Page 17 of Drifter’s Heart

I raise a hand, letting my knuckles graze her waist. “Mission achieved.”

Winnie motherfucking glows. I can’t remember the last time I was knocked on my ass by a woman, but damn if it doesn’t happen right now. I stare down at her, unable to move as that pink stain becomes something so much more than a simple pretty.

When was the last time someone told you that you’re beautiful?

Those words sure as fuck never came from the ex-husband. I still want a word with him the next time he’s around. Not that that’s likely to happen. He’s been an absentee landlord in Sally’s life by design. I doubt the rock star nurse Winnie’s been trying to date has enough sense to pull his head out of his own self-absorbed problems to focus on hers. Bad news on that front, honey. If good news on mine, as that empty space in her life is one I could so easily fill, despite the fact I’ve promised myself over and over that I’ll never go there.

That, and the fact that Winnie’s a matchmaker from hell. She threw Rand and Lanie together, for fuck’s sake, in an attempt to conceal the gaping void in her own heart. I keep telling myself I’ll stay away because of the promise I made to her brother years ago. Maybe it’s because of the respect for the woman standing right in front of me.

Now I want to break all the damn rules, when in reality I have been for a while now.

I rub my knuckles a little higher, over her ribs, across the underside of her breast. “Like I said, pretty,” I murmur.

Winnie’s so much more than that, but telling her so, here? She’ll dart away from me as fast as she arrived.

The corners of her lips tip up in a vision of perfection and snark. My mind registers that last belatedly. “Fuck you,” she replies, and upends the overpriced, responsibly resourced beverage down the front of my shirt in front of the snobby coffee crowd. “No man tells me what I am.”

I was wrong. Winnie doesn’t run away from me. She struts.

And she’s fucking stunning.

SIX

WINNIE

He’s the One Who Knows

“You have oboe lessons in half an hour. Then volleyball. And I have to leave for work!” I yell to my missing offspring. “Sally. Five minutes! So you’re okay?” I throw to Lanie on the phone, double-teaming a conversation between my best friend and my daughter, because why would I do one thing at a time when I can do five?

“You said that fifteen minutes ago!” My ten-year-old, who I swear is going on twenty-three, pokes her head out of the bathroom door and dashes along the hall, her towel flailing behind her like a spinnaker sail tangled in itself.

“I’m fine. Stop worrying about me.” Lanie’s voice strains only a little. “The ranch is fine. Cord looks after me very well.” She sounds like a prerecorded message, not my best friend.

“You’re fine? That sounds sweet and like utter bullshit.” I smile at my phone even though she can’t hear me and cover the receiver. “I have standards!” I yell back to Sally. My landlord will evict us, if he ever actually turns up to collect rent. Which, thank God, he does not, seeing as he’s my ex-husband. I pay it into his bank account monthly anyway just like a good little ex-wife.

“Doesn’t sound like it!” Sally shouts from the other end of the short hallway from the mess that represents my life.

“Sally is energetic. I’m looking forward to seeing her. Cord should be there soon,” Lanie muses.

“She’ll have a ball. How’s planning for the Invitational going?” I search through my laundry pile for uniforms.

Lanie laughs, her voice still thin and straining like she has a cold. “She will. Okay, Levi needs me for catering, and… something something.”

“Something something? Seriously?”

“Yep. Gotta go. Tell Sally I’ll see her soon!”

“Bye,” I say to an ended call. Silence reigns, and it’s disturbing.

My best friend’s new life at Coyote Falls is even stranger than her old one. Did I love nomadic Lanie? Yes. Is this version weirder? Also yes. Shaking my head I kick a squishy toy out of my way for the third time this morning. The stuffed capybara in its pink axolotl suit is haunting me. The fluffy critter hits a doorframe and bounces back, punching me squarely in the stomach.

“Oof,” I groan, not so theatrically. Carrying the offensive thing by one of its feathery fluffy gills, I deposit it on the sofa, where it can do the least damage for the rest of the morning.

“Score one for the stuffed toy,” a dry, deep voice commentates from my front door.

I don’t turn to glare at my brother, who is late for what I swear is the first time in his perfect, prescheduled life. “Half of this stuff wouldn’t be overpopulating my living space if it weren’t for you,” I grump, contemplating retrieving the toy to see how well he likes being hit with the hybrid stuffed capy-lotl thing.

“Or you could move up to Coyote with me and have a whole lot more space to fill,” Cord says easily. His boot taps the wide-open door. “You’re still not shutting this thing, huh?”