his pain away. Of how much she wished she could be in his arms again, even though that was messed up because he’d been grieving and it shouldn’t have affected her to be held by him while he was grieving.
He had been back intermittently since he had moved away, but never for very long, and he’d never sought her out. In fact, it felt like he deliberately avoided talking much to anyone in town other than his parents whenever he came back for a visit.
Then last night she had been in the Gold Valley Saloon, meeting up with a group of friends, and there he was. He had walked in and her entire world had stopped.
She’d been in a T-shirt and jeans, looking about as plain as paper, because she’d just gotten off work, and he’d never once looked her direction.
And that was when she had made a decision. She was single, had been for almost a year, and she was ready. Ready to do something bold. Ready to make a change. Ready to stop settling.
So she’d decided she would come back to the bar looking...sexy. And she would get his attention. Because yes, she was ready.
Ready to be the kind of woman that Parker had said she could never be. Parker, who thought that she needed to make sure she wore outfits that didn’t show muffin tops and who felt that most lingerie didn’t suit her figure.
Parker, who thought that she was too doughy to ever be a sex kitten.
And yeah, tonight she was wearing Spanx. Which she knew could become an issue later. But she had to get the man into the bedroom before she could worry about how she would take the Spanx off gracefully with him in residence, and what he would think when he found out she wasn’t quite as sleek as she appeared.
Yes. That was a problem for after she passed this first hurdle.
But he was coming toward her. And his gaze was hot, so she was hoping she was on the right track.
He was as beautiful as ever, and had actually gotten better-looking with time, in her opinion. He had filled out more, the shadow on his jaw darker than it had been back then, that jaw a bit more square. His forearms were thicker, his shoulders broader. He was bigger all over, really. More heavily muscled. She had heard that he did something with livestock, and she imagined that contributed to his physique. Whether he was eighteen or twenty-six, he appealed to Annabelle. She had a feeling he would appeal to her when he was forty. Fifty. Beyond. He was her special brand of catnip, and whatever the reason why, it was true.
She wanted her catnip.
She’d walked herself into a safe, settled life that had been a direct route to nowhere. A boyfriend of five years who’d done nothing but eat all the yogurt the day she bought it and criticize everything she did in that slow, subtle way that was like death to her self-esteem by a thousand paper cuts.
It had taken her time to figure out what she wanted after Parker had ended things—he had ended things with her, that had been another blow straight to her soft underbelly (very soft, according to Parker)—and now that she had...
Well, her revelation was shaped like Cooper Mason.
She wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship, and God knew Cooper wouldn’t be either. He wasn’t that kind of guy. At least, he gave no indication of being that kind of guy, not in all the years he had lived in Gold Valley, and his rumored lifestyle certainly didn’t conform to that idea either. But she needed excitement. She needed to seize something for herself.
She needed to stop acting like she believed that she was everything Parker thought she was.
She had started changing her life last year after the breakup. When she had gone ahead and bought the Western clothing store, Gunslinger, on Gold Valley’s main street, a store she had worked at for most of her adult life. She had always dreamed of having her own store and it had fallen into her lap when her boss had informed her she was retiring.
She’d talked to Parker about that dream before. He’d told her—couched in concern, because his sharpest words were always wrapped in something soft, so that it took days to fully realize they’d had the power to cut her—that he didn’t think it was the right move for her. That she was far too wishy-washy and she wouldn’t want to be anyone’s boss and she’d hate being in charge actually and on and on.
But she was pulling it off. Without him. Happily.
The business was going well, her professional life nicely improved. But there was the little matter of her confidence in herself as a woman. And fulfilling a long-held fantasy.
It was then she realized that she was standing there staring at Cooper while she engaged in a complex internal monologue.
“Hi,” she said.
It was a far cry from a saucy opening line or a casual how have you been? Which would have been better. But oh, well.
“Hi,” he returned, that voice rough like gravel and even sexier than she remembered.
“I’ve seen you in here a lot lately,” she said, stumbling over her words.
“Yeah,” he said, looking a little surprised. “I’m in town visiting my parents.” He lifted his hand and pushed his cowboy hat back slightly, leaning up against the jukebox, directly across from her. The planes and angles of his face had gotten more chiseled in the past eight years, too. His jaw sharper, covered in golden whiskers, the hollows in his cheeks more pronounced. But his blue eyes were the same.
“Not here to stay, then?” She had assumed as much, but part of her had hoped.
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “No,” he said. “My job keeps me on the road most of the year, so I don’t really have a permanent residence. Suits me just fine.”
She should have known that the rumors she’d heard were accurate. The telephone game in Gold Valley was pretty unerring.
“That sounds exhausting,” she said.
“I like it,” he said. “Get a chance to see a lot of new places. Meet a lot of new people.”
“I suppose,” she returned. “But you must get lonely.”
A slow smile curved his lips upward, the kind of smile that Cooper Mason had certainly never directed her way before. “I’m never lonely.”
“Oh,” she said, the breath pushing out of her lungs, her stomach tightening.
Of course he wasn’t lonely. She imagined all he had to do was direct that smile to any woman he encountered in any bar in any town, and she would turn her panties right over to him.
Suddenly, her mouth felt like it had been stuffed full of cotton.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
All she needed was to get a drink in her and do something dumb. She was on edge enough as it was, and while she knew that most people liked to use alcohol as a social lubricant, she felt like she needed to keep herself from getting too socially lubricated. She wanted to keep herself from being an idiot as well as a long shot.
“Are you waiting for someone else?”
“I
