Page 24 of The Cowboy's Second Chance Bride

“Back to your relationship in college. Is it because the two of you broke up—didn’t have an amicable split—that you were aggressive with Ms. Holloway? How does that look for a man who wants to teach women self-defense, who wants to help people find a safe space with dating? Can you be trusted to do that?” This came from a beady-eyed jackass right up front.

Sabrina stiffened beside me. Only I could hear the sharp intake of breath, and I knew, because I knew her, that she was ticked. A glance in her direction showed she was staring down the reporter. I swore the scent of her perfume got spicier from her quick flash of anger. Like me, Sabrina knew this guy was here to cause more trouble. Chances were he was the source of this article or knew who was.

I leaned forward to respond, but Sabrina stopped me by putting a hand over the mic. “I’ve got this one.” She angled her body toward the reporter and, instead of sitting next to me, perched a hip on the table and rested, one leg swinging casually, the hem of her skirt rising just a bit. She put a hand on my shoulder. “Look again, Mr.—”

“Smith.”

“Yes, of course. ‘Smith.’” The way she drew out his name had a few of the people in the room laughing. “Take another look at those pictures, Mr. Smith. Anyone can add their own narrative to an image. I think there are even contests called ‘caption this image’ where people win prize money. The caption to our image is a bad one. Unimaginative. Given by someone with a negative outlook. Likely a lonely person who goes home to an empty house with a take-out bag and sits in front of the TV, dripping mustard on their tie, mad at the world because they don’t have what others do.”

The way she stared at Mr. Smith’s tie had others craning to see if there was a mustard stain. Even Smith looked down. Her fingers lightly rested on my shoulder, her thumb caressing it slowly.

“Look at it again,” she continued. “Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

Many looked at their phones, presumably to review the image.

“That’s not aggression, Mr. Smith. That’s restrained passion.”

I stiffened, and she squeezed my shoulder in response.

“Restrained?” someone in the gallery called out.

Sabrina moved her hand from my shoulder to pick up the pad of paper in front of me. She began to fan herself even though the room was a comfortable temperature. “We have a history, and try as we might, there’s no denying what’s between us. In that picture”—she nodded to the group—“you see two adults struggling to not engage in what could have been described as a very heated public display of affection.”

Many in the crowd laughed, and more pictures were taken.

“I see it,” someone said. Others murmured their agreement.

What had Sabrina just done? Now we were connected romantically. A new rekindling of our past. This was not going to be good. This was going to be worse than bad. I had not spent the last ten years in a lonely personal hell just to have all of it to unravel now.

I stood suddenly and met her gaze. I sucked in a breath. Dear Lord. She was giving me that look—the one I still saw in my mind’s eye—and it drove me mad. It was a look of hot need, and if we’d been anyone else and in a different time, I would have seen her hot need and raised it by one intense longing, which would only lead to me showing the crowd what a real public display of affection looked like right there on the cloth-covered conference table. The heat of her body and lure of her perfume were intoxicating. I was drunk from her nearness. I knew my face showed it. Add that to the coyness in her words, and this moment painted a story that the press would run with: that we were hot for each other.

The press would dig into our past. They would look for anything they could spin negatively to drag her down. She might have bested Mr. Smith just now, but his employer, likely someone with connections to my dad, would strike back with a vengeance. This I knew for certain because for all the people who loved a love story, many others liked a dumpster fire. My father was still out there trying to destroy me. And he most definitely did not want a Sabrina-and-Cal love story.

I needed to end this now and get her as far away from me as I could.

I took the pad from her and tossed it onto the table, which bumped the mic. It made a short but uncomfortable pitchy squeal that I ignored as I snatched up her hand in mine. I pulled her toward the exit. I needed to get away and regroup. I needed her to not say another word.

“Thanks for coming,” I said as I nearly dragged her out of the room.

A few people hooted.

Once outside the door, I looked for another room to go to, one that would give us privacy.

“Cal, what are you doing?”

I found the door to a closet and pushed her in, closing it behind us. Fortunately, the light was on, dim though it was.

“What have you just done, Reenie? I was trying to separate your name from mine.”

“That smug little weasel was there just to bring you down.”

“So let him try. But you just gave him more to talk about. You did the opposite of what I wanted.”

“Too late now, and who cares?” She planted her fists on her hips. “You’re acting like a tool right now. You bust into my house, you drag me down here to prove you’re not a wife beater, and when I give them something juicy to bite into, you freak out and pull me out of the room.”

She was toe to toe with me and not backing down. This was a new version of Sabrina. She was strong, confident, and deadly. She would lay waste to a man with that beautiful, bewitching smile of hers, those sparking blue eyes, and her sharp words. I stared at her mouth.

“Which, by the way, just made what I said look factual. Now they think you’ve dragged me off, caveman style, to have your way with me.” She tapped me in the chest to make her point, drawing my attention away from my randy thoughts and her delectable mouth.

---