Want Me, Cowboy

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He had been hard. Right there between her legs, he had been turned on.

But then, he was a man, and there were a great many men who could get hard for blowup dolls. So. It wasn’t like it was that amazing.

Except, something about it felt kind of amazing.

She closed her eyes. Isaiah. He was... He was absolutely everything to her.

She could marry him. She could keep another woman from marrying him.

Great. And then you can be married to somebody who doesn’t love you at all. Who sees you as a convenience.

She laughed aloud at that thought. Yes. Some of that sounded terrible. But... She had spent most of her life in foster care. She had lived with a whole lot of people who didn’t love her. And some of them had found her to be inconvenient. So that would put marrying Isaiah several steps above some of the living situations she’d had as a kid.

Then there was Rosalind. Tall, blond Rosalind who was very clearly Isaiah’s type. While Poppy was...not.

How would she ever...cope with that? With the inevitable comparisons?

He hates her. He doesn’t hate you.

Well. That was true. Rosalind had always gone after what she wanted. She had devastated Isaiah in the process. So much so that it had even hurt Poppy at the time. Because as much as she wanted to be with Isaiah, she didn’t want him to be hurt.

And then, Rosalind had gone on to her billionaire. The man she was still with. She traveled around the world and hosted dinner parties and did all these things that had been beyond their wildest fantasies when they were growing up.

Rosalind wasn’t afraid of taking something just for herself. And she didn’t worry at all about someone else’s feelings.

Sometimes, that was a negative. But right about now... Poppy was tempted—more than a little bit tempted—to be like Rosalind.

To go after her fantasy and damn the feelings and the consequences. She could have him. As her husband. She could have him...kissing her. She could have him naked.

She could be his.

She had been his friend and his assistant for ten years. But she’d never been his in the way she wanted to be.

He’d been her friend and her boss.

He’d never been hers.

Had anyone ever been hers?

Rosalind certainly cared about Poppy, in her own way. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have bailed Poppy out when she was in need. But Rosalind’s life was very much about her. She and Poppy kept in touch, but that communication was largely driven by Poppy.

That was...it for her as far as family went. Except for the Graysons.

And if she married Isaiah...they really would be her family.

There was a firm, steady knock on her door. Three times. She knew exactly who it was.

It was like thinking about him had conjured him up.

She wasn’t sure she was ready to face him.

She looked down. She was wearing a T-shirt and no bra. She was definitely not ready to face him. Still, she got up off the couch and padded over to the door. Because she couldn’t not...

She couldn’t not see him. Not right now. Not when all her thoughts and feelings were jumbled up like this. Maybe she would look at him and get a clear answer. Maybe she would look at him and think, No, I still need to quit.

Or maybe...

She knew she was tempting herself. Tempting him.

She hoped she was tempting him.

She scowled and grabbed hold of her blanket, wrapping it tightly around her shoulders before she made her way to the door. She wrenched it open. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to talk sense into you.”

“You can’t,” she said, knowing she sounded like a bratty kid and not caring at all.

“Why not?”

“Because I am an insensible female.” She whirled around and walked back into her small kitchen, and Isaiah followed her, closing the front door behind him.

She turned to face him again, and her heart caught in her throat. He was gorgeous. Those cold, clear gray eyes, his sculpted cheekbones, the beard that made him more approachable. Because without it, she had a feeling he would be too pretty. And his lips...

She had kissed those lips.

He was just staring at her.

“I’m emotional.”

He said nothing to that.

“I might actually throw myself onto the ground at any moment in a serious display of said emotion, and you won’t like it at all. So you should probably leave.”

Those gray eyes were level with hers, sparking heat within her, stoking a deep ache of desire inside her stomach.

“Reconsider.” His voice was low and enticing, and made her want to agree to whatever commandment he issued.

“Quitting or marrying you?” She took a step back from him. She couldn’t be trusted to be too close to him. Couldn’t be trusted to keep her hands to herself. To keep from flinging herself at him—either to beat him or kiss him she didn’t know.

“Both. Either.”

Just when she thought he couldn’t make it worse.

“That’s not exactly the world’s most compelling proposal.”

“I already know that my proposal wasn’t all that compelling. You made it clear.”

“I mean, I’ve heard of bosses offering to give a raise to keep an employee from leaving. But offering marriage...”

“That’s not the only reason I asked you to marry me,” he said.

She made a scoffing sound. “You could’ve fooled me.”

“I’m not trying to fool you,” he said.

Her heart twisted. This was one of the things she liked about Isaiah. It was tempting to focus on his rather grumpy exterior, and when she did that, the question of why she loved him became a lot more muddled. Because he was hot? A lot of men were hot. That wasn’t it. There was something incredibly endearing about the fact that he said what he meant. He didn’t play games. It simply wasn’t in him. He was a man who didn’t manipulate. And that made her accusation from earlier feel...wrong.

Manipulation wasn’t really the right way to look at it. But he was used to being in charge. Unquestioned.

And he would do whatever he needed to do to get his way, that much she knew.

“Did you take the kiss as far as you did because you wanted to prove something to me?”

“No,” he said. “I kissed you to try and prove something to me. Because you’re right. If we were going to get married, then an attraction would have to be there.”

“Yes,” she said, her throat dry.

“I can honestly say that I never thought about you that way.”

She felt like she’d just been stabbed through the chest with a kitchen knife. “Right,” she said, instead of letting out the groan of pain that she was tempted to issue.

“We definitely have chemistry,” he said. “I was genuinely caught off guard by it. I assume it was the same for you.”

She blinked. He really had no idea? Did he really not know that her response to him wasn’t sudden or random?

No. She could see that he didn’t.

Isaiah often seemed insensitive because he simply didn’t bother to blunt his statements to make them palatable for other people. Because he either didn’t understand or care what people found offensive. Which meant, if backed into a corner about whether or not he had been using the kiss against her, he would have told her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Now he looked genuinely confused. “You’re apologizing to me. Why?”

“I’m apologizing to you because I assumed the worst about you. And that wasn’t fair. You’re not underhanded. You’re not always sweet or cuddly or sensitive. But you’re not underhanded.”

“You like me,” he pointed out.

He looked smug about that.

“Obviously. I wouldn’t have put up with you for the past ten years. Good paying job or not. But then, I assume you like me too. At least to a degree.”

“We’re a smart match,” he said. “I don’t think you can deny that.”

“Just a few hours ago you were thinking that one of those bottle blondes was your smart match. You can see why I’m not exactly thrilled by your sudden proposal to me.”

“Are you in love with someone else?”

The idea was laughable. She hadn’t even been on a date in...

She wasn’t counting. It was too depressing.

“No,” she said, her throat tightening. “But is it so wrong to want the possibility of love?”

“I think love is good for the right kind of people. Though my observation is that people mostly settle into a partnership anyway. The healthiest marriage is a partnership.”

“Love is also kind of a thing.”