The Cowboy's Convenient Wife

by Joanna Bell

  "But this is – this is so good," I said lamely.

  "Is it?" She replied pointedly. "What even is 'this?' There is no 'this' – how could there be? We haven't had time to build a 'this.' There's just –"

  "There's the sex."

  "Yeah," she agreed. "There is that."

  We fell quiet again, but Astrid seemed oddly calm. I didn't like it. I wanted her to be upset at the prospect of leaving – as upset as I was.

  "Do you want to know something?" She asked me a couple of minutes later, picking a stalk of dry prairie grass and running the fluffy seeds at the tip over her upper lip.

  "What?" I replied, wracking my useless brain trying to come up with some way to communicate how much I didn't want her to go that didn't sound like it was only about sex – which it was starting to dawn on me that it wasn't.

  "It's about the, uh – the sex."

  "Yeah?" I prompted, feeling a little stab of hope in my chest at the bashfulness in her voice.

  "It's so good. I mean, it's really good. I don't think I ever realized how much it matters. Not before I met you."

  Men are such simple creatures. Women say it all the time and some men like to act like it's patronizing bullshit and hell, maybe it is. But here's the thing: it's fucking true. As soon as Astrid said what she said the urge to puff my chest out like a bull moose began to return. Forget the fact that we were having a serious conversation. Forget the fact that she was talking about leaving, about ending our insane little experiment before we'd even given it a chance. Forget everything but my male pride.

  What a joke.

  "Oh yeah?" I replied, grinning in spite of everything. "Is that true?"

  She giggled a sweet, self-conscious little giggle and covered her face with her hands, nodding. "Yeah. It is. Like I'm not even kidding, I legitimately did not know sex could even be like – like that."

  "How do you mean?"

  She laughed out loud. "Look at you! You love hearing this, don't you? I bet you do."

  I shrugged. "There isn't a man alive who wouldn't love hearing this."

  She may have been laughing, but I could sense her vulnerability. I knew she was telling me something real, something she could have kept to herself.

  "It was always work before," she continued a moment later, picking the individual seeds off the stalk of grass and then holding them up on her fingertip until the breeze caught them and carried them away. "Do you know what I mean?"

  "Not really. Work?"

  If there was one thing sex wasn't to me, it was work. Women were work sometimes. And getting to the point of having sex with them could also be work. But sex itself? Nope.

  "Yeah," Astrid continued. "Like, it's actual work for me. Or it was work for me, before. I don't just have an orgasm like –" she snapped her fingers – "that. And it always – well, not with you – takes a long time. I'm really self-conscious about that, actually. Sometimes it takes me half an hour – or even longer! And towards the end, Julian kind of stopped bothering to hide his impatience. That sucked. It's hard to come when someone is practically tapping their foot like 'ugh, hurry up!' – you know?"

  I didn't know, but I wasn't completely devoid of the inability to understand what it might feel like.

  "Did he do that?" I asked, nauseated by the mention of the ex-fiancé but legitimately incredulous that a human man could have any reaction to Astrid other than straight animal lust. "Did he tap his foot?"

  "Not literally!" She chuckled, and then sighed. "But you can feel what someone's thinking sometimes, even if they don't say it out loud."

  "Yeah. True."

  "It's not like that with you," she continued. "That's what I'm trying to say. It's not work with you. And it's so – it's so good. You make me come so hard. I honestly didn't know it could be like that."

  I thought my balls were empty. Apparently not. I reached out and slipped my hand between my wife's legs.

  She let out another little sigh and removed it. "You can't just fuck your way out of everything, you know."

  "Why not?" I replied.

  "Is that how you've gone through life?" She continued, in a tone that suggested she was not being facetious. "I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. You probably have a better chance than most men of actually pulling that off. But we have to talk about this, you know. About all of this – about everything."

  She was right. We did have to talk about it. "Come back to my condo," I said. "We can stay the night there."

