Maisey Yates - Wild Ride Cowboy

“Well. I’m kind of stuck with this one. Unfortunately.”

Clara had a feeling there was a lot more to the story about Liam Donnelly. And she also had a feeling it absolutely was in that way. Clara didn’t have any heartbreak like that in her past. She’d experienced too much heartache in the form of death, loss and grief. Putting herself out there romantically hadn’t seemed worth the effort.

Until Asher. He was...well, it was difficult to explain, even to herself. But he was just so fascinating. So unlike her. So unlike everything in her life. He felt like hope. Like the possibility of something new.

She didn’t like to think that Asher could end up replicating in her the strange heartbreak-induced facial expression that things with Liam had clearly provoked in Sabrina.

Clara had been through enough.

She needed something good. She deserved something good.

“Alex isn’t going to come up here, is he?” Sabrina asked. “I mean, the Donnellys aren’t going to start hanging out here?”

“He’s not my guardian,” she said. “It’s not like we’re close or anything. Or like he’s taking care of me. Although, I think that is maybe what Jason was thinking.”

Her stomach clenched tight. It was so easy to feel mad at Jason, but the anger made her feel guilty too. And she knew that regardless of how she felt about him going back into the military after their father died, no matter how much she wanted to second-guess all of it, she couldn’t demand answers of a dead man. But why couldn’t he simply have stayed with her? Why had he felt compelled to test fate like that? If he didn’t care about himself, the least he could have done was care enough about her.

Then again, she supposed whatever this was with Alex...it was Jason caring in his way. Through somebody else. By not being here. By sending a check. In this case, he was sending a friend.

She gritted her teeth. She wasn’t being fair. She knew that. She was just in the anger stage of grieving, wrapped somewhere around denial. Angry denial.

“I mean, of course if they come up here it’s fine,” Sabrina said, forcing a smile. The color returned to her cheeks, to her lips, and she seemed to be grappling now with feeling embarrassed. “I’m sorry. It’s really stupid. The whole thing about me not liking the Donnellys. It was a long time ago. A lot has changed.”

“Is there a meeting I don’t know about?”

Olivia Logan had walked across the dining room, and was now standing behind Sabrina looking, well, smooth and implacable and impossible to read.

It was difficult to say whether Olivia liked them or not. She wasn’t unkind at all, she was just extremely focused. On work, on her boyfriend. And there was a kind of natural aloofness to her demeanor. But then, her ancestors were quite literally the founders of Logan County, the namesakes. It was entirely possible she perceived Olivia as being slightly uppity for that reason alone.

“No,” Sabrina said. “We were just talking about family stuff.”

Olivia’s mouth tightened into a firm line. “Oh.”

“Do you need help?” Sabrina asked.

“Oh, with all the guests? Actually, no. Everything is handled.” Olivia was a funny, efficient creature. She was nice enough, but sometimes seemed like she didn’t quite understand how to make light conversation. She was intense and goal-oriented, which made her good at every job she set out to do. But made her not so great with small talk.

Not that Clara was an expert in it.

“Do you guys want to hang out tonight?” Sabrina looked so hopeful. And it made Clara feel slightly guilty.

Olivia looked surprised. “Me?”

“Yes. All three of us.”

“I can’t,” Clara said, feeling like a jerk. Because she actually could. And she maybe even should. “I mean, Alex is at the ranch. He has been all day. And I need to see what he’s thinking about doing. But once I get settled... Once everything is a little bit more settled I think maybe I can go out sometime.”

Sabrina turned her focus to Olivia, slightly less hopeful-looking now, but clearly still eager.

“I’m closing tonight,” Olivia said. “It will be really late by the time I get out of here. So I shouldn’t.”

Grassroots Winery was nestled in the trees, between the communities of Copper Ridge and Gold Valley, where Olivia lived.

“I understand,” Sabrina said, sounding slightly deflated.

“Well, Bennett dropped me off this morning and he’s getting me tonight too. I don’t want to put him out,” Olivia added.

Bennett was Olivia’s boyfriend. Clara had only seen them together a few times but she couldn’t really see them as a couple. He seemed protective of her, caring even, but in a lot of ways, more like a brother. A strange observation for someone with as little experience as Clara had, but she figured if even she got a strange vibe, something had to be off.

“Sorry,” Clara said, truly meaning it.

Sabrina lifted a shoulder. “That’s okay. Some other time.”

When the shift ended and Clara got in her car to leave, she was still thinking about Sabrina. About the offer of friendship that Clara hadn’t taken. But it felt too hard right now. Like it would intrude too much on the little bubble she’d created for herself.

Grief, she realized, was such an isolating thing.

It was just that Clara had been relishing the isolation. Accepting the social parts in small doses. In the interactions with Asher that she chose, with the job she had taken at Grassroots. The little chats that she had with Sabrina while she was working.

She wasn’t craving mass amounts of human interaction. And the potential problem with that was on the other side, she wouldn’t have a lot of connections when she was ready for them again. She wondered how long it would take her to get to that place.

Clara sighed and successfully spaced out most of the half hour drive along the tree-lined highway back to the ranch. Alex’s truck was in the driveway, and the sight of it made Clara’s heart slam against her chest. He really was here. And she really was going to have to deal with him.

She put her car in Park and killed the engine, getting out and shutting the door with gusto, hoping her completely unsubtle arrival would draw him out of hiding.

But when she saw Alex striding across the property, the very idea that he might have been hiding seemed ludicrous.

He walked out of the barn, his white hat tipped low over his face, his torso bare. He was wearing work gloves and low-slung jeans, a pair of cowboy boots. Positively nothing else.

She couldn’t look away. She was utterly transfixed.

His chest was deep and broad, well-defined with hair slightly darker than what was on his head sprinkled across it, thinning out and tapering down to a line that disappeared between the waistband of those very, very low pants. Very low.

He lifted his hand and pulled one of the work gloves off, the muscles on his torso and forearms shifting with the movement. Then he tugged off the other glove, and she could only watch the sure, strong movements of his fingers, the way his biceps jumped as he lifted his arm, then lowered it.

His ab muscles moved with each step he took, but as incredible as they were, she found herself completely taken in by another set of muscles. A line that cut in hard at his hip bone. She had never been big on science, but she had a feeling that even if she had paid attention in anatomy class she wouldn’t have known the name of that muscle, because every single one of her brain cells had been wiped out by the sight of it.

Alex was...well, she had always known that Alex was good-looking, but it had been kind of abstract in her mind. Because while she had always known he was handsome, he was also very much not the kind of man she was drawn to.