I continued to hold his gaze. His eyes were dark and dangerous, a look unfamiliar to me that reflected what I felt: a blue-flame heat burning me from my very center. He’d always made me feel that way. I was surprised he still felt it too.

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