Welcome to Gold Valley, Oregon, where a rough-and-tumble rancher and the girl next door are about to learn that opposites attract

Olivia Logan has a plan: win back her ex by making him see what he’s missing. But first she needs to find a man who’s willing to play along. With his laid-back cowboy charm and knack for getting under her skin, Luke Hollister is an unlikely hero—but he wants her help convincing her father to sell him land, which means he needs her as much as she needs him.

Luke likes his life—and his women—uncomplicated. So why does good girl Olivia heat his blood like no one else? She’s always been off-limits, but the more time they spend as Gold Valley’s hottest new “couple,” the more real it’s starting to feel. Luke was supposed to help her win back another man…not keep her in his arms. But now that he has her there, he’s not sure he’ll ever let go.

Also includes a bonus novel, Seduce Me, Cowboy!

Also By Maisey Yates

Welcome to Gold Valley, Oregon, where the cowboys are tough to tame, until they meet the women who can lasso their hearts:

Cowboy Christmas Blues (ebook novella)

Smooth-Talking Cowboy

In Copper Ridge, Oregon, lasting love with a cowboy is only a happily-ever-after away. Don’t miss any of Maisey Yates’s Copper Ridge tales, available now!

Shoulda Been a Cowboy (prequel novella)

Part Time Cowboy

Brokedown Cowboy

Bad News Cowboy

A Copper Ridge Christmas (ebook novella)

The Cowboy Way

Hometown Heartbreaker (ebook novella)

One Night Charmer

Tough Luck Hero

Last Chance Rebel

Slow Burn Cowboy

Down Home Cowboy

Wild Ride Cowboy

Christmastime Cowboy

Take Me, Cowboy

Hold Me, Cowboy

Seduce Me, Cowboy

Look for more Gold Valley books coming soon!

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Smooth-Talking Cowboy

Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08234-1

SMOOTH-TALKING COWBOY

© 2018 Maisey Yates

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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Praise for New York Times

bestselling author Maisey Yates

“Fans of Robyn Carr and RaeAnne Thayne will enjoy [Yates’s] small-town romance.”

—Booklist on Part Time Cowboy

“Passionate, energetic and jam-packed with personality.”

—USATODAY.com’s Happy Ever After blog on Part Time Cowboy

“Yates writes a story with emotional depth, intense heartache and love that is hard fought for and eventually won in the second Copper Ridge installment.... This is a book readers will be telling their friends about.”

—RT Book Reviews on Brokedown Cowboy

“The setting is vivid, the secondary characters charming, and the plot has depth and interesting twists. But it is the hero and heroine who truly drive this story.”

—BookPage on Bad News Cowboy

“Yates’s thrilling seventh Copper Ridge contemporary proves that friendship can evolve into scintillating romance.... This is a surefire winner not to be missed.”

—Publishers Weekly on Slow Burn Cowboy (starred review)

“This fast-paced, sensual novel will leave readers believing in the healing power of love.”

—Publishers Weekly on Down Home Cowboy

Dear Reader,

I’m so excited to welcome you to Gold Valley, Oregon, a small Gold Rush town nestled in the mountains, surrounded by ranch land. Where the cowboys are tough and hardworking—and they just need the right women to tame them.

In Smooth-Talking Cowboy, Olivia Logan is having a rough few months.

After a break-up she didn’t really want, she’s looking for a way to win her perfect boyfriend back—by enlisting the help of the most imperfect man she knows.

Luke Hollister is all wrong for the Princess of Gold Valley, but the two of them together somehow feels so right. And inconvenient lust might just turn into true love.

Happy reading!

Maisey Yates

Table of Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dear Reader

Smooth-Talking Cowboy

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

EPILOGUE

Seduce Me, Cowboy

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

Smooth-Talking Cowboy

Maisey Yates

CHAPTER ONE

OLIVIA LOGAN SUPPOSED it could be argued that she wasn’t heartbroken, so much as she had broken her own heart. But it could not be argued that she had flattened her own tire.

Someone had left something sharp in the road for her to drive over with her little, unsuspecting car. Because people were eternally irresponsible, and Olivia never was. She never was, and still, she often got caught up in the consequences of said irresponsibility. Because such was life. That the idiot who left something treacherous in the road wasn’t the one with the flat tire was another painful reality check.

Olivia had had quite enough of life being a pain in the rear. If there was a reward for being well behaved, she hadn’t yet found it.

She got out of her car to look at the flattened tire in the back on the passenger side, bracing herself against the frigid wind that whipped up right as she did so. The typical chilly Oregon January weather did nothing to improve her mood.

And there it was. Silver and flat, sticking into her tire. A nail.

Of course. She was running late to work down at Grassroots Winery and she had a flat tire as well as a broken heart. So, all things considered, she wasn’t sure it could get much worse.

She scowled, then looked down at her phone, trying to figure out who she should text. Normally, it would have been her boyfriend, Bennett, but he was now her ex-boyfriend because she had broken up with him last month at Christmas.

She had her reasons. Very good ones.

She couldn’t text him now, obviously. And she probably shouldn’t text his older brother Wyatt, or his other older brother Grant, because their loyalty to Bennett made them off-limits. Even for pitiful Olivia and her flat tire.

She was pondering her quandary, sitting on the outer edges of Gold Valley with her car halfway in the ditch when a beat-up red truck came barreling down from the same direction she had just come. Her stomach did a somersault and she closed her eyes, beseeching the heavens for an answer as to why she was being punished this way.

There was no answer. There was only a flat tire. And that red truck that she knew well.

Oh well. She needed rescuing. Even if it was by Luke Hollister. She moved closer to the road, crossing her arms and standing there, looking pathetic. At least, she had a feeling she looked somewhat pathetic. She felt pathetic.

Luke would stop, because despite being a scoundrel, a womanizer, he had that innate sense of chivalry that cowboys tended to possess. All yes ma’am and opening doors and saving damsels from the railroad tracks.

Or the side of the road, in this case.

The truck came closer, and she registered the exact moment Luke saw her. Felt it, somehow. She took a step back, making room for him to pull off and up next to her car.

His truck kept going.

She stared after him. “He didn’t stop!”

She had been incredibly peeved that Luke Hollister had been the salvation she hadn’t wanted, but she was even more peeved that he had declined his opportunity to be said salvation.

Then she saw brake lights, followed by reverse lights.

Slowly, the truck backed up, easing its way up beside her.

Luke leaned across the seat, working the crank window so that it was partway down. He had a black cowboy hat on, covering most of his dark blond hair, his green eyes glittering with humor beneath the wide brim. And then he smiled. That slow, lazy smile of his that always made her feel like he had spoken an obscenity.

“Olivia Logan, as I live and breathe. You seem to have gotten yourself in a bit of trouble.”

“I didn’t get myself into any trouble,” she said crisply. “There was a nail in the road, and I now seem to have a flat tire.” He just looked at her, maddeningly calm. “You weren’t going to stop,” she added, knowing she sounded accusing.

“I thought better of it. I’d hate it if you were eaten by wolves.”

“There are no wolves here,” she said, feeling impatient.

“They recently tracked one that came down from Washington. Just one though, so probably the worst that would happen is you’d get gnawed on, rather than eaten in your entirety.”

“Well. I’m glad you decided to help me avoid a vicious gnawing,” she said grumpily.

“I could change the tire for you,” he said.

“Do you want to pull off the road before we have this discussion?” she asked.

He looked in his rearview mirror, then glanced back at her. “There’s no one coming. It’s not exactly rush hour.”

“There is no rush hour in Gold Valley.”

But that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t be pulling up behind him on the narrow two-lane road soon enough.

He still didn’t move his truck, though.

“Luke,” she said, “I need to go to work.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so? Do you have a spare tire?”

“Yes,” she said impatiently.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll drive you down to work, and then when I head back this way I’ll fix your tire.”

She frowned, suspicious at the friendliness. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I’m going that way anyway,” he said. “You still work at the winery?”

She nodded. Grassroots Winery sat in between the towns of Copper Ridge and Gold Valley, and Olivia worked predominantly in the dining room at the winery itself. It wasn’t, she supposed, the most ambitious job, which usually didn’t bother her. She liked the ambience of the place, and she enjoyed the work itself. But she had always assumed that she would marry a rancher and help him work his land. Make a home for them. The way her parents had done. That seemed silly now that she was single, and there was no rancher in her future.

She had been sure that by now Bennett would have come back to her. Was sure that breaking up with him would make him realize that he had to commit or he could lose her.

Except he seemed all right with losing her. And that was terrible, because she was not all right with losing him.

With losing that vision of her future that she had held on to for so long.

“How will I get home?” she asked.

“I could help you out with that, too, but I’ll have your car in working order by then.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why are you being nice to me?”

That wicked grin of his broadened. “I’m always nice.”

She let out an exasperated sound and clicked the lock button on her key fob before climbing into the passenger side of his truck. She struggled to get in because of her skirt and nylons, but finally shut the massive, heavy door behind her.

“Thank you,” she said, knowing she sounded ridiculously prim and not really able to do anything about it. She was prim.

She grabbed hold of the seat belt, then pulled it forward, having to wiggle it slightly to get it to click. His truck was a hazard. She straightened, held tightly to her handbag and stared straight ahead.

“You’re welcome,” he said, stretching his arm over the back of the bench seat. His other forearm rested casually over the steering wheel. His cowboy hat was pushed back on his head, shirtsleeves pushed up past his elbows, forearms streaked with dirt as if he had already been working today. Which meant that he had likely been out at Get Out of Dodge before driving down toward town. She wondered if he had seen Bennett.

“Were you out at the Dodge place today?” She tried to ask casually.

“You want to know if I saw your boyfriend,” Luke said. Not a question. A statement. Like he knew her.

And this, in a nutshell, was why she didn’t really like Luke. He had a nasty habit of saying the one thing that she wished he wouldn’t. With a kind of unerring consistency that made her suspect he did it on purpose.

“He’s not my boyfriend. Not anymore.”

“Still. You’re wondering about him.”

“Of course I wonder about him. I dated Bennett for a year. I’m not going to just...not wonder about him suddenly.”

“I expect, Olivia, that you could go down to Get Out of Dodge on your own pretty feet and find out how he’s doing for yourself if you had half a mind to.”

Olivia cleared her throat and looked at Luke meaningfully. Which he seemed to miss entirely. “I don’t know that I would be welcome,” she said, finally.

“Come on. It’s been at least...six months since Wyatt has run anyone off the property with a shotgun.”

Olivia sighed. “You’re a pain—do you know that?”

“Now, is that any way to talk to your roadside savior?”

“Normally, I would agree, but I suspect that you’re trying to irritate me on purpose. Otherwise, you would have just answered my question.” She settled back into the bench seat, looking down at the floor mats that were encrusted in mud. She had no idea why Luke had mats on the floor of his truck at all. It seemed ridiculous when the whole thing was covered in a fine layer of dust and small bits of hay.

She felt woeful on behalf of her black pencil skirt.

“You caught me,” he said, sounding not at all contrite. “I am absolutely trying to irritate you. I would say that I’m succeeding, too. You do know how to make a man feel accomplished, Olivia.”

“And you know how to make a woman feel feral, Luke.”

“You and I both know you’ve never felt feral a day in your life, honey.”

She wanted to argue with him. Except he had a point. But she was not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. Instead, she sniffed and looked out the window as they crossed into the town’s city limits and drove down Main Street.

The redbrick gold rush era buildings that lined the streets were picturesque, and whenever her friends from college came in from out of town they commented on them. To her they were simply buildings, rather than charming relics that looked as though they could have come out of an Old West movie. To her, having lived in Gold Valley her entire life, it was home.

Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to see the town for the first time. With fresh eyes. To see it as something unique, rather than something that simply was.

The Logan family, founders of Logan County, had been the first settlers in the area, after coming from the East Coast on the Oregon Trail.

As they paused at the four-way stop she took a moment to look at the faded, painted advertisement on the side of Gold Valley Saloon. She couldn’t quite make out what it said, and it was one of those things she had never really bothered to try to do, because it was something else that was simply there.

It was early in the day so the saloon sign—the only lighted sign allowed on Main Street, and only because it was a classic neon sign that had first been put up in the 1950s—wasn’t turned on at such an early hour, and there was a large Closed sign propped up in the window. In fact, most of the businesses on Main were closed at this hour.

The coffeehouses were open already—three of them all within walking distance of each other—because if there was one thing Oregonians liked more than craft beer or wine, it was definitely coffee. The little greasy spoon café that had been there since the middle of the last century was probably packed full of people getting their daily hash browns and bacon.

They started driving again and that cut off her ruminations as they headed out of town and down the highway toward the winery.

“What business do you have down this far?” she asked.

“I was headed down to Tolowa to hit up the Fred Meyer. Got to grab a few things.”

That was Luke. A man of few words until he wasn’t, and then they were annoying ones.

“I see,” she said.

“I didn’t see Bennett this morning,” he added. “Since you were wondering.”

“Right. Well.” And that made her wonder if he had been there. Or if he had spent the night somewhere else—which made her stomach feel like acid. All things considered, Bennett was probably happy that she had cut him loose. She of the self-inflicted metaphorical chastity belt, who had been making him wait to be intimate until he had proposed to her.

But now he was free.

She sniffed again.

She and Luke lapsed into silence as they continued down the winding road. Finally, Luke turned off the main road and onto the long, dirt drive that led up to the winery.

“This parking lot,” she said, gesturing to the paved lot on the left.

The road forked there, and the right turn would have taken them up to Lindy Parker’s house. Lindy owned the winery and lived on the grounds. The unintentional parting gift of her cheating husband after their divorce.

She hopped out of the red truck as quickly and delicately as possible, but even so, her skirt hiked itself up a few inches above her knees. She hurriedly pulled it down, and when she chanced a look back at Luke, she saw that he was looking at her a bit avidly. He smiled, and that same flipping sensation she had felt in her stomach when she had first spotted his truck made an irritating return.

“I still have your number from the beach trip,” he said, referencing a time over the summer when a group of them had driven in a caravan over to the coast for a beach barbecue that she had ultimately found a bit too sandy to enjoy. “I’ll text you. Let you know how things go with your car.”

“Thank you,” she said, trying to avoid sounding wooden and uptight, both things she had been accused of being several times over.

He was actually being nice, even if he was mixing some annoyance with it.

“You are very welcome.” He reached up, grabbed the brim of his hat and tipped it slightly, and she felt something inside of her tip in response.

“I’ll look for that text.” She gripped her bag tightly and walked quickly toward the refurbished barn that was now a rustic but elegant dining room.

When she walked in, both Lindy Parker and her ex-sister-in-law, Sabrina Leighton, were standing at the window, staring out of it, and then turned to look at her with curious expressions on their faces.

“What?” Olivia asked, blinking.

“Who was that?”

“No one,” Olivia said, and then suddenly realized how all of it looked. Her denial hadn’t helped. “I got a flat tire.”

Lindy only stared, and Sabrina’s mouth quirked upward at the corner. “And you hitchhiked here?”

“No. I know him. I mean, he did pick me up on the side of the road. But, he’s...a family friend.” Of Bennett’s family, but she didn’t add that last part. Because it only underscored just how tangled up her life was with Bennett Dodge, and the whole rest of the Dodge family. That Luke was embroiled in her life simply because she had spent so much time at the dude ranch growing up.

Because her father and Bennett’s father had always been so close, and because Olivia had carried a torch for Bennett for her entire childhood, all through high school, and then finally, that torch had become something real after college.

Her memories, her connections... She had so few that weren’t involved in the Dodge family in some way. And now she wasn’t really involved with them anymore.

Her thoughts had gone off track, and she had a feeling that Lindy and Sabrina were interpreting her silence to mean something different.

Lindy’s follow-up question confirmed that. “A family friend?”

“Yes. He rescued me and is going to fix my car. Which seems really nice, but since he was on his way to Tolowa, it was actually just logical.”

“Okay,” Lindy said, clearly disbelieving.

Olivia sighed, and then her eye caught sight of something glittering on Sabrina’s finger. “Sabrina. What is that?”

Sabrina curled her hands into fists. “We don’t have to talk about it, not if you don’t want.”

Olivia didn’t have to answer, because she knew exactly what it was. An engagement ring. Which meant that Sabrina’s boyfriend of almost no time at all had already proposed to her.

Because apparently Olivia Logan was the only person in the entire county who was commitment proof.

“Congratulations,” Olivia said, forcing a smile for as long as she could before turning away to keep from crying. She shed her long coat and hung her purse up on the peg, then took a deep breath, closing her eyes. She was not going to be a baby about this. She was going to be happy for her friend.

The whole world didn’t stop just because she was going through a heartbreak, and she knew that. She still had to go to work, people still had to get engaged, her tire was still going to go flat, and Luke Hollister was still going to be a pain. Life went on. The world still turned.

“Thank you,” Sabrina said, smiling. “It’s hard to believe. Especially since until a couple of months ago I was mostly convinced that I hated Liam. And now I’m marrying him.”

Those words hit Olivia in a funny way. Because she had never been confused about her feelings, not like that. She had always known that she loved Bennett Dodge. The same way that she’d always known she had to work to make her parents proud. To make sure she didn’t cause them worry. The same way she had known since high school she wanted—needed—to be different than her sister. Better.

Olivia was, and always had been, confident in her feelings.

When she felt something it was set in stone. Just like she had always known that she didn’t like whiskey, shellfish or Luke Hollister. And that was just how it was.

CHAPTER TWO

BY THE TIME Luke Hollister pulled his truck into the driveway of Get Out of Dodge, it was lunchtime, and he had been paying closer attention to his texts than he would like to admit.

Just in case Olivia needed a ride.

