Page 64 of The Cowboy Who Stayed

Vivica folds her arms and tilts her head, playing along. “She sounds like quite the catch.”

“Oh, she is. Only thing is, she’s a little older than me. Twenty years, give or take.”

“How scandalous.”

“Right? Anyway, I was thinking about asking her to dinner tonight. You know, when she gets off work at the ranch. Think she’d say yes?”

Vivica pretends to consider this for a moment, tapping her chin with a finger. Buttercup snorts softly behind her as if offering her own commentary.

“I think she’d remind you she wasn’t looking for anything serious,” Vivica says finally. Then the pretense drops and a beautiful smile blooms on her face. “But somehow she’s made an exception. Which is why she’d love to.”

I close the distance between us and kiss her in Buttercup’s stall with hay under our boots and the smell of horses around us and the last of the afternoon light coming through the windows.

It’s not the most romantic setting by conventional standards, but conventional has never really been our thing.

Buttercup nudges my shoulder with her nose as if to remind me she was here first.

“Easy, girl,” I murmur against Vivica’s lips. “There’s enough of me to go around.”

Vivica laughs and the melodic sound fills the stall. The best thing I’ve heard all day.

NINETEEN

Vivica

“You sure you don’t want me to call an actual plumber?”

“Vivica, I jumped out of planes for a living. I can fix a sink.”

A pipe groans ominously. Rhett scratches the back of his head and lets out a short, uncertain laugh.

“It’s supposed to do that.”

“Uh-huh. I’m sure.” I smirk as I lean against the kitchen counter and watch as Rhett disappears back under the sink.

He’s been working on it for about thirty minutes, armed with a toolbox and a YouTube tutorial.

So far, no luck.

If anything, the pipes sound angrier now, as though personally offended they’re being manhandled by a cowboy with no plumbing experience.

The sink has been dripping since before Craig showed up in Ironhaven. I noticed it my first week in the cottage and kept telling myself I’d get around to calling someone. Then life got complicated in ways I didn’t anticipate, and the steady drip-drop became background noise I learned to tune out.

The metaphor isn’t lost on me.

I had a leak I ignored the same way I was trying to neatly lock away my past. Then it came seeping through the cracks no matter how tightly I tried to seal it up.

It took a stubborn man twenty years younger than me to finally help fix what was broken.

I’m self-aware enough to find the symbolism amusing and sentimental at the same time.

“Alright,” Rhett announces from under the sink. “I think I’ve got it this time. Turn the faucet on.”

“You sure? You said that five minutes ago, and it sprayed you in the chest.”

“This time I mean it.”

“You said that too.”