Her laugh comes out as a half-gasp. “Your arms,” she manages. “When you were helping Beau in the barn. I tried to look somewhere else.”
“Yeah?”
“I tried not to stare, but—” Her voice wavers.
I take her hands and slide my palms up her forearms, easing the straps off her shoulders. The dress puddles at her waist, and I slide it off the rest of the way. There’s nothing underneath but smooth, pale skin, and my mouth waters at the sight.
I’m greedy with my hands: I grip her hips, thumb the curve of her stomach, the soft place beneath her ribs. She shudders, eyes closing, like she can’t stand to watch the damage being done.
“You’re beautiful,” I tell her, and I mean it. I mean it with a desperation I barely recognize.
Her hands are already on my shirt, yanking buttons, popping half off their threads. She wants this fast and rough, but I need slow. I slow her with a kiss, bite her lower lip, and drag my hands lower. Her thighs part as if they’ve been waiting for me all along. I slide down to the carpet, and she laughs, the sound gusty and abashed as I set her knee over my shoulder. Her scent is sweet and raw. I bury my mouth between her legs, and she cries out, sharp and electric. I take my time—long, lazy circles with my tongue, savoring every shiver and helpless twist of her hips. She clamps a hand over her face to muffle the moans, but it doesn’t help. She makes these little begging sounds, and I want to play them on repeat forever. I work her up, over the edge, her whole body locked with tension until she breaks apart, hips bucking, crying out my name.
I stand, wipe my mouth with the back of my wrist, and lay her out on the bed. Her eyes are wild, her lips wet and swollen, her cheeks painted a high flush. I take off my jeans, and she reaches for me, greedy, insistent, tugging me down.
“You’re so fucking beautiful, princess. I wish you could see what I’m looking at right now.”
She smiles and brushes the hair off her face. “My view is pretty fantastic, too.”
Without another word, I push into her—slow, deliberate, watching her face open with it. She exhales my name like a prayer. I pull back and press in again, deeper, and her spine arches off the mattress, nails raking hot lines down my back, pulling me closer, harder. I give her what she’s asking for. Her thighs grip my waist, and I feel every shiver move through her like a current. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for you, Hannah,” I say, the words spilling out raw and unplanned, my mouth at her throat. She answers by dragging me down until there’s no space left between us, teeth at my shoulder, breathless: “Don’t ever let go.”
I come hard, stars behind my eyes, my whole body caving around hers. Even after, I don’t move—just stay there, breathing her in, forehead pressed to hers. Her pulse is still going fast under my palm. The ceiling fan turns slowly overhead, stirring the warm air. Outside, Patsy Cline has long since gone quiet, and the only sound is the two of us settling—her exhale, my heartbeat, the soft complaint of the mattress as she shifts closer and finds my hand under the sheets.
She folds her fingers between mine, tight. Kissing my knuckles, my wrist, my chest. Her hair is a halo leaking out onto my pillow. “You really think this is it?” she asks, voice soft.
I kiss her temple. “I know it.”
She hums, content. “You’re not easy to love, you know.”
“Neither are you,” I confess.
She grins, victorious. “Good. Guess we’re stuck with each other.” I wrap her in my arms, roll us until she’s on top, grinning down at me like a sunrise. And even with every scar inside me, every broken thing I’ve been, I know I’ve finally met my match.
EPILOGUE
HANNAH: ONE YEAR LATER
Iunlock the glass door to Cowboy Cupid just before 9:00 and flip the OPEN sign. Main Street’s already alive: Beau Gamble’s beat-up Ford is idling in front of the feed store, Mrs. Ortega is rolling out today’s kolaches at the bakery, and the high schoolers are skateboarding in front of the hardware store instead of, presumably, going to their summer jobs.
I sweep the front mat, check the fresh flowers in the window vase, and stack the week’s intake forms in a tidy column along the scarred front desk. The walls are lined with posters—smiling wedding parties, bouquets larger than small children, and three separate couples who credit their very existence to “the Hannah Effect.” My assistant, Minnie, started it as a joke, but now she’s practically keeping the local print shop afloat.
Minnie comes down from the upstairs apartment in a flurry: hair in a lopsided ponytail, buttons misaligned, holding a mug of coffee like a lifeline. She’s a morning person in the same way I’m a champion bull rider—passable, if you squint, but not fooling anyone.
“You’re up early,” she says, eyes half-closed as she rummages the desk for forms.
“I’m on a hot streak. Four out of the last five first dates are going long,” I report. “Two even called for second appointments.”
She gives me a crooked grin. “If you get one more engagement this quarter, we’re officially outpacing franchise operations. I did the math.”
I would hug her if she didn’t look like a startled owl. Instead, I settle for, “You’re the reason they stick.”
“Nah. I’m just the wingwoman. You’re the real Cupid. I mean, it’s literally in the name.”
We get to work. I handle the new clients: a retired line cook in desperate need of a co-pilot, a transplant artist from Santa Fe, the local veterinarian’s newly single cousin who cringes every time I mention ‘speed-dating.’ Minnie works logistics, calendar Tetris, and fielding calls from the dozen or so pairs teetering on the edge of true love or mutual ghosting.
By lunch, my head’s buzzing with case files and nervous first-date jitters that aren’t even mine. I stand at the window and watch the heat rise off the empty street when I see him—Rhett, boots and all, carrying a brown bag lunch like a prize cow at a county fair.
He opens the door with his hip, flashes a crooked smile, and says, “Didn’t want you to forget to eat, Mrs. Calder.”
