Page 2 of Red Hot Rancher

“Don’t worry,” Oliver replied. “I’ll work it off you later.”

Breathy woman tittered again. “This time, let’s make it past my foyer.”

“I can’t help myself around you.”

A tiny smack of lips carried over the wall. Were they kissing? Stomach acid clawed up her throat and she hunched lower.

Faint laughs and suggestive murmurs continued until the barista said, “Here ya go. Thanks for stopping in.”

Footsteps faded and then the door opened and closed. Brigit let out a slow exhale and stared at the now-black screen in front of her. What should she do? Right now, her heart pounded but her feet were as heavy as salt blocks.

The barista came around the partition with a cloth in her hand. “Still doing okay?”

No. Brigit nodded.

The other girl let out a wistful sigh. “I just love seeing couples so into each other. And when the man dotes on his woman like that…” The lady fanned herself.

Brigit clenched her jaw and released it. She smacked the lid of the laptop down, her ring catching the light, only now its sparkle made her numb. “She’s not his woman.”

I am.

It was moving day. After an ugly confrontation with Oliver, Brigit was packed and ready to leave. Because she’d been kicked out.

Could the humiliation be any worse?

She stared at her oblivious brother. He’d been the first person she’d turned to, and like always, her twin was here to rescue her. Justin stood in the doorway, but he wasn’t the problem. The guy he’d brought to help her move was the issue. She trained her gaze over Justin’s shoulder to where his red pickup was lined along the curb for easy loading.

Caleb Cruise was opening the horse trailer doors and digging out blankets for her furniture. The long-sleeved button-up shirt couldn’t hide the bunching of muscles on his lean frame. And the way it was tucked into his jeans gave her a grade A view of his ass as he set his toolbox on the lawn.

Caleb Cruise. The man she’d tried to avoid her entire adult life.

And he was here to help her move out of the home she’d shared with her cheating ex-fiancé.

She’d rather get her foot stomped on by a half-ton heifer.

Caleb looked up as he straightened. His face didn’t break into a smile. He gave her a nod, like he always had the few times their paths had crossed in the last decade. Thankfully, he didn’t wait for a response. She wasn’t prepared to deal with Caleb or the unresolved feelings between them that she’d ignored since she’d left.

Forget the feelings. She wasn’t equipped to be seen by anyone outside her family. This morning, she’d rolled out of bed after a night full of tears and tissues and dressed in the yoga pants that, according to Oliver, made her ass look big. She’d topped the look with a messy topknot and an old pink T-shirt that had a hole under the armpit.

Moving was hard work, but Caleb looked like he’d be going to a photo shoot afterward. He always did, no matter how he was dressed. When he was on for his twenty-four-hour shift with the fire department, he was Caleb the firefighter. Navy-blue uniform, his hair slicked back revealing his shaved sides. No ear gauges or nose ring.

But off duty, he was a mixture of ranch kid and alt rocker. A combo that shouldn’t work, but with Caleb, it couldn’t have worked better. Today he had a ball cap over his glossy hair, but his ear gauges were in. The ear gear wasn’t large enough to make his earlobes saggy when the plugs were out, and they paired well with his nose ring. In high school, he’d had an eyebrow piercing and a tongue ring, too, but with his work, he’d let those go.

Not that she’d noticed.

“I don’t have much stuff, Justin,” she said tightly. “You and I could have handled it.”

It would’ve taken all day, and maybe some of the furniture would’ve broken their backs, but she and Justin were enough.

Justin snorted and pushed past her. “Sorry, I want to walk in the morning and I know that china hutch is gonna make me its bitch. Besides, you didn’t want to make a big deal out of it and Caleb was around when you called.” Justin wandered through the living room, pointing at the large furniture and muttering to himself.

He was making a game plan to load everything in as few trips as possible. At least one of them had the wherewithal to do it. When she considered all the work that needed to be done, she broke down in tears, all the ways her life had gone wrong rolling like a sad black-and-white movie through her mind.

When she’d called Justin five days ago, she’d been sobbing and shaking in her car in the parking lot of the coffee shop in Normandy. Before she’d confronted Oliver, she’d called her brother. All her college friends had graduated and moved on. They were immersed in exciting careers and a few were married and starting families. There was no way Brigit was going to call and tell them the story of how the barista thought her fiancé and the coworker he was fucking were such an adorable couple.

Would she have called Justin, knowing Caleb was standing next to him? Justin had waited to point it out until last night when she’d contacted him in a moment of panic.

Oliver had moved his things out when she couldn’t accept his indiscretion as a mistake—or take full blame because the stress of supporting her had driven him into his coworker’s arms.

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