Page 86 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

No.

Want to go out?

It took a long time for that response to come through too.

I guess I might as well.

Great. I’ll be by to pick you up at about 7:50.

You go out that late? That’s usually when I put my pajamas on.

The bar doesn’t even get hopping until ten.

Maybe this is an exercise in futility. It was. He knew that. He still wanted to meet her.

He didn’t warn Lachlan. Which he knew wasn’t the best move. But he did it anyway. Because he was past the point of making good decisions. There would be other people from Four Corners at the bar tonight, he was sure that. And for some reason, inviting her made him revise what he had chosen to wear. He stripped off his T-shirt and found a black button-down shirt, put it on with his jeans.

There. He looked a little bit more like he might match up to her now. Not that it was a date. He was just taking her to the bar so that she could see it. He pulled up to her cabin, and the door opened and she rushed outside, almost like she was afraid of what would happen if he had come up those stairs.

She didn’t have her shield. Not anymore.

She was wearing a completely respectable dress that fell just above the knee and didn’t conform overmuch to her curves. But the problem was, he had seen everything beneath that dress. And even if it wasn’t for quite as long as he wanted to see it, he had. And he felt... Well, he felt a lot of things about it. The problem was, he hadn’t gotten his fill of her.

He didn’t know what it would take to get that.

He really didn’t know.

He got out of the truck, because even though she was on her way to him, it was the thing to do. He rounded to the passenger side and opened the door for her. “You look nice,” he said.

She looked up at him, her eyes going round. “Thank you. You... You look nice.”

“Thank you.”

And it was like the air between them had frozen, holding them in place. And there was a moment where he could see leaning in and kissing her. Taking over both of their better senses and walking her up the stairs back into that house. Even though he knew that was what she had been avoiding. Yeah, he sure as hell knew. But if he kissed her, she wouldn’t resist. If he kissed her, she would say yes. Because whatever might be logical or real or reasonable, they wanted each other.

But he didn’t take that direction. He didn’t go that route.

He didn’t, because it just wasn’t the right thing to do. Not right now.

And she got into the truck and the moment passed. He took a breath. Then he rounded to the other side, got in, and started the engine.

“It’s just in town. You’ve been to town. There isn’t much to it.”

“Yeah. As far as I can tell, ice cream, a diner... The bar, and then, of course, the grocery store. Which is mostly bait and tackle.”

“Not wrong,” he said.

“You get most of your food off the ranch, don’t you?”

“We have the resources for it. We’re hoping to make the ranch a little bit of a destination for that kind of thing. We can sell our own beef in the farm store the Sullivan girls are opening. Mostly, because we’re such a huge operation, the Garrets and the Kings sell their stuff to grocery stores farther afield. We’re big enough that we can actually go use the USDA weigh station, all of that. Some of the smaller outfits... It isn’t worth it. It’s expensive to haul your animals all the way over there.”

“Yeah. I don’t know anything about any of that.”

“It’s a whole thing.”

“But you’ve always been horses at McCloud, right?”

“Always. Hunter is passionate about the breeding program. That’s still his pet project. Me, I just like to work. I don’t really care what it is. I do a lot of the construction jobs, the repair jobs. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none. That kind of thing.”

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