He shook his head as he took a left in the long driveway and pulled around to the back of the property to the heavy equipment barn.

It was an involuntary reaction that he had to her. One he’d had for the past seven years or so. She always caught his attention when she was in the room. Like a shiny lure dangling in front of a fish.

He made her mad. She didn’t like him, and that fascinated him. Everybody liked him. He could charm the panties off any woman and stay friends with her afterward. It was his gift.

But not Olivia Logan.

He got out of his truck and rounded to the back, opening the tailgate, a loud, rusted sound filling the air as it lowered. A smile curved his lips, imagining Olivia’s prissy little self sitting in the cab of his truck earlier today.

She’d looked like she was terrified she was going to get his uncouthness on her, and she’d seemed particularly horrified by the thought.

And for some damned reason that thought made his gut tight, made his blood run a little bit hotter and a little bit faster.

Hell no. That woman was off-limits for a host of reasons. Starting with he didn’t get involved with women who wanted more than a night of fun and ending somewhere around her being Bennett Dodge’s ex-girlfriend.

Bennett was like a brother to him and there was no way in hell he was stepping in the middle of that.

He let out a long, slow breath, visible in the frigid cold air, and started to unload the bed of the truck. Wyatt had insisted they had to start making a little bit more of a show out of the place, so he’d been sent to pick up curtains, bed sets and rugs.

It was Wyatt’s show, after all.

The Dodge family might feel like his own in some ways, but he wasn’t part of them, not really. Still, if a man could become blood brother to a place, he had certainly become family with Get Out of Dodge. Enough of his own blood had soaked into the dirt, and he had absorbed a hell of a lot of its dust into his lungs.

Not that he and Wyatt were at odds when it came to what to do with the ranch. But sometimes Luke felt nostalgic for how it had been ten years ago. When he’d first arrived with no knowledge of how to work a ranch, no money in his pocket and no one on earth who cared if he was dead or alive. Back then, Quinn Dodge had run the place. The patriarch of the Dodge family was a gruff, no-frills kind of man, and Luke had appreciated his method of doing things.

Wyatt Dodge wasn’t a frilly guy himself. The oldest of the Dodge children was just pragmatic. He had recognized that with the influx of tourism coming into the neighboring coastal town of Copper Ridge, they could certainly capture some of that for Gold Valley. Luke agreed. But he also resented the fact that the back of his truck was filled with doilies.

“You got the stuff,” Wyatt said, walking into the shed and wiping his forehead with his forearm.

“I did,” Luke said. “And, I think we should make Jamie get all of the rooms decorated. Tell her it’s women’s work.”

“Right. I’m not in the mood to die at the hands of my little sister, thanks. She would probably hit me in the face with a shovel and ask me if that’s women’s work, too.” Wyatt leaned back, stretching and then grunting, putting his hand down on his lower back. “You know what else is a stupid idea?” he asked.

“What?”

“Riding bulls into your midthirties. My back was ready to quit way before I was.”

There was a lot of money to be had in the rodeo as long as a man was good at what he did, and as long as he was smart with the money he made. Wyatt Dodge was smart. “Good thing you gave it all up to become an interior designer at your dude ranch,” he said.

Wyatt snorted. “You hungry?”

“Starving.”

“If you want to head on over to the mess hall there’s some leftover chili in there.”

The food situation was another issue they were actively working to sort out. Wyatt had been searching for a cook that could provide an authentic dude-ranch-type experience, but could do it in an elevated kind of way. At least, those were the words that he had used. That was another thing that Luke was fine with as it was.

Luke didn’t particularly like change.

He didn’t think the place needed to change. He’d spent his childhood entertaining himself. Riding his bike outside alone for hours, and when the weather was bad, inside watching old Westerns on the classic movie channel.

He’d always wanted to be a cowboy. A man who lived for the land. Who lived for honor and riding off into sunsets.

Then he’d moved to Gold Valley and found that dream at Get Out of Dodge. Now he felt like it was slipping away, along with his place in it.

Silently, he followed Wyatt into the kitchen, got down a bowl and filled it up with a good measure of chili, then piled a bunch of cheese and sour cream on top. Then, the two of them walked back out into the empty dining room and took seats at one of the long tables.

The benches weren’t the most comfortable seats, it had to be said, but it was familiar. Home, as far back as he liked to remember.

The doors opened again, and in came Bennett, followed by Grant, Wyatt’s younger brothers who had decided to go all in on the ranch when Wyatt had started this reinvigoration process.

“I’m starving,” Grant said. “Chili?”

“What does it look like?” Wyatt asked.

“Like you got up on the wrong side of the bed,” he returned.

“Don’t ask stupid questions of a man who has been up since before dawn.”

Bennett snorted. “You’re always like this. Don’t go blaming a lack of sleep. Anyway, this is your venture, jackass. The rest of us are just along for the ride.”

“No one made you come. You got on the ride.” Wyatt spread his arms wide. “Get off at any time.”

“Right,” Grant said, “because there were a field full of options available to me.”

All of the Dodge brothers had spent their lives working the ranch in some capacity or another while supplementing their incomes with other work over the years. Grant had gotten married at eighteen and had taken a job working at the power company, where he had worked his way up over the years, needing a place that provided benefits because his wife had been sick.

He had carried on working there even after Lindsay had died. But when Quinn Dodge had remarried and retired abruptly a year ago, and Wyatt had decided that it was his time to try and give the ranch new life, Grant and Jamie had both decided to go all in with him.

Bennett, on the other hand, had a thriving veterinary practice working on ranch animals. But still, because he was his own boss, working with his friend Kaylee Capshaw, he did get to determine his own hours, and that meant he was able to invest time and a decent amount of money into the ranch.

Also, the fact that they had their own vet was damned helpful.

As for Luke, for him it had always been Get out of Dodge. But the more it changed, the more the Dodge children took control, the more he realized it had never really been his.

“Hey,” Wyatt said to Grant, “you had a desk job. A lot of men would like a desk job.”

“Yeah, those men have never had one,” Grant said drily, moving to the dining room and heading toward the kitchen. Bennett followed close behind.

“You keep giving them a hard time and they are going to mutiny,” Luke commented.

Wyatt lifted a shoulder. “They won’t.”

That was Wyatt all over. Sure of his place in the world. Sure of his authority.

Bennett and Grant returned and took their seats at the table with their bowls of chili.

“I’ve got vaccinations in a couple of hours,” Bennett said. “So, if you have anything you need me to get done, now’s the time to ask.”

“What’s that for?” Grant asked, “Rabies?”

“Scabies,” Wyatt said, “probably.”

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response,” Bennett said.

“Why?” Luke asked, figuring it was time to join in the harassment of the youngest Dodge brother. “Is it something worse? A below-the-belt issue?”

“Vaccinating a litter of puppies,” he said.

“You coming out drinking tonight?” Wyatt asked. The question was directed at Bennett. “Because you really should. Considering you’re a free agent now.”

“You never harass Grant about being a free agent.”

Grant let out a harsh breath. “Because I’m not really.”

“You should,” Luke said to Bennett. Eager to smooth over that momentary rough patch. That was what he did. It was why people liked him around. “You can come, too, Grant. At least just because there’s alcohol.”

“Not my thing,” Grant responded.

Luke wasn’t going to press it. In his opinion, it was time for Grant to move on. Lindsay had died eight years ago. Of course, that was an easy conclusion for him to draw, since he had never been in love before. He didn’t know what it was like to lose someone he felt that way about.

He had lost his mother, but that was different.

“Since when is beer not your thing?” Bennett asked.

“I like to do my drinking alone,” Grant answered.

“That’s concerning,” Wyatt said.

Grant lifted a shoulder. “I’m concerning. That’s not a newsflash. Anyway, you guys go out. Drink. I’m going to go home like an old person and sit in front of the TV.”

Luke didn’t see the appeal in that at all. But then, he wasn’t a huge fan of solitude in general. He found that the louder it was, the less he had time to think. And he liked that. In general, he preferred to drink or fuck until he fell asleep. Because the alternative was to lie there and let memories chase around in his head like rabid foxes.

He really didn’t see the appeal in that.

“I gave Olivia a ride to work this morning,” Luke said, addressing the eight-hundred-pound breakup that seemed to be sitting in the middle of the table at the moment. “She had a flat tire.”

Bennett looked up. “Really?”

“Yep.”

He lifted a brow. “I bet she didn’t like that.”

“No. She did not. But then, you know she’s eternally surprised when the world dares go against her express wishes.”

“Yes,” Bennett said. “I do know that about her.”

Luke always had a hard time getting a read on Bennett’s feelings for Olivia. The relationship had been a funny one. Intense, on Olivia’s part. Which was why it was odd that she was the one who had done the breaking up. At least, from Luke’s point of view.

“She’ll come around,” Luke said. “I mean, if you want her to. She asked about you.”

Bennett took a bite of his chili. “Hey, she broke up with me.”

“Lindsay broke up with me once,” Grant said. They all looked at him, because Grant rarely mentioned Lindsay at least not by name. There was a lot of alluding to the past, to his marriage. But he didn’t say her name very much. “Seriously. We were seventeen.”

“Why?” Wyatt asked.

“It was when she got sick again. She was in recovery when we started dating. It came back and she wanted to let me go.”

“How’d you change her mind?” Luke asked.

“I proposed,” Grant said. “Told her I was in it for real, and it wasn’t up to her to tell me how to live my life. That I wanted one with her.”

They were silent for a moment.

“Proposing would have worked with Olivia,” Bennett said. “That is why she broke up with me. I didn’t propose to her on Christmas Eve.”

“What are you waiting for?” Luke asked. “I thought that was the plan. To marry her.”

It had seemed inevitable from the time the two of them had started dating a year ago. The obvious conclusion to something that they’d been circling for years. They were the two most respected families in town. Everybody knew that Bennett Dodge and Olivia Logan were destined to be together.

“Yeah,” Bennett said. “It was. But I don’t know. She broke up with me. So I’m taking the time to think about that. I care about her. She’s a sweet girl. I mean, maybe sweet is the wrong word. But she’s... She’s something.”

Luke chuckled. Yeah, Olivia Logan sure as hell was something. He finished up his lunch, then stood, going into the kitchen and rinsing out his bowl before passing back through the dining room. “I’ve got work to do,” he said. “Hey—” he directed that at Bennett “—you can work on decorating the cabins.”

“What?” Bennett asked, frowning. “How did I get nominated for that?”

“I’m your boss, little brother,” Wyatt said. “And I say you need to hang some curtains.”

Bennett laughed. “I’m the only one with a thriving business independent of this place. I’ll pay to have someone else come and do it before I go hang any damned curtains.”

“Save your money for some G-strings down at The Frisky Mermaid,” Wyatt said, referring to the strip club down in Tolowa. “Since that’s about all the skin you’re seeing these days.”

That forced Luke to think about the skin that Bennett had been seeing. Olivia’s skin. Pale and pretty, and easy to turn pink with indignation. He wondered if she turned pink all over when she got like that. If her anger heated her cheeks, and other parts of her body, too.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he added. Feeling like it was a pointless addition, but needing to reorient.

Yeah, Olivia was hot. And there was something about that prim little attitude, that stuck-up manner of hers that got under his skin. Didn’t mean he should be thinking about hers.

“See you tonight,” Wyatt said.

“Yep,” Luke responded, already heading out of the mess hall and back toward the machine shed.

He had work to do. And if there was one thing that had always provided him with some measure of sanity, it was work.

CHAPTER THREE

OLIVIA FELT LIKE there was a spotlight shining down on her as she walked into the Gold Valley saloon. Because she was alone, and she was certain that everybody in the room had taken note of that.

Happily, her boss, Lindy, had agreed to drive her back to her car, so she hadn’t had to call Luke to come and pick her up from work. And also happily, he had made good on his promise to fix her car.

She frowned slightly thinking of that. That had been... Well, it had been awfully nice of him. It had saved her the cost of a tow truck. And the cost of getting the tire fixed. It wasn’t like her dad wouldn’t have paid for it. But she didn’t want to inconvenience him. And he wasn’t very happy with the way everything had gone down with Bennett. Ultimately, he probably would have badgered her into calling Bennett to try and patch things up with him.

She wanted things patched up with Bennett. She did. Which was why she was here in the bar, alone.

She frowned and edged up to the bar, sitting gingerly on one of the tall stools. For somebody who really wasn’t a big bar person she sure did end up spending a lot of time in them. She didn’t do much drinking, and she didn’t especially like loud environments. But all of her friends seemed to. So when everyone went out after work they inevitably ended up either at Ace’s in Copper Ridge or here.

Laz Jenkins, the owner of the bar, sidled down to her end, a broad smile on his face. “Good evening, Olivia. Your usual?”

Her usual was a Diet Coke. She sighed. “Yes.” She looked down at the scarred bar top, at the contrast between her perfectly manicured hands and the rough-hewn wood. Then she looked up at Laz’s broad back. “Thank you,” she added, because she realized she had forgotten her manners. And Olivia Logan never forgot her manners.

It was early, and the bar was mostly empty, but she knew that they would be here. If she had wanted to avoid them, she would have gone down into Copper Ridge. Actually, if she had wanted to avoid them she would have gone home.

Her phone buzzed and she looked down.

Are you home yet?

It was from her mother. She lived in a little house on her parents’ property, so her mother probably had a fairly good idea that she wasn’t home.

No.

Will you be late?

Olivia sighed and brought up the little phone icon next to her mother’s name. “I’m at the saloon,” she said crisply when her mother picked up.

“Okay,” her mom responded.

“Is everything all right?” She always defaulted to worry. Which was funny, because Tamara Logan also defaulted to worry automatically. Olivia knew why. It was Vanessa’s fault. But Vanessa wasn’t within reach, which meant that Olivia was the focus of all her parents’ concern.

In high school, one slip in her GPA and her parents had been terrified she was on the same dark path as her sister. They were twins, after all. And if Vanessa was susceptible, why wouldn’t Olivia be, too?

She’d been treated like a rebellious teenager when she’d never once set a foot out of line.

“Everything’s fine,” her mom answered. “I was just curious if you were sitting at home or if you had gone out.”

“I’m not with Bennett,” she said.

Then, as if on cue, the door opened and there he was. Bennett and his brother Wyatt. Followed closely by Luke Hollister.

Her throat tightened, her stomach squeezing as if somebody had wrapped their fingers around it and made a fist.

“Have fun,” her mom said, clearly sounding concerned.

“I will.”

“Don’t drink unless you have a ride.”

In spite of her general physical distress Olivia laughed. “Mom, I never drink.”

“I know. You always were a good girl.”

That made her feel guilty. Guilty for being annoyed with her mom when her feelings were borne of concern. And not concern that came out of nowhere.

Olivia hung up and put the phone down with shaking fingers, just as Laz set her drink down on a block of wood that functioned as a coaster.

“Thank you,” she said.

He treated her to another dazzling smile, his dark eyes twinkling. He was a lot older than she was, in his forties, maybe. It was difficult to guess his age. But she could definitely see why women came to the bar to stare at him.

Everything in her tensed as she turned away from the bar and back toward the door, lifting her Diet Coke. Bennett would have to come over eventually. Because he would have to order a drink.

The door opened again, and in came Jamie Dodge and Kaylee Capshaw. Jamie was the youngest of the Dodge siblings, a year younger than Olivia, and hadn’t spoken to her since Bennett and Olivia had broken up.

And then there was Kaylee. Kaylee, Bennett’s best friend. Who was only a friend, and Olivia had always believed that. She had always liked Kaylee. She truly had.

But for some reason the sight of the tall redhead made her stomach go from tight to curdled. It could be because Kaylee had been there the night she and Bennett had broken up. Because Bennett had brought her along when Olivia had been certain he was going to propose to her at the opening of the tasting room for Grassroots Winery in Copper Ridge over Christmas.

It had made perfect sense to her. Absolutely perfect sense.

They had been together for over a year and known each other almost their whole lives. It had been Christmas. Romantic. And he had brought her, which had made it clear he hadn’t seen that night as momentous or romantic at all. Then when she’d told him how upset she was, he’d said he wasn’t going to propose yet.

Just thinking about the entire situation made her face hot. Made her feel like she was going to break into thousands of little pieces.

Of course, it wasn’t Bennett whose eyes she caught. It was Jamie. Who looked at her like she was a particularly regrettable beetle that had wandered into her path. Kaylee, in contrast, smiled. The redhead conferred with Jamie for a moment, who frowned and went to sit at the table with her brothers and Luke.

It was Kaylee who made her way over to the bar. “Hi, Olivia,” Kaylee said.

Kaylee was nice. That was the problem. It made Olivia feel mean having bad feelings about her.

“Hi,” Olivia said.

“Are you meeting someone here?”

“I...”

She wasn’t. That answer was sad. That answer revealed that she was very clearly stalking Bennett. She couldn’t deny that. Not even to herself. She was. She was full on stalking her ex-boyfriend. Her ex-boyfriend who was her ex because she had gotten angry and broken up with him because he hadn’t been doing things according to her timeline. She had been so certain that by ending things she would make him see that his life was empty without her.

But he was in the Gold Valley Saloon with his family and friends. She was sitting at the bar by herself drinking a Diet Coke.

Getting chatted up with pity by his best friend.

“I was actually hoping to see Luke,” she said.

The lie rolled off her tongue easily. Which was strange, because she was not a liar. In fact, she was a terrible liar. She was well known for that in her family because her sister, Vanessa, had been such an accomplished deceiver, while Olivia had always turned bright red and been unable to make eye contact with the person she was attempting to fool.

She had stopped trying by the time she was eight years old.

“Luke?” Kaylee asked, her eyebrows shooting upward.

