Page 125 of Risking it for the Cowboy

He should have yanked the bastard off of her and called 911. He should have shielded his woman instead of going into attack.

“Let’s go back, Thad. Please, we have a song to play, right? We got the Homegrown Music Awards tomorrow, and Ortega is one of the judges. We have to go home and pack and get Daisy ready for Auntie Heart to watch her…”

And the way she was holding his hand now, pulling on him, placating him, churned sickness in his stomach to have let her down. He let her reel him back. Clenched her hand hard as she tried to smooth her hair and dry her splotchy eyes, wiping at her smeared eyeliner and shimmying her hair around her face to hide the redness from the strike, as she hurried him back up the road.

Back to his crowd, who cheered at her return. But they didn’t play the final song. He ushered her to his truck and shut her inside. And the award competition? Shoot, how could he tell his band he hadn’t yet paid the fee? He’d re-earned the entry fee but spent it on his clothes and flowers for Daisy’s dance.

Tension thrummed a silent undercurrent on their drive home to Nacogdoches, skipping post show tacos. Her silence was deafening. He carried Daisy, fast asleep, up to his loft after picking her up from Ty and Heart, laying her on the bed where he and Charlie had been sleeping.

Tonight, he’d take the couch.

He slipped downstairs. Out to his shed and flipped on the light hanging from the rafter in its safety orange cage. Where he came to draw, to tinker and think, leaving Charlie in the cabin alone. Her silence was too loud. He clattered his keys and phone on his drafting table next to the new architectural he’d begun working on the night before, picking up the pencil and engineering measures he’d been using to begin where he’d left off. His pencil skipped off step—

He shoved the paper aside.

Tossed the pencil to ricochet off the surface, clinking to the cement floor, and braced his hands on the edge of the drafting table, exhaling hard.

Might need to pump the breaks on this project until he knew where he stood with Charlie. And with the farm.

And yet, would he have reacted any differently tonight? If Charlie or Daisy were in peril … he’d throw down. Time and again. He didn’t know how to be different. The people who were important to him were so few and far between, they were worth protecting at all costs…

There were vehicles driving up the road.

He could hear the crunch of gravel in the distance, and shoved upright again, moving outside and onto the porch, through the door.

Charlie had just turned down the light in the loft, and he could see her through the rails, leaning over as she tucked a blanket around Daisy, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead and petting back her hair.

Still so smoking in her shimmery black blouse, her turquoise bangles, her heeled western boots and denim, like a goddess in a country boy’s fantasy, and yet, her smile … it had come so easy tonight as the songs had progressed.

And it was gone now as she crept down the stairs, unzipping her boots.

If the silence persisted, he was going to crawl out of his skin.

“Charlie,” he croaked, as headlights flashed in the window and the cars outside grew louder on the gravel path. “We gonna talk about this?”

Heading toward his house?

She slowed to a stop, her back to him, listening, when the headlights pulled up and doors slammed. Walkies staticky in the distance.

The police.

Charlie glanced through the window and tensed. But T.R.’s jaw tightened. All of a sudden, he knew what was coming. Daisy stirred in the loft, and hell, but he couldn’t let her see her T. Rex fallen from grace.

Charlie’s head whipped around to him, and he felt his eyes sting.

He blinked. Fuck. It was all about to come out. He should have told her. Should have known by now, he was never going to win, because when the truth came out about him, he was going to lose the girl he’d announced tonight had clipped his wings.

The officers crunched across the gravel. Thudded up the steps onto the deck. Knocked on the door.

Charlie, her eyes … the vision of them widening, of them hurting, was going to gouge him for the rest of his life.

“I’m sorry,” was all he could breathe. “I’m gonna step outside, okay? Don’t want the girl to wake up and see this. Just, please, stay inside—”

Flashlights and men, decked in sidearms and earpieces and police vests were lining his steps.

A knock thumped. Daisy stirred again. He opened the door.

He was guilty. Just like in New York.