A Good Old-Fashioned Cowboy Read online

  The three of them looked at her, Pru from the game of solitaire she had spread out on the coffee table, and Kit from her romance novel, which she was reading while sitting sideways in a floral chair, both legs slung over the arm.

  Charity moved her knitting needle twice more, creating a massive tangle, and then let out a deep howl the likes of which Hope had never, ever heard from Charity. It filled the room and Charity chucked the yarn ball onto the floor. “It’s dumb! Yarn is dumb!”

  “Okaaaaay,” Hope said, edging slightly out of the room.

  “Wait,” Pru said. “Details.”

  “I can’t talk about it.” Hope went into the kitchen and opened up one of the painted green cabinet doors. She pulled out a teacup and turned the kettle on, then opened up the fridge, digging around the salmon until she found fudge.

  Honestly, screw all the salmon.

  She started eating the fudge straight out of the pan.

  She looked up and saw her friends clustered in the doorway, staring at her. “Sex is stupid,” she said.

  “Oh.” Kit put her hand on her chest, her expression one of horror. “Please don’t tell me that Brooks is the kind of man who leaves a partner unsatisfied, because that is deeply disappointing.”

  “Oh no.” She shoved another piece of fudge in her mouth. “He’s a god,” she said around the candy. “I don’t think I’ll ever walk straight again. I am ruined. For all other men. All other penises. All other sex. I... I...” Tears started to slide down her cheeks. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “Oh dear,” Charity said, racing toward the kitchen table and pulling out a chair, which Hope sank down into gratefully.

  “I’m an emotional disaster. And I keep thinking about how everything fell apart for us twelve years ago. And I... I didn’t love James. I didn’t love him. I almost married a man I didn’t love. I... I never felt as much in bed with James as I did simply kissing Brooks and doing all the third-base stuff we did in high school. And now I... Now we did it. We did it.”

  “You...went all the way?” The fact that Pru didn’t even make fun of her for sounding like a high school girl was testament to how pathetic Hope knew she must look.

  “Yes,” she said. “And I feel like crying forever. And I feel like I’m in love with him. I can’t be in love with him. I dated him twelve years ago, and then was with another man for nine years. Nine years! That’s how long it took for me to get anywhere near an altar with James. To forever. To commitment.”

  “But you didn’t love James,” Kit said matter-of-factly. She walked over to where Hope was sitting and stole a piece of fudge from the baking dish. “You know that. It’s clear to you. So why couldn’t it be equally clear that you love Brooks?”

  “Because that’s not how it works,” Hope insisted. “That’s wishful thinking. That’s... It’s...unhealthy behavior. I should be single.” She held a piece of fudge aloft. “I should be single and not in love and...finding myself.”

  “Maybe you did,” Charity said softly.

  “That isn’t feminist, Charity,” Hope growled, taking another bite of fudge. “I can’t find myself by having sex with my high school boyfriend.”

  “Well,” Charity began pragmatically, all the rage that seemed to have been simmering in her over the yarn tucked away again to wherever it was she kept her feelings. “You didn’t know you didn’t love James. Now you do. You have feelings for Brooks that this seemed to uncover. And things maybe seem a little bit clearer to you, so, I mean, feminist or not, it seems like it happened.”

  “This isn’t one of Kit’s romance novels.” Hope scowled.

  “The greatest lie ever told,” Kit said gravely, “is that romance novels are unrealistic. They’re not. They might sometimes happen over a compressed length of time, but I assure you that love is real and the sort of sex that brings clarity, intimacy, and screaming pleasure exists.”

  “You say this as a woman in possession of all those things?” Hope asked.

  She was being mean now. She didn’t care.

  “I don’t have to have experienced it to believe in it,” Kit said.

  “That just seems too easy,” Hope said.

  “Except it’s clearly not,” Pru pointed out. “Or you wouldn’t be struggling with it, and it wouldn’t have taken you this long to get here.”

  “And it’s not done yet,” Kit said.

  This was why she’d needed them. Because they were right. Each of them.

  “I guess I have to actually talk to him.”

  “What broke you up the first time?” Pru asked.

  “He didn’t think he was good enough for me. Or he didn’t think I thought he was. And I... I was afraid that the real problem was that he didn’t want me. My parents made it clear they wanted me out of here, at a good school where I could meet the right kind of man. But part of me just wished that...that Brooks would tell me not to go. That he’d ask me to marry him at eighteen and I’d just know. That he was right. That it was right. But he didn’t say that. And I wasn’t brave enough to take a risk. If he didn’t want me, I couldn’t disappoint my parents. Who else did I have?”

  “You know we like you no matter what,” Pru said.

  Hope nodded. “I know, Pru. I do. It’s amazing how you can take that for granted. Though what does it say about my family that I trust in the unconditional love I get from the three of you in a much deeper way than I could ever trust theirs?”

  “I don’t know what it says about them,” said Charity, her eyes glossy all of a sudden, “but it says a lot about our friendship.”