“Yes,” Olivia responded. “He rescued me this morning.” That at least was the truth. “I mean, my car got a flat tire and he happened to be driving by just at the right time. He gave me a ride to work. And then he fixed the car. I owe him a drink.” As if she and Luke had discussed this.

“Oh,” Kaylee said again, regarding her with a thoughtful expression.

Olivia smiled, attempting to look enigmatic, which no one had ever accused her of being a day in her life, and took another sip of her Diet Coke.

“Can I get you something, Kaylee?” Laz asked. He remembered everyone.

“A few shots of whiskey would be great. Whatever’s cheap and still good.”

He nodded. “How many rounds?”

“Four,” she said, “I guess. Because I hear that Luke Hollister’s is on Olivia.”

Laz raised his brows, and then went about pouring Kaylee’s shots. Olivia tried to appear engrossed in drinking her soda. Kaylee looked at her a couple of times, smiling awkwardly, and Olivia attempted to seem serene.

Then Kaylee collected the shots and went to the table everyone was sitting at. She said something to Luke, who cast a glance back at Olivia. Her stomach tightened. If he kept doing that she wasn’t going to be able to take another drink of her soda. There would be nowhere to fit it.

She was afraid he was going to make her look like an idiot. That he was going to say she was crazy and he was of course not meeting her here. Because he had not planned to meet her here. She actually hadn’t spoken to him at all since she’d collected her car. Which was rude, she realized.

But she just didn’t like making overtures to Luke. He was a pain. And he always made her feel like she had an itch beneath her skin.

When he stood, saying something to the Dodge siblings with a big smile on his face, she felt like she’d been kicked in the chest by a horse. And then he was walking over to her. She crossed her legs, then wobbled, because she was up on a stool and it was an impractical position. She braced herself on the counter and blinked, then took a quick drink of her soda. Then set it down. She wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted to be doing by the time he got to the counter. And then he was there, so the entire performance was moot.

“I hear we’re meeting? And that you’re buying me a drink?”

She pursed her lips and nodded. Then took another drink of her Diet Coke. “As a thank-you,” she said finally after she swallowed her sip.

“Oh. A thank-you. Funny how I didn’t get one earlier.”

“I thanked you,” she said. “You know. After you picked me up off the side of the road.”

“But not for fixing your tire. And you didn’t text me. I thought you were going to let me know if you had a ride.”

“I thought I was going to let you know if I needed a ride. And my boss gave me one. So I didn’t.” She cleared her throat. “Thank you. For fixing the car. I really do appreciate it. And I do owe you a drink.”

“Is it possible that you were covering your ass, though? Because you didn’t want to tell Kaylee that you were here to stare at Bennett all evening?”

Her face got hot and she had a feeling she was lit up like the damned neon sign that hung outside the saloon. “No... I don’t...”

Her gaze drifted over to the table, to where Kaylee and Bennett sat next to each other. That stomach tightening turned into a twist. A mean, painful twist that sent a metallic taste flooding through her mouth.

“You don’t care.” Luke leveled his gaze on her. “Laz,” he called out. “Can I get a shot? Something really good, because Olivia Logan is paying. And you know she’s good for it.”

Laz nodded and set about to pouring another measure of amber liquid into Luke’s glass.

“Excuse me?” Olivia asked.

“I changed your tire, Olivia,” Luke said. “Don’t go getting me cheap alcohol.”

“No. What do you mean I don’t care?”

Luke sat next to her, his broad shoulder nearly brushing hers as he took his position on the stool. “You don’t care about Bennett.”

“Yes,” she said. “I do. I care about Bennett... A lot. I love him.”

“Why did you break up with him then?”

“It’s complicated,” she said.

“It’s not that complicated. You want to be with him or you don’t.”

Great. She was getting lectured about love and relationships by a man whose longest relationship had been with his pickup truck. “I needed to be sure that he wanted to be with me,” she said stiffly.

“Okay,” he said, arching a brow. “By breaking up with him?”

“Well,” she returned, “it’s informative. I mean... I guess at this point not so informative in the way that I wanted it to be.”

“You wanted him to see what he was missing?” Luke asked.

For all that he pretended not to understand her feelings, he seemed to understand pretty well. Better than she would like, actually. She didn’t like that he could see through her quite so easily because if Luke could, surely everyone could. “Yes,” she answered reluctantly.

He lifted a shoulder. “I still don’t think you care.”

She picked up her soda, and then redirected, brought it down hard on the bar. “I do care.” Her heart was pounding and she was breathing fast. “Stop acting like you know what I want. Or you know what I think. You don’t actually know me.”

“Olivia Logan, I have known you since you were a stuck-up little girl. And I know you now that you’re a stuck-up woman.” Laz slid the tumbler of whiskey down in front of Luke and Luke tipped it up to his lips, downing it in one go.

Luke leveled his gaze at Olivia. “Don’t tell me I don’t know you.”

“I’m not stuck-up,” she said, bristling.

He shifted in his seat and her eyes were drawn to where his hand was wrapped around his glass. He had strong hands. A working man’s hands. Callused and rough, vaguely dirty around the fingernails even when they were clean.

She imagined that they’d be rough to the touch. That they would scrape against her skin.

If she were to shake hands with him, or something. Because there were no circumstances otherwise under which they would ever touch.

She looked away.

“Okay, Olivia.” His tone was so maddeningly placating it made her want to punch him.

“I’m not. Why do you think I’m stuck-up?”

“Because right now you’re looking at me like I’m something you stepped in out in the cow pasture. In fact, you look at a lot of the world that way.”

“I’m in a bar.” She waved her hands around. “Which is not my natural habitat. I don’t think I’m better than the bar, I just don’t feel like I know my place in it. And anyway, you’re not nice to me.”

“Honey, I fixed your flat tire earlier and gave you a ride to work. What do you mean I’m not nice to you?”

She trawled back through her memory, trying to come up with the example of a time when Luke had been mean to her. Well, not mean, but maybe unkind. All she knew was that she felt upset after being with him often enough that she was certain he had to be.

“You know. You are... Provocative.” He was. He provoked her. That was the word. Not mean, maybe, but she always left interactions with him feeling like she’d been poked with a stick.

He lifted one brow. “Provocative? Well. That has several connotations to it, sweet thing.”

There he was. Provoking. “Do not call me that.”

“Don’t call you what?” He lifted his glass and indicated the empty state to Laz. “Honey or sweet thing?”

“Both. Neither. I am nothing remotely sugar-based to you.”

“Well. My mistake.”

Laz refilled Luke’s glass and Olivia shot him the evil eye. “I’m not paying for two drinks.”

“You’re a peach, Olivia,” Luke said. “I’m real sorry about that stuck-up comment.”

She looked out of the corner of her eye and saw that Bennett was watching her closely. That Bennett was watching Luke and herself. She turned back quickly, focusing her attention on Luke.

“I’m not your peach, either.” She sniffed.

For some reason she couldn’t quite pin down, she settled into her seat a little more firmly and listed a bit to the side, her shoulder brushing up against Luke’s.

He paused with his glass up against his lips, his green eyes turning sharp enough to cut straight through her. Her eyes lowered, resting on those lips, still pressed against the whiskey tumbler. He had just a bit of gold scruff right there around his mouth, spreading over his square jaw, the beginnings of a beard or just the end of a long workday. For some reason, she found herself captivated by it. And by the shape of his mouth.

Quickly, she raised her gaze back to his, and found it wasn’t any more comforting.

Then his eyes narrowed and he tilted his head slightly to the side, looking quickly over his shoulder and back at the table of Dodges behind them.

“Don’t play games with me, Olivia,” he said, his voice low, rough. “You’re not going to win any of them.”

She swiveled her head to look at him, keeping her face blank. Keeping her mind blank. “What do you mean?”

“You leaning in like that. Because he’s watching. You think you’re gonna make him jealous?”

She reeled back, moving herself away from Luke. As far away as possible. “No. I wasn’t doing anything.”

He chuckled. “Yes, you were.”

She hated him. She really did. He seemed to put the pieces of her motivation together faster than she did and it wasn’t fair.

“No one would believe it,” she said. “Nobody would believe that I...”

The words froze in her throat. Not just because she could hear how bitchy they sounded, but because suddenly she couldn’t remember what she had been about to say anyway. Because he was looking at her with that steady green gaze, that glass still poised just below his lips and the overhead lights of the bar were highlighting that scruff on his face. Suddenly, she was thinking about the texture of that, too. She wondered if it would be rough, like she imagined his hands would be. He was a very rough sort of creature.

She was not a rough sort of creature.

“Oh, they’d believe it,” he said, his lips tipping upward into a cocky smile. “Even good girls do something stupid every now and again.” He took a swallow of his whiskey. “Might as well be me.”

There was that itch, the one that bloomed beneath her skin whenever he was close. That felt like a cross between having a match struck against her flesh and stepping on a star thistle.

“I don’t do stupid things,” she said.

“Except for maybe break up with the boyfriend you claim you don’t want to be broken up with?”

“I don’t want to be broken up with him.” She tapped the side of her glass. “I want to get back together with him.”

“So you say. I don’t buy it.”

“I didn’t ask you to buy it. I’m not trying to sell it to you.”

“True enough. But, maybe we can try to sell something to him.” He reached out and that hand she had just been pondering made contact with her skin. He squeezed her chin between his thumb and the curve of the knuckle on his forefinger. And it was rough. Just like she had thought it might be. Then he winked. “I’ll see you around, kiddo.”

Then he knocked back the rest of his whiskey and reached into his wallet, putting a twenty on the counter and walking back to where the Dodges were sitting.

She just sat there, staring at him like she had been clubbed in the head.

He had touched her.

And he had winked at her.

And he had called her kiddo, which for some reason felt a million times more offensive and slightly more disconcerting than honey or sweet thing had.

He was an annoyance. A constant annoyance.

She looked back into her Diet Coke, feeling flushed and prickly and isolated. Because nobody was sitting at the bar with her. She wasn’t welcome at the table over there. Or anywhere the Dodges were. That hurt in a variety of strange and sharp ways. She had been friends with that family for most of her life and now she just wasn’t welcome.

She had to believe it was because the breakup had hurt Bennett. And as much as she didn’t want him hurt, she did want to know that he cared.

She sneaked another glance back toward the table, and saw that Bennett was looking at her again. Then she looked at Luke. At his broad back. Broad shoulders. He was not looking at her. And she could still feel the impression of his touch against her chin.

Her gaze darted back to Bennett and she noticed that his expression was speculative. So she offered him that enigmatic smile she had been practicing earlier. Because she was working on being an enigma rather than a broadcast system.

Then she finished the rest of her Diet Coke and started to fish in her purse for some money.

Laz walked over to the bar and picked up the twenty Luke had left behind. “That actually covers everything, Olivia,” he said.

And all she could do was stand there and stare, feeling light-headed. Because somehow, Luke Hollister had ended up buying her a drink, and that had not been the plan.

Olivia didn’t like it when things didn’t go to plan. But unfortunately, that seemed to be the story of her life at the moment.

She got up off the stool and walked slowly across the scarred-up wooden floor, looking down and shoving her hands in her coat pockets, careful not to look at anyone in the saloon. She edged the door open with her shoulder and walked out onto the street. It was dark out, and chilly.

The kind of cold that efficiently sliced through nice, sleek wool coats and penetrated down beneath the skin. But apparently not the kind of cold that could eradicate the heat left behind by Luke Hollister’s hand.

She focused on putting one foot in front of the other as she walked down the uneven sidewalk, her each and every step bathed by the golden glow of the old-fashioned streetlights that lined the street.

Today had been weird. And it had contained far too much Luke for her liking.

Tomorrow would be different. It would be better. It would not begin with a flat tire. And it would not end with Luke Hollister’s thumb pressed against her chin.

At this point in her life she was certain of very few things. But that was one of them.

CHAPTER FOUR

LUKE HAD NO clue what the hell he’d been thinking. But then, that was the theme with Olivia. She brought out the devil in him, and he had no interest in holding it back.

Still, touching her like that to get a rise out of Bennett was not the smartest. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, tension crawling over his shoulders and down his back. Damn. He was wound tighter than he could remember being in a long time. It was because last night he’d ended up talking to Olivia instead of hooking up with someone, counter to his plan.

He let out a long slow breath as he watched the scenery fly by. It was clear out, sunny, though he knew that the air was as cold as—if not colder than—it would’ve been if it had been cloudy. Those crystal clear mornings had a way of cutting straight through you with no mercy. Maybe they were just worse because you could see the sun, and you expected that it might offer some warmth. But no.

Still, it looked nice. And if he pushed thoughts of Olivia Logan aside, it was almost soothing.

A shaft of golden light cut through the dense trees as he rounded the bend in the two-lane road, right at the spot where the property was. The property that was currently for sale by owner.

For sale by Cole Logan.

The Logans owned a fair amount of land in town. After all, they had been the first family to settle the area and large swathes of the countryside still belonged to them. And this one had famously been for sale for a very long time. Cole Logan had no need to sell it to just anyone, and he was particularly choosy about who he wanted settling, and what he wanted settled there.

Clearly, the man was much like his daughter. A control freak.

Without thinking, Luke pulled off to the side of the road, his truck idling. And he stared at the sign. That sign that he looked at every morning on his way to the Dodge ranch.

He was happy with his life working on the ranch. Although, with the changes, the focus returning to taking in guests and all of that, he questioned his place. And he hadn’t done that since he was sixteen years old.

At the same time, sometimes that money felt like it was eating its way through his bank account like acid. Just sitting there. Sitting there for nearly twenty years useless and dead.

He knew why she’d taken out that life insurance policy. Because if anything happened to her, she had wanted to make sure he had a future. He could make something of himself.

But with the way it had happened...

It had to be the right thing. It had to be the right moment.

He stared at the sign, red and white and sticking up out of the ground, with a damn sunbeam shining on it.

He shook his head, putting the truck back in Drive and pulling back out onto the highway.

He turned the radio up, blaring a country song about being back roads legit, which turned his thoughts to things he liked. To drinking. Ranching. Women. Everything that made life worthwhile.

That carried him the rest of the way down the road and all the way to the Dodge ranch.

He parked his truck in the gravel lot that Wyatt was considering having paved over, and looked around. It was bare now, but he knew that Wyatt had landscape plans. Knew that Wyatt had a whole host of modernization schemes up his sleeve. He supported them. He did. He just wasn’t sure anymore if he wanted to be an active part of it.

He frowned, killing the engine on the truck and getting out, walking slowly down the path toward the house, where he had a feeling he would find Wyatt sitting at the table in the dining area, his makeshift office, even though he had a real office. He claimed he preferred the one by the coffeemaker.

He opened up the front door without knocking, as was his habit. He had lived on the property for so many years, the entire place had eventually been opened up to him like a home. Quinn Dodge had been more of a father to him than anyone else ever had been. Surely more than the man who had been responsible for knocking his mom up and leaving her depressed and fragile, never to fully recover.

“Morning,” he said, knocking his boots against the welcome mat and stepping inside, calling out the greeting to whichever of the Dodge brothers—or sister—might currently be in residence.

He found Bennett and Wyatt at the small kitchen table that sat in the corner of the modest room. A large thermos of coffee sitting at the middle of the table, both of them with full mugs in front of them.

“Good morning,” Wyatt said, not looking up from the paperwork in front of him.

“What do you have there?” he asked.

“Looking over some different opportunities. Gabe Dalton has been doing some work with retired rodeo horses. And as crazy as it sounds, he swears that they would be perfect for the trail rides here. He has a few animals for us to look at.”

The Daltons were another big ranching family in the area, and Luke knew that Gabe and Wyatt were pretty tight from their days riding on the rodeo circuit. Gabe had spent a fair amount of time hanging around the ranch too, and as far as Luke could see he was a stand-up guy, honest and definitely trustworthy when it came to his opinion on animals.

“Sounds good,” Luke said.

“I’ll definitely want to take a close look at them,” Bennett said.

“Look under the hood?” Luke asked, moving through the kitchen and grabbing a mug out of one of the cabinets. “Kick the tires.”

“Hey,” Bennett said, “you wouldn’t buy a used car without a mechanic having a look. Might as well have the resident vet take a look at your used horses.”

Wyatt chuckled. “Fair enough.”

“What else are you looking into?” Luke asked.

“Well, I had a talk with Dane Parker about the potential of doing some joint venture stuff with Grassroots Winery. I’m not sure. It might all be a little bit fussy.”

Bennett shrugged a shoulder. “People like to drink.”

“I’m not sure this is a wine place.”

“People staying here might want to go on wine-tasting tours,” Luke pointed out, even though he agreed that wine was a hell of a lot fussier than anything he wanted to deal in. He preferred beer for casual drinking and hard stuff for serious drinking.

Wine didn’t fall anywhere on that spectrum.

“I don’t know,” Wyatt said. “I like Dane. But might be a lot of drama to step in the middle of. You know, seeing as Damien Leighton’s ex-wife now owns the winery. I was pretty good buddies with him when we used to ride bulls.”

“Sounds like you have a lot of options,” Luke said.

And frankly, he wasn’t really all that interested in any of them. He had liked the place the way that it was. Simple. Rustic. Appealing to the kind of people who wanted simple and rustic. At the same time, he also understood that you were going to catch a much broader base of people if you expanded the amenities.

But he wanted to get back to ranch work. Real ranch work. He wanted to dig postholes for fences. Wanted to wrangle cattle and ride horses.

He wanted a place of his own. His own land to work as he saw fit.

“How was Olivia?” Bennett’s question jerked Luke out of his thoughts. “You talked to her at the bar.”

“Yeah. I helped her out with her car, remember?”

Bennett nodded slowly. “Right. So you said.”

