Page 97 of Slow Hands Cowboy

When he got back to the house just in time to take her to his brother’s, she was waiting for him, wearing a demure floral dress that fell past her knees, flowing, loose and pretty like the kind of thing she had worn before she had embarked on the revenge outfit campaign.

But what surprised him the most was that she looked nervous.

“What’s up with you?” he asked as he opened the passenger door for her, then rounded to the driver’s side and let himself in.

“I don’t really know your family. And I imagine that the things they’ve heard about me are not very flattering.”

“The things they’ve heard about you? You mean the things they overheard while we were planning your wedding?”

He knew that he shouldn’t tease her about that. But she just didn’t seem heartbroken about that guy, so it felt more like he was teasing her about an external inconvenience than an actual heartbreak.

“So.”

“Well, that too. You know, I just kept waiting for you to say no,” she said, looking out the passenger side window.

“To what?”

“Any of my demands. I think secretly what I wanted was for it to flip a switch inside of me, and then I could just call the wedding off. Could take it as a sign that things weren’t going to be perfect, and if they weren’t going to be perfect, then we had to postpone. Or cancel. I think I really wanted an excuse to stop it. And that made me horrible, and I’m sorry. It made me act more like I did back in high school, and believe me, other than that, I haven’t really acted that way.”

It made sense. But of course he’d been dedicated to not seeing her as an actual human so he’d assumed she was just being the Addison he knew in high school. Of course he’d never stopped to ask why Addison in high school had been the way she was, much less why she was the way she was now.

“It’s basically the coping strategy that I know.” She wrinkled her nose. “Use that rich bitch attitude to distance people, to get what I want, or to create a situation that I want secretly. It’s like the only tool in my tool bag. And I hate it. I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to be in a position where I have to do that. I want to be able to sit down and be honest with myself. Ask myself what I really, really want. Even if it’s messy. I’ve been so scared of being messy.”

“Well, you’re hanging with the Graysons now. Messy is what we do. That I can promise you.”

He almost felt bad, flinging her into the deep end of his family. Because that was a whole thing. Of that everyone could be certain.

It didn’t take long to get to his brother’s house, and he went ahead and pulled around the back, where he knew everyone would already be, because they were going to be a few minutes late.

When he arrived, the whole family was seated at a long table in the backyard, all the food piled up at the center. And as soon as his truck pulled up, everyone there turned to look.

Today there were Cara, Zane, Marlowe and Cody, Lila, Nolan. Also Pike, one of the ranch hands who, frankly, sort of irritated Walker, mainly because he was always trying to outspin Walker’s yarns.

He was one of those guys that held the room captive with his stories and verbal sleight of hand, and Walker could say that, quite honestly, as much as he liked Pike, he didn’t exactly trust him, because he was a little bit too much like Walker for Walker’s taste.

Still, it was a decent crowd of folks, and some of them needed to believe that this relationship was real, so when he got out of the truck, he went over to Addison’s side, opened the door and took her hand. Lila knew that the relationship wasn’t real, and still, her eyes flicked down to where their hands were joined, back up to Walker, and she lifted her eyebrows.

He shrugged at her in response.

I’m a charming motherfucker, Lila, he said internally.

His sister rolled her eyes, almost like she could read his mind.

He could see Addison smiling, this smile that kept getting wider and wider. And he could practically see gears turning in her brain. Like she was figuring out how to approach this. He could see the exact moment she had decided to approach it like a campaign event.

“Hi, everyone,” she said brightly as she took a seat without waiting for Walker to guide her. “Thank you so much for inviting me over to dinner.”

“Of course,” Cody and Marlowe said at the same time.

“It really has been quite the time. But I can honestly say that the Painted Ridge Resort is the only thing that has made it bearable. I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

He felt like there were campaign promises underlying that.

It was funny to realize how much he and Addison were alike.

He had always considered them to be opposites, and he had a feeling she had too. But here she was, using that same charm that he knew was more defensive than it was real.

She hid behind this shell, the shell that he had always imagined was the real deal.