Page 41 of The Cowboy's Second Chance Bride

I leaned in and closed my arms around her.

“What are you doing?” She bent back, her hands grabbing my biceps.

“What are you doing?” I made a point of staring at her from top to lap, to draw her attention to all the ways our bodies were touching.

Her eyes went wide.

“Maybe you should turn back around,” I said.

“Maybe you should answer my question.” She met my arched brow with one of her own.

“What question?” I smirked.

SABRINA

The man was exasperating. That seemed to be a running theme with Cal Beckett 2.0. My Cal, college Cal, had been tactfully honest, which I had found refreshing.

That was why I’d turned around in the saddle. For a moment there, he was my Cal. The feel of him behind me was as familiar to me as if it were my own body. I’d watched his hands loosely hold the reins, and I knew those hands. Knew the scar across the knuckles of his three middle fingers on his left hand, from an accident he’d had as a child. I knew the feel of the scar when our hands were entwined. And for a moment, I forgot where I was, or maybe I just lost the last ten years because so much was familiar, and it felt so good. Familiarity was comfort, and I sorely missed it.

Then I mentioned my father, and all the loneliness of the years washed over me. My mother had died when I was three, and though I had her parents, they passed when I was a teen, leaving me with just my dad—until I met Cal. With him, I saw more. I saw a growing family, and I hoped and wished and crossed my fingers because, dear Lord, I wanted that. I dreamed of so many wants with Cal that I felt greedy, but I never once thought I was asking for too much. Until it was all taken away. Cal left. My dad died. My uterus betrayed me. And I was… alone. Really, truly, deeply without.

And then Cal had said his dad had targeted me because he knew Cal would protect me. Why would a man who walked away protect me? And why would his dad think he would do that?

I caught his eye and held it. “You keep saying stuff about protecting me. You can’t protect me from what your dad and his cohorts plan to do. You can’t protect me from the press or whatever. And it’s not your job to protect me. You gave up that right in Vegas.”

He was the first to break eye contact as he looked over my shoulder, a stubborn set to his jaw, the muscle in his cheek popping. He was trying to find the right words. I knew him. I knew how to interpret that look.

He cleared his throat. “Whether you see me as a friend or not, I will always protect you. It’s what I do. Just because we couldn’t be together anymore didn’t mean I stopped caring for you.”

“If you still care for me, then tell me why we broke up in Vegas.”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure it matters anymore.”

“What if it matters to me?”

“Reenie?” He sounded aggrieved.

I reached out and touched the scar that ran under his chin and toward his jawline. “Remember when you got this? We went to the Caribbean for spring break.”

His eyes flicked to mine, skimmed past my lips, then looked away. “Your dad was there at a tournament.”

I gave a small smile. “Yeah, he was kicking ass, chalking up the wins.” He’d won enough to pay my tuition for the next year, had I needed it, but my grandparents had funded my college.

A smile teased at Cal’s lips. “Watching him play was amazing. And we ran into some others from school down there, and one was a girl Jace liked. Remember that?”

I barked out a laugh and nodded. “I wasn’t legal drinking age, so you kept ordering me virgin drinks, then swapping a few of them with Jace’s. He didn’t know—he was so caught up in that girl.”

He nodded, a smile fully on his face. Lord, he was beautiful when he smiled. “But you told him she liked the guy that was in their group, and he liked her. They just hadn’t found the courage to take the next step yet. Even then, you could read people. You were a matchmaker, and you didn’t even know it.”

I had always been really good setting up couples. I just sucked at it when it came to me.

“And we swam with the dolphin, and afterward, I was ready to switch my degree to marine biology just so I could swim with dolphins for a living,” I said.

Cal tipped his head back and laughed. “You were obsessed with that dolphin. You said Capri-Sun was your spirit animal.” His voice was deep with a hint of scratchiness yet smooth and comforting as well.

My heart was bulging with happiness from the memory. My head was calling me a fool for going down memory lane.

“Capricious,” I said, committing to being a fool. “His name was Capricious.”

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