Page 10 of Slow Hands Cowboy

He should know that.

He did know that, she knew he did. He was probably just working off of a script. Maybe he was thinking of her as someone he had never met before. Maybe that was what was helping him do his job.

It made her cringe internally. Her relationship with Walker had been strange in high school.

She’d been mean to him. The realization made her cringe.

She often thought of it as badgering, or teasing when Walker came up in her thoughts, but the truth was, she’d been mean.

But he was Walker Grayson. A legendary bad decision at Mustang River High School. The hottest guy to ever grace the halls of that place. He’d had all the girls eating out of his hand. He’d had a reputation and a dangerous edge and he’d been unbothered by her in every way. So sure, she’d been…not the best. But he’d never seemed to care.

That didn’t mean that he needed to be her biggest fan or anything, but she could understand why he was pretending that they had never met, had never known each other, and never would, really, as the question landed like vague professional small talk anyway.

“But you know, we dated junior and senior year, and then went our separate ways for a while. He went to medical school, and when he came back to establish his practice, we got back together.”

It was funny to remember that initial message. The text out of the blue while she had been sitting at home alone having dinner.

Wearing sweats and curled up on her couch, because it was the one place where she wasn’t visible and didn’t have to perform for anybody.

It had almost been like an offer to have a job interview.

Something that had occurred to her then and then she’d dismissed it. She thought of it more and more lately. She’d recently, jokingly, asked him for a performance review.

He’d laughed and asked her what on earth she was talking about. Which made her feel good. Or rather, it should make her feel good.

She and Alan made sense; that was the thing. And when he had texted her, there had been a tone of that in the message.

But Addison believed in sense. She didn’t believe in passion; that was for sure.

She didn’t want it because she knew that it was something that couldn’t be trusted.

She knew that.

But it didn’t make for a very good story. Maybe she needed to work on that. Maybe she needed to work on reframing it as a reconnection of two people who had once been in love finding each other again as adults, when they were mature enough to make a life together.

Or something. Because this felt like it needed to be workshopped.

“Right. He’s a… doctor?”

Well, there he was, indicating that he had some idea of who they both were.

“Yes. He is a doctor.”

He whistled, low and long, and to anyone else it might have sounded like he was impressed. She wasn’t sure. “A doctor and a mayor.”

“Well, I’m not the mayor yet,” she said.

“No,” he responded, “but I don’t think you have any real competition.”

“That’s flattering,” she said, “but I don’t know that that’s true. I’m young, and I’m a woman.”

“I think your father’s reputation precedes you.”

He hadn’t said it unkindly. If anything, it could be interpreted as something nice, but it made her grind her teeth together.

“For better or worse,” she said. “He is, of course, not without his critics.”

“Of course not,” he said. “But he also isn’t without his supporters, and you’re a lot further ahead than most people.”