“It’s going great. Between Laney getting the menu dialed in and me getting to taste test that, and you working on these strawberry rolls, I’m probably having the best time of my life.”
Cara laughed. She sat down in a chair and propped her feet up on a chair across from her. “I’m glad. Now that my cranky handyman is mostly finished with everything here at the bakery, things are going a little bit more…” She trailed off.
“More what?”
“I don’t know. Zane is distracting. He’s just like a big dark cloud.”
Like a whole storm, Marlowe thought. Not a little raincloud. He wasn’t drippy, but hewasthunderous.
“I can see that.”
“Three weeks in his company and I don’t feel like I know him any better. Nor do I think he wants to be my friend.”
“Do you want to be his friend?”
Cara’s cheeks turned just slightly pink.
Marlowe’s brows shot upward. “Oh. You’re attracted to him.”
“I’m not…attractedto him. I just think he’s hot. Because I’m not blind. It’s an aesthetic appreciation, not an internal combustion.”
But the color in her cheeks said differently, because what was a good old-fashioned blush beyond an internal combustion? Not that Marlowe could really comment.
“I didn’t expect to move out to the small town and be surrounded by Cowboys that were all over six feet tall and gorgeous.”
“True. It is a problem.”
With Cody dodging her as he had been, she had spent more time with Walker recently. He was incredibly charming. So beautiful it almost hurt to look at him. There was a contrast to his beauty that set off alarm bells inside of her. Because his blonde hair and blue eyes gave him an angelic quality, and yet, there was something wicked underlying it. The survival instincts inside of her bleated about the uncanny valley of it all.
Then there was Zane, who was a furious, beautiful lumberjack of a man. And she had a feeling he practically went out of his way to not project that beauty. He had dark hair, heavy dark brows, a bushy dark beard, but his eyes were a blazing sort of blue that she couldn’t look away from. He was giving unhinged Henry Cavill Superman, and it was hard not to appreciate that.
Then there was Nolan, who she had been introduced to by Lila. He and Lila didn’t seem to get along very well, but she had the impression that he was a very longtime family friend.He was also aggressively good-looking. Because weren’t they all?
It was definitely an unforeseen circumstance. An embarrassing wealth of cowboy riches.
But still, all she could think about was Cody.
“I’m not dumb enough to hook up with one of them,” Cara said.
She laughed. Oh well, she was that dumb. She was so that dumb. And she wasn’t even actually mad about it. She felt…she couldn’t stop thinking about Cody.
She was a mess, but she was still standing. She was the girl she’d tried to run away from for so many years, but that girl was the one who had gotten her where she was.
She’d forced her to be good. To do the right things, not the selfish things. She’d found security wherever she could get it, she’d taken every opportunity and made the most of it because she’d been so determined to break the cycles of her childhood that had held her down.
But now she’d done something messy because all that trying hadn’t made her life perfect. She wasn’t sorry about the mess, because it had been glorious and hot and freeing. Even if it was over now.
“I am,” Marlowe said. She stared straight ahead, across the top of her coffee cup, at the mountain diagonal to the coffee house. “I am that dumb.”
Cara frowned. “What?”
“Oh… I just… I slept with Cody.”
“WhaaaaAAAaaat?” Cara’s voice spanned eight octaves. She was the Mariah Carey of shock and awe.
Marlowe shrugged. “It just happened.”
“Like recently?”