  It would probably piss my dad off even further but I could sense how close Astrid was to leaving. Not just leaving the ranch, but leaving Sweetgrass Ridge entirely. Leaving me entirely.

  What the fuck were you thinking bringing her here to meet these psychos you call a family? Way too early for that, man. Waaaay too early.

  "No, it's OK. I think I'll stay in a hotel. I need some time alone."

  Panic mode kicked back in immediately. Stay in a hotel? Needed some time alone? She was leaving for sure. She just didn't want to tell me to my face.

  "Fine," I replied flatly, getting to my feet and doing my pants back up.

  When I started to walk away she chased after me.

  "Cillian! Where are you going?"

  I was hurt. And because I was hurt, I was angry again. "You said you needed some alone time, right? Well, go have some then."

  I knew I was being a jerk. It's one of the worst parts of being a jerk. Sometimes you know you're doing it – and you still can't stop.

  "Are you angry?"

  I stopped, sighed, pushed my fingers through my hair. A shower of grass seeds floated to the ground. "No. Yes. Yeah, I am."

  "Why?"

  I turned on her. "Because you're leaving and you don't even respect me enough to say it to my face – that's why. Just be straight with me. Give me that."

  Instead of replying instantly, she reached out and took one of my hands in hers. I stayed rooted to the spot, my ears perking up at the sound of a wolf howling in the valley a few miles away.

  "Look at you."

  Her voice was soft and full of compassion. I didn't quite know what to do with it. I wasn't even sure I wanted it. If it made her stay, fine. But if it made her feel sorry for me? If it made her pity me? No good ever came from a woman pitying a man.

  "What?" I replied gruffly as she maintained her grip on my hand.

  "You want me to stay, don't you?"

  "Of course I fucking want you to stay!" I yelled, exasperated. "I want you to be honest with me. If you're leaving for good just tell me, just –"

  "I'm not leaving for good. I'm going to a hotel, like I said. I need some time to think, OK? I need to get my head straight."

  "Fine. Like I said."

  She wouldn't let go of my hand. "Why are you so angry?"

  "I'm not –" I started, and then gave up. I was angry. And of course she knew it – it wasn't like I was hiding it well.

  When I didn't have an answer – for her or for myself – Astrid took a step towards me and wrapped her arms around my neck. She wasn't looking to be kissed, or fucked again. She just wanted to hold me. And I couldn't give in to it. Couldn't let my body relax into her arms, even as part of me wanted nothing more.

  "OK," she whispered eventually, kissing my cheek and stepping back when I refused to accept her embrace. "I'll call a taxi."

  I offered to drive her but she was insistent on making her own way. So I stood at the end of the driveway after she left and watched the rear lights of the cab disappearing down the road.

  Don't think I didn't know I fucked up. I knew. I also knew there was a better than good chance the next time I heard from Astrid Walker it would be through her lawyer.

  I turned and began to walk slowly back up the driveway, towards the house where my brothers and my stepmom and Jack Devlin were waiting to tear me to pieces. In the distance, the wolf howled again. I listened for a few seconds, to see if another wolf would reply. None did.

  Chapter 18: Astrid

  It didn't go well. />
  Cillian's family – especially his dad, who seemed to wield some strange, malign power over the rest of them – was crazy. And not, as far as I could tell, the good or redeemable or even slightly lovable kind of crazy. Which meant Cillian himself was probably crazy, given how those things work.

  Something about the way his tone changed when he thought I was leaving made me uneasy. He was angry at me, holding his body stiff, refusing to even look at me when I tried to hug him.

  I wasn't very experienced with men or relationships or even just being around people who were very damaged, but even I understood that very little of what happened that evening boded well.

  Maybe I was more like Cillian than I wanted to admit, though. Maybe I was pretty good at hiding from my own emotions, too? Because even as part of me was filled with foreboding – I was married to him, remember – another part couldn't stop thinking about the intensity of our connection. Cillian was the refutation of every cute jock in high school who always, always preferred Ava or one of the other busty, giggly girls over me. He was every shuddering orgasm I always told myself other women were lying about – until he gave them to me like other men snap their fingers.

