What was wrong with him? He’d always known she was a little shallow and not exactly a person you’d want to spend hours talking to, but he’d never thought of her in this “dear God, get me away from her” way. He didn’t want to think about what that might mean for his life back at home. Some of the women he spent time around were interesting and could keep up their end of a conversation, but most of those had settled down with some other guy and moved on.
Actually even quite a few of the less-interesting ones had, too. Now that he was in his late twenties, the pool of eligible women who weren’t looking for a serious relationship had dwindled to a muddy puddle. How had he not noticed that?
He angled himself away from the chattering woman next to him and focused on the show, hoping she’d take the hint that he wasn’t interested without making him come up with some excuse or shooting her down completely—knowing Olivia’s personality as well as he did, though, he doubted it would work. Catching on wasn’t one of her strong suits. And if he was going to break things off with her, he wanted to do it somewhere private, which just wasn’t possible at the moment. The place was packed and getting more crowded every second.
“Isn’t that hilarious, Aaron?” she asked, gripping his arm for a moment.
He smiled at her and nodded, trying his best not to be a total dick.
Below them, in the center of the arena, a few workers were preparing for the first competition of the evening, checking the hard-packed dirt floor for anything that might hurt the riders or animals. Bull riding was the main event, the last of the evening, but before that there was the bareback bronc competition, and then team roping. What he and Jeremiah were there for.
Their teams had been preparing for this all year, and whatever Jeremiah said about his team, Aaron knew his pair of riders were the best. He could picture them, working in perfect synchronicity to rope their steer, the header’s rope looping around the steer’s horns a split second before the heeler tossed his around the steer’s back legs, tightening them at the same moment. They had been working together for years, and moved as one person, as if they were in each other’s minds.
With any luck, they would make it into the top three, maybe even get first place if the horses were steady enough to try the trick they’d been working on the past couple of months. A tenth of a second could mean the difference between a win and a loss here.
Aaron could still hear Olivia chattering away, but he kept his attention on the arena, watching the first competitor mount the bronco being held still behind the gate. In just a few seconds, he would be let loose, and the cowboy would need to hold on for eight seconds with only one hand on the horse that was trying to buck him off.
A snap of a latch and the gate was open. The bronco ran the arena, using his entire body to try to knock the man off his back. Olivia gasped and clutched at his arm, hiding her eyes against his shoulder.
Aaron pictured Jessica there beside him. He could imagine it perfectly, her body tilted forward as she studied the movements of the bronco and the rider, working to figure out what tiny adjustments the cowboy would need to make in order to stay on and get the highest number of points.
It was foolish thinking, and he tried to put it out of his head. What would ever make her interested in watching rodeo events? She was from New York—rodeo probably seemed silly and pointless to her. If in some alternative universe she went with him to a rodeo, she would hate it, most likely.
He couldn’t get himself to believe that, though. Her competitive nature was too strong for her to dismiss it all out of hand, and she just seemed like the type of person who was interested in anything that could be seen as a puzzle. That was what he always liked about these competitions himself.
The buzzer sounded and the cowboy’s eight-second ride was over. Rodeo clowns swarmed the arena, helping the cowboy gain control of the horse.
“Not a bad ride,” Jeremiah commented over Olivia’s head.
Aaron agreed. The man’s style was too choppy for a score much higher than the mid-eighties, but it was decent. The people cheered and shouted, and the announcer’s voice boomed as the next rider climbed into the chute. Olivia continued to clutch at his arm. He wished the owner of his seat would get there quickly.
She squeezed his arm a little tighter and talked to him in a whisper that could be heard by anyone in a five-foot radius. “Do you want to make some plans for when all this is done? I’m free all night.”
She smiled at him. He knew that even just the year before he’d thought she had a sexy seductive smile, but it just looked too forced to be intriguing. For the first time since meeting her nearly five years ago, he wondered what she was really like under all the layers of show.
He didn’t want to hurt her, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. She watched him expectantly as he racked his mind for a response.
He needed to say something, but nothing even halfway decent came to him. Finally he just said, “I can’t,” while he tried to decide the nicest way to tell her that it wasn’t going to happen.
She frowned, but perked up after a second or two. “Okay, well, let me know if you’re still in town tomorrow and maybe we’ll be able to spend time together. It would be a shame to let a whole year go by before we...catch up.”
He had to explain to her that they wouldn’t be “catching up” this year, or any future ones for that matter. “Yeah, so Olivia...” he began, trying to find the right words.
But before he could say anything more, she hopped up. “Great! Just text me whenever. I’m going to head over to my seat. I’ll see you boys later.”
He watched her go, dumbfounded. Maybe it was for the best, though. He’d learned in the past that she could get mean—and loud—when she was sad or angry, and she tended to take any rejection pretty personally, so letting her down in public was probably not the best idea. He needed to find a way to talk to her privately without making her expect sex. That was a tall order.
He’d have to figure out how to deal with the situation without hurting her or making her think they might still get together someday. Stringing women along had never been how he did things, and he wasn’t about to start now.
This was a very strange situation for him. He’d never felt wrong about his relationship with a woman and wanted to end it without having an actual reason. Even though he wasn’t planning on marrying any of the women he spent time with or anything like that, he had his own moral code. He didn’t lie to them about his intentions or expectations of their relationship. He wasn’t going to hold anyone back from living their lives.
There was nothing he could do about it at that moment, so he tried to shut off his mind and just watch the event. The only thing he couldn’t get out of his head, couldn’t stop even if he wanted to, was an image of a beautiful woman with green eyes smiling at him.
He just couldn’t let that go, could he?
8
JESSICA SAT ON a bench, letting the other girls run into the nearest store without her. She was exhausted from following them around, and they’d been going through the mall as if it was a battlefield and they were all determined to leave victorious. She was pretty sure she was a casualty.
She just wanted to go back to her room. Or better yet, Aaron’s room. She wasn’t spending any extra money; after all, she was still working on figuring out her living arrangement when they got back to New York, and no matter what apartment she managed to find, it would be so expensive that she’d need every penny she had. Her mom and dad wouldn’t allow her to move back home—they said they didn’t want her underfoot, but she knew they wanted her to have as normal a life as she could despite her dad’s illness.
So she waited on the bench, picturing other possible places to live. It broke her heart to think of it, but someday soon her father would pass, and once that happened, Jessica didn’t think she could stay in New York any longer. She had been considering moving before she met Russ, but then they got together and he couldn’t leave the city, so she stayed. By the time their relationship ended, her dad was already sick. Her family kept encouraging her to go out and see the world, and maybe someday she would. As an editor, she could live anywhere. Like LA or San Francisco or Florida, or even a ranch in Texas.
Nope. No ranches. She gave herself a mental slap. She could already tell that leaving Vegas and her newfound pleasures would be difficult. If she started fantasizing about something that could never happen, it would only leave her hurting, and she refused to allow that.
She was a little worried about what it would be like to be home and alone once again. She was very quickly becoming addicted to Aaron’s bed—not that they’d ever actually made it to his bed—and she had very briefly considered not going back to see him at all. Except she knew that that wasn’t going to happen. He’d invited her back, and she just didn’t have it in her to say no.
Cindy walked out of the store, no new bags added to her already-weighty haul, and sat next to her. Jessica looked at her in surprise. “What’s going on? Couldn’t find anything you liked?”
Cindy shrugged. “I wanted to chat for a second. You’ve been weird and distracted.”