Christmastime Cowboy. Maisey Yates
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She wrapped her arms around herself and hopped in place, distracting herself with her movements more than actually needing the warmth.
When she reached the front of the line, the girl behind the register smiled. Sabrina didn’t think she possessed the ability to smile at the moment. “Just a coffee,” she said. She was tempted to add that the girl was welcome to hold the cheer. “Room for cream.” She made no comments about cheer.
That was the worst part about living in a small town. You really couldn’t let yourself have a bad day. Because if you did, inevitably the person whose head you bit off today was the daughter of someone you needed to approve a permit tomorrow. Or the person writing up your bank loan.
Or just uncomfortably, someone you had to see day in and day out forever after and pretend that you never had a tantrum wherein you acted like a petty child that one time.
Small-town politics were a thing. A thing that left very little room for cranky faces and sharp remarks.
Though she was ever grateful for the etiquette that allowed two people to ignore each other as long as they could successfully not make eye contact. The tacit understanding that you could both pretend you hadn’t seen each other so that you could get on with your day.
That brought to mind the shock of running into Liam. That first time. They had definitely made eye contact. There was no way she could pretend she hadn’t seen him. And so she had fled Ace’s bar like a scalded cat.
Her pride had yet to recover from that. Because she had some difficulty explaining it the next day to her sister-in-law.
Not that she had given much explanation.
Frankly, the whole story with Liam was just more embarrassing than anything else. Embarrassing because she had been an idiot. Embarrassing because it still hurt. Because she had gone all-in on what her teenage heart had imagined was love, and caused a permanent rift with her father that hadn’t healed yet.
Just looking at Liam hurt. She didn’t know why, but it was all as tender as if it had happened yesterday.
Because when he had broken her heart, he had truly broken it.
She would love it if there was a more dramatic story. If she could claim that he had callously taken her virginity and ruined her for all other men, etc. etc.
Sadly, all she could really say was...that he had humiliated her. Made her feel like a fool. Made her feel as though she couldn’t trust a single instinct that she had. It had been the gutting loss of a friend and first love all in one. She’d laid herself bare to him—literally—and then he’d rejected her and disappeared. From her life. From town.
Then, not content to let that be the last of it, she’d confronted her father, who had confessed to her he’d told Liam to go. That he’d paid him to leave her alone.
Discovering that Liam had put a dollar amount on their friendship had been intensely wounding. Almost more so than his rejection.
But not even that had been enough for her in her seventeen-year-old despair. No, no. She’d had to get wasted at an event at the winery for the incumbent mayor of Copper Ridge and make a total ass of herself in front of every influential person in Logan County.
And loudly revealing her family’s worst secrets to hurt her father the way he’d hurt her...
Well, that wasn’t really about Liam anymore. Even if he was the root cause.
Of her estrangement with her dad and her eternal humiliation over playing the part of wounded opera heroine so publicly. As she put her pain and the depth of all her feelings on display for everyone.
Just remembering it made her skin crawl with humiliation.
She took a deep breath, trying to dispel the tightness in her chest. Trying her damnedest to smile when the girl behind the counter handed her her cup of coffee. She took the lid off, and the dark, scalding liquid spilled over the edge and onto her skin. She growled and stuck her thumb into her mouth, trying to alleviate some of the burn.
“Not a great morning?”
She bit down on her thumb, then jerked it out of her mouth, not wanting to turn and confirm what she already knew. But she had to.
She turned slowly, curling her lip upward into what she hoped resembled a smile. “Liam. I thought we were meeting down the street.”
“We are,” he said. He smiled. “I just had the same idea you did, apparently.”
Today, he was dressed in a button-up shirt that was open at the collar and a pair of dark-wash jeans and a belt. His shoes were...nice. Very nice.
“You look like...well, like you’re headed to a business meeting.” She wanted to bite her tongue off for that. Because of course he was headed to a business meeting. They were having a business meeting. And, she too was dressed up. It was just that yesterday he had not been so dressed up. Which meant he was dressing up for Gage, but didn’t see the point in dressing up for her.
That was fine with her. She didn’t want him to dress up for her. She didn’t want him to do anything for her except maybe jump into the sea and float way the hell out of town.
She, of course, had simply dressed up because it was what she did. Not because of him. Never because of him.
“I could say the same about you,” he said, deadpan. “I’m just going to order a coffee. We can walk over to the building together.”
She wanted to tell him that wasn’t necessary. Actually, she wanted to hit and spit and act like she was choking so that he could fully understand her displeasure. But she wasn’t going to do that, because she was mature.
So there.
“Great,” she said, adding a sugar packet to her coffee and stirring it absently while Liam walked over to the counter. He placed his large hands flat on the surface, leaning in slightly, making rather intense eye contact with the girl behind the register as he proceeded to order.
Sabrina felt something curl in her stomach, and she continued to stir her coffee absently, tearing open another sugar packet and dumping it in without thinking.
The girl fluttered, her cheeks turning a particular shade of pink as she tucked a wayward strand of dark hair behind her ear.
Sabrina blinked, her upper lip curling without permission as she grabbed another sugar packet. She was stirring when she realized what she had done and sighed. It was too late, and now her coffee was two packets of sugar too sweet, and she was standing there acting like an idiot watching Liam flirt with a girl who had to be twenty-two.
At thirty, Sabrina did not find that amusing.
Of course, she shouldn’t care, because she shouldn’t care about anything that Liam Donnelly did. She should be more than happy to watch him flirt with another woman. He could crush somebody else’s self-esteem underneath his extremely nice shoe sole. He was not going to crush hers. Not ever again.
She deserved better than that.
She deserved...
Well, she deserved to get this tasting room up and running for her sister-in-law before Christmas. She deserved to have a lovely, cozy place to work in town where she could extol the virtues of Grassroots Wine and interact with customers, which was what she really liked to do.
Of course, that would mean not hanging out with her friend and fellow winery employee, Olivia, as much, because Olivia lived in Gold Valley and would definitely not be working the Copper Ridge tasting room. But they could still get together after work sometimes.
Her other friend, Clara, had quit working at Grassroots shortly after she had gotten engaged to her boyfriend, Alex. Which had been shortly after the bison had arrived at their ranch, and they had gotten busy with their new venture.
She was happy for her. She really was. But it meant she didn’t see her as often. But then, considering she was now the only single friend in that