  Cillian Devlin was the one, the man who made all the clichés from all the cheesy pop songs true for me.

  I'm glad I didn't marry Julian.

  The thought occurred to me as I walked down the second floor hallway of Sweetgrass Ridge's only motel – or 'Motor Inn' as it called itself on the neon sign outside. I'd never stayed in a motel before. I'd never done a lot of things before I married a sexy, screwed-up stranger in Las Vegas.

  And it was in that motel, as I headed to my room, that it became suddenly and completely clear to me that Julian Acton-Hayes III had, in ditching me on our wedding day, perhaps done me the greatest favor of my life. I didn't love him. I thought I did, but I didn't – and for some reason it took me until that night to realize it.

  I flopped onto the lumpy bed in my stale-cigarette-smoke-scented room and texted Ava.

  Are you there? Just realized something big. Call me.

  The reply came a few minutes later:

  Can't right now, helping my mom organize. Tomorrow?

  I replied that tomorrow was OK. And then I lay on the bed in the dark, thinking. If I closed my eyes, it almost felt like the past few days weren't even real. Like I wasn't in a motel in Montana. Like I wasn't secretly married to a rancher's son I barely knew. Like my hair wasn't full of grass seeds from having the best sex of my life next to the driveway that led to the house I was apparently supposed to spend the rest of my life sharing with my husband's tyrant father. When I opened my eyes again, I told myself, I would be in my bed in Miami. I would have a shower and call my mom. If she asked me to meet her at the tennis courts the next day to hit a few balls, I wouldn't say no.

  I opened my eyes. I was not in Miami.

  My phone rang as I lay there, pondering just what it was I'd managed to get myself into.

  It was my mom. My beautiful, snobbish, loving mother, who did not yet know she had a son-in-law. I took the call.

  "You sound strange," she said, almost right away. "Is something going on with you, Astrid? I'm starting to get the distinct impression you're avoiding me – and you haven't spoken to your father for days!"

  I flicked on the small lamp beside the bed and got up to close the curtains, cradling the phone between my shoulder and my ear. "I'm not avoiding you. I just have some things going on."

  "I know, that's what you texted a few days ago. What things?"

  "Well," I replied, opting for a truth but not the truth. "I realized something. About Julian."

  In the background, I heard the distinct pop-hiss of a can being opened. My mom is constantly drinking flavored mineral water – my parents have an entire full-sized refrigerator in their main house dedicated solely to the stuff. "Did you?" She replied. "What's that?"

  I listened to her sip water and took a deep breath. "Well. For one thing, I realized I never loved him."

  There was no sound from the other end. No sipping, no breathing, no comment.

  "Mom?" I asked a few seconds later. "Are you th–"

  "I'm here," she said. Now she was the one who sounded funny.

  "Did you hear me?" I continued. "I said I realized I never –"

  "You've met someone haven't you?" She cut in. "That's why you're being all mysterious. That's why you're having realizations about Julian. You've met someone you know we won't approve of. That's why you won't tell me what's going –"

  "Mom!" I cried, desperate to stop her before she could use her psychic mom powers to reveal any more truths. "I'm talking about Julian! I just said I never loved him and I – I wanted to talk to you about it."

  "You're not denying it, though, are you?" She replied crisply. "I don't hear any denials – or do I? Do you deny it?"

  "I wanted to talk to you about Julian," I reiterated. "Remember that guy? The one who humiliated me on our wedding day? He was the one who –"

  "Oh, fuck Julian!" My mom retorted, deploying a rare curse word. "One day you'll be thanking your lucky stars you never went through with that marriage."

  "But that's exactly what I'm trying to tell you! If you would just listen to me for a –" I broke off as what my mother had said sunk in. "Wait. What? I'll be thanking my lucky stars? I thought – I thought you wanted me to get married?"

  My mom sipped her water again before replying. "I believe it was you, my dear, who was in such a crazy rush to get up the aisle. Do you know that I've never understood where you get that old-fashioned streak? You certainly didn't get it from me."