“If you want to talk to her, go talk to her. She asked me about you, too. But I’m not a carrier pigeon for the lovelorn. So, if you guys have something to work out, go work it out.”

Bennett’s jaw firmed, a stubborn expression crossing over his face. “She’s frustrating the hell out of me, because she’s manipulating me. I don’t understand why she doesn’t get that I just want to wait until I have some things in order before I marry her. I didn’t say I wouldn’t marry her. I said not yet.”

“Not a carrier pigeon,” Luke said. “I’m not giving this information back to her.”

Luke couldn’t understand why the hell either of them were being so stubborn. If they wanted to be together, they should just be together. He didn’t understand why Olivia felt like she needed a ring so badly, or why Bennett felt like he needed to wait. But, he wasn’t going to get into the discussion. Because it wasn’t his fucking problem.

He poured himself a measure of coffee, left it black and decided that he was going to get to work. “See you both later,” he said.

“You just came in here to steal coffee and pass judgment?” Bennett asked.

“Yep.”

He walked back out of the kitchen, across the stone floor that led to the front door of the large ranch house. He heard Bennett’s footsteps behind him. Luke kept on walking and shut the front door behind him just to be difficult. He heard it open just a couple of seconds later.

“Something going on between you two?”

Luke turned around. “Me and this coffee? Yeah. Seriously red-hot love affair. I crave it. It’s all I think about. I need it to survive.”

“You and Olivia,” Bennett said, his tone stiff. “I don’t know how...”

“No,” Luke said. “But, she’s a grown-ass woman and apparently single.”

“She wants a commitment,” Bennett said. “And we both know you’re not the guy to give that to her.”

Luke’s stomach tightened, and he chuckled past it. “Yes. We do both know that. I’m not giving a commitment to anyone. But you’re apparently not giving one to her, either.”

“It’s complicated,” Bennett said.

“How is it complicated? Either you love her or you don’t.”

“None of it’s about love.”

Luke stared at him. “Then what’s it about?”

“I care about her. But sometimes she looks at me like...” Bennett shook his head. “I told her father that I would take care of her. After he had his heart attack, I promised I’d look out for her.”

“Does Olivia know that?”

“She knows that her father wants us together. Hell, the whole town wants us together.”

Luke couldn’t deny that. They were definitely the golden couple of Gold Valley. The entire town took great delight in the idea that they would someday get married.

Like they were watching a favorite soap opera, using real people as characters.

“True enough,” Luke said. “So why aren’t you with her?”

“She wants things I don’t think I can give. I’m not sure I can put her through any of that.”

“Bennett Dodge, I’ve known you since you were ten years old. I don’t know why the hell you wouldn’t be able to give Olivia exactly what she wants. Exactly what she needs. You’re perfect for her.” For some reason the words burned a little bit on their way out. But they were true.

“You don’t know everything about me, Luke,” Bennett said, shaking his head and walking past him.

“You want to talk about it?” Which was the world’s most ironic question since nobody knew everything about Luke, and he aimed to keep it that way. But Bennett was truly like a brother to him.

“No. If I talk to anybody about it, it has to be Olivia.”

“Then talk to her, bonehead.”

Bennett gave him a strange look. “Stay out of our relationship, Luke.”

“You asked me into it, Bennett. You asked me what I knew, I gave you my opinion.”

The expression on Bennett’s face turned hard. “I asked you if there was anything going on with her.”

“You did. That doesn’t mean I owe you an answer.”

He shook his head and turned and walked away from Bennett. He wasn’t going to get in a fistfight with the guy over a girl he had barely ever touched.

He figured he would go muck some stalls. At least that would clear his head. Shovel shit to clear the shit and all that.

He walked into the barn and grabbed a pitchfork from the hook on the wall.

As he started on the first stall, he kept thinking of the comment Bennett had made about Olivia’s father. About how Cole Logan was the one who wanted them together. Not exactly a declaration of passionate love, but Olivia said she loved Bennett, though as far as Luke could tell they didn’t have enough chemistry to light a birthday candle.

But if Cole Logan wanted them together...

He shook his head, and shoveled another pile of manure up out of the stall, chucking it into a wheelbarrow.

He had some decision making to do.

He really hated change.

But it was starting to look like it was time to make one.

* * *

IT WAS LATE and Olivia was tired and cranky, feeling more than a little burned out after a long day at Grassroots. She missed having Bennett come pick her up. It had made her feel important, that she had a boyfriend who would come get her after work. That he was so solicitous and protective of her.

She missed it a lot.

She had missed it especially today when she had gotten into the car feeling exhausted and put upon, with the drive back to Gold Valley ahead of her. And now she had to make a stop at Get Out of Dodge.

Lindy had checked that it was okay. But Olivia hadn’t seen the point in being difficult about it. It was late, and Bennett probably wouldn’t be at the ranch anyway. He would either be at home or off on some veterinary emergency. Or, out at the bar. But it was very likely that the only person at the ranch would be Jamie. Even though things with Jamie were a little bit awkward, they weren’t insurmountable.

Lindy wanted pamphlets dropped off, and for Olivia to nudge Wyatt about what he was thinking about the partnership with Grassroots. Once Lindy got something in her mind, she was headstrong. She was incredibly independent. In Olivia’s opinion, the way that Lindy had left her husband and taken control of the winery, started from scratch, was admirable.

Not something that Olivia was certain she would have been able to do. She valued security and the opinions of other people too much.

She knew that Lindy’s divorce had impacted how people thought of her. Which wasn’t fair. Her ex-husband, Damien, had been cheating on her with one of the winery employees; it was hardly Lindy’s fault.

But people were hard on women. Exceptionally hard.

Olivia took a deep breath as she turned into the familiar drive that led up to the ranch. She had been up here countless times. As a family friend, and then as Bennett’s girlfriend. And it felt different now. Because it didn’t feel like it was part of her anymore. Didn’t feel like it belonged to her in any way.

It had. Like she was going to be part of this family. Part of this ranch that they had here. This legacy.

She felt sad about that.

There was a light on in the barn, and she stopped there. Jamie was probably putting the horses away.

She grabbed the pamphlets that Lindy had sent with her, clutching them in her hand as she headed into the red building.

When she saw who it was inside, she froze. It was not Jamie. Instead of her feminine, wiry frame, it was a masculine, broad-shouldered body. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, dark blue, and those sleeves were pushed up, which was providing her with quite an interesting show. He was bent down, the muscles in his forearms flexing with each pass of the push broom over the cement floor.

There was a black cowboy hat hanging on a hook, over the top of a bridle and lead rope.

She knew exactly who she was looking at. Because she had been fixated on those hands last night.

Her throat was dry. She couldn’t remember why she had come in here in the first place.

She looked down. Right. The pamphlets.

“Luke,” she said, his name coming out scratchy.

He stopped, midsweep, and then looked up at her, his green eyes hitting her with the force of a punch to the stomach. At least she assumed it was a similar sensation, though she had never been punched in the stomach before. But then, she had never felt anything quite like this before. Not since the last time he had looked at her, anyway.

“Are you looking for Bennett?”

“No,” she said. “I was looking for Wyatt.”

“I think he went out. Trying to drag Grant out of his hermitage, or something.”

Olivia nodded. She worried about Grant. But she also wasn’t surprised that he was still alone, even after all this time. She couldn’t imagine him with anyone other than Lindsay. They had been together for so long. She had been the love of his life. She didn’t know how you moved on from something like that.

She frowned. Was Bennett the love of her life? What if she didn’t get him back? Was she also never going to be able to move on? Well, it wasn’t like Bennett was dead. He was just not her boyfriend. That wasn’t the same thing.

“What did you need?”

Luke’s question dragged her out of her swampy thoughts. “Oh. I just... Lindy asked if I could bring these by.” She thrust the pamphlets out toward him.

He just looked at them. “Okay.”

She took a couple of steps toward him, with the pamphlets still held out. “Because she thought Wyatt might want to see these. You know, because I know that Lindy’s brother had mentioned to him that Lindy was interested in doing some kind of a... You know, mutual promotion thing...”

“Wyatt mentioned as much,” Luke said, propping the broom up and leaning against the handle. “He also said he wasn’t sure about working with the ex-wife of a friend.”

“Is he still friends with Damien? Because Damien is a cheating louse.”

“Bros—”

“If you say bros before hos, so help me God, Luke, I will give you a paper cut with one of these pamphlets.”

His green eyes glittered with wicked humor. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

“You were.”

“I will take your pamphlets,” he said, reaching his hand out, but not making a move toward her. She swore he was trying to be agitating.

She closed the distance between them and placed the pamphlets in his outstretched palm, her fingertips brushing against his bare skin.

She ignored the little zip that raced down to her stomach. “Thank you. Just make sure Wyatt gets them. For the record, I’m not sure that Lindy is thrilled at the idea of working with a bull rider.”

“Why is that?” Luke asked.

“Pretty sure she hates everything associated with the rodeo, given her husband works PR for them, and also, bull riders specifically since he used to hang out with them. And, more specifically, Wyatt.”

“Fair enough. Now, I don’t know that I’m the best person to judge, considering I don’t know that I’m a candidate for fidelity myself. But I’ve also never tried. And never promised it.”

“Great. Congratulations on being slightly less disgusting than my friend’s cheating husband.”

He looked around as if he were searching for something. “Is there a badge for that?”

In spite of herself, Olivia laughed. “I’ll have one made.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

“See you later, Luke,” she said, turning on her heel and taking a deep breath as she started to walk back toward the barn door, trying to get a handle on her electrified nerves.

“Hey,” he said.

She gritted her teeth. “Hey?”

“Yeah.”

She turned around again. “What?”

“Your dad is still selling that plot of land out of town?”

“I guess. He turns down offers all the time. He has some very particular idea about who should have it.”

“I’ve heard that,” Luke said. “I want to buy it.”

Olivia blinked. “How are you going to buy land?”

As long as she had known Luke, he’d lived modestly. Until he had been in his midtwenties he’d lived at Get Out of Dodge. Now he lived in some ramshackle cabin way out of town in the middle of the woods. He didn’t scream financially sound.

“Don’t worry about the how, kiddo,” he said. “From a financial standpoint I’m not concerned at all. It’s that purity testing he seems to be so fond of that worries me.”

“My dad is rich enough that he doesn’t need money. And that makes him a little bit eccentric.”

“So it seems.” Luke looked down at the pamphlets for a second, then back at her. “He really wants you and Bennett together.”

“Why do you say that?” His assessment made her feel uncomfortable. She didn’t even know why it bothered her, just that it did.

“Just saying. I doubt you would have been with Bennett if your dad didn’t approve. You don’t seem like the type.”

Those words, so unerring, so accurate, sent icy little pinpricks down the back of her neck, all the way down her spine. She had no idea how a man who really didn’t know her seemed to know her so well.

“Okay. So, say that my dad does want me to be with Bennett. What does that have to do with anything?”

“You want to be with Bennett, too,” Luke pointed out.

“Obviously. I told you that. I told you that I loved him.”

“And I told you that you didn’t care, but you’re sticking with your story. I respect that.”

She gritted her teeth. “Because I know my feelings better than you do.” Given her observation from a moment earlier she felt a little bit like she was lying, which was ridiculous. But it also made her feel guilty.

“What if I help you with Bennett? And you put in a good word with your dad. How about that?”

“How are you going to help me with Bennett?”

“He didn’t like us talking last night. He didn’t like me touching you. I have a feeling it’ll only take a couple things like that to force him into making a decision. The problem is he’s too certain of your feelings. Not certain enough of his own.”

“Did you talk to him?” she asked, her stomach sinking. The last thing she wanted to hear was that Bennett had made it plain that he didn’t know how he felt about her.

“Yes,” Luke responded, giving absolutely no quarter to her fragile feelings.

“Oh,” she said.

“He was asking about you. You and me. And he wasn’t happy.”

Heat streaked through her. “How could he possibly...” It didn’t make sense. Bennett knew her. In the year they had been together they hadn’t done... Anything. They had kissed, of course, but she had been holding out for a ring before they took things any further. He thought there was something going on with Luke? As if a guy like Luke would have any patience for her wanting a commitment before sex.

And that derailed her thoughts. Absolutely. Completely. Because thinking about Luke and sex in the same sentence turned her brain inside out and backward.

“Because he’s jealous,” Luke said. “Jealousy doesn’t require logic.”

“I don’t...” She cleared her throat, blinking. “He really thinks you and I might be...”

“He’s worried.” Luke took a step toward her and her pulse sped up. “I think it’s in your best interest to keep him worried.”

The idea of tricking Bennett—tricking everyone—felt wrong. It made butterflies take flight in her stomach. Made her feel a strange, dull ache down low. Adrenaline. Excitement.

She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.

Mostly because part of her kind of did like it. And that wasn’t right. It wasn’t who she wanted to be. It wasn’t who her parents needed her to be.

Bennett was her goal, had been for a long time. And maybe, just maybe, if her end goal was good, the method to getting there didn’t exactly have to be. Maybe.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked.

A smile curved his lips. “I hear you’re damn good at playing darts.”

CHAPTER FIVE

SHE DIDN’T NEED the reminder text that morning from Luke, letting her know that they were supposed to go to the saloon that night. That they weren’t meeting there. That he was going to pick her up and drive her to create more of a spectacle. She remembered.

It was all she’d been able to think about all day.

It had been a slow day, which hadn’t helped. They didn’t have the farm-to-table dinners during the colder months, and weddings weren’t particularly popular through January. They’d done a gorgeous Christmas wedding in one of the old barns, with white lights and holly boughs, a magnificent tree at the center of the massive room. Not that Olivia had enjoyed it since it had come on the heels of her breakup with Bennett and she’d been feeling more than a little Scroogey.

Right now the vast dining area was empty. She had a feeling that people would start to filter in sometime around lunch. There were always groups of friends who lived in between the towns who found it the perfect central meeting location for afternoon luncheons, fruit and cheese plates and a bit of wine with their conversation.

There was always something to do. There just wasn’t enough. In fact, in order to fill her time Olivia had resorted to picking at her manicure, and she never did that. She had a date tonight; she really needed her manicure in good condition.

Her stomach felt like it dropped a couple of inches. She did not have a date tonight. It wasn’t a real date. Nope.

“You seem distracted today.”

Olivia looked up to see that her boss, Lindy, was staring at her speculatively.

“I’m not distracted,” she said, the back of her mind blaring Luke’s name like a neon sign. Calling her a liar.

“Did you give Wyatt the pamphlets?”

“He wasn’t there. But I left them with Luke Hollister. I’m not sure if you know him.”

“Is he the guy that brought you in the other morning?” Lindy asked, her tone suggestive.

Olivia didn’t understand why just being with Luke would make Lindy think something was going on with him. Olivia didn’t understand the rules to casual relationships and hookups.

She hoped Luke did. He seemed confident enough. In absolutely everything.

Except his ability to convince her father to sell him that property without her input. She had been turning that bit of information over for the past fourteen hours. It was difficult to imagine Luke being uncertain. It was easy to imagine him walking up to her father and sticking out his hand, shaking it. Giving him that cocky grin and saying, Cole Logan, I want to buy that plot of land you have for sale there.

Yes, that was startlingly easy for her to imagine.

She cleared her throat. “I’ve known him for a long time. He’s very good friends with Bennett’s family. You know, the Dodge family. The family that we were just talking about.” She was rambling. And she did not ramble.

“Yes,” Lindy said. “I do know the Dodge family.”

“You don’t like Wyatt very much, do you?” she asked.

Lindy frowned. “I don’t know Wyatt that well. It isn’t that I don’t like him. It’s that I have a strong suspicion of bull riders as a species. Cocky, arrogant assholes. Every last one of them. And the only man worse than a bull rider is the man who sells them as decent human beings. Damien did a lot of work with Wyatt in particular when he did ad campaigns and things. And, since you figure jackasses of a feather flock together, and Wyatt used to flock with Damien...”

“Didn’t Dane used to hang out with them, too?” Olivia asked, referring to Lindy’s brother.

“I suppose so,” Lindy said. “I don’t know. Wyatt is just one of those guys. He’s too... A lot of things.”

Olivia could relate to that assessment. That was kind of how she felt about Luke. He was too much. Too many things. How could one man contain so much? Self-assurance, attitude, a smile that seemed to light up the room and everyone in it. But lit up parts of her that made her flush to think about.

That thought stunned her. And for a full second she couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Are you okay?” Lindy pressed her. She wasn’t doing a good job of convincing Lindy that everything was okay. Mostly because she wasn’t entirely sure that it was.

“I have a date tonight,” she said. “With not Bennett.”

Lindy’s face relaxed, one corner of her lips turning upward. “Oh. And that’s hard? Weird?”

She felt guilty, because of course her boss was associating it with her divorce. With moving on after a long-term relationship. And Olivia hadn’t actually moved on. “I guess. I just... It’s not really a date. I want Bennett to see that I’ve moved on. And for him to not like that.”

“Okay,” Lindy said. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“No,” Olivia said, feeling miserable. “I don’t. But I don’t know what else to do. And when he suggested it...”

“When who suggested it?”

“Luke. When I went to talk to Luke last night, he suggested it.”

Lindy’s eyebrows shot upward. “I see.”

“Do you? Can you help me figure out if I’m crazy or not?”

“You might be,” Lindy said. “But I hear love does that to you.”

The dining room was empty, no customers in sight, so Olivia slumped at the nearest bistro table, propping her chin up on her elbows. “Were you miserable after your divorce?”

Lindy sighed and walked around to the other side of the table. She sat down, putting her hand over Olivia’s. “I was a lot more miserable leading up to it. It’s hard to find out that someone you love isn’t who you thought they were. Or I guess that someone you love is exactly who you were afraid they might be, but you ignored all the signs.”

