And just like that, I wish I’d taken a second shot.
** Present Day**
If I’d known then just how big a part Liam Stone would end up playing in my life, I don’t think I would've told him Amber’s name that night.
He dated her on and off for three years.
The real kicker? He offered me a job not long after that night at the bar, shortly after I graduated. Business manager. A promotion from barroom embarrassment to full-time glutton for punishment.
But Liam Stone doesn’t do anything like a normal person.
Workplace boundaries? Never heard of them.
We spend our days side by side scheduling meetings, managing sponsorships, putting out fires. Then we spend our nights grabbing drinks, talking rodeo politics, laughing overthings I probably shouldn’t remember. And all the while, I sit there and watch him pick up woman after woman. Like clockwork.
And I wonder every single time why it’s never me.
Why I’m always just the one he leans on, never the one he wants.
I sigh, the sound thick with the weight of every stolen glance and silent heartache.
I should really find a new job.
But Liam needs me.
So I don’t.
2
“Have you been drinking?”
Liam just grins, lazy and unbothered, as he kicks up his boots and props them right on the edge of my desk. Which I guess is technically his desk, since I’m in his home office.
His boots are still caked in dried mud from working the bulls. So are the frayed hems of his jeans, dust and grit clinging to the fabric like a second skin. I want to be annoyed. Ishouldbe annoyed. But my traitor eyes betray me, dragging upward, past those lean, powerful legs, up to the open collar of his blue-and-white checkered button up. The fabric pulls slightly at his chest, just enough to hint at the muscle beneath. The color makes his eyes look even bluer than usual. Dangerous. Hypnotic.
But it’s the way his hat’s tipped low over his brow, casting shadows across that maddeningly handsome face, and the cocky smirk curled at the corner of his mouth that sends my pulse skittering in a dozen directions.
“Sure haven’t, honey,” he drawls, all charm and trouble wrapped in denim and dust.
“I hate it when you call me that.”
Lies. Bold-faced, shameless lies. I love it. Every single time. The way it rolls off his tongue like I already belong to him. The way it slides under my skin and makes my chest ache in the best and worst way.
But it’s not good for me. Not for my sanity. Not for my stupid little heart that hasn’t figured out how to stop falling for him. You’d think, by now, my heart and brain would get on the same page. They haven’t.
“No, you don’t,” Liam says, that infuriating smirk tugging at his mouth. “And admit it. You’re at least intrigued by the idea.”
“Intrigued? By the idea of fake datingyou?” I scoff, crossing my arms. “Liam Stone, did you get kicked in the head out there?”
He throws his head back and laughs, all easy confidence and that damn good-natured twinkle in his eye. Like he’s not asking me to professionally and emotionally walk a tightrope over a raging fire.
“Honey, just hear me out,” he says, and this time his voice drops low and smooth. The kind that knows how to slide past every one of my defenses.
I don’t answer. Don’t roll my eyes. Don’t move.
He takes it as permission and keeps going. “You were there. The meeting went great. They like me. But they don’t want to sell to me because of my personal life.”
As frustrating and sexist as it is, he’s not wrong.