  Kit put her hand on Hope’s shoulder and Hope sniffed loudly, her breath catching in her chest. “It seems silly now, but back then I didn’t know who I would be if I didn’t do all the things my parents expected of me. I didn’t know if I could be special enough to be the girl that Brooks wanted. I didn’t know how to be...everything. To everyone.”

  “And then you went to Chicago and got sucked right into that trap,” Pru said. “Lilac bridesmaid dresses and all.”

  Hope sighed heavily and leaned back in her chair. “This is all a little bit too much insight into my stuff, thank you very much. And I need a break from it.”

  “Understandable,” Pru relented.

  “I guess I have to draw a slip.”

  “You are released,” Kit said. “You’re miserable enough.”

  “Wait, she gets off scot-free and I had to wear a Band-Aid on my face as a man lure?” Pru asked.

  “She’s not scot-free,” Kit said. “She’s sad! And it was hookups in the house only. We were just being petty because we don’t have hookups happening.”

  “And I had to wear a Band-Aid while hefting boxes, and the man who asked me about it was Grant Mathewson. If that’s not misery I don’t know what is.”

  Pru—who in Hope’s opinion was protesting too much about Grant—was outvoted by Charity and Kit, and Hope remained un-slipped.

  But slip or no, Hope realized that she was going to have to talk to Brooks. Really talk to him. And actually sort some things out. She was not looking forward to that.

  But she’d found some kind of honesty with herself, whether she’d wanted to or not.

  She’d thought that self-actualization might come when she was ready for it. Or maybe on the kind of schedule that would feel a bit more acceptable.

  But none of it was waiting for her to be ready.

  Sullivan Brooks had just burst into her shop.

  And it didn’t matter that she had a previous relationship she was healing from...

  That’s a lie. You don’t care about James. You were always running from Brooks.

  Always. He’s the thing you never healed from.

  She lay down on her bed, and she let herself be overwhelmed. Let herself give in to not being able to breathe past all the revelations that were swirling around insid
e of her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BROOKS WAS IN a powerfully bad mood the next day and he was ready to go ahead and carry another torch of anger for Hope for the next twelve years when she called and asked him to meet her at the store.

  “You could not go,” he said to himself. He didn’t have to go just because she’d called.

  Except he was already in his truck. Already on the way. With a bunch of maple syrup, though he didn’t know if that was why she wanted him there.

  He could see her through the door, standing there surrounded by boxes of candy. She was, regrettably, not in high heels.

  He pushed the door and found that it was unlocked. Hope watched him enter, her expression wary.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said, looking away, her cheeks flushed pink.

  “Are you...embarrassed?”

  He wasn’t going to lead with that. It wasn’t kind. But then, he wasn’t exactly known for being a bastion of kindness and compassion. Why start now? Why start with Hope? The person that he credited with his sunny personality.

  That’s not fair.

  She cleared her throat. “Yeah, I have to say, doing...that in the back of a guy’s pickup truck is not exactly in my repertoire.”

  “Well, it is now.”

  “Ten points to me. But... I don’t know. It was just a lot. I’m sorry. I’m...going through some things.”

  He huffed a laugh. “Who isn’t?” He’d meant to be funny but it was a little too close to the truth.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she said. “I’m supposed to be finding my bliss, or something? Like Eat, Pray, Love but on a budget...and back in my hometown. And, you know, I should do it by myself. Or something. I should... I don’t know. Maybe I just thought that by going back to the beginning I could figure out where I went wrong.” She touched the gold compass necklace she was wearing.

  “Is that what I am? You retracing your steps?”

  Anger burned in his chest. He’d told himself this any number of times since running into her a little over a week ago, that this was about getting closure on something that he obviously didn’t have closure in.

  “No. That’s the thing, it wasn’t retracing my steps. I had a lot of feelings. I have...regrets. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around all the regret because I’ve been ignoring it for more than a decade. I didn’t love James, and I really thought I did. While I was in it. I convinced myself that was what I wanted. Maybe because you told me it was what I wanted.”

  “You can’t blame me for your shady fiancé.”

  She laughed. “Okay. You’re right. I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t blame you for what happened in my life. I can’t really blame anyone, and I guess that’s the problem. I mean, I could tell you that so much of this has to do with what my parents wanted for me, but they’re snobs, and on some level I know that. But I convinced myself that what I was doing was different, and I wasn’t just trying to please them. But... I guess I was. I guess, as an only child, with parents who were so... The things they cared about were not the things I care about. But I do care about it. I do. I... I don’t know how not to care. But nearly propelling myself headlong into a life that would’ve made me miserable has gone a long way in curing it.” She looked around the shop. “And they’re not here. My parents aren’t here. Pru, Charity, and Kit are here, with me, trying to make sure that I’m happy. And that just makes me think that maybe I was a whole lot closer to where I was supposed to be way back when, and this was all just...”

  “It can’t be wasted time,” he said, his voice rough. He didn’t know why. He didn’t know why he particularly found himself wanting to soothe her. Except that some guy had treated her badly for the last nine years and that enraged him. Down to his soul. There was never an excuse for that.

