Kristen Ashley - Play It Safe

I didn’t know if after Gray’s crushing set down, Buddy got smart. I did know we didn’t have any more trouble with him. This might have been because of what Gray said to him. But it was also because his hands were full.

Apparently, Cecily was done being the town pariah and she was done with Buddy doing more things to make her stay that way. She knew Buddy’s play with my father and while he was making it, she took her already packed bags and her daughters and she drove straight to Durango.

On Christmas Eve.

She’d never been back.

And she’d filed for divorce, the timing being that Bud received the papers the day after Christmas. With all his machinations and her knowing about it, not to mention she knew he’d cheated on her repeatedly but, until then, turned a blind eye, he didn’t have a prayer in the world of getting custody of his daughters. So he didn’t fight it. Apparently she got a huge settlement and an even bigger child support payment and, word was, she was already seeing somebody.

So maybe no ice cream for her.

As for Buddy, Jeb Sharp heard about his son’s Christmas Eve play and he was as done as Gray.

So he started to talk to his cronies. Then his cronies took his back.

So the day after New Year’s, Bud Sharp went to work and was told immediately that he was required to attend an emergency board meeting. At this board meeting, Buddy was informed that a variety of ranchers, orchard owners, farmers and businessmen who held their money in Buddy’s bank were threatening to pull it if the Board didn’t do something about Buddy. So they did. They told him they’d give him some money to go away quietly and asked for his voluntary resignation. Then they told him if he didn’t resign, he was fired and they’d give him no severance.

Finally, in all his years, Bud Sharp did something smart.

He resigned.

He had been out of work for five months. This was because no one in seven counties would hire Buddy Sharp.

And the settlement with Cecily wiped him out.

Now he’d found the only job he could find.

In New Hampshire.

Which was a long, long way away.

Thankfully.

Gray grinned. “That’s a great fuckin’ wedding present.”

“Yeah,” I said softly.

He took his hand from the horse and turned fully to me.

“Come here, Ivey.”

I didn’t hesitate.

I gave Answer one last stroke and went there.

Gray watched me move.

When I got there, his arm with hand not holding the brush wrapped around me and he pulled me close. Then his head slanted and dropped, mine tilted the other way and, since we had a lot of practice, we didn’t crash the bills of our hats when he laid a long, wet one on me.

And also with lots of practice, he was able to shove his gloved hand down my shorts and in my panties to cup my ass.

As usual, it was tremendous.

When he lifted his head, I asked quietly, “Want some lunch, honey?”

“Yeah, dollface,” he answered and I smiled.

He smiled back.

Then he slid his hand out of my pants and turned back to the horse.

I turned to the doors but I felt his eyes on me as I walked so I stopped and turned back.

Yep, I was right. My man’s eyes were on me.

“Okay, you walk away from me, I watch your ass,” I told him. “What do you watch when I walk away from you?”

“The prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

My heart jumped, my belly warmed and my lips smiled.

That was a really good answer.

So, still smiling, I turned and walked out of the barn to go to the house to make my man some lunch.

Two days later…

I had my hand in the bend of Lash’s arm, my other hand wrapped around a huge bouquet of little baby daisies mixed with big, beautiful white roses and my eyes were on the doors in front of us that led to the church sanctuary.

“Nervous, babe?” I heard Lash ask and I looked up at his handsome head on top of his fabulous tuxedo.

“No,” I told him honestly.

He grinned.

I leaned into his side.

His grin faded and his eyes grew warm.

“Love you, Ivey soon-to-be Cody.”

“Love you too, Lash, my awesome ex-fake-boyfriend.”

He burst out laughing.

I did too.

My music started playing then Stacy, Chastity, Macy and finally Janie strutted down the aisle in their gorgeous yellow dresses in front of Lash and me.

The wedding march sounded.

Still smiling, I walked on my high-heeled, fabulous designer shoes in my unbelievably expensive, exquisite wedding gown on the arm of my ex-fake-boyfriend who paid for both and I did this straight to my waiting, seriously gorgeous, macho man rancher cowboy.

Three hours later…

My feet moved on the wood boards set out on the grass to act as the dance floor, the song a slow one. One of my arms was wrapped around a pair of broad shoulders, one of my hands held in a hand that pressed mine to the chest of a beautiful man.

He swayed, I followed his lead and we danced cheek-to-cheek.

We didn’t talk.

We didn’t need to say anything.

This was because I knew Brutus loved me.

And this was because Brutus knew I felt the same.

Seven hours later in The Brown Palace, Denver…

I felt Gray’s breathing turn to normal against my neck as mine did the same against his.

He didn’t move.

I didn’t either.

We lay connected, my legs wrapped tight around his hips, his fingers laced in mine held over my head and pressed into the pillows.

We stayed that way a long time, him and me.

Mr. and Mrs. Cody.

Six and a half months later…

Christmas music playing, a bay and rosemary candle burning, my hands kneading cookie dough, I heard my father muttering beside me, “Fuck me, I can squirt out a fuckuva Christmas tree.”

I looked to the half a tray of perfectly formed, green-tinted, Christmas tree-shaped butter cookies he was pressing from the cookie press then I tipped my head back and looked at my Dad.

“You’re a master,” I told him.

He looked at me and smiled his huge, wild-ass smile.

“Fifty-seven years on this earth, I learn my calling is cookie making.”

“Worse callings to have,” I told him.

“That’s the damn truth,” he told me then went back to pressing out Christmas trees.

Hoot Booker stayed in Mustang and worked the late shift at The Rambler so Janie could give that up after doing it for years. He lived in the room over the bar where I used to live. He didn’t make a mint, he didn’t live in a palace and he didn’t care.

He didn’t need much seeing as he was right where he wanted to be.

See? Totally my Dad.

He was just like me.

He’d shared his story with Gray and me and there were no protestations of the wronged man. He had lived hard, played rough, did what he could to earn a living, not all of that legal and eventually found himself in a blood feud. A blood feud he ended.

But he did his time, a lot of it, and took that time to reflect.

And those reflections led to some decisions.

When he got out, he’d spent half his life in prison.

He wasn’t going to waste another second on stupidity.

Lucky me.

“Right,” I heard Gray say and I looked over my shoulder to see him on his cell walking into the kitchen eyes to his boots. “Right,” he repeated, stopping on the other side of the table and lifting a hand to wrap it around the back of his bent neck and taking in his posture made something stutter uncomfortably in me. “Right,” he whispered. “Yeah, thanks, man. Later.”

He studiously stared at his phone as he flipped it shut, kept his eyes downcast as he shoved it in his back pocket and then, slowly, he lifted his head and his eyes came to me.