27
RUPERT
If anything were to solidify in my mind how lucky I was to have found Ivy, it was my ex-partner, Stella.
Not that I didn’t adore her for what she was—a cold-blooded killer whose heart froze eons ago like the Arctic Tundra. I recognized a female version of myself in her.
She perched at the bar, drawing eyes from the cowboys all around. One simply never encountered a specimen resembling her in Briarville, a lethal machine roosting on her stool, sipping her martini with delicate poise.
“Stella.” I sat beside her, waving the bartender over.
Her glossy spill of a mane was back lit by the counter lights, and anyone who denied her attraction was a liar.
But she was never my woman.
“Tin Man.” She reached backward to set her drink down on the gleaming wooden surface behind her. “P
