“There she is.” His voice had softened.
“There’s who?”
“There’s the girl I remember.”
She exhaled, and a few pounds of pressure she hadn’t realized she was carrying on her shoulders released with her sigh. He liked when she was happy. She could tell. There was value in a man promoting happiness. Some didn’t know how to do it. Some didn’t care if their partner was happy or not, but the good ones? They nurtured it.
Yeah, he was a punchy-punchy-foul-mouthed-at-times-rough-around-the-edges cowboy with one maniac bull living inside of him, but down at his core? Where it counted the most? He had it together.
“Why are you single?” she asked as he opened the passenger door of his truck for her.
“You want the short version or the truth?”
“Both.”
He offered his strong hand for her to climb into his impossibly high Chevy, and then he leaned on the door. “Short version, I don’t want anyone taking focus off what I want to accomplish.”
“I respect that.”
He nodded and closed her door, then made his way around the front of the truck and got in. “Long version, I had someone take the focus off it for a long time.”
“A girlfriend?” she asked.
Quickdraw turned the key, and the engine roared to life. “More like a wife.”
Annabelle’s mouth plopped open. “A wife? You were married?”
He pulled out in front of Dead of Winter’s truck, fishtailing and spraying gravel behind him, and then he rolled down the window and flipped him off. There was that handsome semi-evil smile again.
“Okay, but on all the background info on you, it only mentions an ex-girlfriend…that you have tattooed on your arm.” She didn’t really like that part. It bothered her every time she glimpsed the naked pinup doll on his left bicep.
“You researched me?” he asked.
Oh, shoot. “Uuuuh, not researched per say, but just stumbled across all of your personal information.”
“It’s okay, Stalker. I researched you, too.”
“Gasp and shock. But how much could you really find out? I don’t do social media.”
“Have you Googled yourself lately? I found pictures of you from the third grade, easy. And what I couldn’t find on Google, I found out from other sources.”
“What sources?”
“Let’s just say you aren’t the only werewolf I know.”
“Eeek, okay.” Her heart was pounding hard. This was a good thing, right? If he knew more werewolves, he would understand her easier. “What werewolves do you know?”
“The Kaid Brothers, and one of them can find out just about anything if he puts his mind to it. Or if I pay him two hundred bucks. He’s like my own private investigator.”
“That’s a little creepy.”
Quickdraw shrugged up his shoulders and gave her a look that said he didn’t give a single shit about her name-calling. “It was a waste of money. I found out you had braces for a couple years in middle school, were turned into a werewolf when you were eight on accident and survived it, which means you must be one tough little hellion. You worked at your dad’s junkyard until a few years ago when you picked up a job as an online stylist. The company website is pretty awesome. I mean, if I were a chick and liked that kind of stuff. High heels and purses and shit. Your last known relationship was three years ago, and from Matthew Maholin’s social media pages, he looks like a boring douchebag, so I know your taste in men is questionable. Which is good for me because I’m a pretty bad call.”
“Well, that’s a good sales pitch,” she uttered sarcastically.
“Thank you. I have plans, though.”
“Oh yeah? What plans?”
“Get you addicted to feeling safe, show you an opening in the herd that could be yours, completely bribe and manipulate you with more time with Raven, set up girl dates with Cheyenne, too, so you want to spend more time on the road with me, make you come at least three times every time I fuck you—”
“So that I get addicted to your dick, too?”
“Exactly, and then when you’re nice and comfortable and in love with me, I’m gonna drop my red flags on you.”
“Or…” she said, curling her legs up to her stomach and leaning on the console, “we could skip straight to the red flags, and you and I could both decide early if we even match.”
He narrowed his dark brown eyes at her. “That’s not part of my plan. My red flags are very big.”
“Maybe mine are, too.”
“Hmmm.” He drove in silence for a couple of miles up a main road.
She let him have his silence, let him get lost in his thoughts, because some men needed that. They needed to process thoughts when they were thrown a curveball. And from the interviews she’d seen of him, he was very careful when he answered questions, if he answered them at all.
“I got married a year after I started my bucking career. It was a bad match. Toxic or whatever. We were either full of joy or full of hate, and there was never a day that was in between. Lookin’ back, it was just as much my fault as hers, and I had to learn some really heavy lessons. Now, I ain’t opposed to caring about a woman again. That’s new for me—moving forward enough to want to try. But caring for you is where we will stop. It’s the max you’ll get. Do you understand?”
“No,” she murmured. “You mean you won’t ever get married again?”
He shook his head. “Never in this lifetime.”
“Truth,” she said softly. Inside her chest cavity, an ache unfurled. His tone had been so easy to read the honesty. He truly believed he would never get married again, and so that was his truth. She’d been here before. Been burned before. Wasted her time before.
“I want to get married someday,” she said.
“Truth.” His voice was all gritty. “There’s my big red flag, Annabelle. From the look on your face, it may be a deal breaker. I wish I would’ve done my plan instead.”
“Get me addicted to you and a life with you?”
He dipped his chin in a single nod.
“You wanted to trap me?”
Another nod. Well, at least he was honest.
“But you barely know me.”
“You got a ride to a hospital in an unfamiliar town to stand watch over three poisoned bull shifters you’d never met in your life.” He glanced over at her with an eyebrow cocked high. “I know all I need to know.”
She allowed a couple minutes to pass as she watched the trees blur by out of her window. “What did your ex-wife do to you that you waited so long to open up again?”
Quickdraw ran a quick hand through his hair and stretched his neck to the side. She’d seen him do that in interviews when he didn’t want to answer questions, so she expected him to shut down on her. But…he didn’t. “Her name was Maren, and she was nice in the beginning. I think she liked the attention that my career gave her. She liked being seen with me, having that sense of power, and claiming me in front of the crowds. But as she watched me rising in my career, she got bored. Less of the attention was on her. She figured out she didn’t like the life, didn’t like moving around, didn’t like traveling to arenas, didn’t care that it was important to me, and she started distancing herself from me. It hurt. It hurts shifters. You ever bonded to a man before?”