Rode Hard, Put Up Wet: Cowboy Romance (Rebels & Outlaws 2)

Which means that she's got to put up with whatever he's got on Philip, too. Deep breath. Nothing to worry about. She's going to worry either way, because if she doesn't, then she can get run over.

That's how it is for a woman in business, and like all women in business—like Andrea Neill, who called her just to make sure that she hadn't forgotten the lesson—she was going to have to be proactive.

Proactive enough to react to problems before they can even become problems, and at the same time, keep it in her pocket as long as she can.

Not prepared enough and you're weak and waifish. Too prepared, and you're a cast-iron bitch.

Which is she going to be? She doesn't know. All she knows is, she wants what she wants, and she doesn't want to get herself—or Philip—hurt if she can avoid it.

Everything else is secondary.

Chapter Forty-One

If he wants to sit and talk, if he wants to spend some time chatting with them, then Phil Callahan isn't going to argue. It's worth twenty grand. It's worth five. It's even worth it, he thinks in spite of himself, if he's going to get boxed out of the conversation a little.

After all, some people are more talkative than he is. He's never been much of a talker. He's always been the sort of guy who is either doing something or waiting to do something. Not the type to do a whole hell of a lot of talking about it.

But if he's going to sit here and watch Glen damn Brand flirt with Morgan Lowe—a frog catches in his throat, a feeling he doesn't want to begin to unpack. All he knows for sure is, he's not interested in seeing it continue.

Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, it's easy to feel as if Glen is a big guy. He is. His shoulders are as broad as a barn, even as his hips are fairly narrow and tight. He looks like the kind of guy who pulls up his shirt sometimes when he's working out just so you catch an accidental peek at his abs.

There's the difference between the two of them, though, too. Glen looks like he's got a body that he put together in the gym. Philip's got a body that grew out of the work he did. It takes a real force of will to recall that he's not a small man himself.

"What you doin' here, anyways, Glen?"

"I was just on my way to sittin' down, and I saw my good friend Mr. Callahan."

"Good friend?" his molars push against each other. "You're my good friend, now?"

"Well, sure."

"Then go on, get out of here. I'm here with the lady."

He hadn't really expected to feel quite this jealous, when Glen walked up. He hadn't known how the conversation would go, for one thing. But for another, there was certainly something more to it than that. A feeling like he was more possessive towards Morgan than he'd realized.

What had this thing between them become, in the time since he'd last seriously considered it?

Lovers? Sure. But the way that the radio makes it sound, the way the news on the internet talks about it, that's how kids are these days. Twenty-year-olds who think that a hug and a kiss is more intimate than slipping it to a girl.

Maybe these days lovers didn't mean a thing to other people. Maybe he should see it that way, too. Maybe it was just something they did because it was fun and because they could. Because nobody was going to stop them.

But that wasn't how he felt. That wasn't how he thought about it, regardless of what he should be thinking and should be feeling.

They were lovers, sure. But did that mean that he was in love with her? And if he was…

"Get on out of here." Callahan's voice sounds dangerous and carries an edge, even to his own ears.

"I'm not going to do that," Glen says.

"I don't want to take this outside," Philip says. He doesn't add that he will if he has to.

"Then don't."

Philip steals a glance over at Morgan. What does she think of all this? Is she going to be furious with him for pushing this?

"You ought to go, Mr. Brand." Her voice should be the one driving reason. The one that makes everything sound copacetic. Instead, she sounds firm. Which, as it happens, he realizes is so very much like her.

She's never been the voice of reason. She's always been right there, fighting, too.