Free And Then You Kiss (Crested Butte Cowboys Series Book 3) by Heather A Buchman

hers, but left his hands where they were. “I wanna be alone with you Blythe, so bad. But…”
    “I know. Sorry,” she breathed. “I live with my parents.”
    “I wouldn’t feel right—”
    She put her fingers over his lips. She didn’t want to hear him say anything about Renie. “It’s okay,” she whispered.
     
    She was quiet on the drive home. He held her hand in his, and ran his thumb back and forth, over her knuckles. She hummed along with the music on the radio; he doubted she knew she did it.
    She took a deep breath and rested her head against the window. He’d give anything to know what she was thinking about. Was she thinking about him, or had Tuck wormed his way back in?
    “Are you staying with Billy and Renie all week?”
    “Haven’t decided yet. Why do you ask sweet girl?” Maybe he was the reason she was so lost in thought.
    “I don’t know. Seems like a long drive back every night.”
    “Yeah? You think maybe I should get a hotel room closer to the show?”
    “I don’t know. It might be a good idea.” Then she laughed.
    “What’s funny?”
    “As long as Billy doesn’t want to share the room with you.”
    He laughed too. He wouldn’t be offering Billy bunk space. To be sure, he’d get a room with one bed in it.
    “You gonna keep me company if I do?”
    “We’ll see.”

Chapter 6
     
    Dottie and Bill, Billy’s parents, kept Willow with them so Renie could go up to the stock show with Blythe. Ben and Liv were going too, but driving separately.
    “It’s been a long time since we went to the rodeo,” Renie said on the way there.
    “A very long time. Guess we won’t be checkin’ out the cowboys the way we used to.”
    Blythe wondered if Renie had ever checked out other cowboys. From what she’d said in the last couple of months, she’d been in love with Billy Patterson long before she and Blythe went to their first rodeo.
    “What about you? Are you and Jace…you know?”
    “Are we what?”
    “Seeing each other?”
    “Yes. No. I’m not sure, to tell you the truth.”
    “Billy wondered. He asked me this morning when Jace told him he’d decided to stay in Denver the rest of the week.”
    “Well it is a long ride home every night.”
    Blythe started to giggle and Renie joined her.
    ***
    Tucker knew he was being an asshole when he up and left the dinner table on Thanksgiving. He hadn’t intended to leave necessarily. He went outside hoping to shake off the ghosts, but they wouldn’t let loose. What started out as a drive to clear his head, ended up taking him back over the pass and home. He hadn’t even taken the time to thank Ben and Liv for inviting him.
    More importantly, he hadn’t said goodbye, or anything else, to Blythe. Sitting on the beach in San Sebastian, he had little recollection of how he got back to Spain, but the memory of Blythe Cochran remained crystal clear.
    He’d been in the seaside community for a little over a month, painting. He had little to show for it in terms of the Basque landscape. Blythe, on the other hand, he could paint all day.
    When he got the email from Jace saying he was competing in the National Western, saddle broncs of all things, he figured the next thing he’d read was that he was seeing Blythe. Sure enough, the next paragraph said he hadn’t seen or talked to her since the day after Thanksgiving, but he planned to while he was in Denver.
    His gut twisted when he read it. Here he was, five thousand miles away, and he’d been the one who put himself here. Every night, he dreamt about her. When he was awake, all he had to do was close his eyes, and there she was. One ghost had been replaced by another, but this ghost he could talk to, wrap his arms around, sink his body into. And yet he wasn’t doing any of those things.
    ***
    Blythe sent a text to Lyric when she and Renie got to the show complex.
    “I can’t wait for you to meet her,” she told Renie. “She’s great, fun to talk to. She and I hit it off right