Free Lonesome Cowboy (Honky Tonk Hearts) by Stacy Dawn

broom, dropping his chin on his knuckles. He opened his mouth to speak, but settled for a heavy sigh against his friend’s knowing stare.
    She tucked the heavy blonde hair behind her ear and leaned back against a table. “Love’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
    Narrowing his eyes, he took in her slouched shoulders and thin finger rimming the brim of the cup. “You hooked up with him again, didn’t you?”
    “No.”
    But the brush of a phantom hair from her cheek was her tell, and he knew it. This time the sigh was for her. “Josh’s a jerk, Keira.”
    Her gaze darted to the kitchen door and then back, her voice a harsh whisper. “Hey, we’re not talking about me —it’s you who needs to get his head out of his ass and see what’s right in front of you.”
    He leaned in and matched her low volume. “Seriously? This coming from you? The woman who’s hung up on a jerk who hooks up for a bit of tail, and then heads to the next rodeo before the bed is cold.”
    “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She pushed off the table and came right up to his face. “But yeah, maybe Josh isn’t Mr. Perfect, but at least he admits he wants me. More than your sorry ass has done. I don’t blame Amy for—”
    Marshall raised his hand between them in an attempt to stop her momentum before it took them both somewhere they didn’t want to go. After a few more seconds of heated stare-off, he dropped it.
    “I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight with you, Keira.” He was so damn tired of fighting—mostly with himself. It was like he was split in two and didn’t know how to pull himself back together again. Worse, he hated to admit out loud, “You’re right, okay? Happy now?”
    She collected herself with a purse of her lips and eyed him up and down before letting out a heavy breath of her own. “No, I’m not.” Leaning back against the tabletop, she tilted a smile his way. “We’re really a pair, aren’t we?”
    He chuckled and reached out a hand to chuck gently at her chin. “Yeah. Lonesome’s finest.”
    “So, what are you gonna do about her?”
    Marshall shook his head. Having been burned to ashes, he didn’t know if he had it in him to risk even going near that flame again. “God knows I’ve thought about it until my head hurts.” Not to mention his heart. “But, honestly, I haven’t the slightest idea.”
    “Maybe you’re thinking too hard. You know what Dad always says”—she twisted the end of an imaginary mustache—“‘Thinking can put more walls around a heart than cement.’”

Chapter Nine
    Marshall rubbed gingerly at his thigh again; there’d be a bruise there the size of Texas by morning. He returned his hand to the steering wheel and turned the truck off Main Street and onto Route 66 out of Redemption.
    If he didn’t get his head on straight, he’d get more than a hoof in the thigh next time. Even Chase had chewed him out for not having his head in the game. Guilt tipped his lips down; his buddy trusted him to ride the bulls for assessment, paid him for his expertise, and here he was acting like a greenhorn on his first circuit ride.
    He needed to get Amy out of his head.
    Focusing his attention back to the road before he ended up in a ditch, he slowed down when he noticed a car on the side of the road outside the old Johansson place. He grimaced at the For Sale sign in the front yard near the road. The Victorian Bed and Breakfast had been a booming little business in its day.
    What a waste.
    Marshall pulled up behind the blue Camry and jammed the gear shift into park. He grabbed his cell phone from the cubby in the dash and slid it into his pocket as he exited. The heat of the afternoon was bad enough in an air-conditioned vehicle, he didn’t want to imagine what it would be like for someone stuck on the side of the road for hours.
    The low rumble of an idling engine told him there wasn’t anything wrong with the car, and there was no appearance of a cell phone being held to the