.

shook her head, spurring Roo on harder into the second. That went better. But she knew she wasn’t at top time. Not even her own top time. She was too in her head, and there was nothing she could do about it right now. Not with Jack here. Not with that whole list of professionals she was going to be competing against in front of people.

      Not when she was going to be faced with the undeniable proof of whether or not she had the ability to compete professionally and win. And down went the third barrel.

      Kate growled, bringing Roo to a halt. She slid off the back of the horse, walked over to the barrel and reset it herself. “I’m gonna call it good now,” she shouted.

      “Do it again.”

      “No. I’ve done it twice—that’s enough.”

      “Your horse can handle more than that. You know that.”

      “I’m done, Jack,” she said, feeling a whole lot angrier than the situation warranted. But she didn’t care. Because all of this felt like a little bit too much. Because she wanted Jack, and yesterday, just when she thought he might want her too, he had walked away. He had walked away and acted as though it didn’t matter.

      And now he was here again, getting in her face, treating her like a kid. He was the worst. He was worse than the run she had just done.

      “Do you want things to go well when you compete next month?”

      “No,” she said, her tone dripping with disdain. “I want to fail miserably in front of a thousand people.”

      “With those skills, you will.” There was an intensity to him that was unusual. And it matched her own.

      This was weird. All of this was weird. Sure, she and Jack sniped at each other, but this wasn’t normal.

      None of this was normal, and she had no freaking clue what to do about it.

      She turned away from him and started fiddling with the barrel position again.

      “You going again?” he asked.

      “Nope,” she said. “I already told you that.”

      “Stop being a baby.”

      She snorted. “Kiss. My. Ass.”

      “I don’t think I’ll kiss it, actually.” She didn’t see his next action coming. Literally, because she was turned away from him. The sharp crack on her backside with his open palm didn’t hurt, but it sure as hell shocked her. “Now, get that pretty ass back on the horse and do it again.”

      Shock, anger and undeniable lust twisted together in her stomach, forging a reckless heat that fueled her next set of actions.

      He had too much control. She let him set the terms in the Farm and Garden, let him mess with her, let him ramp up her attraction and walk away. He thought he was the teacher, in everything, in all things, because he thought she was a kid, easily dealt with. Wasn’t that what all of this was? Just him dealing with an obnoxious kid. Teach her how to flirt, keep her out of trouble. No way. No more.

      He had too damn much control, and he was too confident in it. She was going to take it. Now.

      She reached out, grabbed ahold of the collar of his shirt and pulled him forward, catching him just enough by surprise that she managed to knock him off balance and close the distance between them as she stretched up on her toes to press a kiss to his lips.

      She realized her mistake a split second too late.

      She’d seen it as a moment to seize power, but what she hadn’t realized was that all semblance of control would flee her body like rats off a sinking ship the moment his mouth made contact with hers.

      There was no calculation, not now. There was no next move that she could think of. There were no thoughts at all.

      There was only this. There was only Jack. The heat of his body, the sensation of his lips pressed against hers. The fact that this was her first kiss was somehow not at all as important as the fact that she was kissing Jack.

      And he wasn’t pushing her away.

      He didn’t move for a moment, simply standing there and receiving what she gave him. But in a flash, that changed.

      He wrapped one arm around her waist, holding her hard against him, crushing her breasts to the muscular wall of his chest. So tightly she could feel his heart raging.

      Somewhere in her completely lust-addled mind, she was able to process the fact that he was affected by this, too.

      She angled her head, trying to deepen the kiss, wanting more, needing more. Just as she did, she found herself being propelled backward, released.

      Jack turned away from her and walked about four paces before whirling around again.

      She felt cold. Shaky. She had kissed Jack. Actually kissed him. And for about two glorious seconds he had kissed her back.

      And then he had...shoved her.

      “Don’t do that again,” he said, his tone hard.

      “If you’re going to slap my ass, I expect a kiss on the lips first,” she said, not quite sure how she was managing to keep her tone steady.

      Her insides certainly weren’t steady. They were rocked, completely turned on end. But at least her voice was solid.

      “Don’t...do that again,” was his only response.

      “Why not? I thought you were going to teach me how to flirt. Doesn’t that fall under the header?”

      “That falls under the header of playing with fire, little girl.”

      Her heart thundered faster, her lips impossibly dry. “Maybe I want to.”

      “Spoken by a girl who’s never been burned,” he said, taking another step backward.

      “Spoken like a man who’s afraid I might be kerosene to his lit match.” Apparently, being stubborn and unwilling to back down handily took the place of having experience and confidence.

      Good to know.

      “We’re not going to do this.”

      “Why?” she asked, not quite as pleased with the tone of her voice this time. She sounded needy. And she hated that.

      Her mother had walked out when she was two; her father was a drunk. She’d never had the chance to be needy. Frankly, she didn’t like the way it looked on her. She was making a mental note to avoid it in the future.

      “You know why.”

      Because he thought of her as a kid? Because he wasn’t attracted to her? Because Connor and Eli would kill him and bury his body in a far-flung field? She didn’t know why, because there were too many whys. But she wasn’t going to go on. She wasn’t going to do the needy thing. She was not going to beg.

      She had her pride. Sure, she’d never been kissed before today, but she had never really wanted to be kissed by any of the guys she had known. She would go find someone else before she would make a fool of herself in front of Jack Monaghan.

      Though it was hard not to beg when her lips still burned from the touch of his. When her body ached in places she hadn’t given all that much thought to before.

      Yeah, that made it a lot harder.

      “Get on your horse. And do the run again,” he said, his blue eyes level with hers.

      “Still?”

      “Are you a quitter?”

      “Fuck you.”

      “Shout that at me all you want when you’re doing the run again. Go.”

      She walked back over to Roo and got on. They walked back to the starting point. Then she looked at Jack, who was standing there holding the stopwatch. She took a breath and started. And her mind was blank. Blank of anything but