Chapter Two
Three weeks later...
I f there was one thing Wendy Stevens did not want to do, it was depend on another cowboy. She’d learned her lesson. Some fifteen years and two kids too late, but she’d learned it.
She tried not to think about that night. The one that hadn’t exactly covered her in glory. But it had covered the ground in shattered glass, and for a moment, it had made her feel satisfied.
For a moment, the images of her husband with another woman had felt dimmed, dulled, because all she had seen was the destruction she had caused to his truck. Technically, her truck.
Except you bought it with his money...
Well. That was the problem. She had given up her life in service to that man. She had acted as his agent, essentially, getting him endorsement deals and other things. He was good-looking. It had been easy to do. He was charming, that had made it easier.
Both of those things had likely made it easy for him to get women into bed too.
She was still reeling from the truth.
For a few days, she’d clung to the belief that he’d only cheated on her the one time. The time that had come with photographic (emphasis on the graphic ) evidence.
She knew it was na?ve. But it was deliberate. A form of protecting herself.
It hadn’t lasted long.
Because once the floodgates of truth had been opened up, more truth had kept on coming.
Fast and swift.
More women had stories. Texts. Photos.
He’d never been faithful to her. Never even once. Their entire marriage was a lie. Everything they’d ever built in their relationship was a lie. She supposed the one thing she had to be grateful for was that he had been judicious in his use of condoms. One of the first things she had been worried about was what hideous disease the man had given to her, but he had sworn up and down that he’d had protected sex with all those other women.
As if that earned him some sort of commendation.
I would never do that to you , he’d said.
She hadn’t even known what to say to that.
But she hadn’t known what to say for a good three weeks now. That was the amount of time she’d given herself to clear up her life and find another place to go.
She had given everything to that man. When his career in the rodeo had started to take off, she’d discovered she had skills she hadn’t known she possessed. She’d brokered all the endorsement deals that he’d gotten over the years. Her reputation was tied to his. Her career had been all about making money for him, and they’d put it all in one pot rather than having an official split because why would they ever need that? They were in love. They were forever.
The phrase all your eggs in one basket was suddenly far too clear for her liking, and yet there was nothing she could do about it.
Her eggs were in Daniel’s basket.
She made a face. She did not like that.
“Mom?”
She turned to look at her daughter. “What?”
Fifteen-year-old Sadie looked at her from the passenger seat, and then twelve-year-old Michaela—Mikey for short—leaned forward. “Are we going?”
Wendy was at the end of a long dirt driveway. The one she knew would take her to help. The one she didn’t want to drive down.
“Yeah. In a second. I’m just sitting here thinking about how little I like any of my options.”
“You have our support,” said Sadie.
“Yes,” said Mikey. “It isn’t your fault that Dad’s an untrustworthy blight on humanity.”
“Your vocabulary,” said Wendy, rolling her eyes, but she was actually very proud, and beamed a little every time Mikey opened her mouth.
“It’s because I read,” said Mikey. “And also, because I binge-watch TV shows that are probably above my age rating.”
“Let’s just leave it at reading,” said Wendy.
“I thought Boone was Dad’s friend,” said Sadie.
“He is,” Wendy said slowly.
And she left out all the complications that Boone made her feel. She made sure to keep the pronunciation of those words as simple as possible. She made sure to leave any kind of subtext out of what she said. Because she had to. She had no room in her life for subtext. Not right now. And never when it came to Boone.
“So, why are we going to stay with him?”
“Because he offered.” And he’d offered her a job. It was humiliating. But she didn’t really have another choice. The one thing she had any kind of experience with before marrying Daniel was housecleaning. Boone said now that he was back from the rodeo, he needed a cleaner, and he had more than one house on the property, and more than enough room for her and the girls. She was in no position to turn it down. She had to take the offer.
Anyway, that night...
She kept seeing it. Over and over again. She’d been unhinged. But brave. And she couldn’t help but admire herself. But also, she kept seeing the way Boone had put his body between hers and Daniel’s. The way he’d been. Like fire and rage, and completely on her side.
And then the way he told her...
Don’t regret it.
So she hadn’t. Because Boone had told her not to, and maybe that wasn’t healthy, but dammit all, she didn’t have a whole lot of healthy available to her right now. Mostly she had disillusioned and confused.
