Wilde Fire (Forever Wilde 3)

Grandpa raised an eyebrow at me, and I felt my face heat up. “I’m just surprised, that’s all,” I muttered. “I would have pegged her as a straight-up homophobe.”

“You should know better than to judge—”

I held up my hand to stop him. “I know. I’m sorry. Forgive me. Maybe Hobie’s gotten more open-minded since I left.”

Doc reached out to squeeze my shoulder as we approached the restaurant with a stylized pinecone logo on the front. “It definitely has, Otto. And Sheriff Walker’s been an unexpected part of that change. The sheriff we had before that was a jackass.”

“I heard,” I said as I reached out to pull the door open. I tried not to look four doors down the street toward the sheriff’s office where I knew Walker was most likely fighting sleep deprivation from his jaunt to Amarillo. Hopefully, I only needed to be patient for several more hours until I could see him again.

A female voice called out from our right, startling me. “Excuse me, are you Otto Wilde?”

I turned to see who’d called my name. The woman speed-walking toward me was an attractive blonde-haired, blue-eyed fashion plate, dressed in a starched pink blouse tucked into a trim gray pencil skirt. She had a designer handbag of some kind under her arm and a pair of sunglasses perched on top of her hair.

“Yes, ma’am,” I responded automatically. “Can I help you?”

When she got close enough for me to make out her features, I saw tight lips and flared nostrils. She was lovely but pissed. Her eyes flicked from me to my grandfathers and back again.

“May I have a word with you in private, please?”

“Sure, can I ask what this is about?” I inquired, racking my brain to figure out if I was supposed to know her. I stepped to the side and let Grandpa and Doc go ahead into the restaurant before gesturing for the woman to join me on a nearby bench.

“My husband,” she said in a clipped voice. “Seth Walker.”

My throat tightened in shock, and I simply gaped at her.

I couldn’t stop staring. She was a beautiful woman. She looked a bit like a famous actress who was in all the perfume ads. Why the hell had someone this attractive and poised settled for a sham marriage?

“You must be Jolie,” I said in a voice low enough to keep our conversation private despite it taking place in the town square.

“Yes. You’ve heard of me then?”

“Of course. I met your daughter a couple of months ago while I was riding my horse near my parents’ old house. She seems like a delightful little girl,” I said as politely as I could. My brain scrambled to fit this woman’s face into every missed moment of Walker’s life for the past ten fucking years and with each new image, a little part of me died inside.

“You’ve met Tisha?” she asked, clearly peeved by the news.

“By accident. I was trail riding on my grandfathers’ ranch when she saw my horse and called out to me,” I explained. “Seth was there. He can tell you.”

Why was I trying to reassure her I hadn’t been alone with her daughter?

Because she’s making you feel bad for talking to her child.

I clenched my mouth shut and forced myself to allow her to steer the conversation.

“How long have you and my husband been seeing each other behind my back?” she asked.

A gasp sounded from behind me, and I turned to see a petite man in a whack-a-jack outfit. Purple pleather pants with a floral button-down blouse of some kind and giant yellow-framed sunglasses. I ignored him to focus on the hellcat in front of me.

I looked from Jolie’s angry face around to make sure no one besides the strange little guy had overheard her accusation.

“We haven’t been,” I answered between tight teeth. “Until last night, I’ve been living in Dallas, and before Christmas, I was overseas in the military for years.”

“Yet you still managed to screw up my marriage?” she hissed. “How exactly did that happen?”

I couldn’t help but glance in the direction of the sheriff’s office and notice the floral-shirted man racing in the front door all aflutter. Oh shit. “I think you should talk to Walker about this,” I began. “It’s not my place to—”

“I tried to talk to Seth about this last night,” she interjected. “But then he bolted and went to shack up at your place. So now I’m asking you.”

I looked at her in surprise. “I haven’t seen Walker since he dropped me and my grandfathers off at the ranch last night before dinnertime. And I haven’t been alone with him more than about fifteen minutes in the past ten freaking years. I don’t know what your agenda is here, but it sounds like something that’s between the two of you. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”