Tempting the Rancher (Meier Ranch Brothers 1)

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January awoke in two contradictory states of mind.

One was a slow climb from a fog not unlike the kind she witnessed in Newfoundland between the polar current and the Gulf Stream: tremendous, hypnotic, a tidal wave in magnitude. She was naked, toasty, wrapped in the quilt beside Nat, and she lacked the desire to resume anything about her existence past snuggling closer to him and allowing sleep to resume its hold.

Another disquieting thought tugged at her: she had to go. Not from Close Call, not yet. She had to finish packing, and she wanted to tackle a special project before she left. A gift for Nat that required her to call in a few of Mona’s favors. First, though, she had promised her mother she would meet her at the bank in town to take care of her inheritance transaction. With no cell reception, January had no choice but to give in to this much more pressing state of mind.

She allowed herself a minute longer to study Nat’s face. Skin at his lower lids was grayed with fatigue, from long hours getting the herd ready for auction, from carrying the family legacy alone. A mental map formed of the parts of her body still raw from the stubble that crowded his generous lips, slackened in sleep. Her mouth stretched to a smile that quickly faded. Time was sure to blur his features, as it had once before. Would she remember the precise shade of his sun-bronzed skin, no longer fleshy and boyish but stretched taut against his cheekbones? The cleft of his latent dimple where his long, symmetrical face transitioned into a strong, square chin? The more recent development of tiny lines at the creases of his eyes? Would she remember this series of breaths with absolute certainty?

That answer alone—no—nearly had her rethinking her life.

January dressed without rousing him. The plan was to leave him a note torn from her journal and take Brontë back. If the crew hadn’t yet sent a trailer for the animals, she could alert them. She scratched off one sentence—See you soon. Sending reinforcements. She had just gotten to the Love, J part when she was startled by his voice: strong, not at all sluggish, as if he hadn’t really been asleep.

“What are you doing?”

“I didn’t want to wake you. I have to go.”

He scrubbed a palm down his face and sat up. The quilt fell to his waist but left a tempting expanse of nude hip exposed.

“So you were going to leave. Just like that?”

“I wrote you a note.”

“That’s about right.”

His tone was low-grit sandpaper and sharp edges that rubbed her the wrong way.

“I don’t think you heard me, Nat. I said I had to go, not that I was leaving.”

“Are we really going to debate synonyms, J? You get up and you leave. That’s what you do.”

His voice resonated in her chest. He was too goddamned close to be stumbling into anger. She swallowed the dryness in her mouth, to give her time to summon words when none would do. “Wha—?”

“I thought that after what we shared—after all this…” He motioned toward the saddle corralled in the center of the room. “You might at least have the courtesy to be real with me this time.”

She watched him drop the quilt. Nat was erect and flawless in all his grand, first-wake manhood, but she was numb to the sight. He stabbed his legs into his jeans, not bothering to button them—couldn’t even if he tried because of her desperation to strip him—a desperation she could barely remember now, much less summon again.

“This is as real as I get, Nat. I’ve never shared myself with anyone the way I do with you.” Her words ripped uneven and raw from her parched throat. “This was the scariest thing I’ve ever done, knowing I had the power to hurt you again. The fact that you can’t recognize that as real puts us right back where we’ve always been.”

“Exactly.” He punched fists through the arm holes of his t-shirt and cinched it over his head. He was a bull set loose in a hallowed space. “Where us revolves around you.”

She swung her pack onto her shoulder and opened the cabin door. “I’m taking Brontë.”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to realize you’re not enough to make someone want to stay? Not even after sex?”

“That’s not fair, Nat.”

“No, what isn’t fair is that I would leave this place in a heartbeat to be with you, but you would never leave all the other places to be with me.”

She shifted her weight from boot to boot while his words trampled through her ears and plummeted to her chest like a herd driven off a precipice. Their currency had always been honesty, but the truth made her feel cold, lifeless.

Nat reached for his hat on the stove but didn’t put it on. He kneaded the bill until his knuckles paled. His voice wavered, quieter now, behind the static rush of blood to her ears. “That peace you’ve been looking for? That place you think will magically make you feel whole? It ain’t on a map, J.”

His brows gathered above wounded eyes.

A sting filled her sinuses, yet even now, she thought only of saddling up Brontë and putting distance between her and this—this absolute unraveling of her good intentions. Why was she this way? How had something so special turned so wrong?

Revolutions of a diesel engine crowded the silence. Truck doors slammed. Men chattered.