Page 12 of Oops I Fell For The Cowboy Next Door

"We should probably talk about this."

"Probably." My thumb is still moving along her jaw. Can't seem to make it stop.

"But not right now."

"No. Not right now."

She slides out from between me and the counter. Steps back. Her cheeks are flushed, her lips swollen, her eyes wide and bright. The flannel is completely off one shoulder now, and I can see the strap of her tank top, thin against her skin.

"Six a.m. meetings are dangerous," she says.

"You don't know the half of it."

She walks to the door. Opens it. Pauses with one hand on the frame and looks back at me standing in the middle of my kitchen with my hat on the floor and my hands gripping the counter behind me because if I don't hold onto something, I'm going to follow her.

"Thanks for the coffee, Rawlins."

The door closes. Her boots cross the porch. The steps creak under her weight, and then silence.

I pick up my hat. Put it back on. Look at the drying rack where her mug sits next to mine. Look at the chair where she sat. Look at the door she walked through.

Three years. Three years of silence, routine, the safe mechanics of a life built for one. And in forty-five minutes, a woman with blue eyes and freckles and a mouth that gives as good as it gets just put a crack in every wall I've spent a decade building.

My lips still taste like her.

I'm late for morning chores. First time in twelve years.

I don't care.

CHAPTER FIVE

PIPER

Three days since he kissed me. Three days of absolutely nothing.

No knock at my door. No figure on horseback along the fence line. No mysterious repairs appearing overnight. The cattle come through for their creek access morning and evening, and I watch them from my kitchen window, but the man who negotiated their passage has vanished.

The temperature dropped last night. Hard. The kind of cold that makes the cabin groan at the joints, and I woke up at two a.m. with my breath visible in the bedroom. The furnace works, barely, but it's fighting a losing war against single-pane windows and thirty-year-old insulation.

By the time I drag myself out of bed at seven, there's firewood stacked on my porch. Two neat rows against the railing. Fresh-split, still smelling like sap.

Of course.

He won't talk to me. Won't look at me. Won't come within fifty feet of my property in daylight. But he'll haul wood across the fence line before dawn because the temperature dropped and he knew my cabin would be cold.

I carry an armload inside, stack the fireplace, and get a fire going with matches I bought at Hilda's. The wood catches fast, clean. Seasoned properly. Because Tate Rawlins doesn't do anything halfway, including avoidance.

My phone lights up on the counter.

Mom:

It's cold up there isn't it. I checked the weather. 28 degrees!! Are you warm enough?

Me:

Got firewood. Got fire. I'm fine.

Mom: