Page 30 of My Cowboy Temptation

I haven’t had the chance to declare my love for him, a love that’s so overpowering that I thought for sure he had to feel it. Only now I’m starting to see that maybe that love was more one-sided than I thought.

There’s no chance I’m making any silly declarations of love now.

“Look, Cal. It’s been fun,” he tries again. “But I’m not a commitment kind of guy. And even if I were, it wouldn’t be with the boss’s daughter. A daughter I’ve known since she first came into this world and who is half my age. You’d be better off finding someone closer to your age, who shares your own interests, and who can give you everything you want. What you deserve. That sure as hell isn’t me.”

I pull the quilt up around me, no longer comfortable lying here naked under his hard stare. What had I expected? That he’d say he was willing to risk losing his job, his friendship with my dad, his entire life that he’s built here, just for me, a girl who he still sees as nothing more than a spoiled little brat?

“Maybe we should cool things down until you go,” he says as I remain mute. “No sense confusing things any further between us.”

Meaning he doesn’t want me confusing this as anything more than just sex.

And although I want nothing more than to roll over and close my eyes and shut him and this moment out, I refuse to let him see me looking so sad and pathetic.

Instead, I come to my feet, keeping the quilt wrapped around me. “You’re right. This was fun. And maybe I got caught up in the throes of my last orgasm and abandoned good common sense. I see that now. There’s no world where we can ever be together. Not when you value your relationship with my dad more than you would ever value one with me.”

He stands there studying me, and I fight the urge to throw myself into his arms and beg him to reconsider, to see that together, we can overcome anything, even my dad’s approval.

But I can see by the way his jaw is set, the hardness in his eyes, that he’s not bending.

And if I have nothing else, I still have my pride. So I stand there and watch as he slowly turns around and walks away.

It’s only when I hear the front door open a few minutes later and his truck driving down the driveway that I can fully breathe again, even if I feel my heart has been crushed and pummeled and is now sitting dead in my chest.

Why did I ever think that he was going to find me enough?

That he’d risk everything, move mountains, fight to the death if he had to, just to hold on to me?

Delusional. That’s what I must have been.

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