Wild Cowboy Nights (Foolproof Love 1-3)

Wait. Jules patted her pockets. Oh, crap. Her phone. She didn’t have it. Aubry must have been going crazy imagining all the ways Jules might have been killed when she didn’t come home. Hopefully she’d assume she spent the night with Adam.

She was definitely going to hear about this when she got back to the apartment.

He held the door open for her. “Happens to the best of us.”

Maybe. But it never happened with her—mostly because even if she got particularly drunk, her bed was only a handful of steps away. I’m never drinking in public again. Her stomach made a truly embarrassing sound and she glared at it. “Shut up.”

“You want to get some breakfast?” He started the truck, heading back toward the main road. “You’ll feel better if you eat.”

That was debatable. Right now, all she wanted was to crawl into a hole and never surface again. “Are you sure you want to be seen with me?”

He laughed. “Aw, sugar. You might have been a little bit of a shit show last night, but trust me—I’ve seen worse. I’ve been worse.”

That was strangely comforting. “I should know better. I’m not twenty-one. Four shots in half an hour is more than enough to make me act a fool.” She crossed her arms over her chest and slumped down. “I hate that he makes me so crazy. That they all make me so crazy. Everyone thinks that I’ve accomplished all I’m going to in life—that I had my chance at greatness and Grant and blew it—and they’ve written me off as a result.” She should be past it by now, shouldn’t she? But Grant showing back up in town was like rubbing salt in her wound. Every time she turned around, someone was giving her considering looks like they should be asking her if she was really okay. She’d walk to hell and back before her pinnacle in life was dating that man.

That said, the whole situation wasn’t all bad.

There had been Adam, after all. Fake boyfriend or not, spending time with him wasn’t exactly a hardship. Assuming he’s not going to drop me off on my front doorstep and hightail it out of town as far and fast as this rig can take him. “I don’t suppose you still want to have sex with me?”

“Sugar, come here.”

She slid across the seat and yelped when he grabbed her hand and pressed it against the front of his jeans. His length met her touch, hard enough to make her bite her lip. Adam’s eyes were dark as he looked into hers. “I’m always ready for you. If you think for a second getting a little drunk and trying to fight your ex is enough to make me change my mind about wanting you, you’ve got another think coming.”

“Oh.”

“All the words in the world and that’s the one you respond with.”

She could do better. Really, she could. Jules swallowed hard. “I’m glad. I like having sex with you.”

Adam threw back his head and let loose a laugh that resonated with something in her chest. “Damn, sugar. You’re something else—and before you go overthinking things, I mean that as a compliment.”

Considering every other time someone had said something of that nature, they hadn’t meant it as anything positive, she wasn’t used to being complimented. “You are a strange, strange man, Adam Meyer.”

“It’s been said before.” He turned onto the highway, heading away from Devil’s Falls. There were a grand total of four towns within easy drivable distance, and the only one in this direction was Pecos, so they had a good thirty minutes before they got to wherever he was headed.

She settled against him. “I know this is like two weeks late, but you really aren’t what I expected.”

“Oh, yeah?”

She ignored the tight way he spoke. “You’re such a…well, a good guy. From the way some of the locals talk about the legendary Adam Meyer, I expected a hell-raiser.” People still talked about the time he started a brawl after the Devils’ rivals beat them in the division championships. Yeah, he’d been all of seventeen at the time, but he’d gone on to be a freaking bull rider. Every rodeo cowboy she’d met over the years was a hard-core adrenaline junkie. Adam just seemed so…well, not chill exactly, but not like a junkie jonesing for his next hit. He was intense and sometimes he moved around a room like the walls were closing in, but he wasn’t anything like she’d imagined.

And that wasn’t even getting into the sex and how out-of-this-world good it’d been.

He still didn’t say anything, so she just kept talking. “Do you like bull riding?”

“I love it.” His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Those few seconds are the only time everything around me becomes crystal clear and quiet. I feel fucking invincible.”