“He didn’t take Dad’s side on this.”
“Good for him.”
“I admire his willingness to break with traditional toxic masculinity,” said Sadie.
“Well, don’t go giving that much credit,” Wendy said. “He is still a rodeo cowboy. He just happened to...bear witness to some things.”
The brief text conversation she’d had with Boone after her grand performance in the parking lot had confirmed that Daniel had been well on the way to cheating on her that night too.
At that point, she had known it was a routine thing.
Any guilt she might have felt eventually over smashing up the truck had been effectively squashed at that point.
There was no room for regret in the well of rage created by Daniel’s own actions. If he didn’t like the way she behaved, he should have been different. From the very beginning.
“I need something to get back on my feet. And I think we all need a fresh start. This isn’t where we’re going to stay forever but...”
“It’s pretty,” said Sadie.
She had expected her daughters to be a little bit angrier about leaving California than they were.
They’d lived in Bakersfield, and it didn’t often feel like there was a lot happening there but heat and drought. They complained about both, often. And they seemed to be in places with friends where they were glad for a fresh start and a change of scenery. She couldn’t help but wonder if some of it was the pain of having Daniel break up their family. And maybe leaving rather than having to tell everyone about it was easier. At least, that’s how it was for her.
Their life had been quiet and stable. He might’ve been out chasing glory, but she hadn’t been. To her, their life had been glory.
But it hadn’t been enough for him.
She should’ve known.
He wasn’t home all that much. When he was, they’d had a healthy sex life, but she had honestly just imagined that he was like her. That he turned it off when she wasn’t there, like she did with him.
That’s oversimplifying things, isn’t it?
She gritted her teeth.
Maybe.
Maybe it was.
But she was happy for oversimplification right now. She needed it.
As if simplification didn’t cause some of this mess in the first place.
So she started up the car engine and continued down the road that would take her to Boone’s house.
When the house came into view, her stomach twisted. It was weird, because it was Boone. And she didn’t need to go getting wound up about her own inferiority complexes, or her memories of growing up poor. Her memories of being a have-not in a sea of haves. Of her mother being the one who cleaned and now she was...
It wasn’t the same.
Not because she was ashamed of her mother. She wasn’t. She never had been. The difference wasn’t in the work, it was in the person needing the work done.
Those people had all fancied themselves better than her mother. And that wasn’t Boone. And it never would be. It wasn’t why he had asked her to come.
He felt guilty, she knew that.
She also wondered how much he had known for all those years...
Well. You have plenty of time to talk.
Seeing as she would be living on his property and cleaning his house.
“Wow,” said Sadie.
The house was beautiful. Even more beautiful than the one they had left behind in Bakersfield.
Their house had been elaborate. Because it was the kind of fancy Daniel liked. It had been positioned across from a field that was just empty.
And now she kind of felt like it was a metaphor. A dream house surrounded by a whole lot of nothing.
Empty. Like his promises.
She ached, and she couldn’t quite work out exactly what she was feeling. If it was heartbreak or the sting of having been tricked. If it was betrayal or the loss of her marriage. Or simply the loss of her life.
She didn’t know. Maybe it was all those things. It seemed like each moment one of those things felt more prominent than another. And then it would shift.
She didn’t have time to think about anything shifting at the moment. What she needed to do was get her game face on.
She pulled the truck up to the front of the house and turned the engine off.
Okay. It was just Boone.
And something about that made her feel every inch a liar.
There was no just Boone . There never had been.
He’d been a particularly problematic thorn in her side for years.
Mostly because...
Of one moment. A very clear and terrifying moment—the minute she had first seen him.
She and Daniel had only been married for two weeks. It had been a whirlwind romance, and she’d been head over heels, and pregnant far too quickly, so they’d had a shotgun wedding, though Wendy had never felt forced.
She’d wanted it. She’d wanted to secure that life. She hadn’t wanted to be a single mother. She’d found an easy man. A fun man. A happy man.
Her life had felt lacking in those things, growing up with scarcity was a feeling Wendy was very sensitive to.
Daniel had felt like excess. Excessive joy, excessive drinking, eating, happiness. She’d loved it. And when their love affair had had consequences...he’d been kind and he’d done the right thing.
He’d told her he loved her.
She’d said she loved him, because it was best if they did, and eventually she was sure she’d meant it.
