by Maisey Yates
“How will I get home?” she asked.
“I could help you out with that too, but I’ll have your car in working order by then.”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Why are you being nice to me?”
That wicked grin of his broadened. “I’m always nice.”
She let out an exasperated sound and then clicked the lock button on her key fob before climbing into the passenger side of his truck. She struggled to get in because of her skirt and nylons, but finally succeeded and shut the massive, heavy door behind her.
“Thank you,” she said, knowing that she sounded ridiculously prim and not really able to do anything about it. She was prim.
She grabbed hold of the seat belt, then pulled it forward, having to wiggle it slightly to get it to click. His truck was a hazard. She straightened, held tightly to her handbag and stared straight ahead.
“You’re welcome,” he said, stretching his arm over the back of the bench seat. His other forearm rested casually over the steering wheel. His cowboy hat was pushed back on his head, shirtsleeves pushed up past his elbows, forearms streaked with dirt as if he had already been working today. Which meant that he had likely been out at Get Out of Dodge before driving down toward town. She wondered if he had seen Bennett.
“Were you out at the Dodge place today?” She tried to ask casually.
“You want to know if I saw your boyfriend,” Luke said. Not a question. A statement. Like he knew her.
And this, in a nutshell, was why she didn’t really like Luke. He had a nasty habit of saying the one thing that she wished he wouldn’t. With a kind of unerring consistency that made her suspect he did it on purpose.
“He’s not my boyfriend. Not anymore.”
“Still. You’re wondering about him.”
“Of course I wonder about him. I dated Bennett for a year. I’m not going to just...not wonder about him suddenly.”
“I expect, Olivia, that you could go down to Get Out of Dodge on your own pretty feet and find out how he’s doing for yourself if you had half a mind to.”
Olivia cleared her throat and looked at Luke meaningfully. Which he seemed to miss entirely. “I don’t know that I would be welcome,” she said, finally.
“Come on. It’s been at least...six months since Wyatt has run anyone off the property with a shotgun.”
Olivia sighed. “You’re a pain, do you know that?”
“Now, is that any way to talk to your roadside savior?”
“Normally, I would agree, but I suspect that you’re trying to irritate me on purpose. Otherwise you would have just answered my question.” She settled back into the bench seat, looking down at the floor mats that were encrusted in mud. She had no idea why Luke had mats on the floor of his truck at all. It seemed ridiculous when the whole thing was covered in a fine layer of dust and small bits of hay.
She felt woeful on behalf of her black pencil skirt.
“You caught me,” he said, sounding not at all contrite. “I am absolutely trying to irritate you. I would say that I’m succeeding too. You do know how to make a man feel accomplished, Olivia.”
“And you know how to make a woman feel feral, Luke.”
“You and I both know you’ve never felt feral a day in your life, honey.”
She wanted to argue with him. Except, he had a point. But she was not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. Instead, she sniffed and looked out the window as they crossed into the town’s city limits and drove in silence down Main Street.
Copyright © 2018 by Maisey Yates
ISBN-13: 9781488029301
Christmastime Cowboy
Copyright © 2017 by Maisey Yates
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