The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(16)

Still, it was the mantle he’d picked up in the family all those years ago. But he was struggling with it now.

“It’s not your job to save everyone’s ass, either,” Jake said.

His brother’s eyes were too serious, and Colt didn’t like it. He didn’t like the fact that his brother was getting so close to his issues. Didn’t like the fact that he seemed to have hit him right where he was the most sore.

“I know that you think you could’ve done something...”

“You know what I think, Jake,” Colt said, feeling really irritated now. “I was done with the rodeo. That’s it. You know, somebody dying in a riding accident is a really great reminder of the potential consequences to what we do.”

“Since when do you care?”

A good enough question, since Colt Daniels had been known up and down the rodeo circuit as someone who just didn’t give a damn.

He had thrown himself onto the backs of the meanest bulls, had challenged anyone who would let him to try and drink him under the table—nobody ever had. He was the kind of man who took risks that some saw as unnecessary. But he called it flipping a middle finger at fate, which she richly deserved.

It always felt that way. He had always felt like there was no point trying. Because if life wanted to take you out—it would.

It just damn well would.

There was nothing you were going to do to keep yourself here. If fate decided you’d live, you would. If fate decided you were going to die, it was about the same.

So he didn’t see much point worrying one way or the other. Yeah, he figured that it was one of those predestined things. He figured that was one of those things that you couldn’t fight, couldn’t ignore, couldn’t shake.

Then Trent had died and something had shifted inside of him. That kid... He’d had so much to live for. So many people depending on him. And it had uncovered old wounds. And it had exposed a whole lot of angry, festering, unhealed bullshit. He didn’t like it. Not one bit.

“How about we skip psychoanalyzing me?” he growled.

“But it is my favorite pastime.”

“I liked it better when we didn’t talk.”

“Cal says it’s good for me to talk,” Jake said, referring to his wife, who he’d married officially six months ago. That was what had brought Colt into town. His brother’s wedding. And that was when he had seen her. But yeah, marrying Callie had changed Jake. Colt wasn’t so sure he liked it.

“All right,” came his sister-in-law’s voice from inside the kitchen. “Who wants pie? Iris made it.”

There was an enthusiastic chorus of yeses, but Mallory hung behind. She was new, and it was easy, he supposed, for everyone else here to forget that.

But he didn’t.

Everybody filtered slowly toward the kitchen. Jake clapped him on his back and made his way that direction as well. And that was how Colt found himself standing there in the living room with her.

She looked around as if she was trying to find an emergency escape hatch. Sadly for her, there was none.

Then finally, resigned, she looked at him.

“Did you know?”

He hadn’t expected that question. Her eyes were wide and filled with nerves, and his response to that shocked him more than his own response to her. It was about the only thing that could have. The fact that she looked like she might be genuinely terrified of him.

“Hell no,” he said. “It doesn’t suit me any more than it suits you to come back to haunt me.”

“Haunting,” she said. “Well, that is a new one for my repertoire.”

“Don’t act offended. It doesn’t suit you.”

“You don’t know what suits me. You caught me at a weak moment.”

“Excuse me,” he said. “I caught you?”

She sniffed. “Yes.”

“Talk to me about the part when I caught you. Was it the part where you put your hand on my chest? Or maybe it was the part where you led me down the sidewalk holding my hand?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, what about you? We’ve known each other for six months.”

“It’s a good line.”

“It was a good line.” She practically hissed. “My panties came off in record time. But nonetheless... This is not something that I would normally do. Ever. Ever.”

“Well, as it happens, it is something I would normally do. So, you can calm the hell down about it. There’s no reason to get worked up. Or get your aforementioned panties in a twist.”

The fact of the matter was, even standing there bantering with her, what he really felt was that he wanted to get her panties in a twist, on the floor of his bedroom.

Lust tore through him. Why the hell was that? Shouldn’t be so easy for this woman to rile him up. But damn her, she did. From the moment he first set eyes on her. With that fiery red hair and that lithe body that seemed to call to him specifically, hell if he knew why. She wasn’t the most curvy. The most athletic. The most anything.

Except, apparently, his particular vintage of whiskey.

“We’re just...going to have to figure out how to... Work around each other.”

“Like I said,” he responded. “I don’t have a problem with this. It was just another day in the life.”

And it was a lie. It was a damn lie from the pit of his decaying soul. But he wasn’t going to admit that. He wasn’t going to admit that she had him all kinds of shook-up and that he had been in the middle of a dry spell the likes of which he had heretofore never known.