“Bennett is who I think he is. He’s a good man. I was impatient. I broke up with him because I wanted to have him make a commitment. And now...”

“You regret it.”

“Yes.”

“Olivia, I’m not an expert on love. Obviously. I think everyone knew that my husband was a bad bet. Everyone except me. But what I can tell you about loving someone is that it doesn’t make sense. And sometimes you do the wrong thing hoping that the right thing will come out of it. And sometimes you hurt each other even when you don’t mean to. Because loving someone is scary. So, sometimes you act scared.”

“Bennett is acting scared,” Olivia said.

She wasn’t scared. Commitment didn’t scare her at all. It was what she wanted. It was that end goal. That bright, shining beacon she had been working toward for so many years. She would have that life, that perfect life. A little house all her own, a husband. It was what she had always wanted. There was nothing to be scared of when it came to marriage as far as she was concerned. Her parents had a wonderful marriage. She aspired to that. To that good life that they led.

To being that kind of person.

Scary was the unknown. Scary was having your future tossed high up into the air. It was having no plan. Being aimless. It was how Vanessa lived her entire life, as far as Olivia could see. Her twin sister, the person she had been closest to from birth, was a virtual stranger now.

Her partying, her drug use, had taken everything from them that they used to share. Even their looks. Nobody would think they were sisters now, much less identical twins.

Her sister was so thin. Wasted down to nothing, her skin ravaged, her eyes dull, her hair lank.

That was where aimlessness got you. It was where living for the moment got you. And Olivia had never been that person. No, plans didn’t scare her. Permanence didn’t scare her. It was all those other things in between.

“Well,” Lindy said, “men get gun-shy when commitment is on the table.”

“I’m not scared of getting married. Or having a relationship.”

“But apparently you’re scared of having an honest conversation with the man that you claim you’re ready to marry?”

Olivia placed her hand on her chest, where it felt like Lindy’s words had literally stuck into her like a sword. “I just... I have some pride. I’m not going to beg him. I need him to try and get a better understanding of his feelings. Through... Seeing what his life might be like without me. I want him to understand that he needs me by saying that maybe I don’t need him.”

“But don’t you need him?”

Olivia frowned. “Yes. But I have to have some pride.”

“Okay. So, your version of having pride is trying to trick the man that you say you’re in love with, by pretending to date a different man, so that he’ll feel bad and ask you to marry him?”

Olivia did not like this line of conversation at all. Because when Lindy said it like that, it just sounded sad. And it didn’t sound at all like it did when she thought about it. When it came from inside of her it all seemed logical. Repeated back at her it sounded manipulative and that wasn’t what she felt.

“I’m just saying,” Lindy said. “At a certain point in your relationship you’re going to have been together for a long time. That’s what marriage is. It’s forever. It’s supposed to be. And you’re going to reach a point there where you realize you didn’t practice telling each other the truth. You didn’t practice sharing what was in your heart, what you were feeling, what you had for breakfast. And you’re going to realize that you live with a stranger. And so does he.”

“I don’t think you can compare what happened with you and Damien to me and Bennett,” Olivia said. “And I don’t think it’s fair for you to try and take blame for anything. For you to say that he didn’t know you as if somehow you could have told him what kind of cereal you had that day and he wouldn’t have cheated on you.”

“That’s the thing,” Lindy said. “He did the wrong thing. And he took us to a place where for me... We couldn’t come back from it. But he didn’t take us there by himself. He didn’t get started on the road on his own. As much as it pains me to say it, our divorce isn’t only his fault.”

“I don’t understand how that could be. You do the right thing, and you keep going forward on the right path, and things like that don’t happen. He’s the one that strayed.”

“Yes,” Lindy said. “He did. But why? It’s the answer to that question that sits uncomfortably with me. Just... As I told you, I’m not an expert. I’m thirty-four years old and divorced with absolutely no prospects on the horizon. But I was married for ten years and I do know a little something about that. And about all the things that can go wrong. So just... Consider having a conversation with him? You don’t have to cry or make a fool out of yourself. But... It might not be the worst idea.”

Olivia frowned. “I don’t know what I would say to him.” To tell him that she was unhappy because she couldn’t see where her life was going anymore? To tell him that she loved him and was miserable without him? That settled uncomfortably in her chest, too. Because it felt... Wrong. Like it might not even be true.

“I don’t know,” Lindy said. “Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about with you and Bennett.”

“It’s not like I didn’t tell him,” Olivia said. “I told him I wanted to marry him. And he said he didn’t want to do that yet. I haven’t been lying to him. I told him exactly what I wanted. I just want him to make a decision. A final decision. I’m the one that broke up with him. And I feel like he’s the one who has to either close the door on it forever or come back. I would prefer that he came back.”

Lindy sighed heavily. “I get that. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I accused you of not asking for what you wanted. I know that you did. And you know... My marriage didn’t work. So, you probably really shouldn’t listen to me because I’m bitter and cynical, and I feel like I don’t much believe in the power of love right now. So go on, make him jealous. I hope that he sees you with Luke and is overcome by the desire to pick you up and carry you back to his bed.”

Olivia shifted uncomfortably. “I’d settle for an engagement ring.”

A subtle crease appeared between Lindy’s brows. “Right. Good luck tonight.”

Olivia forced a smile. “Thank you.” She had a feeling she was going to need to find a rabbit holding a four-leaf clover between its toes before she had the proper amount of luck she would need tonight, but she was just going to stick with a simple thank you.

A group of three women walked in after that, and Olivia was saved from her thoughts. She hoped that she could find a way to stay busy enough to avoid thinking for the rest of the afternoon. But she had a feeling that was a tad optimistic.

Still, considering that tonight she had a date with Luke Hollister, optimism was necessary.

CHAPTER SIX

LUKE WASN’T SURE what to expect when he went to pick Olivia up that evening after work. He had spent a good portion of the day imagining what Olivia Logan considered to be make-your-ex-jealous clothes.

He was slightly disappointed by the answer to the question.

It was a floral dress and a pair of leggings, accompanied by a tall pair of boots. Fair enough, he supposed, since it was cold as hell frozen over out there. But as far as he was concerned a little bit of skin wouldn’t have gone amiss. Of course, he had never actually seen Olivia showing any skin, and he imagined it had been a little optimistic to expect she would start now.

Not that he needed her to expose any skin for him.

But he was a man, same as any other. Which meant that whatever type of creature he found sexually appealing he enjoyed seeing more of when at all possible.

He put the truck in Park and got out as Olivia whipped down the front steps of her little cottage, her brown hair a tangle around her face, her skirt blowing up around the top of her legging-clad thighs. All right, even though her legs were covered by that textured, gray wool, he could see the shape of them, and he definitely liked what he saw.

“You didn’t have to get out of the truck,” she said, clutching her purse and a cranberry-colored sweater to her chest, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear as the wind blew around them, sharp like a knife’s edge.

“Sure I did, ma’am,” he said, sweeping his black hat off his head and treating her to his most charming smile. “We are on a date, after all, and a gentleman always comes to the door to pick up his date, same as he walks to the door to drop her off.”

“But this isn’t a real date,” she said, treating him to a very suspicious glare.

“I have to get into character, kiddo. If you’re going to use me, you need to allow me to be used on my terms. That’s the only way this works.”

“You’re using me, too,” she pointed out. “So that you can offer on that land. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten.”

“I like it when you play ruthless, Liv.”

She sniffed. “Nobody calls me that.”

“Good. Then it will be my pet name for you. I bet it will drive Bennett crazy.” He grinned, and he couldn’t help but notice that he was driving Olivia a little bit crazy, too. At the moment, she had the appearance of a ruffled wren. If she’d had feathers they most certainly would have been standing on end.

“Let’s just go,” she said. “I bet everybody’s at the bar already.”

“Now, here’s a chance for you to learn a little something. Sometimes it’s better to show up late.”

She blinked, her brown eyes almost comically bland. “Why?”

He chuckled. “Because it gives space for the imagination. For Bennett’s imagination. For him to imagine all the things we might have been doing in that time we weren’t in the saloon.”

Her eyes remained blank for a split second, and then suddenly her face turned scarlet. “Oh.”

“Sometimes taking it slow is the best way to take it.”

She swallowed visibly, her fingers curling more tightly around her purse. “Right.” She lifted her chin, attempting to look imperious now, which was especially funny with that blush still lingering on her cheeks. “Oh, I suppose we’ve taken it slow enough. And if not, you can drive slow.”

“No one tells me how to drive my truck,” he said.

“You’re exasperating,” she said.

“Sure. But, if I didn’t exasperate you, who would?” He moved along beside her and pressed his palm against her lower back. She stiffened beneath his touch, her shoulders going rigid. “Relax,” he said, leaning in, ignoring the sparks beneath his fingertips. “You have to look like you like it, remember?”

She nodded wordlessly, and he guided her to the passenger side of his truck, opening the door for her.

“Another thing a gentleman does,” he said, keeping his voice low.

He offered her his arm, but she braced herself on the rest inside the passenger door, hauling herself up into the large vehicle and settling into the seat. Primly. As she had done the first time. If someone had told him a couple of days ago that he would have Olivia Logan sitting in his truck two times in one week he would have said they were crazy. But, here she was. Looking no more comfortable today than she had the other day.

He shook his head and put his hat back on as he took his position in the driver seat, slamming the door hard behind him.

“Bennett always opens the door for me,” she said as he pulled the truck out onto the main highway.

“Well, good for him. I would expect nothing different. In fact, if he didn’t I’d have to have a serious talking-to with him. You know, kind of like an older brother thing.”

“You’re not his brother,” she pointed out.

“No,” Luke said. “But I’m older. Full of wisdom.”

“Ancient,” she said drily.

He took his eyes off the road for a moment, to look at that imperious little profile of hers. Her cheeks were still pink.

He heard a phone notification, and saw Olivia lift her phone up and text quickly.

“Who’s that?”

“Do I owe you an explanation for all of my actions now?” she asked, her tone snippy.

“I’m making conversation, Liv,” he said. “You know, since you’re in my truck and making conversation with someone else instead of with me.”

“It’s my mother,” she said.

“Checking in on you?”

“Yes. She does that. She just wants to know what I’m up to.”

“And what did you tell her?” He was genuinely curious how she was going to spin this story to her parents. He was also fascinated by the fact that her mother checked in.

He’d been an orphan for all intents and purposes by the time he was sixteen, and before that, he had done a lot of the caregiving in his household. His only other real experience with a parent-type relationship was with Quinn Dodge, and while Quinn was definitely an involved father, he didn’t hover.

“I told her I was going out with a friend,” she said.

“That feels like an upgrade,” he said. “Though, you might have told her you had a date.”

“No,” she said, “I mightn’t have. Because then she would want details, and she would want to know what time I was coming home, and she would want to make sure that I didn’t have anything put in my drink.”

He laughed. “A little overprotective?”

“Maybe. But we are close. She just wants to know what’s going on in my life.” He could tell that wasn’t the whole story, but he could also tell that she wasn’t going to give him much more right now. If she’d wanted to, she would have just come out and told him.

And he didn’t do female excavation. He liked easy conversation; he didn’t like to dig. Because that meant getting down to the bits of people they didn’t want to share, which meant that they might want him to do the same in turn. He preferred stripping off layers of clothes to any other kind of stripping off of layers, thank you very much.

And since Olivia wasn’t going to be stripping off any clothes for him—and he wouldn’t ask her to anyway—there wasn’t any point in courting any other type of stripping.

“Well, that’s nice.” Except to him it sounded stifling more than it sounded nice.

“It is. I have great parents. I’m lucky.” Her tone sounded distracted. Distant.

“Sure,” he said.

“You’re very difficult,” she said.

“Yes,” he remarked, making his tone as contrite as possible. “It’s been said. Frequently. Mostly by you.”

She sniffed loudly, and he imagined that there was a very haughty face accompanying that sniff. “It’s just... As far as I can tell you aren’t accountable to anyone or anything. I don’t understand that. I have my parents... I have goals... I have... Bennett.”

“Technically,” Luke pointed out, feeling like an ass even as he said it, “you don’t have Bennett at the moment.”

“You’re mean,” she said.

“Am I wrong?”

“No. But... I feel like a gentleman wouldn’t say that. And you’re so into pointing out what a gentleman does.”

“That’s the trouble,” he said. “I’m playing the part of a gentleman. But don’t for one second confuse me with an actual gentleman.”

At that exact moment, they drove down onto the town’s main street, and Luke spotted an open parking space against the curb across from the Gold Valley Saloon.

He put the truck in Park, then looked at Olivia’s resolute profile. “Ready?”

“Now who’s impatient,” she said, hands pinned firmly to the center of her lap, her eyes fixed straight ahead.

“Not impatient,” he said. Except he felt something. A kind of restlessness rolling through him that left him feeling edgy. And he didn’t do edgy.

He liked irritating Olivia—it was one of his great joys in life. He didn’t so much like it when she managed to poke her own little stick back at him and make contact.

He got out of the truck, and he noticed that she stayed put. Waiting for him to open the door. In spite of himself, his lips curved up into a smile.

He opened it for her, then offered her his hand, which this time she took. The skin-to-skin contact hit him like a knockout punch. She was soft. So damn soft. That didn’t shock him; he had expected her to be soft. What shocked him was the fact that such innocuous contact had him hot and hard in seconds. And maybe that was the reason, in and of itself. The fact that he hadn’t been expecting the impact. Maybe that was why it landed with such accuracy, with such force.

Whatever it was, he’d felt less pleasure from a hand wrapped around more intimate parts of him than from her delicate fingers wrapped around his own.

“Let’s go,” he said, his voice gruffer than he intended. But dammit, he was affected. He wasn’t used to being affected. He was used to doing the affecting. He was used to being the one causing a reaction, not contending with one. Particularly one he didn’t want.

He didn’t have a lot of practice in restraint. Life was pretty easy for him. Everything he had he’d worked for honestly. Everything except that money in the bank from the insurance settlement. And that was why it still sat there, because it occupied a place that was uncomfortable for him. A place he didn’t know what to do with.

He didn’t like things like that. He liked his life simple.

He wanted something, he worked for it. He wanted a woman, he slept with her. He wanted to be done with a woman, he cut things off.

He didn’t do longing. He didn’t do unrequited lust and unquenched desire. He didn’t want things he couldn’t have. Hell, usually he didn’t even want things he had to wait for.

But there was money he’d received from a loss, from a moment in time he resented, and if he did nothing with it, it would be worse than benefiting from it.

And there was Olivia Logan. About to make him lose his mind because her hand had touched his. Like he was a green horse that had never been ridden.

In rebellion to those feelings, he held on to her more tightly, shifted so that his fingers were laced through hers as the two of them walked across the street and toward the saloon. When he looked down at her, he almost laughed. Except that his throat was too tight, and his chest felt like there was a ten-ton weight on it.

Yeah, except for those things, he was tempted to laugh at Olivia, who looked like she was carved out of a particularly lifeless bar of Ivory soap. She’d gone waxen and pale, her expression frozen, her petite little shoulders stiff as they made their way to the front door of the bar.

“You’re going to have to look a little bit less like you want to throw up on my boots, kiddo,” he said.

“I don’t... I don’t know if I can do this,” she said, extricating herself from his hold.

“It’s too late, honey,” he said. “We’re already doing this. People have already seen us out the window. And they’re wondering what the hell you’re doing with the likes of me. But you know who’s going to wonder that most of all? Bennett. Bennett Dodge is going to wonder what the hell you’re doing with me.”

“Is it going to cause trouble?” she asked, her dark brows knitting together, a little crease appearing between them. “Is it going to cause trouble between you and the Dodge family, because I know you’re close...”

“You don’t care,” he said.

“Will you stop telling me I don’t care about things?” she said, frowning deeply.

“When you stop lying about it, sure. You’re worried about what people will think. Because you’re worried that they’ll think you’re slumming it with a guy like me, right? Because I’m a no-account from nowhere and you’re Olivia Logan. But that’s the point, isn’t it?”

“My mother is going to get phone calls.” She scrubbed her hand over her forehead, as if that could remove the worry lines that had appeared there at the mention of her mother.

He shrugged. “So what? Let her get phone calls. There are worse things. You can explain it to her. You can tell her the truth, or you can tell her our lie. Either way. But you’re a grown-up, Olivia. And nobody gets to tell you what to do.”

“Right.” She sighed. “That’s not how life works when you care about people, Luke. You don’t just...do whatever you want and leave someone to worry.”

“Why not?” he asked. “You can’t control what someone else feels.”

She made a frustrated noise. “That’s not...you’re missing the point. And I don’t care if you miss the point. You and I just don’t see eye to eye.”

“We don’t need to see eye to eye. We just need to work together for a bit. Now, do you trust me, or not?”

Her brown eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. “Not as far as I could throw you.”

“Good. You shouldn’t trust me. I’m not a gentleman.” Right now he felt like a particularly hungry fox sniffing around the henhouse. “But, I do have the best idea running for how you can get Bennett’s attention.”

Olivia took a deep breath, shaking those stiff shoulders out, then looking up at him. “Okay.”

“Okay.” He took a step ahead of her and grabbed the handle on the door, pulling it open. “After you.”

She walked in ahead of him, and he was struck by just how small and delicate she was. The top of her head wouldn’t graze the underside of his chin if she walked under it. It made him want to pick her up, carry her over a threshold or some shit. And that was a weird impulse. Except, he supposed not really all that weird. Since what he really wanted was to throw her down on a big bed and spend the rest of the night exploring every inch of her.

Damn. Things were escalating. She had always been an itch to him. From the minute that girl had turned eighteen she’d been a problem.

Pretty. Remote. She’d been far too young. So far off-limits that he’d never allowed his fantasies to get this graphic.

