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Chapter 1
Atley
Have you ever fallenoff a horse?
When you come off a horse, you remember every detail on the way down: a small yellow flower in the grass below the horse’s hooves, the cry of a bird overhead, the smell of fresh cut hay drifting on the wind.
Then bam!
You slam into the ground and time rushes forward at normal speed while you try to assess the physical damage done to your body as your horse gallops back to the barn without you.
When I realized it was her, I was already falling.
My ass had left the saddle, and there wasn’t shit I could do to save myself. I was headed for the ground at the speed of gravity. My brain kicked into the same state of hyper-awareness, too.The details of that Fourth of July afternoon were etched into my memory in crystal clear perfection.
It started when I kneeled to pet the dog that greeted me just inside my boss’s, Wilson Phillips’s, house. Then the rest unspooled at breakneck speed, and I’d never forget a single moment.
Not the way my body short-circuited when I realized it was Rae. Not the shocked expression on her face or the flowered scarf at her throat covering my hickey. And not the overwhelming urge to punch Wilson for touching her.
What the fuck were the woman I’d had the single best night of sex with in all my 48 years and her little fluffy white dog doing at my ranch? Well, more accurately, at Wilson’s ranch that I managed.
My realization of her identity came a split second before her beer bottle crashed to the floor. The sound reverberated like a shock wave and rattled me and everyone in the room.
Damn it, I needed a week, not a second, to process everything. But my time was up; all eyes had swung in my direction. I’d thought I’d never see her again except in my X-rated fantasies. From the short dark waves that I could still feel wrapped around my fingers to the delicate ankles that had been draped over my shoulders less than twenty-four hours ago. It was Rae.
My pea brain reeled with shock and let slip from my lips the dumbest sentence I’d ever uttered. “Hello again, darling.”
Again… well, shit.
I shouldn’t have said anything at all. That was my normal reaction to almost everything. I kept my mouth shut and let everyone around me say the dumb stuff.
But my brain was too busy collecting those million data points while trying to formulate a rational reason for her to be here in Elmer at Blue Star—there wasn’t one.
“Fuck.” Her breathless gasp reminded me of the sounds she’d made the night before when we’d burned up the sheets in a Dallas hotel room. And thoughts of all the things we’d done and what I still wanted to do to her—with her—assailed me. Until this moment,morehadn’t been a possibility.
Her dog, Georgie, startled by the breaking beer bottle, wiggled away from me and bolted across the great room for Rae. Right through the mix of shattered glass and spilled beer on the slate tile floor of the great room and kitchen.
“Georgie, no!” Rae slipped off her barstool and dropped to the floor to intercept the dog. Wilson cursed and made a grab for her arm as she fell to her knees, his fingers biting into her upper arm.
I strode across the room, heedless of everything else but the fact that Rae had gasped in pain. My urge to punch Wilson intensified to a white-hot anger. Why was he grabbing her? My hands bunched into fists. An overwhelming urge to capture her caveman style and toss her over my shoulder beat back most other thoughts. Not that I could or would do it, but fuck, I wanted to.
“Get back, there’s glass everywhere,” Cami, Wilson’s girlfriend, kept repeating.
Yeah, no shit. Now, get out of my way.
I scooped up Georgie, cradling him under my arm like a football, and helped Rae up with my other hand. When she stood steady, I pressed the dog into her arms and slid my hand up to cup the back of her neck. The hum of attraction that had connected us yesterday returned ten times stronger. The pulse point below her jawline fluttered under the pad of my thumb. She was hot silk from her skin to her hair, better than my memories.
I held her gaze and drank in the details. The small, upturned nose and the hazel brown eyes flecked with gold and green, widewith shock. The lush full lips that must still be raw from my kisses. I tightened my hold at the nape of her neck, my fingers tangled in her bobbed hair. The only things keeping me from pulling her close and pressing my lips to her rose-scented skin were the dog she held between us and the four other people in the room.
“Rae-ray, you’re bleeding.” Wilson tugged her arm up, blood-slicked from her palm down toward her elbow.
Wilson’s use of a pet name hit like a bucket of cold water, dissolving the connection between us. She blinked and shook her head like she’d awoken from a dream. Regretfully, I released her. As I lowered my hand to my side, I closed my fist, capturing her warmth lingering on my palm.
The dog must have sensed the change in the atmosphere between us, because he squirmed. Rae shushed him and spun to set him down away from the glass.
Confusion and regret poured over me. I stepped back from her and Wilson. The heel of my boot crushed a shard of glass, and the pop tore through my aching chest like a gunshot. He examined the injury, admonishing her for not being careful. His concern for Rae fueled my uncertainty.
“Shit. I didn’t even feel it.” With desperate, confused eyes, Rae glanced at me for a split second before looking back at her cut.
