an ex-wife, Denise. Denise LeClair was tall, blonde and smoking hot—and long gone from Justice Creek.
Denise had moved to Colorado from Miami six years ago. She’d met Walker and it had been one of those thunderbolt moments for both of them. Or so everyone said. According to Rory’s cousin Clara, Walker’s ex-wife had sworn that she loved him madly and she only wanted to live her life at his side right there at the Bar-N.
One Rocky Mountain winter had obliterated that particular fantasy. They’d been married less than a year when Denise filed for divorce and headed back home to the Sunshine State, leaving Walker stunned at first, and later grim and grumpy.
Rory had actually met Denise only once, a few months after the wedding—and hated her on sight. And not because Denise was necessarily such an awful person...
Yes. All right. The embarrassing truth was that Rory had crushed on Walker from the first time she’d met him, seven years before. Even way back then, when she barely knew the guy, Rory’d had kind of a thing for him.
But it had never gone anywhere and it never would. There were issues, the debacle of Denise among them. True, they were all issues that could be overcome, if only Walker wanted to overcome them. But he didn’t. And Rory accepted that.
Walker was her very good friend. End of story.
He seemed to have more or less got over Denise in the past couple of years. But there hadn’t been anyone else for him since his marriage. He claimed that there never would be, that he was like his uncle John, a solitary type of man.
Rory stepped back and stared into the wide-open cabinets. Linens, bandage strips, ointment, aspirin. And the tampons. And four still-wrapped bars of plain soap. No men’s toiletries.
So, then. Walker had his own bathroom. Mystery solved.
Rory sank to the edge of the tub. She felt like a balloon with all of the air let out, droopy with disappointment that she and Walker didn’t have to share.
Bad. This was bad. She was long over that crush she used to have on him. Long past dreaming up possible situations where she might see him naked. She needed to pull it together.
For two weeks, she would be living here. Walker would provide the security her mother insisted she have. Nothing would happen between them. She would get through the days until the wedding without making a fool of herself. And then she would return to Montedoro and get on with her life.
Because she and Walker were friends. Friends. And nothing more. They were friends and she liked it that way.
She jumped to her feet and glared at herself in the mirror to punctuate the point.
And she ignored the tiny voice in her heart that said she did care, she’d always cared—and that was never going to change.
“It’s a little strange,” Rory said when they sat at the table in the big farm-style kitchen, eating Alva Colgin’s excellent elk stew with piping hot drop biscuits, which Walker had whipped up on the spot. “Staying here, in your house...”
He sipped his beer, the light from the mission-style fixture overhead bringing out auburn lights in his brown hair. “You have complaints?”
She split a biscuit in half. Steam curled up from the center. Those blue eyes of his were trained on her. She thought he seemed a little wary. “Relax,” she told him. “No complaints. And I know I was a bitch before. Sorry. Over it.”
He set down his beer. “Weird, how?”
“It’s just not what we do, that’s all.” She’d always stayed at the Haltersham, Justice Creek’s famous, supposedly haunted luxury hotel built by a local industrialist at the turn of the last century. “You know how we are...”
“How’s that?” He forked up a bite of stew and arched an eyebrow at her.
Annoyance jabbed at her. Seriously? He didn’t know how they were? With a great show of patience, she explained the obvious. “Well, we meet up at Ryan’s bar.” His brother owned and ran McKellan’s, a popular neighborhood-style pub in town on Marmot Drive. “Or we hang out at Clara’s house. Or we head up into the mountains.” They both enjoyed hiking, camping and fishing. So did Clara and Ryan. The four of them had camped out together several times—just four good friends, nothing romantic going on. But now Clara and Ryan were getting married. And Rory was sleeping in Walker’s house. “I’ve been here at the ranch maybe six times total in all the years we’ve known each other—and tonight is the first time I’ve seen the upstairs. Wouldn’t you say that’s a little bit weird?”
He was looking at her strangely. “You really don’t want to stay here. That’s what you’re saying, right? That’s why you’ve been so pissed off about having me handle your security.”
Wonderful. Now she’d succeeded in making everything weirder. She set down half of the biscuit and picked up her butter knife. “No, Walker. That’s not what I’m saying.”
“It’s not what you’re used to, is it? Too far out in the sticks, no room service, iffy internet access.”
“Not true. Wrong. It’s beautiful here. And very comfortable. I promise you, I’m not complaining.”
He went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “I admit it’s just easier for me, if you stay here at the ranch rather than the hotel. But if you want, we can—”
“Will you stop?”
“I want to work this out.”
“There’s nothing to work out. I just said it was a little weird, that’s all. I was only...making conversation.”
“Making conversation.” His mouth had a grim set.
“Yes. I talk. You answer. I answer you back. Conversation. Ring a bell?”
He set down his fork. It made a sharp sound against the side of his plate. “Something is really bugging you. What?”
“Nothing,” she baldly lied. “There’s nothing.”
But of course, there was.
It was the two doors to the bathroom. Because of those two doors, she’d thought about seeing him naked and that was not the kind of thing a girl was supposed to be thinking about her very good friend.
For years, they’d had everything worked out between them—for him, everything was still worked out.
But for her, well...he kind of had it right, though she would never admit it no matter how hard he pushed. She didn’t really want to stay here—and not because it wasn’t a luxury hotel.
Uh-uh. There was just something about staying in his house, something about having him as her bodyguard, something about Ryan and Clara suddenly getting married, something about everything changing from how it had always been. It had her mind going places it shouldn’t go.
It had her heart aching for what it was never going to get.
He sat back in his chair,
