Page 4 of If You Loved Me

Chapter 2

Ranger

Long chestnut hair, rich espresso eyes, and rosebud lips haunted me from the time I leftSarah’s Bakeryto this very moment as I walked up the steps to the main house. Maybe it was my prolonged stint in prison that had me fawning over her like a fucking puppy. Nearly ten years without contact with a woman did something to men like me.

I’d never been a player. The girls I hooked up with always knew exactly what they were getting with me. I made sure there was no mystery to the situation. Brutal honesty was a trait my father passed down to me.

I could still remember all the moments we shared together. The first time he had me break in one of the new horses, I’d hit my ass on the dirt too many times to count and my father just stood behind the barrier of the training ring giving it to me straight. Telling me how I was messing up and what I needed to do to fix it.

He never sugarcoated what he said and Ialways appreciated that about him because I knew exactly what I was getting. There was never a question in my mind about what he meant or what his intentions were in various situations.

So, I’d brought that quality into myself—worked on establishing my own truth and communicating openly about it. Especially when it came to women. Because I’d never been with a woman who I wanted to spend more than one night with. There were plenty of great ones who shared my bed. Smart, witty, adventurous. But none of them drew my attention the way Sarah Williams had this morning.

Which I found odd given I was six years her senior and barely had any contact with her other than seeing her around when I would pick up my sister from school. But two summers ago when I saw her at Deacon’s summer bonfire, I felt like a shadow that had found its muse. I couldn’t seem to stay away from her that night. Watching the reflection of the flames in her dark eyes as she tilted her head back and laughed at something her friend, Willow had said. The gentle curves of her body had my hands aching with the need to run them all over her. To pull her into my lap as I buried my face in her neck.

Fuck.

I pulled at my jeans, trying to loosen the crotch area where my dick was annoyingly erect. Not exactly the look I wanted to have as I brought my sister and Miles muffins for breakfast.

Taking a quick pause in front of the door, I adjusted myself so I wasn’t showing before I cleared my head of any remaining thoughts of Sarah.

Most ranchers ate breakfast before they started work for the day, but it had always been tradition for my sister, Callie Rose, and me to eat breakfast together and despite all my years of trying to get that girl out of bed before the sun rose, I’d failed. So, I learned to accept my fate and celebrated the fact that I was even able to have these mornings with my sister again.

Ten years without them was hard. Even though it made the ranch work feel more difficult some days not getting a head start in the mornings, I cherished this time with my sister knowing how quickly someone else could take it away from us.

Stepping through the door, I called out, “I have breakfast!”

There was rustling and the sound of stools scraping against the hardwood. I rolled my eyes, remembering I needed to add some furniture pads to the kitchen stools before they wore holes into the floor. Callie had done a great job of keeping up with the place while I was away, but there were still a ton of things I needed to do to keep everything up to par.

Miles, my best friend since kindergarten, rounded the corner from the kitchen first. “Oh, man! You got stuff fromSarah’s Bakery? She has the best cupcakes I’ve ever had.”

When Miles grabbed the box of muffins from me I asked, “When have you gone to her bakery?”

A strange pull tugged in the center of my chest when I thought about Miles hanging around Sarah. We were similar in our approach of being honest with the women we sleptwith and I’d never been a jealous man. If a woman wanted someone else that just meant she wasn’t the woman for me.

But this reaction I was having about Sarah was foreign to me. And I couldn’t help but think about the comment she made to Deacon over the phone.

“But who the hell is going to want to be with a thirty-year-old virgin, Deacon?”

How a woman like that had gone her entire life without being shown the passion of sex was beyond me. Or maybe she was one of those who chose to save themselves for marriage. Not that there was anything wrong with that approach, it just wasn’t the kind of ideology I subscribed to.

“I go there all the time, man,” Miles said before stuffing his face with one of the muffins. “Like I said, best cupcakes around, and when the sweet tooth starts barking at me she’s got the best fix in town.”

I tried to hide the sneer from my face but when I looked over to my sister, she stopped her hand mid-grab and looked at me, her eyebrows raising in question. I shook my head, silently telling her to let it go. She shrugged and finished her reach for one of the muffins.

“So, what’s the plan for the calves?” Miles asked.

I swallowed a bite and chased it down with the coffee Callie Rose had waiting for me on the counter. “I figured we could grab the calves on the front pasture and tag them first while we slowly transition the ones on the back pastures forward. I think we can have them all wrapped up by the end of the week with just the two of us working.”

“Speaking of just the two of us, have you thought any more about hiring another hand?”

It was truly wild to see just how far the ranch had come in such a short period of time. While Miles and Callie Rose had kept things going while I was away, they barely broke even most months for the past decade. It wasn’t for a lack of their efforts though. Ranch life was hard work and if you didn’t have the gift of choosing the right cows and building relationships with wholesalers, you’d likely fail. My father never had the passion for it which was why he went into the military.

But every man who owned this land in our family before him had been gifted the ability to ranch well and that was passed on to me. So, when I got released I immediately got to work and within a year, I had the place turned around so that we started making a decent profit. Now, that profit was growing more and more which also meant the ranch was expanding and we’d need to hire some additional hands.

I just didn’t like the idea of having strange men around my sister. Miles had always been around and we’d established one rule since our friendship began. My sister was completely off-limits. He’d respected that rule, but I wasn’t sure if I could trust other men to do the same.

“Let’s get through the rest of this year and we will re-evaluate in the new year. I think we can manage just the two of us until then.”

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