But he’d touched her now. Untouchable Olivia Logan. He’d felt her skin beneath his fingertips and it was like those chains he’d put around himself had dissolved. Now all that resolute control was getting strained.

Which wasn’t a difficult thing to do considering he didn’t have a whole lot of practice with control. Except for with her. With her, he had certainly tried over the years.

This was making it damn difficult.

He walked in behind her, pressing his fingertips against her lower back, again in defiance of that need rocketing through him. He clenched his teeth, wondering silently if he was a masochist and didn’t know it.

“Why don’t you go get us a table?” he asked, scanning the room to see if Bennett, Wyatt and Grant were already in residence.

Bennett and Wyatt were. Grant was unsurprisingly absent.

He wished the guy would get his ass in gear and get out more, he really did. But Grant was like a difficult burrowing animal. Certain times of the year, particularly in the winter, it was tough to get him out to do anything. He seemed to do better later in the year. Some people might attribute that to seasons on sunshine and whatever. Luke figured it had to do with the fact that his wife had died in February. The lead-up to the month was always tough.

He wasn’t the most emotionally enlightened guy, that much was for sure, but he knew a little bit about loss.

About the way dates burned themselves into your brain. The way they seemed to exist in the back of your mind, eternally in your consciousness even when you weren’t trying to be aware of them.

“Hey.” Luke sidled up to the bar and signaled Laz as Olivia looked around the room, bewildered, clearly trying to decide which table to select. She was not good at subterfuge, that much was certain. It was kind of charming to watch her try. “I need a couple shots of whiskey.”

“Olivia doesn’t drink whiskey,” Laz said, picking up a shot glass.

“All right. What does she drink?”

“Diet Coke.”

“I’ll still take the extra shot of whiskey. But, add the Diet Coke to it. In case she wants to mix the two.”

“She won’t,” Laz said.

“She might before the evening is up,” Luke said, confident. “You can just put that on my tab.”

Olivia had finally made a decision, and was sitting at a table near the dartboard, looking lost. Luke acquired their drinks and went to join her. He slid the Diet Coke in front of her as he took his seat, then placed both shots of whiskey in front of him.

“Am I that trying to hang out with?” she asked, looking pointedly at the two glasses of alcohol. There was a hint of humor in her eyes and he found that more surprising than anything.

“The other shot is for you. In case you’re feeling crazy.”

“No. On a very rare day sometimes I feel regular soda crazy, but not so much hard liquor crazy.”

“Do you not drink at all?”

“No, I do. I mean, I have. I just don’t usually.”

“Any particular reason?” he asked.

“I like control,” she said simply.

“Well,” he said, lifting the shot glass to his lips and knocking it back. He grimaced. “That’s a shame. Because so do I.”

She looked at him and blinked slowly, her expression comically bland. “Good thing this isn’t a real date, then.”

“Good thing.” He stood up. “Because then you would be obligated to let me win at darts.”

She huffed out a laugh. “I would do no such thing.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she returned. “Any man who needs to beat a woman at darts to feel good about himself is no kind of man in my book. I would rather see how my date fared in the face of defeat.”

“So confident.”

“With good reason.”

“Okay,” he said, “show me how it’s done.”

* * *

OLIVIA FELT LIKE she’d had alcohol, and she absolutely had not. But she felt bubbly, fizzy, and her blood felt slightly overheated. It was a strange turnaround from a few moments before when she had been certain that she was going to pass out. It was just that when Luke had held her hand like that...

She’d held hands with two men in her life. Which was lame and silly, and probably completely ridiculous to get worked up over, but her level of experience was what it was.

She had very briefly dated one guy before Bennett, and it could hardly even be called dating. They had gone out a couple of times. They hadn’t even kissed.

But she had held his hand. And then she had held Bennett’s. Often, obviously, as they had dated for more than a year.

Holding hands with Luke... It had been unexpected. It had been one thing for him to help her out of the car, although, even that small bit of skin on skin had felt significant. But once he had woven his fingers through hers her entire body had gone tight, like fencing wire, and she had found it almost impossible to breathe.

And it wasn’t like when he shocked her, when he said things that made her blush. No, this was different. It had made her hot, then cold; it had set off a chain reaction that she could hardly figure out even now. It was just... Such intimate contact to make with a man she had known for so long, but never like that.

She had known Luke since she was a kid. Since he had been a kid, too, honestly. Even though he had always seemed like a grown man to her, because that was a child’s perspective on teenage boys. And that had always put him in this other realm, as this other thing, separate to her. But she wasn’t a child anymore; she was a woman. And he was a man. And that was very... Alarming to fully realize. That there was no longer this invisible wall between them, something that kept them on separate sides of that divide. It made this game they were playing feel far too stark. Far too dangerous and real.

It felt like something different all of a sudden than what it had felt like when they had conceived it a bit earlier. Far different than that vague itch that usually rested beneath her skin when she dealt with Luke.

But now they were in the bar trading barbs, and getting ready to play darts, and that felt familiar somehow. And she was ready to jump into it with both feet. To do something to get herself back on balance, because she could not go back to that place she’d been in when his hand had touched hers. No, that, she did not want to contend with. Not at all.

So darts and good-natured banter it would be.

She was far better at darts than she was at banter, but you couldn’t have it all, she supposed.

“Are you really that good, Liv?” he asked, his voice huskier than normal, and strange, the roughness abrading places inside of her she would rather it didn’t.

She was back to feeling slightly dry of throat and out of her comfort zone.

“I’m better,” she said. “Haven’t you seen me play before?”

“Sure,” he said, “but I’ve never played you. For all I know Bennett let you win. Usually, you just play Bennett.”

“Bennett never let me win,” she said. “He didn’t have to.”

“I wonder what he’ll think of another man getting to play with you,” he said.

Okay, this Luke she could deal with. Cocky and arrogant, throwing out innuendo expecting that it would make her blush. And yes, it often did. But at least that was a comfortable pattern. “That’s what we’re here to find out,” she said.

She went over to the dartboard and collected the darts from where they were stuck into the cork, and then she carried them back to the line, steeling herself for her first shot.

“You’re really not a bar girl,” Luke said. “So how is it exactly that you are the most notorious dart player in Gold Valley?”

“I like to have a bit of mystery about me, Luke.”

“Fine. You have to get a bull’s-eye on this next shot, or you have to tell me how you learned to play darts.”

She laughed, then she straightened her posture, cocked her arm back and let the first dart fly, effortlessly sticking it in the center of the bull’s-eye.

“No shit,” he said, slightly annoyed, slightly in awe.

“I told you I was that good,” she said.

She liked darts. She had ever since she’d outgrown the little wooden dollhouse she’d played with when she was young. If there was one thing Olivia had done a lot of, it was playing by herself. Because Vanessa always wanted to push the boundaries, and Olivia never had. So she’d played with dolls. And then when she was a teenager, it had been darts.

She had spent hours fiddling with them down in her dad’s man cave in their house. Countless times when Vanessa had decided that she was too cool for Olivia and all of her rule following, when she had gone out with her other friends. When she had decided that drinking and sex were far more important than having a bond with her sister.

When Olivia had ended up grounded because she’d come home a few minutes too late, or her grades had slipped and it had caused her parents to tighten their restrictions on her, while Vanessa ran absolutely wild, uncaring if she was grounded or not.

Olivia had thrown any kind of silent frustration she had felt into sticking that sharp pin into the corkboard. Into watching that dart fly straight and true and land exactly where she wanted it. Control. Even in all those muddled, mixed-up feelings, she had found control. Had found a way to channel them. And God knew that had to be better. Better than simply exploding and getting messy emotion all over the people that you were supposed to love and care about. Better than going off and doing whatever you wanted.

Her parents had been hard on her. Harder, in the end, than they were on Vanessa. But hadn’t she turned out better for it?

Olivia hadn’t disregarded their parents’ warnings.

Olivia had played darts.

“Okay,” he said. “Now you have to tell me where you learned.”

She tossed her hair, shooting him a smile. “I don’t have to tell you anything, cowboy. Because I hit the bull’s-eye. And I’m going to keep hitting the bull’s-eye. All night long.”

A strange crackle of tension arced between them and she felt as though she was electrocuted by her next breath.

She looked away from him, and her eyes automatically went to Bennett’s table. He was looking at them. He really was. He was looking at her and Luke and he was not happy.

Their eyes caught for a moment and her breath hitched. It wasn’t the same kind of tension that she felt standing there with Luke, but it was a strange adrenaline rush. That she was accomplishing this. That she, Olivia Logan, who was quite possibly the polar opposite of a femme fatale, was somehow managing to draw attention. To cause friction. Make a man jealous.

She noticed then that Kaylee was looking at Bennett, and then that she looked up at Olivia. The look was filled with so much anger that it made Olivia’s breath catch in an entirely different way.

She flicked her attention back to Luke. “I’d say that we’re drawing the focus of the crowd,” she said softly.

“Good,” he said, not looking over at Bennett’s table at all. “That’s what you wanted.” He leaned back against their table, resting his forearms there, his hands dangling loosely over the sides. His green eyes were fixed on her. “You going to go again?”

“Of course,” she said. She whirled around and faced the dartboard and brought her arm back one more time, zeroing in on that bull’s-eye. Letting go of everything except for the target. She threw the dart and it landed satisfyingly right where she wanted it.

If only life were like darts.

“Good,” he said, “one more, and then it’s my turn.”

“Yes, I do know how it works, Luke. Thank you.”

“Bull’s-eye,” he said, “or you have to tell me how you learned to play.”

She snorted. “I’m not even worried.”

She turned away from him, facing the dartboard. And suddenly, she felt heat at her back. And then a large hand resting on her hip. He leaned over her shoulder, his lips near her ear. “I just want to see how it’s done. How exactly you’re standing. You know, I’m not anywhere near as good at this as you are. So, it would help if I could observe. If you could teach me.”

She froze completely, her whole body going rigid like a board. The place he was touching her, on her hip, felt like it was on fire. So hot, the press of his palm against her so heavy that she could hardly breathe. That was reasonable, right? That it was the weight of it on her hip... Affecting her ability to breathe?

Her heart was thundering erratically, and when she lifted her hand again, it was unsteady. Her pulse was fluttering hard at the base of her throat, and more disturbingly there was an answering pulse between her thighs.

“I’m not distracting you, am I?” His breath was warm on her neck, and that was a very strange sort of intimacy. His breath against her skin. She could honestly say there was only one man whose breath she had ever felt. And it was not Luke Hollister.

“I’m fine,” she said, not willing to admit that he was affecting her at all. She didn’t want to give him that satisfaction. But then, she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to throw a dart when her entire person was trembling like she was an overly excited rat terrier.

Olivia had never been accused of being overly excited in her life. She was hardly going to start behaving in such a way now.

She took a deep breath, her stomach twisting sharply. Then she lifted her arm, raising the dart back. She tried to zero her focus in on that little red dot at the center. To block out everything around her. But there was his heat. His lips so very close to her ear, his hand resting all proprietary and possessive on her hip.

Possessive.

What an odd word, except it was the one that fit. That’s what it felt as though he had done. As though he had walked up and claimed possession of her in some way. And she should be okay with that. It should be what she wanted. The kind of display she was after.

But it felt terrifying and somehow outside the bounds of the game she knew they were playing. Somehow different than what they were trying to accomplish. She didn’t like it at all.

And if she showed him that he was affecting her, if she missed the shot, there was going to be a lot more of it and she knew it. He might be claiming to help her out, but somewhere underneath all of that, she had a feeling that it was more of Luke messing with her. Why, she didn’t know. She only knew that he seemed to take joy in it. And if nothing else she wanted to deprive him of a little bit of joy.

She let out a long, slow breath and ignored the fact that it was a bit shuddery. A bit shaky.

Then she drew the dart back and let it fly. She gave out a whoop of triumph when it hit the bull’s-eye, even though it was resting just on the edge of that red, it was definitely there.

She whirled around without thinking, and brought herself nearly nose to nose with Luke.

“I hit it,” she said, all the breath leaving her body as she stared into those green eyes. As the nerves in her face lit up like a power grid, every part of herself feeling electric and bright with him right there. She was conscious again of those whiskers that covered his face, just evidence of a long day spent working, a shave that had happened some twelve hours before.

And the shape of his lips.

The way the top lip dipped sharply in the middle, and the lower was fuller.

“I played darts in my father’s basement,” she said in a rush, taking a step backward from him.

If she didn’t tell him he was just going to keep pestering her. She didn’t know how much more of it she could take.

“Really?” he asked, his eyebrows shooting upward. “By yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Not with friends?”

She frowned. “I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, if you must know.”

“Why?”

“Because nobody likes a tattletale, Luke,” she said, not meaning to echo her sister’s words. Not meaning to reveal so much about herself. But echo them she did.

Her stomach sank, her hands getting a little bit clammy.

“Were you a tattletale, Olivia?” he asked, humor in his voice. Clearly, he didn’t understand that they were treading on very bad memories for her.

When everything she had wanted had been at odds with everything she had been. When she had tried so hard to be both good and accepted, and found that she could only be one.

“Yes,” she said, her teeth locked together. “I was. And so I played alone a lot, so I spent time at my parents’ house in the basement playing darts. And I threw them and threw them and threw them until I could hit a bull’s-eye every time. So you’re never going to beat me. You’re never going to throw me off my game, Luke Hollister. It’s going to take more than invading my personal space to throw me.”

“You were pretty thrown, darlin’. I just think you’re that good at darts.”

“I wasn’t,” she insisted, “not at all.”

“You sure about that?”

Ugh. That cocky smile of his. It made her want to... It made her want to something, and she didn’t know what. That was Luke in a nutshell for her. He made her feel restless and strange. Made her feel like her skin was too tight. And she had no idea what she was supposed to do with any of it.

Worse, she had no idea how to ignore it.

“Yes. I’m completely sure.”

“Want to place a wager?” he asked, his grin getting that wicked bent to it that never failed to make her stomach a bit tighter, never failed to send a little shot of adrenaline through her.

She couldn’t predict him, that was the problem. Because as they’d discussed earlier, he didn’t answer to anyone.

This was dangerous, and she knew it. He was playing games with her, and she felt as though they were the kinds of games she might not actually know the rules to. But she was also angry that he had affected her, and angry that he had stepped on vulnerable places inside of her.

That anger propelled her forward.

“Sure.” She tried to sound casual. Unconcerned, even.

“All right,” he said. “We are going to do a little experiment. And then you’re going to throw the dart, and try to hit the bull’s-eye.”

“Fine.”

He held up the shot of whiskey, extending it to her. “You want me to throw the dart after I take a shot?” She laughed. “First of all, are we in high school? Are you peer pressuring me to drink? And second of all, that’s not even a challenge.”

“Oh, kiddo.” He lifted his glass and pressed it to his lips, tilting it back, taking the whiskey down in one swallow.

She gaped at him, confused.

His mouth turned up at the sides in a smile she was sure was meant to be an answer, but only raised more questions inside of her.

“You’re a lightweight, I assume,” he continued, “since you claim you don’t drink often. It wouldn’t be very sporting of me to expect you to throw a dart after you take a whole big bad shot of whiskey. But I do think you should have a taste.”

And before she could protest, before she knew what was happening, Luke had wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her up against his body, where she was staring at those lips again. And then, he was closing the distance between them.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LUKE HOLLISTER WAS kissing her.

He was only the second man to kiss her. The second man to ever put his mouth against hers. But at the moment, she couldn’t even compare the two experiences. She was frozen, and Luke was still, too, but he was... Him.

He tasted like Luke. Like sunshine and hard work. Like whiskey that lingered on his lips. And like a whole lot of trouble.

It was more than just taste, more than just the strange sensation of a mouth that was an unfamiliar shape pressed against hers. It transcended those physical things.

And it went somewhere deeper.

She was on fire. Melting. Her legs were weak, her stomach trembling. It was as if she had never been kissed before at all. That’s how different it was.

His hand was so big, and it was pressed against her lower back, like he owned her. His other hand came up to cup her face—rough, callused—skimming over her cheekbone. He didn’t take the kiss deeper. Didn’t part her lips.

It was over in less than a second.

A chaste kiss. A simple kiss.

That left nothing chaste or simple remaining in her entire body.

There was a pulse pounding insistently between her legs, a slick wetness that had built up in defiance of everything she knew about herself. Her heart was pounding, her breasts heavy, her nipples tightened into painful points.

It was over. Over long before she was able to move or think or react at all. Over long before she realized they were still standing in the middle of the Gold Valley saloon, rather than in some moment that existed outside of space and time.

Luke Hollister had just kissed her in front of everyone.

Bennett was there. She remembered that too late. She remembered everything too late. Including why they were doing this. Of course. He was making a show, as he had promised he would do. And he was definitely trying to get a rise out of her, which she expected, because he was Luke.

All of that made sense. Except none of it made sense. Not inside of her anyway.

“Throw the dart,” he said, his mouth so close to hers it would take nothing for her lips to touch his again. Nothing at all.

Then he withdrew, taking a step back and leaning against the table again, all cocky arrogance and that kind of masculine swagger she hated. She did. She hated it. And right now she was pretty sure she might hate him, too.

She turned away from him, drew her arm back and threw the dart. And it missed.

She hadn’t missed a bull’s-eye without meaning to in more than ten years.

Hot, angry tears pricked her eyes but she refused to let them fall. Because that was just stupid. This was a game. That was all. It was supposed to be a game where they made Bennett jealous. Where they made him think that he was in danger of losing her.

It was supposed to make Bennett feel wild and unpleasant things; it was not supposed to make her feel wild and unpleasant things.

Too late she remembered to look over at Bennett. And when she did, she had to force herself. He was facing away from them. For all she knew, he hadn’t even seen the kiss.

