Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Ivy

M y mother always warned me never to get involved with a bull rider.

Okay, not really. But she should have. It was sound advice.

Of course, she'd never known any bull riders, but if she had she most certainly would have warned me against getting involved with one. Especially if that bull rider was Connor freaking Bennett. Not that her warnings would have mattered much. After all, I'd always had a bit of a taste for trouble.

In the back of my mind I'd known a man who had as much charm and swagger as Connor did would end up being nothing but trouble. I smelled it on him the very first time we met, but instead of seeing him for what he was—a walking, talking red flag with a great, dimpled smile and an even better ass—I played right into his hand. In my defense, he really had pulled out all the stops to win me over.

My cellphone chimed with a text, pulling me out of my head and the memory from a few nights ago when I saw that woman launch herself at him on camera and try to fish his tonsils out with her tongue. And that son of a bitch just lapped it up.

I let out a frustrated groan at having gotten lost in thoughts of that asshole again. It seemed like no matter how many mornings I woke up and told myself I was not going to think about Connor Bennett, he would somehow manage to niggle his way into my mind whenever I wasn't paying attention. The littlest thing would spark a memory, and I'd fall right back down that rabbit hole without even realizing.

I did my best to push the latest thoughts of Connor Bennett to the back of my mind, shoving them down into the deepest, darkest cobwebbed corner, and focused on the breathing exercises I learned from the meditation app my friend Holly talked me into downloading a couple weeks back. So far I wasn't very good at it. Meditating required clearing the mind and being still in the present for an extended period of time, something I had never been good at.

I could handle yoga, thanks to the lessons my mom's great aunt Silvia had started giving me back when I was still a toddler, but that was only because by the time I started getting bored in one position, we were moving on to the next one. I was an active kid. I spent most of my early years covered in dirt and mud from hours and hours spent outside. I always managed to get into something, and not much had changed since growing up.

I liked to stay busy. I tended to get bored easily, and when that happened, it usually resulted in me getting into some kind of trouble.

I was the child whose parents were always getting calls from the school because I couldn't keep my mouth shut during class. Bedtime was a nightmare for my poor mom. Unless she managed to run me ragged in the evenings, I was a little terror who would climb out of bed a million times for a million different reasons before finally passing out a good three hours after I was supposed to be asleep.

On top of being busy, I had also been a little wild. Although most of what I got up to was relatively harmless, I had driven my mom and stepdad up the wall, seeing as more than once I had been escorted home by the cops after one of my many stunts.

There was that time when I was sixteen and got caught skinny dipping in the creek that ran along old Tolliver Mill Road. A couple years later, after binging all the Fast and Furious movies, I convinced myself I would be a natural at drag racing and challenged a couple of the guys on the football team to a race. My mom had screamed at me for at least an hour about the dangers I had put myself in, but once she stormed off after burning herself out, her husband, Micah, asked if I at least won, high-fiving me when I told him I'd smoked those losers.

Then I went through a minor anarchist phase where I convinced the entire senior class to stage a walkout in protest of the dress code the district was trying to enforce that would strip everyone of their individuality and was created to make the girls feel like it was our fault if boys popped a boner and could no longer concentrate because, Lord forbid, we wore shorts or a skirt that didn't come all the way down to our knees.

I'd gotten more than my fair share of speeding and parking tickets—I was shit at parallel parking—and was busted once or twice for underage drinking. Then there was that one time a few of my friends and I tried to sneak backstage during a Civil Corruption concert and had to be carried out—literally—by burly security guards. We didn't talk about that particular incident, mainly because it made the tabloids. While I found it hilarious—I even framed the picture they ran with the article of me being carted out over some dude's shoulder in a fireman's hold—my folks did not .

My mom claimed she had to start coloring her hair years ago because I'd driven her so crazy she'd gone gray early. My stepdad was a cop with the local police department, and thanks to my shenanigans, Micah had to deal with his fair share of shit from his partner and other co-workers. Apparently, they had started placing bets on when I'd get into trouble next.

I did my best to tame a bit of that wildness as I got older, but that was easier said than done. It was like trying to breathe when there was no air or trying to stop your heart from beating. It was that side of me that was so drawn to Connor in the first place, even though I knew he was all kinds of trouble.

I tried ignoring him at first, but the man made it way too damn hard. He was always there . He went out of his way to win me over, and I got swept up in him, falling for all the pretty words and actions. What woman wouldn't fall for a man who brought her wildflowers he picked himself every day or showed up at her job to sweep her off for a picnic lunch he packed himself? We had inside jokes and shared about our lives. He'd even confessed that he feared the day when he could no longer do what he loved, and what that would mean. How he tied so much of who he was into being a bull rider that he wasn't sure how to exist outside of it. When he told me he'd never shared those concerns with anyone else, I'd felt honored.

