Stepping in closer to me and leaning down again, he says, “For what it’s worth… you would have totally won that contest.”

“Um… thanks,” I say as I nervously brush some strands of sticky hair that came loose from my braid away from my face.

“Listen… let me buy you a drink and we can reconnect,” Colton says, and his smile seems genial enough. I’m guessing, however, he’s thinking I might be an easy score tonight since I was just on the bar a bit ago flashing my boobs all around.

“She’s going home,” I hear Woolf bark above the music so he can be heard clearly, and my elbow is once again in his hand. I turn my head slightly to see Woolf glaring at Colton.

“Well, then,” Colton says as his eyes slide slowly from Woolf back down to me. “In that case, seems like you’re in good hands tonight. Hope to see you around, Callie.”

Woolf doesn’t even let me reply, just turns me around and starts pushing me hastily back through the crowd. In no time at all, he has his SUV door opened and he’s helping me to climb in with liberal use of his running board.

All is silent as Woolf makes his way out to Highway 191 and turns north instead of south.

“Where are we going?” I ask in confusion, as my house is back in Jackson.

“I know damn well your father is in town and I can’t take you home like this, Callie,” Woolf says in exasperation. “Reggie would have a heart attack if he saw you looking and smelling like that.”

“I can make it to my room without him seeing me,” I grumble but secretly… I’m a bit pleased. I’m just not ready to go home yet. I’m even more excited by the fact that I know we’re headed to Woolf’s house on the Double J, which means some more alone time with him. That thought shouldn’t bring me such a rush of giddiness, but it does all the same.

I knew I’d see Woolf at some point when I returned home from Connecticut. His father and my father were very good friends. His father was a huge contributor to my father’s political campaigns, and we all ran in the same social circles our entire life. Woolf is three years older than me and up until my sophomore year in high school, we attended the same schools in Jackson from elementary school onward. But then my father won the gubernatorial race and we moved to the state capital of Cheyenne, which is less than an hour away from Laramie where Woolf was attending his freshman year at the University of Wyoming.

Even though we were family friends and were within spitting distance of each other, I saw very little of Woolf while he was in college. This was due, I expect, to the fact that my older brother Richard was attending Harvard back east. He and Woolf were close friends, and without Richard around, Woolf just didn’t come to visit that much.

That came about even less after Richard died at the start of his senior year at Harvard from pneumonia. Richard was asthmatic and stubborn as hell. By the time he broke down, went to the emergency room, and got admitted, his lungs were so full of fluid he suffocated to death. My eyes prick with tears at the thought of his death, which will hit the eleven-year anniversary mark in a few months. I wonder if Woolf still grieves for him the way I do.

“What happened to your fiancé?” Woolf asks, and I blink my eyes hard to dispel the moisture. “What was his name? Bill?”

“Will,” I correct him woodenly. He and Woolf had met once, just last year when Will came home with me for Christmas.

“So what happened?” he prompts me.

I gaze out the side window but it’s so dark outside on this lonely stretch of highway, I can’t really see anything. Ironic, since even thinking about Will, I don’t really feel anything. Even my anger has sort of fizzled.

“I caught him in bed with another woman,” I say softly.

It was actually a bit more than that. I left work sick one day where I worked as an event planner, having given up on the fight against the overwhelming nausea I was experiencing. I was panicked, thinking that perhaps I was pregnant, and I wasn’t ready to be. I mean… physically and mentally, yeah… I could totally be down with having a baby, but I was having so many doubts about marrying Will that the thought of having a child with him caused me to feel overwhelming dread rather than happiness.

Stopping at the drugstore on the way home, I grabbed a twelve pack of ginger ale and a pregnancy test. I made it to our house in the burbs outside of New Haven, Connecticut and wasn’t all that surprised to see Will’s car at the house. His law firm was only about five minutes away and he often ate at home.

I was surprised, however, when I walked back into our bedroom, pulling the pregnancy test out of the bag, and stumbled right upon the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m not sure it even bears repeating the full details, but suffice to say that Will was naked except for a leather headpiece over his head with a ball gag in his mouth. He was in the middle of our bed on his hands and knees while The Honorable Jennifer P. Lane, one of the local circuit judges, whipped him with a riding crop. She was dressed head to toe in black, shiny vinyl and growling at him, “I sustain your objection, Counsel.”

I thought I was in a dream… nay, a nightmare. My eyes dropped to the bed where a gavel rested near one of Will’s knees, and I shuddered to think where she was going to stick that thing.

But for the tiny gasp that came out of my mouth, I doubt either one of them would have known I was there. It would have been my preference to have backed out of the room quietly, sight unseen, but Jennifer’s head turned my way and rather than being horrified, she actually smirked at me. Will, on the other hand, promptly started freaking and was trying to rip the headpiece off while I think he was trying to scream apologies around the ball gag.

I didn’t wait around to find out. Stuffing the pregnancy test back in the bag, I ran out to my car. I got in, drove to the airport, and booked the first flight back home. While I waited for boarding to begin, I went into the bathroom, peed on the stick, and found out I wasn’t pregnant. Ironically, I wasn’t nauseated anymore, and I’m wondering if I was just feeling a generalized anxiety because of my doubts over Will.

Regardless, something clicked in my mind as I sat in the airport terminal and considered my past and my future. I had to turn my phone off because Will was burning it up with calls and texts. I imagined him out riding the roads, looking for me. The cocky son of a bitch was just self-centered enough to think that I’d never leave him. That he’d be able to smooth this over and keep me pinned to his side. He would have never thought his little fiancée, Callie Hayes, was at the airport and getting ready to leave Connecticut for what I hoped was forever.

I bet he sure as shit never thought I would enter a wet t-shirt contest, nor would I be in a man’s vehicle heading to his house late at night.

I turn my head and look at Woolf. The silhouette of his face shows lines of stubbornness, brilliance, and command. He’s always been that way. I can also see the glow of his eyes from the dashboard lights. He knows I’m looking at him, and his face turns to give me a short glance.

“I’m sorry,” is all he says over my revelation that I found my fiancé cheating on me.

“I’m not,” I tell him. “And I’m staying at your place tonight so the mighty Governor Hayes doesn’t see me like this.”

Chapter 3

Woolf

“It looks fantastic,” I tell Bridger as I walk through the newest cabin we had just finished constructing a few weeks ago. While our original plans called for ten cabins, they were getting overbooked so we added on as needed. This makes cabin number thirteen.

This Wicked Horse building has no interior walls except for restrooms because privacy isn’t needed. The Silo has four group sex rooms for viewing, but those are filled to capacity almost every night so we built this new cabin. Thick, soft carpeting done in a pale blue sets more of an elegant atmosphere. Dark gold silk wallpaper with subtle geometric designs, and several ottomans done in a soft, vinyl material in a dark cream color complete the decor in this eleven-hundred-square-foot cabin. There are two powder rooms on the back wall, and a tiny, self-serve bar on the adjacent wall.