  Some jackass had made her feel like she wasn’t beautiful. Like she wasn’t enough.

  He had never worried about Hope being enough. No, he’d worried that he wasn’t enough for her.

  “So, enough about me,” she said, kicking a box of wax-wrapped fruit candy to the side. “What have you been doing for the last twelve years other than making syrup?”

  The abrupt change of subject threw him off for a second and he didn’t really know why he was indulging her. Except, he couldn’t...not.

  “Right. Well, I got a job on a ranch. Dave McAllister’s place. He died a few years back and he left me quite a bit more than I would have ever expected, and it set me up to get my own place. I was being a dick when I told you it was all down to hard work. It was, but I also got lucky. You don’t work your way up to buying a piece of property like mine by being a ranch hand. You have to have something go really well for you. And I did. He was more father to me than my own ever was.” He frowned. He didn’t like talking about either man all that much.

  “And your father?” she pressed.

  “Also dead.”

  Her face infused with compassion and she said, “I’m sorry, Brooks.”

  “It’s not a surprise. He was pickled by spite and alcohol in the end, and it was only a surprise that it didn’t keep him going longer. But he went out walking in the back of his property and had an accident. Fell off the walking path over a ravine.”

  “Brooks,” she said, her expression contorting with sympathy.

  “He wasn’t a good man, Hope. You know that.”

  “He was still your dad.”

  He nodded. “He was.”

  He thought about the years he’d spent getting angrier and angrier in the Rusty Nail, yelling at Garrett Roy and anyone else who would listen about Hope Marshall and her many sins, and he had to wonder if, much like Hope, his particular apple hadn’t fallen far from the toxic tree.

  “I never wanted you to see where I grew up,” he said. “You know that, right? That’s one reason I was so pissed off when you came that night.”

  “Oh, the night that...”

  “Yes. I was ashamed, Hope. That wasn’t what your house was like. It didn’t smell like alcohol from out on the porch. Didn’t have a ton of trash all in the yard.”

  “Yeah, but my house wasn’t actually that great. My mom and dad were always jetting off to the next thing and they expected me to be good. To take care of myself. To be a reflection of who they were in a positive way, but not actually need their intervention. And I just wanted... I wanted their approval. You were a detour from that. And I can admit that. You were a little bit of a rebellion, and at the beginning I never intended for you to be more. But in the end, Brooks, I really did love you. And I want you to know that. Not because I want to hurt you, just because it was real. And I think that’s what got to me last night. I can’t stand here with you now and not think about then too.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He felt the same. There was no getting around it.

  “I don’t want to live for my parents anymore. For a vague idea that someday they might be proud of me.”

  “I was never living to make him proud of me,” Brooks said. “Just to show him that he could have done better if he’d wanted to.” The words hurt coming through his throat. “I think he liked to believe that the world was out to get him. That the world was out to get the whole Brooks family. And he was going to sit there and wait until the good Lord or Mother Nature or whatever the hell realized that it owed him a living. I was never going to do that. But I’m not as different from him as I would like to be.” A reluctant smile curved his lips. “Bitter is bitter, even if it’s in a nice house.”

  “You don’t taste bitter to me,” she said, stepping over one of the candy boxes. “You taste pretty sweet. And I know sweet.”

  And then Hope was kissing him, soft and gentle, and it was more than he deserved.

  She reached down, curving her fingertips through his belt and jerking him toward her, and he growled a laugh against her mouth b
ecause Hope taking charge was adorable. And sexy as hell.

  Then she pushed her fingers up underneath the hem of his shirt, and his growl turned into a groan. Yeah, he was ready to have her, here and now on top of that pink taffy in the box down by their feet. Wherever. Didn’t matter.

  They’d already done way too much talking for people who should have been doing this for the past twelve years.

  He’d missed her.

  That hit him like a bolt of lightning.

  He didn’t hate her. He missed her.

  He gritted his teeth against that. Anger was so much easier.

  Anger was a hell of a lot easier.

  But this swollen, aching feeling in his chest...he didn’t like it at all. Not at all.

  “Hope, could you...?”

  They broke apart and turned around, and were faced with a wide-eyed Charity. “You know what? Never mind...”

  “Charity,” Hope said.

  But she’d already scurried off.

  Hope groaned. “I guess it’s a good reminder that we are standing here with everything unlocked. I mean, the store’s not open and it’s early in the morning, but Charity has access through the basement.”

  “Right. So, did she not know about this?”

  “No, of course she did.” He was staring at her. “What? They’re my friends. Of course they know.”

  “That’s not really how it works with dudes.”

  “You don’t talk about your hookups?”

  “Hookups, sure. Not girlfriends.” He realized what he’d said, and saw the color rise in Hope’s cheeks. “I mean, you were my girlfriend.”

  “Right,” she said. “You don’t talk about the size of...” She held her hands out in front of her chest.

  He recoiled in horror. “Why the hell would we do that? You can see them.”

  She howled, and he did not think it was funny enough to merit the level of laughter that the statement got.