My flannel. On her body. Against mine.
She makes a sound. Low, quiet, something close to a whimper. My hand tightens on her waist. She opens her mouth and the kiss deepens, her tongue sliding against mine, her fingers twisting in my shirt. She tastes sweet. Warm. Real.
A cow lows from twenty yards away. Then another.
Pulling back takes more willpower than anything I've done in recent memory. Her lips are swollen, eyes half closed, chest rising fast. My forehead drops to hers.
"We can't do this," I say.
"We literally just did."
"You work for my sister."
"I work for the ranch. There's a contract, not a convent." Her fingers are still twisted in my shirt. "Tucker. Look at me."
Looking at her is the problem. Because looking at her standing in my creek bed wearing my flannel with her mouth swollen from my kiss, I don't see a consultant or a photographer or a city woman passing through.
I see someone I want to keep.
"One more day," I say. "Give me one more day to think."
"About what?"
About the fact that in three days you've made my dogs love you, my ranch foreman approve of you, and my kitchen smell like sweet tea. About the fact that I can't remember the last timeI smiled before lunch. About the fact that my flannel looks better on you than it ever looked on me.
"Things," I say.
She laughs. Low, warm. "One day, rancher. Then I'm kissing you again whether you've thought about it or not."
She picks up her camera, turns toward the truck, and walks away from me in my own flannel while both dogs follow her instead of staying with me.
Eight hundred and one head of cattle, six hundred acres, and a sunrise that used to be enough.
Used to be.
CHAPTER FOUR
LENA
Twenty four hours.
He asked for one day. That was yesterday at the creek. Now it's sunset on day five, and Tucker Brant is standing in the doorway of the barn watching me walk across the yard with two plates of food because the man forgot to eat lunch again.
"Dinner," I say, holding up the plates. Leftover roast beef sandwiches from the deli in town, chips, two pickles.
He takes his plate. Our fingers don't touch. He's been careful about that all day. Keeping distance. Measuring the space between us.
"You don't have to feed me."
"You skipped lunch."
"Manny brought jerky."
"Jerky isn't lunch, Tucker."
The corner of his mouth twitches. "Been eating jerky for lunch for nine years."
"And I've been here five days. Things change."
