The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(30)

“I can honestly tell you that I have no experience of rodeo cowboys.”

“Griffin is a cowboy,” Iris said, somewhat archly.

“Kind of.” Mallory relented. “More of a rancher.”

“Well, okay, I’ll give you that. That’s how my brother is. Ryder. He’s a rancher. And he’s steady. You have to be when you work the land. You have to be up at a certain time every day. You have responsibilities. It’s all about that. Rodeo cowboys on the other hand...”

“I can imagine you have to be kind of crazy to do that sort of thing.” And she found herself extremely interested in spite of herself. “What... What event did he do?”

“He’s a bull rider,” Iris said.

For some reason, the thunderbolt of pleasure and need went straight through Mallory’s thighs. A bull rider.

Was she having a full-on reaction to him? That was so... Primitive.

He made her primitive, she guessed.

She’d known that he was a cowboy, but she hadn’t known he was like... A cowboy. It was so intense. He was a man who risked life and limb for... Well, a belt buckle, she supposed. She didn’t actually know anything about the rodeo. Her entire reaction was based upon a sense of mystique that might not be at all real. But it made her tingle. In very interesting places.

You’re ridiculous.

Yes, she was ridiculous. But she didn’t really know what she could do about it. She seemed to be ridiculous when it came to Colt Daniels. But she had a whole different name for being here, and it had nothing to do with that errant attraction that she felt for him, so she was just kind of content to... Ignore it. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t... Sit here and enjoy this moment, with a healthy amount of distance between herself and Colt. She wasn’t in danger of jumping him when he wasn’t even here.

“Yeah. Well, not anymore. I guess one of his friends... Someone he was pretty close to died in an accident, and he quit. Though, he won’t say that’s why. That’s what Jake says, though.”

Suddenly, Mallory felt guilty. Like she shouldn’t have that information. She had met Colt with no name. No knowledge of his occupation. No information about him, his family, his life. Nothing but a fantasy. And it had never occurred to her that he might be running from something that night they had hooked up.

He said that one-night stands were his modus operandi, and she believed him.

But there there had been something in their coming together, something singular and intense, and she knew that. Whatever he said, she knew that.

She might not have had a lot of sex with a lot of different people, but she’d had sex, and she knew what the mechanics were. She knew that there was something else happening between them other than just physicality. Other than just orgasms.

But they hadn’t engaged in intentional intimacy. She didn’t have the right to have secrets about him. About his grief. His dead friends. The reason he left the rodeo. It reshaped the fantasy that she had of him. She didn’t want him to become a real person, she found.

And more to the point, she felt uncomfortable with it.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, looking away.

And Iris had no idea that what she was doing felt like a breach of trust, because she didn’t know that Mallory had a relationship with him that went beyond the one she’d confessed to.

You don’t have a relationship with him, you lunatic. You banged him. That’s it.

Yes, that was it. But still, it felt like a prior, existing connection that made it unfair for her to gain information about him through back channels.

“Yeah, but Colt doesn’t like to talk about things,” Iris said. “So... I don’t really know any details.”

That didn’t help ease Mallory’s mind. “Oh. Well. I should go. I need to go back to the clinic for a little while. But thank you. Thank you for the cake. Thank you for the cake and... Everything.” She really tried to mean it. Really tried not to dwell on the tangle of complicated feelings that were rioting inside of her. “You know you’re welcome to come to dinner tonight if you want,” Iris said.

“Thank you. I’ll probably stay home tonight.” The word felt strange on her tongue. Home. Was this really home? She wasn’t sure yet. She wasn’t sure what it would feel like to be home, or when she would feel like she was even at home in her skin. Everything had changed so much in the last few weeks.

She was happy about it.

Mostly.

But... She also just felt strange. She wondered how many of these surprises she was finding deep down inside of herself had to do with the fact that she had been so distracted by her relationship with Jared it had prevented her from being wholly honest with herself about who she was and what she wanted. It had prevented her from really taking inventory of her relationships. It had been protective in ways she hadn’t realized. And that was a very odd realization.

Tonight though, she would spend some time at home, her new home, putting it together. She would go into the barn, like Colt had suggested she do, and dig around for some of the things that she needed. And she would deal with that drive, even though it frightened her. She managed to make it down okay today; she would be able to make it back up just fine.

And maybe she would just spend some time thinking about herself.

That was another unpleasant realization. She had to wonder if the distraction of Colt was something she couldn’t shake just because it was more interesting to ponder him than it was to think about her issues. Issues that she didn’t really want to deal with. Because who did?