BENNETT COULDN’T BEGIN to untangle the whole mess of feelings rioting around inside him like coiled-up snakes. He wasn’t in love with Olivia. He never had been. But she had been his girlfriend for a year, and he had been planning on marrying her. They’d had an arrangement that had suited them both.
It hadn’t been a love match in a conventional sense. Her father had asked for him to take care of her after a health scare, and Bennett had thought...
He’d thought she was damned near perfect. He didn’t want a passionate love affair, he wanted stability. Wanted the kind of life he could plan. Put in careful order. And Olivia had seemed to want that too.
But right toward the end, he’d been putting off proposing. He’d known what she wanted and he just...
There was part of him that worried she wanted more than he was giving. At first he’d thought she wasn’t any more in love with him than he was with her. Hell, they’d never gone past second base, at her insistence. And she’d never seemed tempted to go further. He’d respected it, respected her. Hadn’t touched anyone else the whole time they were together, because he was a man of his word.
Then, she had broken up with him over the fact he was dragging his feet, and she had gone and slept with Luke Hollister. Who Bennett would have said was about the worst bet in the entire world. If asked, Luke would probably have agreed he was a bad bet too.
But apparently, not when it came to Olivia. Because that bastard had proposed to her in record time. And apparently had gotten right on starting a family with her too.
It was what Olivia wanted. He knew. Well, not to be pregnant out of wedlock. That would bother her. He had a feeling the wedding was about to get moved way the hell up.
But a family. That was what Olivia wanted. Domestic bliss and all that.
“Are you all right?”
Kaylee was looking at him with wide amber-colored eyes.
At the moment she made a pretty comical sight. Wearing a dress a hell of a lot fancier than he was used to seeing on her, the delicate floral material swirling around her long, pale legs.
And her arms were streaked with afterbirth.
Her red hair was disheveled, a smudge of something across her cheek. But she was also wearing makeup.
Frankly, the dress and the makeup were a lot more out of place than the afterbirth.
Kaylee wasn’t a girly girl. She never had been. Kaylee had run with the boys from junior high on. She had been one of his best friends ever since then. The kind of friend that he called if he needed someone to help at two in the morning. The kind of friend who would leave a date—apparently—to come and help him birth a calf.
The kind of friend who knew everything about him.
Almost everything.
“I’m fine,” he said, lying.
But he couldn’t exactly articulate all the things this was bringing up. Because it wasn’t just Olivia. There was something else churning deep beneath the surface and he didn’t want to get into that. He knew what it was. Whenever pain pushed up against that locked door down in his soul, he knew what that pain was. Loss.
All that loss in his life.
And mistakes. Regrets. A time in his life when he hadn’t planned a damn thing, when he had lacked for control and decency, and had paid the consequences of that behavior. Consequences no one, not his family or Kaylee, knew about.
He was different now.
But that didn’t erase the past.
“Do you still want that beer?”
“Maybe let’s take a rain check,” he said. “You’re covered in...”
Kaylee looked down her arms and grimaced. “I can shower at your place.” The suggestion was casual, and there was no reason it wouldn’t be. He and Kaylee had known each other forever. Had showered in each other’s homes more than once.
For some strange reason, probably because it was late, he was tired, and feeling like his world had been thrown slightly off its axis, he had a momentary blip in his brain, just one bright pop of an image. Pale skin and water sluicing over slight curves.
He blinked heavily in the darkness. He did not think about Kaylee like that. Ever.
She wasn’t a woman. She was his friend. His business partner.
And he had more control than that.
“Yeah, I think... I think I might go over to Wyatt’s.”
Kaylee was clearly somewhat irritated by the fact he was rescinding his invite, but she would deal. They had spent so much time in each other’s company over the years that it was inevitable they sometimes irritated each other.
Anyway, Kaylee was great if you wanted to talk. That was one of the perks of having a woman for a friend, even one who wasn’t especially...stereotypical. She got into deeper topics and longer conversations than his brothers did. Than any of his guy friends.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk now. He wanted to drink. And Kaylee would want to know what he was feeling about Olivia. She liked to pick that particular scab. He wasn’t sure why. But it was something that she hadn’t been able to let go since he and Olivia had broken up.
He shouldn’t care at all about this news. Olivia deserved a man who loved her. She deserved to be in love. That kind of thing wasn’t in the cards for Bennett. It wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted a well-ordered life. He wanted one without complications, without big highs and lows. Because God knew he’d had enough.
The whole situation was tangled up, but his heart wasn’t broken. And Luke Hollister was like a brother to him. Even given the circumstances. The man was always going to be part of the Dodge family. So having to deal with Olivia was unavoidable.
“Okay,” Kaylee said, taking a step away from him. “We’ll talk tomorrow I guess.”
“Thank you,” he said, meaning now and for the birth. “If you hadn’t been here... The baby probably wouldn’t have made it. I would’ve lost one of them.”
“Hey,” Kaylee said. “What’s a date compared to the life of a baby cow? And that’s not sarcasm. I can go out with Michael again anytime. He was very understanding.”
“Michael, huh?”
He didn’t know Michael, and he hadn’t been able to place him when Kaylee had started talking about Clarence the dog either. He didn’t know why he couldn’t picture the guy. Gold Valley was small enough that he felt like he should know men about their age that Kaylee might date, particularly ones that owned pets and sometimes came into the clinic.
But no, he was drawing a blank.
“You want to go drink,” Kaylee said, waving a hand. “Interrogate me some other time.”
“Good night,” he said, getting into the truck that served as a mobile veterinary unit. He might go ahead and crash at Get Out of Dodge tonight, he mused as he pulled onto the highway, putting Kaylee and her date out of his mind.
He could get hammered and sleep in one of the cabins that were currently unoccupied on the dude ranch. They were gearing up for their grand reopening, but it hadn’t happened yet.
Wyatt was working tirelessly—and working the rest of them to the bone when they were doing their real jobs—getting it ready.
Although, his brother Grant officially didn’t have a real job anymore. His real job was the ranch. Jamie, the only girl, and youngest in the family was in the same boat as Grant and Wyatt. Bennett was the only one that hadn’t thrown himself wallet and soul into the place.
But it wasn’t as simple as that