Page 46 of At the Rancher's Pleasure

Jules frowned and leaned forward. “All because you told Rusty to take his hands off her?”

Brett nodded. “Pretty much. Then she called it off.” He shrugged, as confused today as he was a week ago.

The other man folded his arms across his broad chest, his expression pensive.

“It still doesn’t make any sense. I know Sarabeth doesn’t need saving. She’s a successful businesswoman in her own right. She doesn’t take any crap—particularly my crap. She’s solid, you know?”

And that was why her about-face was so damn confusing. But he wasn’t going to beg her to take him back, to resurrect something she’d killed. As he told Jules, he still had his pride.

“Yeah, and pride is going to keep your bed warm at night, help you with your strays, have bed breaking sex with you.” Jules scoffed. “Stop being a dick, dude.”

The man had a point.

Jules stretched before reaching for his bottle of cola, his big fingers popping the tab. “Have you seen her, spoken to her since that cocktail party at the TCC?”

Brett shook his head. She left the clubhouse with Jaynie, and in the days since, they’d not laid eyes on each other. He left his house at the crack of dawn and came back from the land after dark, and she, he suspected, was trying to avoid him too.

“What do you want from her, Brett?”

He sighed, done with this conversation. But when he tried to stand up, Jules’s warning stare pinned him to his seat. He threw his hands up in the air in frustration. “I don’t know, dammit!”

“Yeah, you do. You’re just too much of a pussy to admit it.”

Brett scowled at him. “I can toss you overboard, you know. You could swim to the beach. My boat, my rules.”

“You could try.” Jules smirked before turning serious again. “Now answer the question. What do you want from her?”

This conversation would never end unless he gave the ornery jerk what he wanted. And that was honesty. And maybe by admitting what he really wanted, he could, finally, be honest with himself. “I want everything with her that I didn’t want with Lexi. Marriage, companionship, friendship...love.”

“You’re still okay with not having kids of your own?”

It was one of the biggest differences between them—Jules desperately wanted to be a dad and raise a basketball team while he was ambivalent about the concept of fatherhood. He’d all but raised himself and didn’t feel the need to repeat the process.

“I just want her, Jules. Any damn way I can get her.”

Brett stared at his teak deck for a long time before lifting his eyes to Jules’s serious face. He scratched his head and rubbed the back of his neck, wishing his friend would say something. Brett was about to wrap his hands around his throat and squeeze the words out of him when Jules spoke again.

“Then maybe, Einstein, you should tell Sarabeth that and not me.”

That, Brett decided, would be a very good idea. Of course, he would be putting his heart on the floor, inviting her to stamp all over it again. But at least he could tell himself that he tried. That he hadn’t walked away without fighting for her, fighting for them, fighting for what they could have.

But he needed her to fight too, and he wasn’t sure that was something she wanted to do. But something seemed off in her response to him wanting to protect her from Rusty. She knew he wasn’t the type of guy to let any woman be bullied by a man—so her reaction was way out of proportion. Something else had been happening behind those pretty blue eyes, and he’d been too pissed off—and hurt and betrayed—to make sense of it.

It was time he got to the bottom of it. And afterward, if she still didn’t want him, he’d find a way to live without her.

It would be hard but he damn well would.

Jules released an evil chuckle as he placed his bare feet on the coffee table separating them. He pulled his ball cap over his eyes and rested his linked hands on his stomach. “If this works out, will I have to write a new best man’s speech or can I recycle the one from the aborted wedding last month?”

Brett slapped his feet off the coffee table and turned his head away so Jules couldn’t see his smile. “Poop head,” he said, channeling his inner ten-year-old.

“Butt face,” Jules replied without missing a beat.

Yeah, because that’s how adult men, friends for most of their lives, expressed their gratitude. And their love.

That same afternoon, sitting in the Royal Diner, Sarabeth heard the ding of an incoming message on her phone and, thinking it might be a message from Brett, yanked it out of the side pocket of her Kate Spade tote bag. Jaynie and Gina were laughing about something; she’d lost track of their conversation ages ago. In fact, since walking out of the Texas Cattleman’s Club last week, she hadn’t been able to think about anything or anyone other than Brett and how much she missed him.

The message was from her lawyer, telling her to expect the delivery of papers she needed to sign for the trusts she was establishing for her kids. Sarabeth bit the inside of her cheek, telling herself that, at some point, she would feel better, normal. Whatever the hell normal meant...

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