And then she’d gone to the very first cowboy thing she’d ever done with him, and Boone had walked in, and it was like everything in the world had fallen away. Like something inside of her had whispered, This is him.
She had never in her life believed in the concept of the one. Ever. But right when Boone had come in, it was like the universe had whispered across her soul. That it was him .
She had never been so completely devastated by the impact of another person in all her life. He was ruinous. And glorious.
And the moment she had first seen him, she had wanted to not see him just as quickly.
Had wanted to go back to living a life where she had no idea Boone Carson existed in the world.
It was just easier if she didn’t know.
When she was married to another man. Pregnant with that man’s child.
She had told herself that all of it was silly. Boone was handsome, that was all. And she’d been surprised by the impact of him.
You didn’t expect to see a normal man like that just...out and about in the world. That was all.
She was very, very good at telling herself that story.
She loved Daniel.
She had loved Daniel.
Did she still love Daniel?
Right now, she felt hollow.
She loved her daughters. She knew that much.
She let out a long, slow breath.
That was going to have to be enough, because it was going to be the thing that was driving her now.
She missed her anger.
It had been so bright and glorious and wonderful. And far too fleeting.
But it had fueled her for a while there and now she was just...
Well, she was at Boone’s house.
She sucked in a sharp breath and killed the engine on the truck. She got out and the girls followed suit. Then she went around to the bed of the truck to start gathering their bags.
Boone walked out the front door.
“You made it,” he said.
She stopped, and she wished she didn’t feel like she’d been hit by a train, because she did. Just looking at him. She’d known him now going on fifteen years, and she couldn’t understand how or why the man still did this to her.
“Yes,” she said. “We did. Kind of a long drive.”
“Not as far as Arizona.” The corner of his mouth lifted.
She didn’t smile back. “Yes.” She moved to the bed of the truck to grab her bag, but he started moving toward her purposefully.
“You don’t need to get anything,” he said, and then he reached into the back of the truck and plucked up her bag, her daughters’ bags and a suitcase, which he lifted up over his shoulder. “Your place is just a walk out back here,” he said, gesturing behind his grand house.
She stared at him. At the way he held all her baggage so easily.
It was a very weird metaphor to be confronted with right in this moment, and was it bad that she wanted him to carry it all? Was it bad that she was tired? That she wanted him to carry her worldly possessions in his strong arms and over his shoulders because she was just so damned tired of...everything?
Yes, it’s bad. You need to figure out how to stand on your own. That’s your problem. You let a man carry you for too long .
Well, that wasn’t fair. Daniel hadn’t carried her, but she’d wound herself around him so tightly that cutting ties was painful.
Difficult.
But it wasn’t the same as being carried.
But she figured she could also chill out and not see her literal baggage as a metaphor. Because physically Boone was stronger than her and he knew where the house was, so why not follow him?
“How was the drive, girls?”
“Good,” said Mikey, “we played the alphabet game and also discussed elaborate ways men should die.”
“We didn’t do that,” said Wendy quickly.
“Wouldn’t blame you if you did,” said Boone.
“Not you , of course,” Sadie said.
“Appreciate it, Sadie,” Boone responded.
Boone had always had a decent rapport with the girls. It was weird that right now it made her feel...lightheaded.
But Boone had been that fun uncle figure when he’d been around, which had been often enough, and of course the girls enjoyed him.
It turned out their dad also thought of himself as a fun uncle. Which really didn’t work when you were supposed to be a husband and father.
The path behind the house led to a cottage. It was small, with freshly planted flowers all around the front, and two hanging baskets with flowers on the porch.
It was beautiful. Small, she wondered if the girls would see it as a major downgrade. But right then...she saw it as salvation.
It was hers.
Theirs.
For now.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her throat going tight.
She looked up at him, and her breath caught. His blue eyes were startling, arresting, there in the sunlight, and the way the gold played against the whiskers on his face did something to her stomach, low and intimate. His face was just...perfect. As if an artist had lovingly sculpted him by hand with the intent of making him the perfect masculine figure.
His jaw was square, his nose straight, his cheekbones so sharp she could cut herself on them. And then there was his body, which she’d spent a lot of time not contemplating and she surely wasn’t doing it now, with her daughters present.
