with their pencils and calculators.
Since I had yet to explore any more of Willow Springs than the house, I decided to head outside for a little fresh air. I grabbed my sketchbook and favorite pencil just in case I found anything I just had to draw, tucked them inside of my oversized purse, and headed outside. The weather had taken a turn and the early morning air had enough of a chill I wished I had my trusty black hoodie.
The giant red barn loomed in front of me like it could swallow me whole. When the reminder of the big reveal at breakfast raced to the forefront of my mind again, I kind of wished it would. A bunch of guys had lied to me about their relationship status. More guys than I could count. That wasn’t what I was upset about. The lies I’d come to expect. What I was upset about was that I hadn’t expected it from Jesse. I’d lowered my guard around him because my subconscious had been fooled into believing he was different. Jesse Walker, golden cowboy whose dimples alone could unnerve a girl, couldn’t possibly be hiding a girlfriend like the rest of them.
But he had been. The whole time. In all our conversations, our flirty banter, our asinine question game, and when he’d asked me out . . . never once had a certain Josie come up. Even though I’d only known Jesse a few days, his betrayal cut deeply.
I wandered into the barn and tried to push all thoughts of betrayal, girlfriends, and Jesse Walker out of my mind. I was done pretending there might or ever could be something special between us.
The barn was as huge from the inside as it was from the outside. It had a grassy, tangy smell right between pleasant and offensive. I couldn’t decide. As I passed a stack of bags taller and wider than I was, I saw what Jesse had been heaving out of his truck: feed grain.
The barn had a never ending number of stalls, an unbelievably tall tower of hay bales, and only about a million different tools, buckets, hoses, and thingamajigs hanging on the walls. The only tool I was familiar with was the row of shovels. Everything else I would have been at a loss with.
I was almost to the end of the barn when a wheel barrow bounced out of the last stall on the right. Followed by a certain cowboy I really wasn’t in the mood to see. His trademark dark smile and predatory eyes went into position as soon as he noticed me.
“Well, if this isn’t the damn pleasantest surprise I’ve had all week,” Garth said, parking the wheelbarrow outside the stall before walking my way. Actually, it was more of a saunter. Garth Black had a serious saunter as unapologetic as the way he stared at me.
Damn, the guy was so my type everything inside me tightened in anticipation. At the same time, I also knew “my type” had gotten me a whole lotta nowhere in the past.
“It is a surprise,” I said, crossing my arms.
The skin between his brows came together. He was thrown by my lack of warm welcome. Cocky bastard. I wanted to ignore him that much more.
“You don’t like me,” he guessed, stopping a few feet in front of me. His black hat was tilted low on his forehead, making his eyes dark as onyx.
I lifted a shoulder. “I just met you. Not liking you would assume I’ve actually spent time thinking about you. Which I haven’t.” I wondered if that ever present curl to Garth’s mouth could be ironed out.
“You’re about as good a liar as you are pretending you’re not attracted to me.”
My mouth almost dropped. He wasn’t just a cocky bastard. He was the cockiest bastard to have ever sauntered the earth.
“Are you always this full of yourself or just today?”
Garth’s smile curled higher. “Always.”
Of course he was. “And where does this full-of-one-self attitude come from?” I asked, crossing my arms tighter.
“Experience.”
Garth infuriated me, but a thrill of excitement rushed through me at the same time. I didn’t know what it was about that kind of guy, who thought they were next in line to rule
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