Good Enough (Meet Me in Montana #3) - Kelly Elliott Page 0,33

let it fade away. “Is that so? Did she bring me up, or did you?”

I gave him a quizzical look. “Um, I believe Lindsey brought you up after Kaylee mentioned how we danced a few times. She was teasing me about it.”

He rolled his eyes and cursed under his breath.

My stomach felt slightly ill as I asked a question I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know. “Is something going on between the two of you?”

Tanner let out a sarcastic laugh. “No. Not at all. Lindsey Johnson is…how do I put this so I don’t sound like an asshole?”

“How about the simple truth,” I said as I followed Tanner over to a large rock. He sat on it, and I did the same. Our bodies weren’t touching, but the feel of heat between us was noticeable, at least it was for me.

“Okay, the truth it is, then. Lindsey was a fuck buddy of mine.”

My eyes went wide at his blunt words. I knew something was going on with how Lindsey acted when Kaylee briefly mentioned Tanner, but I honestly thought it was just a crush or something.

“She’s the girl I used to call when I needed a date to an industry function and didn’t want to have to deal with someone thinking I liked them more than I did.” He cleared his throat, looking down. “She’s the person I called when I wanted to hook up with someone.”

“And you don’t think that made her see herself as something more to you in her eyes?”

He shook his head and gave me a bemused look. “Why would she? You heard how she described me. She knew there was nothing and would never be anything between us. I was always up front with her on that. I liked her, but we were never anything more than friends with benefits. She’s shallow and trust me when I say she enjoyed bragging to everyone about our hook-ups.”

“You said she was a hook-up. When did it stop?”

“A while ago.”

Tanner looked out over the countryside, and before long his brows drew in and he almost looked annoyed. “Shit.” He scrubbed his hand over his face and cursed under his breath. “Maybe she did think there was something more. Last year my folks had an anniversary dinner. I asked Lindsey to go with me because, well, I needed a date.”

I nodded.

“After the party she wanted me to come to her place for a drink. I declined.”

“Why?”

Tanner turned and looked directly into my eyes. “I wasn’t in the mood for a mindless fuck that night. So I said no. She got pissed off and said something about getting tired of being used by me and that she wanted more. I had no idea what she meant, but all I had to hear was that she thought I was using her. I stopped calling her after that. I thought we had an understanding. I would have never intentionally led her on.”

“Ahh, so now you’re putting two and two together and realizing that Ms. Johnson wanted more, as in a relationship more.”

His eyes were still locked with mine. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Well, she didn’t say anything bad about you, so I’m sure she’s not going around spreading nasty rumors.”

When he didn’t answer me, I smiled and asked, “Are you upset she was talking about you at all?”

That seemed to break the weird spell he was under. “No, it was true at the time. Well, most of it.”

I raised a brow. “It’s no longer true?”

“I’m not sure,” Tanner said as he turned and stared off in the distance once more.

A part of me wanted to ask him what he wasn’t sure of and what hadn’t been true, but before I could, he stood and reached down to help me up. “We need to head on down and to the cabin. We should reach it about the same time as the guys.”

I let him help me up and tried to ignore the dip in my stomach that seemed to happen every time he touched me. His slight change in breathing told me he felt it as well, and that made me dizzy. This was happening too fast and I was starting to lose a bit of control over my emotions when it came to Tanner. One look into those baby blues, and I no longer seemed to care about keeping him at a distance. I liked the way we bantered back and forth. The way he looked at me like I took his