He made me feel like I was important to him, like I was special. Then he made me feel like the world's biggest fool.

I spent months holding on to my anger with an iron grip so I would never forget. If I didn't forget I wouldn't fall for that bullshit the next time. Not that there would ever be a next time. As far as Connor Bennet went, I'd learned my lesson and I would not be making the same mistake twice.

I had hoped to never see that asshole's charming, chiseled, stupidly perfect face ever again. Unfortunately, the bastard was tight with Zach Paulson, the son of the family I worked for and the soon-to-be husband of one of my closest friends. Escaping him completely wasn't an option, unless I wanted to quit my job and ghost Rae, two things I would never do. I adored Rae, the former big city celebutant-turned-rancher's-fiancée. She was one of my favorite people, and had taken to the slower pace of ranching life like she was born for it. She'd traded in her stilettos for boots and her designer dresses for jeans. If you looked at her now, you would never guess she'd once been a part of the LA party scene.

As for my career, working as the hospitality manager for Second Hope Lodge, the rustic yet swanky resort-style hotel that was a part of Safe Haven Ranch, was my dream job. I wasn't going to let anyone run me out.

Normally, Connor only popped up once in a blue moon whenever a rodeo brought him out this way. He was usually too busy getting his ass thrown off the backs of angry bulls and screwing his way through every buckle bunny on the circuit to make regular trips, but with Zach and Rae's wedding just around the corner, I was going to be forced to see him sooner than I'd hoped.

I had been trying my best to prepare myself for the inevitable. My plan was to fake it, to smile and laugh and act like I didn't hate the very ground that asshole walked on. After all, what was a few days of pretending if it meant making sure my friends had the wedding of their dreams?

I could totally do it. And if not, my Plan B was to act like I didn't recognize him.

There was also the tiny fact that I didn't want him to know I was still angry and hurt that I woke up to find the man I slept with only hours earlier had taken off in the middle of the night. That kind of burn stayed with a person, singeing their ego until there was little left. It wasn't just the sting of his rejection, but also the humiliation that came with how he left. The man made me believe there was something big happening between us, then he bounced, leaving behind nothing more than a one-word note that he'd scribbled on the back of a crumpled receipt he had probably found stuffed in his pocket.

Thanks .

That was it.

That was all he'd said.

He'd worked for months to get into my pants, practically the entire time he was on the ranch, supposedly resting his injured knee, and when I finally let him take me to bed, thinking all the shit he'd spewed had been genuine, that was all he'd left me with. Thanks . Talk about a slap in the face.

There hadn't been a single phone call or text. I would have accepted a smoke signal or homing pigeon, for Christ's sake. But there was nothing. I had been well and truly ghosted.

The thing was, I didn't start out with any expectations. If he'd told me from the beginning that it was just sex, I would have been fine with that. It wasn't like I had visions of white picket fences and two point five kids dancing in my head, and the man was the living example of sex in a pair of cowboy boots and faded jeans. When he pulled off that baseball cap he favored and twisted it backward, my stomach never failed to erupt with butterflies. But he pulled out all the stops to make me believe it was so much more than that. The things he said, the things he did...

He made me feel like I was the only woman that existed for him. He not only accepted that wild streak of mine, but he seemed to actually enjoy it—doing what he could to coax it out of me. I'd never felt so wanted, so craved and desired, in all my life, not to mention the sex.

God , the sex.

I wish I could say it was bad, or even just average. I would have gladly settled for the kind of bang that was good enough to get the job done in the moment but eventually faded from a person's mind. Unfortunately, I hadn't been that lucky. That son of a bitch seriously knew what he was doing. Not that I should have been surprised, given his track record. Apparently Connor had a reputation throughout the rodeo circuit. He'd been dubbed the playboy bull-riding bachelor. But I let myself forget about the stories I'd heard and the things I'd seen on the internet.

I'd convinced myself that the cockiness and charisma were a part he played for the cameras, that the real man behind the swagger and charm was so much deeper and softer and more caring. I felt like I had been given the gift of seeing the real him.

I was wrong.

But none of that mattered anymore. What I thought we had was over. If he hadn't made that perfectly clear with his scribbled thanks , that lip-lock on camera the other night certainly did it. I was back to living my own life, reminding myself every few hours when he popped into my head against my will, I wasn't supposed to be thinking about him any longer.

Grabbing my phone from where it rested on my desk, I swiped the screen to read the message that had just come through.

Rae : Don't forget about tonight. Ladies' night at the Tap Room. And no excuses that you're too busy!

I let out a low chuckle and shook my head, quickly typing out a response that I hadn't forgotten and I'd be there.

After all, ladies' night was just what I needed to get my mind off the man who didn't deserve a second thought.