Page 15 of Older Cowboy

That hadn’t happened in a long time. A long, long time.

“Go out with me?” His question left his mouth as more of a challenge than a request. He couldn’t seem to alter his tone, either. Maybe because he felt like a fish that had been on the end of the line for too long. “We can do anything you want. Hang-gliding. Mountain biking. Dinner or lunch or coffee. Going around the world in a hot air balloon, I’m up for whatever.”

“Cody Stiers,” she said on a giggle. “You are a mess.”

“True, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

She shook her head at him, her face still jerking now and again with amusement. “Fine, you wore me down. Coffee, then. Just coffee.”

And all Cody could think during the secret inward celebration boomeranging through his head was,Finally.

“How about now?” he asked her on the fly.

“Now?”

“If you’re available.”

She glanced down at her work attire, and he felt certain she was about to say no. Which made sense. He’d been trying to strike while the iron was hot, but he might’ve overreached a bit. That was why he felt totally floored by her answer.

“Why not?”

CHAPTERSEVEN

The thingabout Cody was that he snuck in like smoke under a door, so subtly at first that Erika didn’t recognize that it—he—was already inside. Once there at Sweet Everything, she waved to Allison, the owner and most frequent operator who waved back. It felt simultaneously odd and not odd at all to be there with Cody having her cold brew latte with artificial sweetener, especially when Cody ordered the same thing.

“What she’s having works for me, too.”

Most vitally, this agreement she’d made with him to go get coffee meant nothing. It wasn’t a serious date. She was still in her scrubs, for mercy’s sake. How serious could this be?

“Then, Gabe bolts into the house, bare feet, naked butt, mud and all, right onto the pristine, brand-new white carpet.”

Erika hadn’t been paying the strictest amount of attention to Cody, but at that, she had to gape at him.

“You had a white carpet?”

“Stacey insisted on it. She was super into Do It Yourself home decorating shows back then. I warned her that it wasn’t a good idea to mix white carpet and a three-year-old boy, but she didn’t listen.”

Erika could imagine it, but she couldn’t help but trip over the other woman’s name. “Stacey is your son’s mother?”

“Yeah, she’s my ex. We were happy at first, but ultimately, it didn’t work out. We share custody, or we used to. Now that Gabriel’s of age, I suppose that’s no longer necessary.” He sat back in his seat as if pondering that as a revelation. “Life is funny, isn’t it? We had this big wedding and make all these promises to each other, only for it to fizzle away.”

“I have a husband,” she blurted out, and at his astonished look, added on, “A late husband.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“He is—was—the love of my life.”

Cody paused, regarding her carefully, for once utterly mute. It struck Erika that she’d gone out of her way to mention this, that she always did this when out with another man, as if spouting these words would absolve her of some sort of sin. As if being on a date, even though she couldn’t genuinely think of this that way, was cheating on Blake.

Erika knew she shouldn’t feel like that since this was nothing but two people having a cup of coffee.

“You look sad,” he remarked, his brows pinching in the middle. “I didn’t mean to make you sad. When did you lose him?”

She heard her father’s incredulous,Sixteen years, Erika, rebounding through her brain.

“A while ago, but it’s recent as far as my heart goes,” she replied. That much was certainly true.

Her hand had been resting on the table, and he clasped onto it as he said, “I’m sure that’s hard.”

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