Solid Gold Cowboy by Maisey Yates (books to read for teens TXT) 📕

Their friendship was a strange one. He could honestly say that he had never been friends with women. Not really. Women liked him. He had absolutely no trouble getting play when he wanted it. He owned a bar, after all. He saw the women who ended up not leaving with the person they wanted to. The women who came to hook up, but didn’t find any they were interested in, except him.

As a blanket policy, he never went home with a woman who had had more than two drinks. Because he was a gentleman like that. And hell, he wanted a woman to know who she was with. And he wanted her to enjoy it. And the fact that he wanted desperately for Jordan to want to be that woman... Well, that was something that stuck in his craw more than he would like to admit. He didn’t do unrequited longing. And hadn’t before he met her.

She’d come in about once a week at first. And in that time he’d managed to collect more and more information on her.

He could still remember the first time she’d mentioned Dylan. Dylan, the eternal boyfriend, who had then become an eternal fiancé. Who had then been intended to be a husband. But was not, it turned out.

“I’ve been with him forever.”

“Is that why you’re still with him?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Weird question.”

“No it isn’t. We get in habits.”

“He’s a person, not a habit.”

He shrugged. “Just checking.”

“Well, no he’s not. He’s amazing. And he liked me when I was the sad girl in high school with no coat and shoes that were too small. And do you know how many people liked me or tried to know me back then? Approximately no one, that’s how many.”

“All right. Fair. But I bet a whole lot more people like you now.”

“I got busy.”

“You got busy. Great.”

“Are you going to castigate me for declining to come to the wedding that you clearly didn’t have, or are you going to actually tell me what the hell happened?”

“There’s no point talking about it,” she said, wading deeper into the bar, kicking the tulle and lace of her dress out of the way. It did something weird to his heart. Made it get tight. Also made it feel too big for his chest all at once.

It was hell. He didn’t like it.

He hadn’t imagined her in such a fussy wedding dress. Jordan was... The thing about Jordan was she wasn’t actually sullen. She was reserved. She took a while to get to know, but he knew her. And he had a feeling it was her almost-mother-in-law’s fault she was in such a fluffy dress.

I’m not the person that my mother-in-law... My future mother-in-law would’ve chosen for her son. She told me that. I had a lot of changing to do to be...remotely acceptable. Trailer trash and all that.”

“She called you that?”

“Oh, not in so many words. She’s a good churchgoing woman, she would never say it. But she thinks it. I know she does. She was so generous to me, and she gave me a place to stay when I needed one, but it has always come with strings.”

He could remember every conversation they’d had at this bar. For someone who talked to hundreds of people every week, it was telling when he could have a conversation with one person and know it was important.

He’d made good friends with West Caldwell. The guy was an ex-convict from Texas, wrongfully accused of a crime he didn’t commit, who had married the town police chief. There was just something about the guy, easy to get to know, easy to talk to, as well as not talk to. But, he had never once been tempted to kiss West. There were several reasons for that. But it was just one of the many ways that Jordan herself was unique.

Their connection had stuck. That conversation had stuck. And it had bloomed into a friendship. One that took place between the end of his shift and the beginning of hers. That was another thing about Jordan. She often wandered the streets of Gold Valley from 2:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m., captive to her insomnia, which had become the foundation for their relationship. And he had just... Well, he’d forgone a lot of sleep and a lot of sex for the privilege of talking with her.

“There’s no point talking about it, and yet you’re here. In the place where we talk about it. All of it. So you might as well go.”

“I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. I got to the day, and I couldn’t do it. And I owe them everything.”

He knew what she meant. She didn’t just mean Dylan. She meant his whole family. Jordan had been kicked out by her parents when she was sixteen, and it was her boyfriend’s family who had taken her in. He knew that her connection with them was complicated, and went far beyond a simple romantic entanglement with one person. She was enmeshed in the entire family. And she spoke about it in terms of affection and irritation in pretty equal turns. But one thing was certain—always certain—she loved his family. She loved him too, though less often doubted that she loved him the way that a woman should love a man. She carried a lot of affection and obligation for him.

He wasn’t actually an asshole. It was just that Laz didn’t think he was right for Jordan.

And you think you are?

For all his speeches on love, he’d never been in love himself.

He’d been married to this bar for more years than he could count. After moving to Gold Valley to care for his grandmother and work on her ranch, he’d set new goals for himself. And those goals had included buying a piece of the main street of the town that he had come to love so much.

So he’d done that. But along the way... Along the way he hadn’t done the whole