Page 9

“When exactly are you planning to deal with that? Or are you in one of your play-with-your-food phases?”

I smiled like I had no idea what he meant.

Like I hadn’t already spent half the afternoon deciding exactly how it would end.

Ryder rolled his eyes and scoffed, muttering something under his breath as he knocked back his drink. The porch light spilled over him, catching in the gold of his hair and turning him into something almost saintly. Angelic, even. Which worked out real well for the town sheriff. People looked at him and saw a lawman they could trust without question, because how could a man who looked like that do anything wrong?

I let my mouth curve around the rim of my glass, amused. Ryder’s halo was a very convenient mask for the things we got up to after dark.

The scrape came again, faint under the storm. I heard it clear as day…and so did Ryder.

He tipped his glass back, sighed like a man bored out of his mind, and set it down with a thunk.

“If we’re not gonna do anything about it tonight,” he said, “then I need to get laid. Jett said there’s a new waitress at The Hollow. Says she’s blonde and bitter and has thighs that could crack a man’s spine.”

I grinned into my glass. That sounded exactly like Jett, with the exception of…

“He say that last part or did you add it?”

He smirked at me, and I rolled my eyes.

Typical.

My gaze drifted past him, down to the scatter of lights in the valley. Blackwood, Montana wasn’t big. A couple of bars, a motel, a diner, a few random stores, a restaurant that tried too hard to be upscale and mostly failed, a church that doubled as an AA meeting spot on Wednesdays, a museum tourists traveled miles to see but usually left uneasy, and Ryder’s sheriff’s office—officially handling drunks and wandering cattle, unofficially making sure the worst things never made it onto a report.

Everyone knew everyone. And everyone had a theory about why I’d come back after so many years away…nostalgia, desperation, or a very early midlife crisis.

They were all a little right.

I inherited the ranch at twenty-one, after my old man died in a hunting accident no one liked to talk about. My mother had already been gone a few years by then, leaving behind a handful of rules about discipline, restraint, and what to do with certain impulses that ran a little too strong in the Hayes bloodline.

Five years later, after college and a stint at a Manhattan hedge fund that never quite fit, I came back and turned the place into one of the biggest outfits in the state. Cattle, bison, horses, and land…a lot of it.

As it had for the generations before me, the money followed.

More than anyone suspected.

Sterling Hayes, people liked to whisper. Rancher. Playboy. Occasional philanthropist when it suited him.

None of them knew me. Not really.

My mother had made sure of that.

The wind rattled the porch again, louder this time, and underneath it slipped that sound, soft but enough to wake the restless itch in my chest, the one always hungry to break free. I caged it, breathing through the urge.

Not yet.

Beside me, Ryder’s eyes flicked toward the house, then back to me. Green, piercing, and carrying the same need I felt gnawing at my ribs. He swallowed it down, too, but I saw it…because it lived in me the same as him.

“The Hollow?” he asked, gripping the wooden armrests of his chair like they could hold him back.

I rolled the whiskey slowly in my hand, weighing the thought. The bar would be full by now. Ranch hands blowing their checks, old-timers swapping lies, tourists hoping the place lived up to its reputation. Options for a good lay if I wanted one because the Hollow was the only good one for miles. Women fell easily for me. A smile here, a round of shots there, and someone would decide I was their bad decision for the evening.

They saw the charm and assumed that was the whole story.

The sound came again, like a nail dragged across wood. A harsh breath leaked out of me as I set the glass down. I needed something to distract me from the itch twisting tighter in my chest. “Let’s go.”

Ryder’s grin lit up with that reckless, predatory charm he wore like the badge on his uniform. He stood, his boots heavy on the boards. “Knew you’d come around.”