Page 2 of Slow Hands Cowboy

Not that it mattered. Except it did. What hurt now was his pride.

What hurt now was the fact that she had taken the last little bit of belief that he had that maybe the world had something good in it and squished it underneath her designer shoe that had no business being in the halls of Mustang River High School.

And that was a fact.

It had been his own personal hell that she had been able to turn him into her errand boy for her wedding.

He was part owner of this ranch. He knew for a fact he owned more land than the Carey family. That he was probably richer than her, not just in a familial sense with this shared property, but personally. His earnings from the rodeo, endorsements, championship pots, were above seven figures, and other than the cash he’d spent building his house, he proudly let them sit in his bank account while he lived off the interest and this land he had inherited from his father.

Well. Not his father, but that was a whole different story.

He was ruminating on Addison right now; he didn’t have time to ruminate on the Grayson family drama.

“I just want to catch a glimpse of bridezilla.”

Walker turned and saw Laney, the chef at the Painted Ridge Dining Room, who had sidled up next to him. She was small, blonde, with tattoos extending from her wrists up to her shoulders.

Pretty.

Given that Walker was a shameless flirt, he would normally have flirted with her, but they were working together, and he had found that he needed her as an ally. Laney had become a friend, united in irritation with Addison.

“Oh, just you wait,” he said. “She breathes fire.”

“Does she?”

“No. Sadly, she is all things pristine and delicate and beautiful.”

He didn’t like the way the last word tasted in his mouth. He’d like to wash it down with a shot of whiskey, but that was going to have to wait until after the bridal shower, which he was overseeing himself because he couldn’t chance anything going wrong.

This was the issue. The Carey family was richer than God.

Addison herself might not be much more than a small-town nepo baby, but her dad owned a sizable amount of timberland and had been the mayor, so he had both influence and wealth.

Addison was trying to follow the same path, but in his mind, she was just trying to step in her father’s footprints.

And fine. She was welcome to do that. But she didn’t have any qualifications of her own. As far as he was concerned, she was kind of an empty-headed witch.

Her brain seemed to be filled with nothing.

She owned a little shop in town that sold home goods, but she was rarely there. It was fully staffed, and Addison essentially functioned as the buyer and the manager. He hated that he knew that about her. He hated that he knew anything about her. He had quit Addison Carey for good a long time ago, and having to do this wedding had forced him to pick up an old habit.

Thankfully, he had only seen her in person a couple of times. Because she was still –

His thoughts were interrupted when a parade of women walked around the side of the hotel, on a path that let out to the lawn.

They were all dressed immaculately.

But Addison would’ve been easy to spot even if she hadn’t been the only one wearing white.

Her long honey-colored hair was styled in perfect waves, her lips were a bright glossy pink, and she was laughing in that particular way she did that drew people to her like a magnet.

This was the thing. She wasn’t openly a bitch.

She had been covertly awful to him in ways that he had loathed and loved, because it was attention, and again, teenage boys were dumb. So part of him had craved that attention even though it had been bad attention.

But other people didn’t know it.

Other people knew her to be a ray of sunshine. A real debutante.