“He saw.”

She blinked, feeling numb. “What?”

Luke was looking at her, his expression grave. “Bennett saw the kiss,” he said.

And just like that, she felt about two feet tall. Because not only had he read her mind just now, it confirmed to her that Bennett was all he had been thinking about during the kiss. She hadn’t thought of Bennett until after. Much, much after. But Luke had been aware the entire time. And then, when she had been standing there feeling vulnerable and reduced, desperately trying to remember the purpose behind this entire interaction, he had read her. Unerringly.

Meanwhile, she couldn’t read him or Bennett or anything. She couldn’t even read herself.

“Good,” she said, as if it was all she cared about. As if there was nothing more conflicting inside of her than whether or not they had managed to affect Bennett.

To say nothing about how she had been affected.

Except, she had missed the target. And there was no pretending that hadn’t happened. She bit the inside of her cheek. “He’s never seen me miss a bull’s-eye,” she said. “At least, kissing him certainly never made me miss a bull’s-eye. That will give him something to think about.”

She could tell by the particular curve of his smile that Luke didn’t believe her. But he didn’t say that. This, quite possibly, was the first time he had ever been a gentleman to her in any way that counted.

“You sure you don’t want another drink?” he asked, taking a step backward, toward the bar.

She sniffed. “I don’t like whiskey.”

His smile widened. Why was his confidence so impenetrable? Why was he so... So much? “Really?”

“Really,” she confirmed.

“I’ll get you a refill on that Coke,” he said, turning away from her and heading back toward the bar, leaving her to ruminate by the dartboard.

She chanced another look at Bennett’s table. And he still wasn’t looking at her. But she caught Kaylee’s eye again. The other woman was clearly unamused with Olivia. Well, at the moment, that made two of them. Olivia felt like she had taken a step into a river, only to find that there was a drop-off sooner than she had anticipated. And that she had scrambled to find her footing, finding instead only algae. Now she was being swept downstream. As analogies went, it was both unpleasant and apt.

She wanted to run. She wanted to run right out the door of the saloon, down the main street, all the way back home. She wanted to abandon this mission, wave a little white flag of defeat, start over tomorrow morning and pretend that nothing had happened.

The only thing that kept her there was that sheer goal-oriented, stubborn nature of hers. She had started down this path, and she had to see it through.

Well, more accurately at the moment, she had started swimming in this river, and at this point she just needed to see where the current would carry her. She couldn’t undo what everyone had just seen. Couldn’t pretend she hadn’t just kissed Luke in front of God and everybody in the bar.

There was no taking that back. Sure, she could offer up handwritten notes to everyone in attendance explaining what she had tried to do, that she was very sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again. Sure, she could stand up on a chair and make an announcement, that she and Luke had been engaged in a little bit of improv, and hadn’t that been a great scene? But it definitely hadn’t been real.

But that would be silly, and she wasn’t going to do that.

Which meant she had no other choice but to allow the current to continue to sweep her along. And hope there wasn’t a waterfall waiting for her at the end.

She beat Luke soundly at darts, which was the only expected thing to come out of the evening. Thankfully, she managed to get herself solid again, and didn’t miss another shot for the rest of the night. Luke, on the other hand, was actually fairly terrible.

“Don’t you know how to shoot a gun?” she asked when they had finished tallying the score, which had been more of a formality than anything else, because she had so obviously beaten him.

“Yes. With a scope. That’s a little bit different.”

“Pretty pitiful, Hollister,” she said, feeling bolstered by the win and momentarily forgetting what had happened a half hour earlier.

“I know my talents. I’m okay with the fact that they don’t lie at the dartboard.”

“Really. Where do they lie exactly?”

“The back of a horse, out on the ranch and in the bedroom.

Heat flared through her body, bleeding out toward her cheeks, down her neck, lower. To all those places that had been affected by the kiss.

“If a man has to boast,” she said, knowing her tone sounded clipped and stiff, “then it sounds a little like just that. Boastfulness with nothing behind it.”

“I don’t boast,” he said. “I’m terrible at darts, and I never claimed any different. One thing you should know about me, Liv. What you see is what you get. I don’t lie.”

“Except now. What Bennett’s seeing isn’t real. Don’t go claiming perfect honesty when you’re in the middle of treachery.”

“I’m being honest where it counts,” he said. “You know what I want.”

Something about the way the heat shimmered in his green eyes when he said that made her stomach tighten. Made her question if she actually did know what he wanted. If this really was all about Bennett and some property her father owned, or if there might be something else. But that was ridiculous. A man like Luke wouldn’t want anything from a woman like her. A woman who barely knew how to kiss, much less anything else.

And if he did, it wouldn’t be about her specifically, but about the fact that he was a man, and they had needs, and all of that. Particularly men like him, who didn’t practice any kind of restraint.

At least, she had never witnessed him practicing restraint of any kind. He was about as different from Bennett as a man could be.

“I have to get up early,” she said. “We should probably go.”

But first, she really needed to use the restroom, because ultimately she had ended up having three Diet Cokes to keep her focus on something—anything—other than Luke.

“All right,” he said, grabbing his jacket off the back of the chair.

“Just a second,” she said.

She scurried across the bar, the sound of her footsteps swallowed up by the noise of the people around them and the music playing over the speakers.

She grimaced when she saw that there was a line outside the little single-use room. Strangely, she didn’t want to talk to anyone. Strange, since what she and Luke had been doing had definitely been designed to draw attention. But she didn’t want to actually contend with that attention in real time. She wanted to deal with it on her terms. When she was good and ready to deal with it. And that would be when she had been given a lot more time to process everything herself.

She looked up at the scarred, wooden wall and frowned when she saw a list of names carved into it.

Second to last was Luke Hollister. She put her fingertips against his name, a strange kind of energy zipping through her as she did.

“Found me,” he said.

She looked up, startled. Luke was standing right next to her, his hands shoved into his pockets, his black cowboy hat positioned firmly on his head.

She jerked her hand back as though the wall was on fire and in danger of scalding her skin. “What is it?”

They were all men’s names. She recognized a couple of them, but no one she knew very well. And she couldn’t figure out what they might have in common.

Luke lifted a shoulder. “Dumb shit.”

“What dumb... Stuff?” Now her curiosity was getting the best of her.

“They don’t do it much anymore. This,” he said, tapping his hand against his own name, “is from a long time ago.”

“What? Did you... Drink the most beers or something?”

“When a guy hooked up in the bathroom they used to carve his name on the wall.”

Her stomach plummeted down to her toes. “What?”

“Yeah, Laz put a stop to that. He didn’t much care for people carving into the side of his wall when he bought the place.”

“You... You...”

Just then, the bathroom door opened and a woman walked out, barely glancing at her and Luke as she breezed past.

“Looks like it’s vacant.” He gestured toward the bathroom.

“You’re not going to wait outside for me, are you?” That was all she needed. Luke timing her bathroom break. While she was in there it would also probably be unavoidable to imagine him in there with that woman...

“Yes,” he said. “Because I’m waiting for you.”

“You’re awful,” she said, rushing into the bathroom and shutting the door firmly, locking it behind her. She pressed her palms against her face and realized that it was hot.

She looked around the small room and tried to imagine how on earth a person would... Do that. With everybody outside fully aware of what was going on.

She took care of her necessities, her heart thundering hard the entire time. Then, when she washed her hands, she went ahead and splashed some cool water on her face and her neck.

When she exited the bathroom, he was standing there, leaning against the wall, his head down, his black hat concealing his face. Then he looked up, revealing all that stunning masculine glory. Strong chin, square jaw, those lips that she had kissed. Lips that had kissed another woman and more in the bathroom she had just exited.

That thought was even more effective than the cold water she had literally just splashed on herself.

She walked past him without saying anything and he followed behind her.

“Hang on,” he said when they got to the bar. “I have to settle my tab.”

“You couldn’t have done that instead of loitering outside the bathroom door like a pervert?” she muttered.

“I waited for you,” he said. “You can wait for me.”

She realized, dimly, somewhere in the back of her mind, that this all served the purpose that they had come here for in the first place. She wasn’t here with him as a date. She wasn’t. They were here so that they looked like a burgeoning couple. Which made him waiting for her, and them walking across the bar together, look romantic or something.

Of course, had she actually been here on a date with him, finding his name carved into the wall like that would have been even more upsetting. No. It would have been upsetting. It wasn’t upsetting at all as it was. She didn’t care how much of a whore he was. That was his business—and the woman’s. Whatever woman was crazy enough to try and get involved with him with any actual sincerity.

He paid Laz, and then put his hand on her lower back as they headed toward the door. She gritted her teeth, trying her best to keep her expression neutral until that first blast of night air hit her in the face as they walked out onto the street.

Then, she pulled away from him. She shoved her hands in her pockets and walked down the sidewalk, looking for the first crosswalk before making her way across toward the truck. He was already there. Because he had just gone directly across the street.

“That’s jaywalking,” she said.

“Do I look like I care?” he asked, rounding to the passenger side of the truck and jerking the door open for her.

“It doesn’t seem to me like you care about much,” she said, getting in and grabbing hold of the door handle, slamming it shut before he could do the honors.

He got in and started the engine, pulling away from the curb quickly, before she managed to get herself buckled.

“For the record,” she said, once they were on the road, “it’s illegal to start driving before the passenger is buckled, too. Like jaywalking.”

She didn’t know if that was actually true. But it sounded legitimate enough.

“Again,” he said, “I don’t care.”

Now he was starting to sound snippy, and he had no right to sound snippy. He wasn’t the one who had been kissed in the middle of the bar in front of everyone. Okay, so he had been. But it was different for him. Different for him because he was Luke Hollister, and he had kissed any number of women, and his kissing her wouldn’t reflect badly on him. She was the one who had kissed only the second man she had ever kissed in her entire life, and then seen his name carved on the wall because he had...

They headed out of town, the glow of the streetlights fading in the distance behind them, the evergreen trees that lined the side of the road absorbing any light that was coming from the moon or the stars, making them feel ensconced in darkness, only the narrow glow of the headlights illuminating a very tight path in front of them.

She kept her eyes on the double yellow line on the road, something comforting about having that familiar sight to rest her eyes on while the rest of the world felt wild, untamed and unknowable.

And she couldn’t even pretend it was because of the darkness. It was because of Luke. And the way it had felt when his lips had touched hers.

There was a certain point where she’d stopped worrying about unknown things in the darkness, because she had been convinced that she knew herself well enough she could find her way through anything. That she had decided firmly who she was, and who she would be, and had been at peace with that choice. But all of that assurance had crumbled around her in a bar tonight, and she didn’t know quite what to do with that.

So she stared at the yellow line and hoped that it would guide her home, because God knew she didn’t trust herself to do it. She certainly didn’t trust Luke.

“What exactly are you mad about, Olivia?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“You’re a terrible liar,” he said. “Things were going okay, and now you’re mad at me.”

“What does it matter? Nothing that happened tonight is real.”

“Something made you mad. I want to know what.”

“Like you care when I’m mad. You like making me mad.”

“Sure,” he said. “I like making you mad on purpose. Just a little bit mad. A bit of annoyance here and there. But when I do that, you can bet I do it for fun, and you can bet I don’t do it on accident. This is different.”

“Did you honestly have... Did you do...” She stumbled over the words, too embarrassed to talk about it in front of him. Which made her feel silly, and childish. She had no idea how to combat it. She cleared her throat. “With a woman. In that bathroom?”

He chuckled, the sound somehow absent of humor, flat in the cab of the truck, the only other sound the engine and the tires on the road. “You’re mad about that?”

“You kissed me,” she said. “I think I have a right to know where you’ve been.”

“I’m well traveled, kiddo, and I think you already know that.”

“In the bathroom?” she asked, incredulous. “And everybody in the bar knew what you were doing?”

“We didn’t have sex technically speaking.” He paused for a moment. “At least, not in the bathroom.”

“Then why is your name on the wall?” she pressed.

“Something happened in there, not going to lie to you about that. And Wyatt Dodge is a dick when he’s drunk.”

She could hardly imagine Wyatt, who was like a steady older brother to her in many ways, behaving like such a... Such a juvenile frat boy. “Wyatt carved your name onto the sex wall?”

Luke huffed out a laugh. “Yes. But seriously, Olivia, I was like twenty-four years old, and so was he.”

“I’m twenty-five,” she said. “And I think it’s immature.”

“You’re eighty down to your soul,” he said.

“Still,” she snapped, feeling particularly annoyed by that last comment. Mostly because it skimmed a little bit too close to the truth. “That doesn’t make you less gross, and it doesn’t mean that I want you to kiss me to prove points, unless we talk about it beforehand.”

Suddenly, Luke slammed on the brakes and the truck lurched forward. “That does it.” He steered the car off the road onto the shoulder, throwing it into Park, and then turned toward her.

Olivia shrank back, her heart thundering hard from the adrenaline of the abrupt stop, and from the sudden realization of just how small the interior of the truck was. How close he was to her.

“Not everything that happened tonight was fake,” he said.

Her stomach lurched, so hard, so far up that she was afraid it might come out of her mouth. “Yes, it was,” she insisted.

“No,” he said, his voice as rough as the road they’d just been driving on. “It wasn’t.”

Before she could protest, he reached out, wrapping his large hand around the back of her head, drawing her forward. And then Luke was kissing her again. but this wasn’t like The kiss in the bar. There was no audience; there was no excuse for it.

And this time, he wasn’t still. He wasn’t chaste or simple or careful.

He angled his head, forcing her lips apart with his tongue, and her world exploded behind her eyes.

This was Luke. Even in the dark there was no pretending any different.

She lifted her hand, with every intention of pushing him away, but then her fingertips made contact with the scruff on his face, those whiskers that had caught her attention on all those close examinations of him that she caught herself engaged in over the past week. She was touching it. Touching him.

There was only one word that echoed inside of her. A word that didn’t make any sense, but one that shouted loudly nonetheless.

Finally.

She squeezed her eyes shut, so tight that a tear leaked out from one corner. Only because of how tightly she had closed them, not because of emotion. Of course not because of that. This was Luke and she didn’t feel emotions for Luke.

Luke.

Instead of pushing him, she dragged her fingertips along that sharp edge of his jaw, tracing the line of his face down to his chin, brushing her thumb beneath his lower lip as he widened his mouth to taste her even deeper.

She could feel the motion of the kiss under her hand, and somehow, that added to the intensity of the moment.

Which seemed impossible, really. Because the kiss itself was so slick, so hot, so all consuming in a way that she had never imagined a kiss could be.

It eradicated her sense of responsibility, her sense of self. The reason that she was here in this truck with Luke in the first place. The fact that they were on the side of the road—a public road just outside of town where anyone might spot the vehicle and be able to identify it.

None of that seemed as important as what he might do next. As the way he might angle his head, the way the tip of his tongue might trace her lip, might slide against hers.

She was hot all over, her breasts heavy, the ache between her legs a fierce and unrelenting thing that made her feel hollow all the way through.

Luke shifted, pressing both of his hands between her shoulder blades before moving them down her back, coming to rest on her hips. He gripped her hard, his fingertips digging into her skin, through the thin fabric of her dress and her leggings.

Then, suddenly she found herself being hauled across the cab of the truck, as Luke quickly undid her seat belt and drew her up onto his lap, positioning them both at the center of the bench seat, her back to the dashboard.

He pulled her hard against him, until she could feel that telltale, uncompromising ridge between her legs. There was one moment where she thought about protesting. Where she had a spare brain cell in her head that told her she needed to put an end to this.

But it was only a moment. And when he flexed his hips forward, meeting that place at the apex of her thighs that was so desperate, so needy for some satisfaction, it burst into blinding brilliant light, lost completely in the heat and intensity of the moment.

He kept one hand placed at her hip, raised the other one and cupped her face, his hand sliding around behind her head, sifting through her hair as he continued to kiss her, deep and slick.

Then he abandoned her lips, and she groaned, her sound of regret quickly replaced by one of pleasure when that hot mouth of his made contact with the vulnerable skin on the side of her neck, down farther, down all the way to the neckline of her dress. And back up again.

She didn’t know what was happening to her. Didn’t know what had possessed her. She felt like a stranger inside of her skin, one who had no control over the reactions happening inside of her. One who had no understanding of them.

Of course she had been kissed. She had been kissed quite passionately before. But she had been so very aware of herself, so very aware of what was happening, of what might happen next and what she would allow.

Here, now, all of that had been blown apart. Reduced to such tiny fragments that she would never be able to piece them back together. In the moment, she didn’t want to.

In the moment, all she wanted to do was feel.

There was no sound apart from their breath, hard and heavy, mingling together. A sign that the two of them were completely lost in this. Together. It was so intimate. Yes, of course, her tongue against his was intimate, her most sensitive place pressed against his was intimate. But their breath, their heartbeats, that evidence of what this did to them... Somehow that was even more. Even deeper. Even more impactful.

Something dark, delicious and unfamiliar was building inside of her. Dimly, she thought she should fight it. That it was something she had fought against before. But his hands were so warm, so large and masculine and wonderful holding her head, holding her hip. The whiskers on his face burning delicate skin on her cheek, her neck, her collarbone, too wonderful to pull away from. She rocked her hips against his, the rhythm natural, seeming to blend with the rhythm of their kiss as he licked a path down to the very edge of her dress, then lifted a hand and flicked open the top button, then the second.

Until he revealed the edge of her bra and licked around the edge of that, his tongue tantalizing the sensitive, aroused skin there.

