Colton's Lethal Reunion (Coltons of Mustang Valley)

Which was the only reason she had a smile on her face when she opened her door to him. Still in the jeans and tennis shoes he’d had on earlier, he came in carrying an overnight duffel on a strap over his shoulder.

And a hanger filled with dress shirt, pants and a tie.

It wasn’t that she was thinking his visit meant anything permanent, or signified any change between them. It just felt good to know that he was worried about her.

“Wow, they did a good job,” he said, nodding toward the front room. “You can’t even tell it’s a new window.”

She could. The old one had had a moisture cloud between the panes on the left-middle side.

“You can hang those in the closet in the spare room,” she said. “There’s no bed in there, just my desk, but there’s an inflatable mattress if you’d rather use that instead of the couch.”

Because his being there was not for them to sleep together again. He’d said it. And she needed that fact clearly established from the beginning.

No way was she going to spend the evening wondering. Wanting. Talking herself into one more night of pretending heaven on earth was real.

“I’ve called up aerial maps,” she said as soon as Rafe came walking back down the hall minus his bag. In the jeans and T-shirt she’d changed into after her shower, she was leaning over her personal tablet and her department-issued laptop placed side by side on the dining room table.

“I was hoping I could take a shower first?” he said. She looked up to see flannel pants and a T-shirt in his hands. “I didn’t want to take the time to shower at home...”

Because he was worried about her and eager to get back.

“Fine,” she said. “You can use the spare bathroom in the hall. There’s a set of towels under the sink.” And in the meantime she was going to brew herself some peppermint tea, and on her way to do that, she went down the hall, past the spare bath where she could hear the shower start, and in to get her lavender oil. Both were good for headaches. And lavender was calming, too.

The shower was still running on her way back to the kitchen. No big deal. She’d had guests before. Had them shower in her bathroom. She just hadn’t ever pictured them actually in the act, completely naked, with soap suds on their...

No. She had to stop.

The image of Rafe’s penis was just fresh in her mind. Because of the night before. That was all. She wasn’t losing it.

Or, if she was, it was just the crack on the head. She’d be over it in the morning.

Or sooner. Did peppermint and lavender take care of unwanted sensual thoughts, too?

Her tea was not only brewed, but half-gone by the time Rafe was back in the dining room. She’d been studying the aerial photos—satellite images that were readily available on the internet these days.

She could get Odin Rogers without Rafe’s help, but she had a better chance of doing it and staying alive if she had backup. The afternoon’s events had shown her that much. If she hadn’t texted Rafe, she could have died out on that mountain. And it was clear to her that Dane was going to focus on solving the ranger’s death, not on catching Odin Rogers. She knew his investigation was going to lead him there eventually, unless they wrote this one off as an accident, too, but she wasn’t going to sit around and wait.

Something was going on; the perpetrators were nervous about her sniffing around, which meant now was the time to sniff harder.

She was smart to let Rafe help her do that.

Besides, he kind of owed it to Tyler. And to her.

One glance at those dark plaid flannel pants, and the T-shirt stretched over the expanse of flesh, and she was reaching for the tea again. She told herself he most definitely had underwear on beneath the pants.

And if he didn’t, she’d never know about it.

But Rafe would make certain that he had something to hold on to his hard-on. If he got one.

Would he get one?

Being alone in her home with her all night?

Did she have at least that little bit of an effect on him?

“So...here are the aerial maps,” she said, tapping on her laptop to wake it up. And then repeating the process with her tablet. “I’m thinking we were right about here...” Using the mouse, she moved the pointer, stepping over a few inches as Rafe came closer, leaned down, to study the screen.

His hair was still wet. She’d seen it that way as kids, when they’d play in the landscape sprinklers when one sprung a leak, or turn the hose on each other. As an adult—all that blond thickness...