Slow Burn Cowboy. Maisey Yates

for a moment. Outside of her body, possibly outside of Oregon. Somewhere else entirely.

      Twelve years in the past maybe.

      “What? Sorry, I spaced out.”

      “You seemed distracted by Senator Good Hair.”

      “Oh,” she said, trying to figure out how she was going to spin that. Because she didn’t exactly want to have a conversation about the fact that she knew Cord McCaffrey. She was never going to have a discussion with anyone about the particulars of that knowledge—that was for sure. But she was trying to decide on the most believable and innocuous lie.

      “I get it,” Alison said. “He’s compelling. I mean, I think being a politician’s wife would be horrible. All I can picture is how controlled it would be. How owned you would feel. But I get why some women go for it.”

      Lane had a feeling that Alison would find a long-term relationship with any man stifling at this point. Her ex-husband was to blame for that.

      “It’s just weird,” Lane said, going for the closest version of the truth that she could manage. “He lived in my parents’ neighborhood. We grew up next to each other. It’s always kind of strange to see somebody that you knew in a different context becoming famous.”

      Saying something so innocuous about him nearly killed her. The fact that she had occasion to talk about him at all—with people who had no idea of their connection—just made her angrier.

      At the same time, if Cord had never achieved his political ambition she might have been even angrier. Because then what would the point have been of any of the pain that he put her through?

      “I can see that being weird,” Rebecca said. “I really can’t imagine any of the jackasses I went to school with ascending to political office. It’s a terrifying prospect, actually.”

      Rebecca truly had no idea. “Yeah. Weird.” She shoved another fry in her mouth to keep from making further comment.

      She felt weird the whole rest of the evening, which she hated. Because Cord wasn’t rattling around his giant-ass mansion feeling weird right now. No, he was likely sitting in a wingback chair with a snifter of brandy, letting his Stepford wife rub his feet while his two perfect children slept upstairs. When she walked back to her car later, Rebecca intercepted her. “Are you okay?”

      “Fine,” Lane said, breaking away quickly, tromping across the parking lot with more forceful steps than necessary, loose rocks and gravel crunching under her feet.

      “You were very quiet tonight. You’re never quiet.”

      She let out an exasperated sigh that bloomed in the cold night air, joining the low-hanging fog that was creeping in off the sea. “Just tired. I stayed up late making dinners for Finn last night, and then had to work most of the day. And then I had to deliver the food, so...”

      “You do a lot for him.”

      Lane bristled. Mostly because whenever anyone made comments about her relationship with Finn, those comments contained undercurrents. Undercurrents she didn’t like. “He’s done a lot for me. Plus, his grandfather just died, and he might have been a surly old coot, but he was pretty much all Finn had to call family.”

      “Except all those brothers,” Rebecca pointed out.

      “Half brothers. And he didn’t grow up with them.”

      She didn’t know why she was being defensive. About Finn, about anything in his life. She was crossing the velvet Finn rope she tended to put up around her conversations with other people, and hell if she knew how she’d gotten dragged over it.

      “Sorry,” Rebecca said, letting out a long sigh. “I’m just worried about you and I’m trying to drag out a reason why you might have been upset and I tend to come back to him.”

      “Well, Finn is not ever part of my upset. Finn is one of the only truly good men on planet Earth.”

      Rebecca looked at her, long and hard, her dark eyes glittering in the lamplight. “Okay.”

      Damn her. She still wasn’t taking Lane’s placating lies at face value. But she was also wrong about the source of her issues. And if her Finn stuff was cordoned off by a velvet rope, her Cord issues were kept in a very difficult to access attic, beneath a really heavy box with a blanket over it, so no one would ever look and she’d have a hard time ever pulling it out herself.

      “I’m fine,” she said, singsong now, walking to her car with a small bounce in her step. “Fine, fine, fine.”

      “Keep saying it,” Rebecca said, her tone dry. “That will make it seem more believable.”

      Lane cheerfully flung her middle finger into the air, directing it at Rebecca along with a smile. Rebecca lifted her own hand and made a catching motion, as though Lane had blown her a kiss. Then she put the imagined item in her pocket. “In case I need a good Screw You later.”

      “I think you had a good screw earlier,” Lane shot back.

      “Don’t hate the player,” Rebecca said, her tone completely serious.

      Lane rolled her eyes and got into her car. Sometimes she thought it would be more practical to get a big truck. For garden soil, wood chips and anything else she might need for her garden. But she liked the fuel economy of her little car. Plus, Finn had a truck and he could always do that stuff for her.

      Her house was a quick trip from Ace’s, which sat on the edge of town. In about five minutes, she was at the dirt driveway that led back into the hills to where her little homestead was. Four potholes and three curves later, she was pulling into her driveway.

      The house was modest, but it was cozy and perfect for one person. Nestled in the pine trees, the little cabin looked like it might be growing straight out of the earth. But the value of this place wasn’t in the house, it was in the property.

      She had spent the past couple of years taming it, getting herself a decent-sized garden plot prepared and revamping an old outbuilding set way back in the trees that was designed to store things like jam and root vegetables.

      Well, Finn had helped with a lot of that.

      But, like she had told Rebecca earlier, Finn did a lot for her. It was one reason she happily did a lot for him. Anything. She would do anything for Finn.

      She walked across the soft ground, bark and pine needles muting her footsteps until she reached the wooden porch steps. She shoved her key into the lock—even out here she kept her doors locked out of an abundance of caution. She wasn’t particularly concerned with anyone stealing her things, not in Copper Ridge. Really, she wasn’t legitimately concerned with much considering that Copper Ridge was a very safe place to live, but she was a woman who lived alone in the middle of nowhere, so her anxieties tended to center on some deranged drifter lying in wait in her living room when she returned from town after a long day.

      That she could live without.

      She sighed heavily, dumping her purse and her keys over the back of the armchair that sat adjacent to the entryway. She felt unsettled and restless, which wasn’t how she usually felt when she walked into her snug little house.

      It was so different to that expansive stone monstrosity her parents had lived in, heaving with dashed expectations and the scent of disappointment. It had always felt so cold. So vast and empty.

      Because there was nothing even close to love in the hallowed walls of the Jensen family home. And no matter what her parents said, she could feel it. And it made that massive manor feel claustrophobic.

      She surrounded herself with warmth here. And in this tiny place with its rough-hewn furniture, with the lake on one side and the endless woods on the other, she felt free.

      Usually, she felt a sense of relief as the rustic wood walls offered sanctuary from the day.

      Not today. Today required more eating.

      She flicked on the light