She rolled her hips forward, the tension low in her midsection drawing up even tighter, that place between her legs slick and sensitive. He moved the hand on her hip lower, around to grip her butt, pulling her hard against him. And then the world burst into brilliant color behind her eyelids. She pressed her hips forward, rubbing herself against that hard ridge in his jeans as wave after wave of pleasure rolled over her, as internal muscles she hadn’t been aware of before clenched tight.

She buried her face into the curve of his neck, a hoarse cry on her lips as she shivered through the onslaught of release that seemed to be unraveling her, pulling at some previously unseen thread deep inside of her, undoing everything that had been Olivia Logan before. Leaving behind a worn, threadbare stranger that was sweating and panting in a man’s arms.

In a truck. On the side of the road.

And then it hit her. Fully hit her.

She had been making out with Luke Hollister on the side of the road.

She’d...

She scrambled out of his hold, pinning herself against the passenger door, her heart pounding so hard she was afraid it was going to break into a million pieces as it slammed itself against her breastbone. As if it were trying to escape, or trying to destroy itself, to release her from this moment. From this humiliation.

She grabbed hold of the door handle and opened the door. And before she could fully think her next action through, she jumped out of the truck and started to walk back toward her house. Away from Luke.

Away from the kind of insanity she knew had the power to ruin her carefully laid plans.

CHAPTER EIGHT

LUKE WAS OUT of the truck and heading after Olivia before he had time to process what had just happened.

They had been kissing, of that much he was certain. An explosion of restraint that had reached its breaking point. At least on his end.

He was pretty sure he wasn’t the only one, though. Judging by her response to the kiss. If he wasn’t mistaken, she’d had an orgasm. And then she had tumbled out of his truck like he was an ax murderer chasing her down, and not the man who had just made her come.

“Olivia,” he called after her retreating figure. He could just barely make out the shape of her, fluttery and small in the darkness.

She didn’t stop moving away from him.

“Olivia Logan,” he called again, taking three steps and catching up with her, grabbing hold of her arm and stopping her progress. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m walking home,” she said, jerking out of his grasp and starting down the road again.

“You are not,” he said. “Get your ass back in the truck.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she said. “I’d rather take my chances out here than get back into that truck with you.”

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t act like I did something to you that you didn’t like. Don’t hide behind all your prickles and indignation. We both know you wanted that.”

She laughed, a kind of hysterical hoot, her brown eyes glittering in the pale light. Her hair was a wreck, and he’d place a bet her cheeks were flushed from the pleasure he’d just given her. She looked like a woman who’d been ravished. He imagined she wouldn’t like that one bit. “I did not want that. I have actively avoided things like that my entire life. Nothing in me wanted that.”

“Then why did you respond the way you did?”

“Good night, Luke,” she said, whirling away from him again and stalking down the road.

“It’s dangerous out here. You can’t see, any car driving on the road isn’t going to be able to see and you’re basically cougar bait.”

“The way I see it, it’s one predator or another, Luke, and I’m happy to take my chances on the ones with claws.”

“Olivia, I would never do anything you didn’t want,” he called after her.

She turned toward him. “I’m just going to go home,” she said, her voice tremulous.

“Let me take you home, Liv,” he said through gritted teeth. “The last thing I want is for something to happen to you because I let you run off having a tantrum.”

“I am not having a tantrum,” she said, stomping her foot in the dirt.

“Honey,” he said, “this is a tantrum. And I’m about over it. So either you get back into the truck, or I’m going to throw you over my shoulder and carry you back.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me, kiddo. Ask yourself if there’s one threat I haven’t made good on. I might be a jerk, Olivia, but I’m an honest one. And I swear to you if you don’t get that pretty ass of yours back in my truck I will put it there myself.”

He wasn’t bluffing. There was no way in hell he was letting her wander around in the forest without a flashlight, with her purse back in his truck... Hell, he doubted she even had her cell phone.

She stood for a moment, and there was no making out her facial expression in the darkness. But he could sense her rage. Had a pretty good idea she was staring daggers through him, even though she probably couldn’t see him very well, either.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, walking back toward the truck, careful not to brush him as she went past.

“I’d rather stick my hand in a badger den,” he commented, walking behind her.

“I’d happily watch.”

She climbed back into the truck and shut the door behind her. And he waited until she was buckled up before he got in and started the engine up again. He checked for headlights, and then pulled back out onto the highway.

His pulse was pounding, and only once they were back on the road did he realize that he was still hard and aching from that kiss. Olivia had come, but he had not. And he wanted to.

He gritted his teeth. He needed to get himself under control. Needed to get his libido reined in. Because he didn’t do things like this. He didn’t go after women who didn’t want him; he didn’t work this hard for a simple orgasm.

And he sure as hell wasn’t going to try and coerce Olivia into his bed. He could have most any woman back at the bar that he wanted. Why was he going to get embroiled in something this complicated? Sure. He wanted her. But he wanted a lot of things he didn’t have.

Life was tricky enough at the moment. He was not going to add her to the mix. Her and her uptight demeanor. Why the hell would he want to take a woman like her to bed anyway? He could have a woman who was enthusiastically on board with everything, rather than little miss prim and prissy.

Thankfully, they weren’t actually that far from her little house.

He saw the little half stone wall with the reflective address number on it and turned in. He followed the main drive for a while, then took a right, where he knew the road led to Olivia’s cottage, rather than to her parents’ house.

He pulled up in front of the little white-and-yellow cottage, illuminated by the small light on the porch, and didn’t even bother to put his truck in Park. Just pressed his foot down on the brake.

“See you later,” he said.

“Sure,” she said, opening up the passenger door, the overhead light casting a glow on her face.

She was pale. More than that, she looked terrified. Not just angry. But honest to God scared.

He groaned, putting the truck in Park. Then he reached out, brushing his thumb over her cheekbone. “Olivia...”

For a moment she froze. For a moment she just stared at him, and he could see a small war being waged behind those pretty brown eyes. Then she jerked away from him, away from his touch. “Don’t.”

She shook her head, climbing down from the truck and slamming the door, clutching her purse and her sweater to her chest as she walked up to her front door. He watched until she was safely inside, and then shook his head, throwing the truck in Reverse and pulling out of the driveway too damned fast. But if he didn’t leave now, he was going to be tempted to go after her, and he knew that would be a bad idea.

His heart was raging like he had just run a marathon, his whole body so on edge he had a feeling a strong breeze could push him over.

No. Only Olivia.

He gritted his teeth against that thought. That regrettably true thought.

There was no point wanting her. There never had been. She was Olivia Logan, of the Logans of Logan County. As close to royalty as you could find in rural Oregon.

He did not have an inferiority complex. That wasn’t the issue. He was sure on her end those would be on her list of issues. As far as his went... She wanted love. She wanted marriage. She had made that abundantly clear. She was twenty-five years old and he was thirty-six. He had a hunch that she was inexperienced, and he sure as hell was not.

He was wrong for her in a thousand different ways, and his damned body couldn’t seem to hold on to that reality.

No, he wasn’t going after her. He was going home. He was getting in a cold shower.

And then he was getting blind-ass drunk so that he could forget he had ever put his hands on Olivia Logan.

Because he sure as hell wasn’t going to do it again.

* * *

OLIVIA STUMBLED INTO the house on shaking legs. A great, gasping sob escaping as she shut the door behind her and locked it. She didn’t know if she was locking it against Luke, to keep him outside, or locking it to keep herself inside.

Apparently, she didn’t know anything. Not about herself, not about a man who had been in her life in some capacity for close to twenty years.

She hadn’t known she could want like that. She hadn’t known she wanted him like that.

But that word had played itself over and over in her mind. Finally. Finally. Finally.

She couldn’t scrub it out of her brain even now.

Even now, as she walked through the living room and dumped her purse and her sweater on the couch, unbearably conscious of the fact that her stomach felt nauseous and that she was wet between her legs.

She heard her phone vibrate and she scrambled to grab hold of it. She had three texts from her mother. Asking if she was home yet.

And then another one rolled in.

Why were you with Luke Hollister at Gold Valley Saloon tonight?

She threw her phone on the couch like it was a rabid varmint and took a step away from it, scrubbing her face with her hands. She couldn’t have this conversation. Not now. She couldn’t answer these questions she didn’t have an answer to.

There’s a very simple answer. It’s to get Bennett back.

She was a liar. Even her head was a liar. She certainly hadn’t made out with Luke in his truck to get Bennett back. She hadn’t...

She pressed a hand to her stomach. She had kissed him and had an orgasm.

She’d never had an orgasm before in her life.

She was a good girl. She had worked so hard to be a good girl. And to be everything that Vanessa wasn’t.

To justify her existence. To justify the fact that Olivia the tattletale had ruined Vanessa the rebel’s life. Hadn’t it been essential to be good after that? To show it was possible to live the kind of life their parents wanted them to have? That it led to better places?

Or she was a hypocrite. She had to keep everything locked down so tight. She couldn’t even let go of it in private.

But a few minutes in private with Luke, a few minutes in his arms, with his hands on her body, and she had let go of everything she had worked so hard for. Everything that she had trained herself to be.

Without thinking, she stumbled back toward the bathroom, flicking on the switch, flooding the room with light that was far too bright. Far too revealing of everything that had happened over the space of the last half hour. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips were swollen. Her eyes were bright and fevered.

She was suddenly aware of the fact that her neck burned, and she angled her head to the side, looking at her reflection, looking at the trail of red that ran down her skin.

Whisker burn, she realized.

Those whiskers that had been captivating her for all this time had left their mark, that was sure.

Who was she? She didn’t have an answer to that. Or at least, not one she liked.

She pulled her dress up over her head, whirling around and turning on the hot water knob in her shower. Then she wrestled with her bra, extricating herself clumsily before shoving her leggings and her underwear down her thighs.

She stepped beneath the spray of water before it was warm, shivering as it slowly grew hotter and hotter, sluicing over her bare shoulders.

She was determined to stand there until she felt normal again. Until she could no longer feel the impression of his lips on hers, his stubble against her neck, his hands on her hips.

She stood there until the water got cold again, and she could still feel his touch. She stood there until she was too miserable and exhausted to do anything but turn the water off, wrap herself in a towel and sit on the edge of her bed.

Slowly, she became aware of her body. Of the fact that her breasts still felt sensitive, of the fact that she felt achy and restless between her thighs still. That got her moving. Spurred her to dry herself off and get herself covered up in sensible, cozy pajamas.

She hoped that would make her feel more like herself.

But as she slipped beneath the covers and curled up into a tight ball, she still felt wrong. Still felt like somebody new. Somebody she didn’t want to be.

And she was afraid that good girl Olivia, the Olivia that was so essential, wasn’t someone she could simply get back to. Because she was afraid she had shattered that Olivia irrevocably in the cab of Luke Hollister’s truck.

As she finally drifted off to sleep, all she could think was that nothing was right. She didn’t know how it ever would be again.

CHAPTER NINE

WHEN OLIVIA WOKE up the next morning her phone was glowing on the couch. She had a raft of texts from her mother. And before she could bend down to pick the phone up, there was a knock at the door.

“Darn it,” she whispered, picking up the phone and holding it to her chest.

She walked to the front door, the white carpet plush beneath her feet. Usually a comfort in trying times, but nothing was comforting to her now.

“Coming,” she muttered as the knocking became more insistent. She had absolutely no illusions as to who it was.

She opened the door and came face-to-face with her mother.

Tamara Logan closely resembled Olivia, only older and more elegant. She was an inch or so shorter than her daughter, still as trim and petite as she had always been. There were fine lines next to her eyes, and not even one strand of gray in her brown hair. If that was accomplished by a hair salon, she would never say, and no one would be brave enough to ask.

“Thank God you’re here,” her mother said, breezing past her and walking into the room. She looked around her, as if she expected to see something out of place. Olivia had a feeling she was expecting, dreading, the possibility that she might find Luke Hollister in the house somewhere, enjoying a morning after.

“I’m alone,” Olivia said.

“Good,” Tamara answered, looking visibly relieved. “I can’t tell you how many texts and phone calls I got about you and Luke. Kissing.”

“I went on a date with him,” Olivia said, wrapping her arms around herself. “It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t even a very serious kiss.” The one in the bar that anyone had seen. She left out any mention of the kiss that had happened after.

She wasn’t even going to think about that kiss, much less talk to her mom about it. She suddenly felt like she was thirteen again and staring down her very disappointed mother after the skinny-dipping fiasco.

Whose fault was this, Olivia? I can hardly believe it was yours.

Olivia swallowed hard.

“I’m not sure he’s a very good man for you to be going on dates with,” her mom said, frowning. “And I thought you wanted to try and patch things up with Bennett. I’m sure that by now he’s regretting breaking up with you.”

“I broke up with Bennett,” Olivia said, realizing that she hadn’t exactly explained the whole story to her parents. “He didn’t break up with me.”

Shock flitted over her mother’s face. “But you were so devastated...”

“I know,” she said, shifting in place, feeling about two inches tall. “I just... I don’t want to be broken up with him. I didn’t want to be. But, you know, I wanted to get married and...”

“He didn’t?”

“Not as quickly as I did. I don’t know. I’m questioning my decision making now.” She was questioning a lot of things. And it was way too early in the morning for her to be trying to explain any of it to her mother, when she could hardly process what had happened the night before, much less what all had happened in the past month.

“I don’t like not knowing where you are,” her mom said. “I texted you so many times last night.”

“I came home early,” Olivia said, lying only a little bit, “and I went to sleep. Sorry.”

Her mother looked so genuinely concerned that Olivia felt guilty. It was one thing to feel indignant in the moment, like her leash was too short. It was another to fully face the reasons she consented to that leash.

Her parents never knew where Vanessa was. They heard from her maybe twice a year, and it was rarely comforting. They deserved to have one child they didn’t have to worry about constantly. She also knew that her parents worried about her even more because of Vanessa. Because they already had one child that was lost to them for all intents and purposes.

They had enough sleepless nights without adding Olivia to their list of worries, and for her part, she had done everything in her power to make sure that she wasn’t doing that.

But last night she had. In a few different ways. And now guilt sat heavily on her chest like a rock, joining all of the other muddled feelings she was contending with.

“Nothing is happening with Luke,” Olivia said. “It’s not. I went out with him because I wanted to prove to Bennett, and to myself a little bit—” she said a small prayer asking for forgiveness for the lie “—that I could go out with someone else if I wanted to. But I promise I’m not blind to anything about Luke. I know him too well.”

Tamara sighed heavily, that burst of energy she’d come in with clearly beginning to run out of steam. Her mother reacted with fear first. It was fear, Olivia knew that. She understood it. “It’s all right if you want to go on dates.”

“I know,” Olivia said, feeling a little bit silly that she was twenty-five years old, standing there in a house on her parents’ property offering justifications for a date she had gone on. Now she felt silly and guilty. So that was fun.

“But, I am relieved to hear that it wasn’t serious. I’m sure that Luke is a nice enough man,” Tamara conceded, “but I wouldn’t say he was suited to you.”

“No,” Olivia said, agreeing with that wholeheartedly. And tried not to think about the way his hands on her body had seemed to suit certain purposes.

“Bennett is a much better choice. He’s from such a good family. And he’s such a good man. He’ll take care of you.”

Her mother’s eyes shone with conviction. The absolute certainty that Olivia needed to be cared for. But then, her mom and dad took care of her now. So of course they thought she might need someone to take care of her later. Bennett had been an ideal someone to them.

To Olivia, too.

But she was starting to be concerned she had blown that potential future up, and that there would be no getting back to it. That felt hopeless. It felt scary. Like the future in front of her was blank, and the past behind her was slipping out of reach.

She’d had a plan. But in that space between the bar and her house, something had happened. Something had happened with Luke. And it had done something to her.

“We’ll see what happens with Bennett,” Olivia said. “I know what I want. I don’t know what he wants.”

Those words tasted like a lie, too.

“You can always talk to me about these things,” Tamara said. “I broke up with your father more than once before we ended up getting married. He was dragging his feet.”

“Dad dragged his feet?”

“Terribly. And sometimes the breakup really is what you need to get some perspective. So, hopefully that won’t be a long time coming for him.”

“Hopefully,” Olivia said.

Tamara leaned forward, pulling Olivia into a hug. Olivia suddenly felt very small, and young. Rumpled. Nothing made her feel more fragile than hugging her mother. She took a shaky breath, her shoulders shuddering, and tried to hold back the tears that were building. She was tired. She really needed coffee. Or she was going to fall apart.

“If he doesn’t, then he’s not the right one,” Tamara said, taking a step back and patting Olivia on the shoulder.

“I guess so,” Olivia said, taking a deep breath.

Words like right and wrong felt all jumbled and confused inside of her. Along with everything else.

“Everything will work out right for you, Olivia,” her mom said. “You’ve done everything right. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Olivia mumbled. “I need coffee.”

“Okay. I’ll leave you to that. I’m going out for breakfast with some of the ladies. Though, that new cook at Sugar Cup doesn’t have the best customer service.”

Olivia knew that her mother was referring to the very unpersonable Frederick Holt, who made a habit of serving up scrambles with a scowl.

“I’m sure if anyone can make him smile, it’s you.” Not necessarily because her mother was the friendliest, but because she was more formidable than most anyone. Hell on high heels. Always tactful, but never a pushover.

“We’ll see,” her mother responded. She gave Olivia’s hand one last squeeze before breezing back out the door and getting in her little red sports car, the perk of turning fifty, she had called it.

Olivia closed her white front door, then stood there for a moment looking at her entryway. It was perfect, undisturbed as ever. Her mother had decorated the little cottage that Olivia now called home. And it was as perfect now as it had been the day she moved in five years ago.

There was a little rose garland with a ribbon on it above the door, framing it in a very charming fashion. Shabby chic furniture and country details were spread throughout the room. Cute little roosters and splashes of red amidst pale yellow and white.

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