Slow Burn Cowboy. Maisey Yates

say that. Because introducing the subject was even more impossible than just having her here.

      “It’s me,” he said, gritting his teeth. “It’s not you.”

      She snorted. “Now it just sounds like we’re having a bad breakup.”

      “We aren’t,” he said, his tone harder than he intended. “It’s not like that. Friends don’t break up.”

      That was the bottom line. Friends didn’t break up. And she was a friend. It was one of the biggest reasons she had always been a friend, and nothing more. Why he had never, ever made a move on her. Not just out of his loyalty to her brother, Mark, but also because he valued the connection between them.

      Yeah, he wanted her. But there were a lot of women to want. A lot of women to have for temporary moments in time.

      There was only one Lane.

      He repeated that over and over in his mind while he continued to look at her. She was hurt—he could see that, her dark eyes looking a little too bright in the dim morning light.

      “Good,” she said. “Because you can’t.”

      “I can’t what?”

      “Break up with me,” she said, a thread of genuine emotion winding around the teasing note in her voice. “I mean, I know how to get into your house. You would never be able to get rid of me. It would make things really uncomfortable. You would be like, ‘Lane, I’m not speaking to you, why are you in my house?’ And I would be like, ‘you’re doing a really bad job of not speaking to me, since you’re speaking to me.’”

      “That’s what it would be like?”

      “Yes. So, you can see that it’s silly.”

      “Definitely. You have nothing to worry about. I have no desire to break up with you.” Using those words to talk about the two of them was weird.

      “Good,” she said.

      She shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, looking around, the air once again thick between them. He had thought that maybe it was just him. Until yesterday. And that made him mad all over again. It was one thing to feel attracted to her knowing that she was completely oblivious.

      It was another when he had a feeling she sensed the tension.

      “I have to go,” he said, using the cows as a convenient excuse.

      “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to clean.”

      “I wish you wouldn’t.”

      “And I don’t care. I have a while until I have to go open the store. Just let me help.” She reached out, like she was going to put her hand on him, and he took a step back. She stared at him, and then lowered her hand back down to her side.

      “See you later,” he said.

      “See you.”