Page 38 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

She did. And realized immediately that she’d been holding hers.

“It’s very early,” he told her, and nodded toward the windows, which were dark. “I have to go milk the cows. Everything is exactly the same as it was yesterday. We’re fine. Okay?”

When she only stared back at him, too shellshocked to even move, he grinned.

And there was something about that grin. It seemed to curve into her, too. It was so…him. She’d seen Boone grin a million times, but this was different.

This wastheirs.

She felt something inside her stutter at that.

“There’s coffee in the kitchen,” he said, his voice that impossible rumble, and now she’d actuallyfelthis voice. Right there against the softest part of her when he’d made those noises while he was busy—

Good Lord.She could feel herself getting breathless and hot at the very idea.

And she had the strangest feeling that he knew exactly what was happening to her.Nuclearbegan to seem more and more like a perfectly appropriate word to describe this. Theonlyword.

“Come on down to the barn when you’re ready,” he said. “Feel free to take a shower. Or whatever else you want.”

Then he sat up—an easy, athletic jackknife that seemed to require no effort at all from him. And she’d known that he was in good shape. Everyone knew he was in good shape. He worked with his hands, for God’s sake, and was constantly moving, and he looked the way he looked. She’d understood that he was handsome and fitin the abstract.

But suddenly the specific shape he was in seemed personal. To her.

Especially when Boone, her very best friend in all the world, reached over to take her chin between his thumb and forefinger. Then held her face there as he kissed her.

Not a quick little kiss. Not a peck.

He was focused. Determined. And thorough.

Very, very thorough, until she was panting and he was grinning against her mouth.

“Cows, baby,” he said against her lips. “Got to think about the cows.”

And when she still didn’t move, he moved her. He just… picked her up and set her back down again further away on the couch so he could angle himself off of it.

Then Sierra sat there, a lot like she was paralyzed, as he moved around the dark house. He disappeared into the back and she heard the water running in the pipes. Then he came out in a slightly different version of the jeans and T-shirt he’d been wearing last night—his uniform, she knew. He went to the kitchen and came back out with the insulated mug he carried with him in the mornings, and a regular mug that looked like it came from the Farm and Craft Market. He plunked the ceramic mug down in front of her and she didn’t even have to look at it to know it would be made perfectly to her preferences. Heavy cream, light sugar.

This time, he kissed her on the forehead and laughed when she only stared back at him. “Drink your coffee. See you soon.”

That he walked out of his house and left her there.

It seemed take Sierra a very long time—after she heard his truck pull away, after she’d sat there in the quiet—to realize how early it really was. The darkness outside had only the faintest tinge of deep blue. There were still stars.

She reached out to pick up the coffee mug, then curled up on that couch to drink it. She waited for one sip, then the next, to encourage her brain to start firing.

But the truth was, she couldn’t make any of this makes sense.

She had asked him last night, but she didn’t feel that the question had really been answered. How had she missed this?

Because she had meant it every single time she’d told Matty that there was nothing between her and Boone. She’d been telling the truth.

She could hear Boone’s voice in her head.You wanted to be blind, he’d said.It was safer that way.

Today she felt anything but.

Still, it was a different kind of precariousness. She felt as if a bull had been let loose in a China shop, except the China shop was inside of her. And despite all the clanking around, she really couldn’t tell if she minded all that much that the China was broken.

If, maybe, the China hadneededto break.

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