"I'll call Delaney tomorrow," I say into her hair. "Tell her I'm coming. Tell her I'm bringing someone."
"Good."
"Paige."
"Hm?"
"Thank you. For today. For the yard."
She lifts her head. Looks at me with those green eyes that have been taking me apart piece by piece since she rode into my clearing on a buckskin mare with a thermos.
"Don't thank me for that," she says. "That wasn't charity. That was me looking at you and deciding."
"Deciding what?"
"That whatever put you out here alone, it's done." She puts her palm flat on my chest. "Because I'm here now. So it's done."
I press my mouth to her forehead. Hold it there.
Four in the morning, for six years, I've sat in the dark with nothing but my own head. Carving scrap wood. Drinking bad coffee. Listening to a creek that doesn't care about me one way or the other.
This woman rode into my forest with better coffee and a bigger mouth and decided I was worth the trouble. And I let her.
Granddad would've liked her. He'd have poured her coffee from his own thermos, asked her about that buckskin mare, called her ma'am, and pulled me aside later with that look he got when he meant business.
Don't be stupid, boy. Hang onto that one.
Yes, sir.
I'm trying.
Chapter Seven
PAIGE
Two days since he kissed me on his kitchen table, and I still can't pour coffee without my hands remembering his jaw under my fingers.
Serenity knows. She keeps side-eyeing me at the rail while I tighten the girth, and horses don't side-eye unless they have opinions.
"Don't start with me."
She flaps her lips. Gums fully out. Opinion delivered.
The saddlebag's got the thermos, two sandwiches, and a manila folder of flight printouts Gabe left in my ranch box this morning with a sticky note that saidMadison booked these. Don't argue.Madison Moore, the woman who runs everyone's life from a law office in Portland, has apparently decided that Wild Peak's recluse lumberjack and his ranch hand are flying to Texas on Thursday.
That's two days from now. Two days to figure out how to pretend to be in love with a man I'm actually falling for.
Not falling. Fell. Past tense. Happened somewhere between the coffee and the stirrup, and I missed the moment entirely because I was too busy watching him close his eyes after every tree.
Mama called last night. I made the mistake of telling her I was going out of state with someone. She went quiet for six seconds, which is her version of a five-alarm fire.
"Boy or girl?"
"Boy, Mama."
"How old?"
"Forty."
