Page 11 of Knot Her Cowboys
I blushed while they clapped.
“Thanks for sparing us Cash’s cooking,” a gorgeous alpha said as he sat down to one side of me with a full plate. His long dark hair was pulled back in a braid, and the glint of the setting sun danced over his skin, making him look like he was constructed of polished copper.
“You’re more than welcome.”
He held out his hand for me to shake and I slipped my hand into his. “I’m Dakota.”
The deliciousness of sweetgrass and sandalwood flowed over me, my whole body reacting as if his scent was a tangible thing, caressing my skin. “Nice to meet you. You already know who I am, thanks to Cash’s big mouth.”
Dakota laughed. “Indeed I do. I’ll be seeing you tomorrow for the trail ride. I don’t run them very often, but I guess it’s my lucky day.”
My cheeks burned. “Mine too, apparently.”
“Dakota runs our equine therapy program,” Cash told me, dragging a camp chair to sit on my other side.
“That sounds amazing. I thought I might do that when I was a kid, but figured culinary school was a little more applicable for me to live anywhere.”
“Definitely more flexible if you want to live in a city.”
“Wantis a strong word, but I love the convenience. Probably hard to get middle-of-the-night takeout around here.”
“Not wrong about that,” Cash said with a laugh. “But you also don’t get any fucking stars in New York.”
“I do really miss the night sky. Sun should hurry up and set.”
“Soon.” Cash beamed. He gave Dakota the strangest look I couldn’t discern the meaning of, but my musing on it was quickly cut short.
“How long ago did you move away from here?” Dakota asked.
“Twelve years, give or take.”
“Did you ride horses before that?”
“Constantly. Almost everyone I knew had horses. Not sure how my body will do with the trail ride tomorrow, but we’ll find out. Might need to soak for a few hours after.”
“It definitely makes you use muscles you forgot existed.”
“Someone needs to get on board with memory foam saddles. I want to sit on a cloud.”
Cash snorted. “Did you develop the ass of a princess since moving away?”
“I take it you and Cash used to be friends?” Dakota asked.
“Best friends. I was shit and went no contact with everybody here when I moved. They all deserved better, but it was the only thing I could figure out to prevent how often I was crashing out.” I shrugged, staring down at my plate, unwilling to dig into just how many things had gone wrong to prompt all of that. “Homesickness is weird and I wasn’t very rational about it all.”
Cash looked like he wanted to say a thousand different things, but instead he took a bite of steak. Dakota’s thoughtful expression only made my guilt over the whole situation worse.
“How far away is Morgan? Maybe I can swing by and say hi before we head out on Sunday.”
“A couple of hours south,” replied Dakota. “About seventy-five miles due west out of Great Falls.”
Bit of a drive, but not the end of the world. Our flight wasn’t until the evening so I could probably get away with a decent visit. “Cool, thanks.”
“You started without me.” We all turned, another beautiful alpha joining us, this one with short black hair, the light curls catching the sunlight. The earthy scent of bay leaf and bergamot slid over me, the same tangible caress Dakota’s and Cash’s scents had been.
Goddamn.
I squeezed my thighs together. People around here needed to stop being so fucking pretty and smelling so damn delicious. My alphas were nothing to sniff at in the looks department, both crisp and clean, broad-shouldered and possessing transfixing dark eyes. But I was engaged, not dead. I could appreciate looking at these men without doing a single thing about my body’s reaction to them.