  "But," I continued, confused, "I thought you liked Julian? I thought you and Dad both did?"

  "Your ex-fiancé is from a good family, Astrid. He is neither a criminal nor a cheat – and you are a grown woman. It's not my place to tell you who you can and cannot marry. I wouldn't have picked him, but it was your choice – not mine."

  My poor mother had no idea how soon the truth of her statements would be tested.

  "So you – didn't like Julian?" I asked, as intrigued as I was mildly insulted by her comment that she herself 'wouldn't have picked him.' "Why didn't you –"

  "I don't want to talk about Julian. I want you to tell me who you've met."

  My mind whirred so fast trying to come up with something to say that wasn't a lie but also wasn't the whole truth that it simply went blank.

  "I –"

  "Yes?"

  "Mom, I –"

  "Yes?"

  No. I had to tell her in person. Didn't I? Or maybe I could just tell her part of the truth, and the whole truth later? I switched the phone to my other hand and rubbed the first hand, which was a little sweaty, across the cheap polyester bedspread. And then I cracked. Just a little crack.

  "OK. Fine. I met someone."

  "I knew it!" My mom trilled happily. "Who is he? Do I know him? What's his family name?"

  I needed to shut her down. Once my mother gets going she's relentless.

  "No, you don't know him. Listen, we should meet up. I'll tell you everything then – I promise."

  "How about tomorrow? We could have lunch at Milano."

  "I can't," I replied hastily. "I mean, I'm busy. How about in a few days?"

  "You're not in Miami, are you?" My mom continued, her tone increasingly suspicious. "Your dad went to the condo a couple of days ago and Jordie said he hadn't seen you for a week. Just what exactly is going on?"

  Ugh, Jordie the doorman and his big mouth. Not that I could blame him, really. My mom can get anyone to talk.

  "Nothing!" I squeaked. "Mom, it's nothing."

  For some reason, I thought of Cillian's dad in that moment, and how appallingly he behaved at dinner. What must it have been like growing up with that man for a father?

  My husband may have been rich like me, but he must have had a much harder life than I did with my own two loving parents. I should have been kinder to him about the way he handled things at di
nner.

  With no warning at all, I teared up. It was about Cillian. But it was also about my own mother and knowing something she didn't know – something I was pretty sure was going to devastate her. It was about knowing she didn't deserve it. Neither did my dad, who had now twice missed the opportunity to walk his only daughter down the aisle.

  A wave of guilt washed over me. After everything they did for me, after everything I had that other people didn't have, I run away to Las Vegas and marry a stranger?

  A stranger from Montana with a messed up family I was expected to live with?

  Talking to my mother brought me back to reality after days of pretending it no longer existed. Back to my own life. Back to being Astrid Walker – who lives in Miami, not Montana. Back to being the Astrid Walker who got dumped on her wedding day. The Astrid Walker who pukes at the smell of cow dung. That Astrid Walker. Not the other one. Not the one who was going to move to small-town Montana and wear cowboy boots and raise a bunch of sturdy, blue-eyed babies without any of her own friends or family anywhere close.

  That Astrid isn't real. You're infatuated. Dickmatized. As wrapped up in that man as a teenage girl in her first love. You need to grow up.

  "I think maybe I fucked up, mom."

  My voice was quiet, small. And my mother must have sensed it was serious because she didn't chide me for my language.

  After a long pause, she replied: "Whatever it is, we'll figure it out. OK? Just – well, let's start with where you are."

  She sounded really worried. I wasn't the type of daughter to make tearful 'I think I fucked up' statements, so she had to know that whatever was 'up,' it was serious.

  "I'm in Montana."

  "You're – where?"

  A high-pitched peal of hysteria-tinged laughter erupted from my throat. I couldn't help it. Montana, of all places. My mother would surely have preferred me to get into trouble in a ritzier location.

  "Montana."

  "And what on earth are you doing in Montana?"