She freed the breath from the little knot in her throat and got herself together. She didn’t need this kind of drama. Not now.
“This is so cute!” said Sadie, her voice going high, and the delight in her tone shocked and pleased Wendy.
“It’s like a fairy house,” said Mikey.
Wendy had to wonder if her daughters were being overly happy for her benefit, but then she decided she didn’t care.
They’d been so supportive of her through everything.
If they’d been younger, she’d have tried to shield them. But the thing was, she’d sort of made the news.
“Scorned Wife Goes Full Carrie Underwood Song on Cheating Husband.”
It was all over the country music news sites, given the rodeo circuit was sort of adjacent when it came to industry interest crossover, and also because, indeed, she had sort of had a certain set of song lyrics in her head when she’d driven across state lines.
Lucky for him it was more “Before He Cheats” and less “Two Black Cadillacs.”
The article had actually made that point.
But because of that there had been no shielding the girls from the truth. She could have handled herself better, though she had a feeling there would have been some news about it anyway since Daniel was a minor—very minor—celebrity who both rode rodeo and had done some reality TV, so the breakup would never have stayed entirely between them.
“I’m glad you like it,” Boone said.
He walked up the steps and pushed open the door and revealed a house that was immaculately put together. Everything in it was new. And she had to wonder if it had been furnished like this when he bought the place or...
She decided to stop wondering.
And just enjoy the experience.
Tomorrow she was going to get the girls off to school, and she was going to start work. She would give herself four weeks of this. Of taking Boone’s help, and then she was going to need a plan. A real plan.
She was resourceful, and she was a hard worker, so she knew she would be able to come up with something. But it was hard to do when you also had deep wounds that needed a little healing.
And also had to be an adult and a mother when you just wanted to keep on being subject to the whims of your emotions. Being that woman, the one with the baseball bat, had been easier than being this woman. The one making plans and trying to hold it together.
But that was what she needed to do; it was who she needed to be.
For her girls if nothing else.
“I’ll leave you to get settled,” he said. “If you need anything, just give me a holler.”
And then he put their things down and left them, shut in the little house that felt somehow indescribably safe, secure and...wonderful.
Like shelter from a storm she hadn’t realized she’d been in.
Right now, she could rest.
Even cleaning his house for a few weeks would feel like rest.
And then she would have to figure out what to do with her life.
But until then, she was going to take the shelter he was offering. Since the man she’d made vows to had kicked her out into the elements.
So why not have this? Even just for a time.
“Why don’t we get our things put away and then explore town?” she asked.
She knew Lone Rock was small, and the exploration wouldn’t take long, but they needed to find some food, and a distraction would be good for everyone.
Her daughters smiled at her a little too bravely, and right then she hated Daniel. Because he’d done this to them.
“Great,” she said. “This will be great.”
“You did what ?”
“I gave her a place to stay,” said Boone, looking down the bar at his brother Jace, who was staring at him incredulously. His sister-in-law Cara leaned over the bar and stared at him as if she was waiting for more details.
“What, Cara?” he asked. “There’s nothing to say.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said. “The whole breakup was headline news, and he’s your best friend.”
“He is not my best friend,” said Boone. “I was friends with him. More importantly, I was friends with the man I thought he was. But I didn’t think he was out there betraying his wife every week out on the road.”
“You really didn’t know?” Chance, his other brother, who was seated next to his wife, Juniper, asked.
“No,” he said.
And he left off the part about how he’d never wanted to know because it wasn’t simple and never could be.
“Sounds unlikely,” said Shelby, his other sister-in-law, from beside her husband.
Shelby and Kit had recently had a baby, but Boone’s mother was always so happy to babysit that the happy couple could go out whenever they wanted. And were practically forced out by the well-meaning grandma even when they didn’t want to go.
All his siblings—except Buck, as far as he knew—were coupled up now. And the only couples not present were his younger sister Callie and her husband, Jake, who lived out of town, and his brother Flint and his wife, Tansey, who was a famous country singer currently on tour. Flint was with her.
Talk about revenge songs, Tansey had written a hell of a song about her and Flint’s first go-round that had made him infamous. Flint would probably have measured words for the whole situation since he knew how the media could whip up personal issues.
But Flint wasn’t here, so no one was being measured.
“Good for her, I say,” Shelby said to her husband. “But I’d leave your truck intact and take it. Your dick on the other hand...”
