Her Cowboy Groom

He lifted an eyebrow. “Trying to get me out of my clothes?”

She rolled her eyes, and that’s when he saw that her eyes were red as though she’d been crying again. He didn’t know what had happened, but he didn’t like seeing her so upset. He dated around, yeah, but he tried not to make any woman cry.

“Don’t be such a twit,” she said as she ushered him out of the kitchen. “Just dump those muddy things in there, and then I’ll turn my back as you head through the house.”

He turned around and retraced his steps. “Getting bossed around by a woman. It’s like Chloe never left.”

“I suppose if I wasn’t here, you’d just track mud through the house like an animal.”

He unzipped his jeans and shoved them down his legs. “No, I’d strip like I’m doing now and walk through the house stark naked.”

“Oh.”

He laughed a little at her startled reaction. When he was down to his boxers, he headed for the kitchen. “Hide your eyes.”

“The coast is clear.”

When he stepped into the kitchen, he smiled at how rigidly she stood with her back to him. “No peeking.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t want to burn my corneas.”

“I’m that hot, huh?”

“Oh, good grief. Will you just get out of here?”

This time, he chuckled where she could hear him before heading to the bathroom.

* * *

LINNEA DIDN’T DARE turn around until she heard the water in the shower start running. She relaxed and headed for the mudroom, wondering why Owen’s teasing had unnerved her so much. He’d always been a flirt, but he and Garrett had been more like brothers to her than anything else. They were actually the closest thing she’d ever had to brothers. But when she’d listened as he dropped his filthy clothes on the floor and walked into the kitchen behind her, she’d had to fight the urge to peek.

She shook her head, chalking it up to how mixed up she’d felt since Danielle Benson dropped her information bomb right in the middle of Linnea’s life.

When she picked up the dirty jeans and shirt, they felt as if they had ten pounds of mud caked onto them. What did he do, mud-wrestle a cow? She added the once white socks to the pile and was strangely grateful not to find a pair of underwear. At least she hadn’t been standing in the same room with her best friend’s buck-naked brother.

Unless he went commando.

Oh, good grief, why had that image popped into her head? She didn’t need to think about whether or not Owen Brody wore underwear every time she looked at him.

She took the clothes into the laundry room and washed some of the mud out in the utility sink, thinking the whole time that perhaps she needed to shove her head under the cold stream of water, too.

She waited until she heard the shower turn off before starting the washing machine, then returned to the kitchen. A few minutes later, Owen walked back into the kitchen, this time clean and fully clothed. His dark hair was still wet, and something about that look caused a funny little flutter inside her.

She turned her gaze back to the countertop in front of her, wishing she could speed time up until she felt normal again, when her heart didn’t feel as if it’d been stomped and when she wasn’t having strange thoughts about Owen, whom she’d known since he was fourteen. Granted, he was twice that now, had grown into a man’s body, but she still shouldn’t even notice things like that. Especially when she’d been about to marry another man she’d loved very much. Probably part of her did still love Michael even if she hated him, too. You weren’t supposed to be able to just turn love off and on like a light switch, right?

She mentally shook her head. This was probably just some sort of coping mechanism, her subconscious trying to find someone to make her feel good in the aftermath of being so horribly wronged by the man who had claimed he loved her.

“What are you doing?” Owen’s voice pulled her from her rambling self-diagnosis.

“Cooking dinner.”

“You don’t have to do that. The chili wasn’t that bad, was it?”

“No, it was fine. I just...needed something to do.”

Owen leaned a hip against the opposite end of the counter. “You okay?”

He sounded hesitant, as though he wasn’t used to asking people about their feelings. He was a guy. Of course he wasn’t making a habit of in-depth conversations about feelings.

“Fine. Just wanted something to occupy my mind.” She was saved from having to explain any further when Garrett walked in.

“It smells great in here. Hasn’t smelled this good since Chloe left.”

Linnea shifted her gaze to Owen and Chloe’s big brother. “I doubt that. I had a bowl of the chili. It was actually quite tasty.”

“Why, thank you,” Owen said, drawing her gaze back to him.

“You made the chili?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t sound so surprised. I’m good at more than riding a horse.”

“That’s not what I hear from the girls you’ve dated,” Garrett said.

Owen slugged his brother in the arm. “Since when do you even talk to girls? You have longer conversations with the cattle.”

Linnea managed to smile at the same brotherly poking at each other that she’d witnessed from the moment she’d met Chloe’s family. It was a small comfort that some things didn’t change. But then, some things did.

She tore her gaze away, ostensibly to refocus on the food preparation. But it was really to blink new tears into submission. She was so sick of crying, of how it made her feel even worse. She wanted to be the person again who could laugh at Owen and Garrett’s antics, who could move through her day without feeling as though her emotions were riding a seesaw.

When she heard Chloe and Wyatt arrive, followed shortly thereafter by Chloe’s dad, she forcibly shoved away her sadness. There was time enough later for it to leak out when she was alone.

Chloe came over and gave her a one-armed hug. “You shouldn’t have done this,” she said so no one else could hear her.

“I needed to. A gal can only cry so much before she feels like her head is going to pop off.” Not that she didn’t expect more tears to visit her later that night, or in the days ahead, no matter that she wanted to be done with them.

“Okay, then. What can I do to help?”

“Start pouring drinks.”

A few minutes later, they all sat down to the dinner she’d prepared, lasagna with salads and garlic bread.

“This is great, Lin,” Chloe said.

“Yeah, way better than when Wyatt tried to cook for us when he was staying here,” Owen added.

“Oh, the frozen chicken episode,” Linnea said as she glanced across the table at Wyatt. “Heard all about that.”

Wyatt shook his head. “Y’all are never going to let me live that down, are you?”