That questioning look on her face, her cheeks bright pink.
“Hi,” he said, again, because it seemed important to do now that Walker wasn’t here. Like it was the real greeting.
“Hi,” she responded.
“How are you? I mean, how is the hotel?”
“Oh, everything’s going great. The staff is awesome, Laney is the best. Really fun.”
“You divorced yet?”
He hadn’t meant to ask that.
She wrinkled her nose. “No. But, thanks to you, or… Lila, for hooking me up with the lawyer’s information. I’m on the path.”
“Good. I just wish that I could be there to see the look on his face when you initiate things.”
“He’ll be thrilled,” she said.
“I don’t think so.”
The two of them looked at each other for a long moment, and the color in her cheeks mounted further. “He’s with somebody else already.”
“You know what I know about men like that? And think they’re going to lose anything. They think they get to have everything on their terms. The minute that you make it your terms, he’s going to have an issue.”
“I hope so,” she said, smiling broadly. “Because I would really like to cause him some problems.”
“I have no doubt you will.”
A little bit of tension settled between them, but he was bound and determined to get things back on track. He had decided already that that afternoon together wasn’t going to change anything. It couldn’t change anything. Because they worked together. Because they were building this place together, and she was…
She seemed like she was doing good. He should be relieved by that.
He didn’t want to be the asshole boss who slept with her and made her feel uncomfortable around him.
Well, hewasan asshole because he was her boss and he had slept with her, and he wasn’t all that reassured that she was doing good. Because he sure as hell wasn’t.
“You don’t feel like you need anything ahead of the grand opening?”
“No. Everything is great. Everyone is so professional. You’ve put together an amazing team. It’s very impressive,Cody.” She looked around the room and lifted her beer bottle to her lips. “Your mom would be proud.”
Her words hit him squarely in the solar plexus, because they weren’t just empty words. She knew a little bit about his mother, about him and his siblings’ lives, and he knew that it had been something he wanted to hear. Even if he could never ask anyone to tell him, to reassure him. Even if he could never admit it.
“Thanks,” he said.
“So, this is the big venue for the weddings?”
“One of them. Obviously, there’s the potential to have smaller weddings outback at the hotel. Or to have a ceremony out there, and a reception in here. We have different packages. And both...”
It felt so stupid to be having small talk like this with her. He couldn’t recall ever having to try to engage a woman that he had slept with before after the fact.
When he was in the rodeo, they had all been strangers. Women that he met one night in one city, and then never saw again.
As far as the town went… Well, it had always been women who didn’t want to admit that they slept with him. He had been their definition of slumming it. Their shame had kept them from ever engaging with him afterward. And damn, he had no practice with this.
No practice with what level of conversational intimacy was appropriate when you’d been inside of a person.
And you were trying to pretend that you hadn’t.