“Same,” said Juniper.
It served his brothers right for marrying sisters who were as pretty as they were badass. Boone loved them. He loved it even more when they gave his brothers hell. His brothers seemed to get something out of it too.
His brothers had all married pretty badass women.
Bar owner Cara was no shrinking violet. And Tansey, well she’d gotten rich with her revenge, and made his brother infamous in the process.
He thought of Wendy and how fragile she’d looked today. He’d wanted to tell her he’d done all that for her. The flowers, the new paint, the new furniture. He also hadn’t wanted to say a damned thing because he didn’t want her to think she owed him, and he didn’t want her to thank him for something a man ought to just do for her because she was there and breathing and her .
He didn’t want to do anything to crack her open when she was working so hard at holding it all together.
She was badass too. Hell yeah, she was.
She’d smashed the hell out of Daniel’s truck.
But she was also wounded. And she needed to be taken care of.
He couldn’t say he’d ever had experience with that, but if he was going to push the boat out on caregiving it was going to be now and it was going to be her.
“Did it really go down like they said?” Jace asked.
“It did,” he confirmed. “But if you see her around, don’t ask her about it.”
Cara snorted. “We aren’t feral.”
Jace gave her a long look. “Well...”
“Okay, but we do know how to behave and not hurt people’s feelings,” Cara said.
“I know,” Boone said. “But she’s not going to be here forever. I’ll talk to her more tomorrow about her plans.”
Because if there was one thing Boone was certain of, it was that no matter how much he might want it to be, this couldn’t be forever.
He might love her. He did love her.
But she was still married, and he didn’t have the first clue how to...
He’d never had a real relationship, and there was no way this would ever be what she needed.
She had kids.
He had a ranch, which was a step into adulthood, but he didn’t know how to do feelings and all that. It was one thing to carry a torch for a woman he couldn’t have.
He was good with not having her.
One thing he wouldn’t do was leave her uncared for.
He would make sure everything in her life was set to go just as she needed it to be, and then he’d let her go, because it would be the kindest thing.
She didn’t need another project.
He wouldn’t be the cause of any more pain for her.
If he was certain of anything in this world, it was that.
“She’s with you?”
He regretted answering his phone as he walked out of the bar.
“Yes,” said Boone. “And if I see you, I’ll run you right off my property.”
“What the hell, Boone? I thought we were friends.”
“And I thought you were a husband, but it turns out you’re just a little boy who can’t control his dick.”
“Boone... I’m sorry, I have to get her back. I royally screwed this up. I can’t live without her and the kids.”
The change in tone did nothing to sway Boone. Because he just didn’t care. He wondered if Wendy would, though. Daniel was the father of her kids and all that. Boone didn’t have kids, and the thought didn’t sway or soften him at all. But he figured that could be because it was a connection he didn’t especially get.
It maybe wasn’t up to him to decide that Daniel should never speak to Wendy again. But he wasn’t going to facilitate it, that was for damned sure.
“You should have thought of that before you cheated. Extensively, from what I understand.”
“It was separate to me,” he said. “I never thought of it interfering with what we had as long as she never knew. When I was home, I was always with her.”
And I’m with her every time I’m with anyone.
I’m with her when I’m home. When I’m on the road.
Always.
He didn’t say any of that. But he wanted to jump through the phone and strangle Daniel.
“She deserves better than you,” Boone said, his voice rough.
“What? She deserves you?”
And that cut him deep because right then he knew Daniel wasn’t as oblivious as he pretended to be. He only played like it when it suited him.
But of course he couldn’t be as dumb as he played. He was a pretty big success and that didn’t come on accident.
“No,” Boone said. “But she does deserve someone who’s honest with her.”
“Is that why you brought her out to your place? Have you been screwing my wife, Boone?”
“When the hell would your wife have time to screw around on you, Daniel? She’s busy raising your kids and holding your life together. Say what you want about me, slander me all you want, but don’t project your bullshit onto her.”
Boone hung up then.
He shouldn’t have, maybe.
Because if Daniel was going to make up a story about him and Wendy it would probably only be reinforced by him hanging up like that.
But he just didn’t care to speak to that asshole for another second.
He couldn’t bear it.
Instead, he drove home, and when the phone rang again, he ignored it.