Page 13 of Oops I Fell For The Cowboy Next Door

From the grumpy cowboy?

I don't answer that one.

Work carries me until late afternoon. The brewery logos are done, submitted, approved with minor revisions that take an hour. My inbox has two new inquiries from referrals. The business is growing. Something I built, something that's mine, and every invoice paid is another month of proof that leaving Denver was the right call.

By five o'clock, the fire has burned down to embers. The cabin is warm, but the light is fading and the walls are closing in again. I've been inside for ten hours. My body is restless, buzzing with energy that has nothing to do with caffeine and everything to do with the memory of calloused fingers on the back of my neck.

I pull on my jacket, grab the bottle of wine from the fridge, and walk outside.

The stars are coming out. September in Montana means the sky goes from blue to black in twenty minutes, and the stars don't trickle in. They arrive. All at once, thick and bright, more than I've ever seen in my life. I sit on the porch step, the new one, wrap my jacket around my knees, and pour wine into the mug I brought because I don't own outdoor glasses.

His porch light is on. Faint, yellow, a hundred yards east.

I sip my wine. Look at the stars. Don't look at his porch.

Look at his porch.

He's there. Sitting in the dark, just past the reach of the light. I can see the outline of his shoulders in the rocker. The shape of his hat. He's watching me. Has been, probably, since I walked outside.

Something bold and reckless moves through me. I raise my mug toward his porch. A toast. A dare.

Silence. Then his porch light goes off.

My stomach drops.

Thirty seconds later, I hear boots on gravel. Coming from the east. Coming from his side of the fence.

He appears at the edge of my yard. No horse this time. Just a man walking across the dark grass with his hands in his jacket pockets and his jaw set in that way that means he's been arguing with himself the whole way here.

He stops at the bottom of my porch steps. Looks up at me sitting there with my wine and my racing pulse.

"Saw your light."

"Saw yours."

He takes off his hat. Runs his hand through his hair. Puts the hat back on. It's the most uncertain I've ever seen him.

"Been thinking," he says.

"Dangerous."

"About the other morning."

"Even more dangerous."

His jaw works. "Shouldn't have kissed you."

The words land clean. I take a slow sip of wine, buying time, steadying the ache that just bloomed behind my ribs. "Okay."

"Shouldn't have. Because once wasn't enough." His voice drops to gravel. "Because I've been thinking about it for three days. Because I can't look at that kitchen counter without seeing you pressed against it. And I came over here to say I'm sorry, that it won't happen again, that we should keep this professional."

"But?"

"But you're sitting on the step I built you, drinking wine out of a coffee mug, looking at the stars. And I can't make my mouth say any of those things."

My heart is in my throat. Hammering so hard he can probably hear it.

"Then don't say them."