Winning the Cowboy Billionaire - Emmy Eugene Page 0,58

been on a loop for days, and Tam had barely slept the past few nights.

“Do you need help with the rules?” Cara said.

“I know Blaine,” Tam said. “The rules will take ten seconds.” He’d have put no kissing on it, but they’d already broken that rule.

He won’t again, Tam thought. Blaine had an iron will, and he stuck to things he’d decided to do like glue. The man lifted weights six days a week, no matter what. He’d barely left the ranch after his break-up with Alex, and Tam knew he’d decided to simply surround himself with family and never date again.

“You know what they say,” Cara said. “Rules are made to be broken. Put everything on the list that you really want to do, Tam. Then shatter those things.” She laughed, and Tam let the infectious nature of it put a smile on her face too.

“Okay,” she said. “Enough about me. What about you and Chris?”

“Oh, Chris,” Cara said. “He’s being an idiot, because he thinks we’re too young to get married.”

Cara was a decade younger than Tam, but, “Twenty-five is not too young to get married,” Tam said.

“I know,” Cara said. “He is a year younger than me, and he wants to finish law school first.”

“Have a long engagement then,” Tam said.

“I’m going to let it be for right now,” Cara said. “He sometimes gets too far inside his head.”

“Right,” Tam said, and she realized that she could’ve said the exact same thing about Blaine. He was incredibly smart, and he got lost inside his mind sometimes too. “All right, I’ll let you go.”

She hung up with her sister and stayed on the bed for another minute. Then she quickly tapped out a text to Blaine.

Dinner tomorrow night. I’ll come pick you up at 6:30.

He didn’t answer right away, not that she expected him to. Blaine would shut down for a while after an encounter like the one they’d just had. She’d shut down while he was still talking on the sidewalk.

Her mind was moving again now, though. She’d heard the tell-tale rumble of his engine when he’d pulled into her driveway, and she’d given him a minute to come inside. When he hadn’t, and he’d leaned over the steering wheel, she’d gone out to him. She’d thought maybe he’d fainted or didn’t feel well and had just pulled over at her house, because he knew it.

You forgot me at the house.

Blaine didn’t understand that he was impossible to forget.

Rule #1: The relationship will not ruin our friendship.

Sent.

Rule #2: The relationship will only be binding while Hayes is in town.

Sent.

Rule #3: No kissing.

Sent.

Rule #4: Public displays of affection will be limited to flirting, laughing, and hand-holding and only for the purpose of perpetuating the relationship’s validity for others.

Sent.

Rule #5:

Sent.

I don’t really have a fifth rule, she sent. If you do, feel free to add it.

She saw the delivered status next to the texts change to read in a blink of an eye, and her heartbeat shot to the top of her head.

He started typing, and Tam smiled though she wished she wouldn’t. “You can’t romanticize everything he does,” she told herself.

Dinner at 6:30 is great.

I don’t need any rules, Tam, he said next, and she sat up in bed, reading the text over and over.

Especially not #3.

Her mouth turned dry, and she blinked, her vision turning white. When she could see again, the text was still there.

She fumbled her phone trying to get it to make a call, and she ended up bobbling it, then hitting it with her knuckles as she tried to grab it. It flew away from her, hit the wall, and then landed with a terrible cracking sound against the floor.

“No,” she said, disturbing her dogs as she went after it. She picked up the phone and found the screen splintering right before her eyes. She tried to tap, and nothing happened.

“Great.” She knelt on the floor, her ruined phone in her hands, and looked up and the ceiling. “Is this a sign or something? Why can’t I be with Blaine Chappell?”

In her mind, the two of them were so good together, and she’d be happy for the rest of her life with him at her side.

Tam stared at her phone, the screen bright but obviously not doing anything. It was too late to go to the cell phone store tonight.

“Tomorrow,” Tam said, because she wasn’t one to just roll over and give up. She couldn’t respond to Blaine, and she drove herself toward