Page 60 of Second Chance Saloon

“And being eaten by bats is better than finding a single dog hair in your room?” he mocked.

Jackie puffed out her cheeks and turned on her phone light, strolling toward the rickety ladder leading up to the loft. She didn’t look back to check if Mitch was following her, but she could feel his eyes boring into her back.

Another stream of white, circular light joined hers on the ground.

“Are you sure it’s going to hold our weight?” Mitch whispered right into her ear.

A shiver shot up her spine. She hadn’t heard him walk right up behind her.

His chest pressed into her back, rising goosebumps all over her body.

She swallowed thickly. “You can go first, if you want. I’ll hold the ladder.”

He pressed his chin into her shoulder and drew in a deep breath. “No chance. You’ll go first and I’ll hold the ladder. I want to be down here in case I need to catch you.”

Jackie dropped one foot back and spun round, right into his embrace. His arms encircled her waist, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. The emerald flannel shirt he wore was almost the exact shade of his eyes.

It was her favorite, and he knew it.

Shards of light flooded through the few windows unobscured by the hay. They glimmered in his gaze, stealing her breath.

How did they get here, and in such a short space of time, too? If someone had told her at her high school graduation that she’d not only meet someone on her first day in college, but become so smitten with him that she wouldn’t want to look anywhere else again, she’d have laughed at them and said there was no chance. But now? Standing here, in a barn on the ranch she grew up on, safely tucked into his strong arms, she felt like the luckiest girl in the world. So, what if she couldn’t run fast enough in another barrel race? So, what if she struggled with chemistry? Right now, in this moment, she believed everything would be all right, if they just stayed together.

“I won’t fall,” she said confidently.

Mitch stared at her with a grin that she desperately wanted to kiss off his lips.

Neither of them blinked, their gazes unwaveringly locked in a silent battle. The unmeasured seconds ticked away to charged silence, the space between them filled with electricity.

Finally, Jackie exhaled sharply. She wanted them both up in the hayloft, not down here, fully dressed and all. “Fine. I’ll go first.”

“I knew you would.”

She glared at him.

He chuckled softly, released her from his arms and stood beside the ladder.

Jackie squashed her phone back into her dress pocket and put her sneaker on the first step.

Mitch grabbed the base of the ladder, anchoring it to the ground. It was fastened to the top of the loft, but Jackie didn’t have the heart to tell him that, after he played the gentleman and got her to go first.

“Don’t look down,” he said as she was halfway up.

She paused her climb, biting back a smile. “Why would I look down?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because you can’t resist my good looks.”

She continued up the ladder, step by step until she reached the top. Planting her palms firmly on the wooden floorboards, she pushed herself to her knees and then up to a standing position. Peering down at Mitch, she smirked at him. “Come up, then, handsome.”

He did, and at such speed that she wished she’d timed him. Before she could even take her phone out again, he was next to her, pulling her to him.

“Handsome, huh?” he teased, his mouth a breath from hers. “Don’t say it too often or my head will get too big.”

Jackie clenched her lungs. “I’ll keep that in mind. But not tonight.”

She tipped her head back and planted a searing kiss onto his lips, which opened to her in an instant, like they’d been waiting all evening. Thousands of tiny butterflies took flight from the bottom of her gut, rising, up, up to her chest as their tongues clashed and danced.

Their arms flailed and stumbled, hands traveling up and down like starved travelers in search of sustenance.