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

"That black horse. The one you saw the boys riding. Need to get it sold. Simple as that."

"That seems like an awful lot of complication for a sale."

"Horse is a little older than anyone would like. I made a deal, and he says he'll meet my price, but I owe him a favor. He wants to have dinner with me, fine. I don't like it, but fine."

"Ah." So that was it. For a moment, she'd almost grown concerned that he had made a very different deal altogether. One that was somewhat more disturbing. The thought won't leave her head, though. What if he had? What if she was some sort of sacrificial… something or other? And he'd just gotten cold feet?

"Sorry you had to get involved in it."

No kidding.

What was she even doing here? What was she thinking, trying to… what, get some kind of relationship going?

The thought that she ought to have known better had run through her head more times than she could count, the past couple of days. The thought that

maybe she should have realized what this always was, from the very beginning.

It was a business deal. That business arrangement went too far the minute that her clothes had come off. If he was just some guy, someone she'd met and never wanted to do any business with, and never planned on doing any again, then that would be something different.

But that wasn't the case. She was here to work, and she knew him because she wanted to work through a deal with him. She wanted something of his, and so she'd decided, what…

She'd decided to pay for it with her body? To grease the wheels a little? And now she was getting funny ideas about it.

Well, that was how it always was with women in business, wasn't it? They let their feelings get in the way of making smart decisions. Men don't have that problem, and when they do have that problem, they can excuse it.

They can just wave their hands and the problem goes away. Not for her, though. Not for her and not for other women like her. She should have been more careful, should have known what she was getting herself into and she should have known to avoid it.

But she hadn't. Instead, she'd just gotten herself involved further, just made decisions that would ultimately hurt her more in the long run.

And now, just like she should have known it would, it was biting her in the ass. He was using their relationship as some sort of strange bargaining chip.

Or maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was being completely honest. After all, he seemed to believe that his answers were all completely believable. He'd picked his fork back up and went back about eating, as if there was nothing more to discuss.

But if he hadn't told her the truth, if there was still plenty left to discuss, what would the difference be?

None at all. She'd be getting the same answer, he'd be trying to play it off as if it meant nothing. But she knew the truth. It didn't mean nothing. It meant something, and what it meant, in the long run, was that she was the idiot who believed that it was going to turn into something real.

She was the one who shouldn't have been such a God damned fool. She'd sign away the check on his property, she'd transfer deeds, and then she'd figure out a way to forget any of this had ever happened.

She was an idiot and a fool. If she should have learned anything from the call Andrea made to her, at five in the fucking morning, she should have learned that you don't get to be a big success, not on the level of Andrea Neill, not as a woman, and get to have feelings.

You have to put those away, because if you let yourself have some kind of weakness, any kind of weakness, then other people will just exploit it.

She wasn't going to give up Lowe. There was no way that would happen, not in a thousand years. Not after all the work she'd done, not after all the time she'd spent. She wasn't going to let herself be put into that position, forced into that box.

Whatever she was supposed to do about her feelings, how she was supposed to turn them off like that… that would come later. She'd have to learn it, over the years.

But she would have good practice coming up soon. Because there was one thing that was repeating through her head, over and over, and that was that she couldn't afford to have any weaknesses. She couldn't afford to have people with something to hold over her head.

Nobody could pose any threat to her, because with the way that women were treated in her business, they'd take even the slightest sign of weakness as proof that you were a pushover.

And if there was one person who posed a threat, one person who presented a chink in her armor, one person who got too close and she had to close off, that person was Philip Callahan.

It was going to hurt, but she'd tear it off like ripping a band-aid.

Because Philip Callahan had to go.

Chapter Forty-Three