The kind of man who made “yes, sir” and “no, sir” sound like the only reasonable responses in any conversation.
We’d talked for exactly seventeen minutes before he’d asked if I wanted to get out of there. Before I’d followed him to his guestroom in the bunkhouse like a man with a death wish. Before I’d spent the night learning that the careful control Fernando Cruz showed the world hid a hunger so fierce it made my chest ache just thinking about it.
And then we’d done it again two weeks later in Salt Lake. And again in Cheyenne. And again in Rapid City.
Always in cities neither of us lived in. Always in rooms he booked. Always on his schedule, never mine.
And never, not once, a word about what we were doing or why or if it meant anything beyond the obvious physical pleasure of it.
Not that I’d asked. I was a thirty-two-year-old ex-SEAL with a mortgage on ten acres of Montana farmland. I didn’t need to be having conversations about feelings.
My phone buzzed again. I flipped it over.
Friday. Seven. 412.
I wrote back:Copy that.And then, because apparently I was determined to embarrass myself tonight:Looking forward to it.
I put the phone down again and finished my whiskey in one swallow. The burn was almost enough to distract me from the fact that I’d just committed to driving three hours to Billings to spend the night with a man I’d known for exactly six months, most of which we’d spent naked.
A man who had texted me the night I moved into my first real home.
A man who’d somehow become the thing I thought about when I let my mind wander from the thirty-seven-item to-do list that had ruled my life for the past year and a half.
I went inside to pour another finger of whiskey, moving automatically to avoid the creaking floorboards. The house was still mostly empty—just a bed and a dresser in the bedroom, a table and two chairs in the kitchen, a couch and TV in the living room. I’d ordered furniture, but it wouldn’t be delivered for another week. Until then, I was camping in the shell of the life I’d built.
A life that now included a weekend trip to Billings to see a man who’d never spent more than twelve consecutive hours in my company.
I carried my fresh drink back to the porch and resumed my position at the railing. The stars were coming out now, pinpricks of light in the darkening sky. I found the North Star by habit, then traced the line to the Big Dipper, to Cassiopeia, to the smudge of light that was the Andromeda Galaxy, two million light-years away.
The universe was bigger than my ten acres. Bigger than my unfinished house. Bigger than the inconvenient attraction I felt for a man who texted like he was issuing marching orders.
But somehow, none of that seemed to matter as much as the fact that in seventy-two hours, I’d be in a hotel room in Billings with Cruz’s hands in my hair and his mouth on my neck and the weight of him pressing me into a mattress that wasn’t mine.
I took another sip of whiskey and stared out at my land—my land—while my mind was already three hours east, in room 412 at the Sheraton.
Pathetic.
Chapter Two
~ Jackson ~
I killed the Humvee’s engine and sat in the sudden quiet, staring at the glowing lights of the Sheraton Hotel’s entrance. The parking lot was nearly empty—not surprising for a Friday night in Billings in November—just a few scattered cars huddled near the lobby doors like they were afraid of the dark.
I’d made it. Three hours of driving, five gas station coffees, and an audio book about wine-making that I’d been too distracted to follow.
I checked my watch: 6:58. Two minutes early. Of course I was. Being late meant admitting I’d been thinking about this, about him, for the entire drive. Being on time meant I’d arrived precisely when I intended, nothing more.
The dashboard lights cast a greenish glow across the cab of the Humvee, highlighting the map I’d left folded on the passenger seat, the empty coffee cup wedged in the center console, the way my hands were still gripping the steering wheel with more force than necessary.
I gave myself exactly ten minutes. Ten minutes to decide whether to walk through those glass doors and take the elevator up to room 412. Ten minutes to remind myself why this was a bad idea.
One. Three hours on the road to spend what—twelve hours in a hotel room? Fourteen at the outside? For a man who’d sent me a text that was more directive than invitation. For a man who’d never once suggested we meet anywhere that wasn’t neutral territory—the kind you claimed in a firefight, not the kind you built something in.
Two. What the hell were we even doing? I was thirty-two years old, for fuck’s sake. I owned property now. I had a vineyardto plant, a house to finish moving into. I didn’t have time for weekend booty calls with a man who treated hotels like DMZs.
Three. The weight in my chest when he’d texted. The way my breath had caught. The way I’d immediately checked my calendar—not that I’d needed to. I knew exactly how busy I wasn’t. How available. How ready I was to drop everything and drive halfway across Montana.
How pathetic.
