Wild Ride Cowboy. Maisey Yates

      Asher, seeing him every morning, getting her daily coffee—which she summarily dumped out—from him had provided a kind of light in a long dark tunnel.

      Alex’s bare chest could not compete with that.

      Alex paused at the barn door. “After you.”

      “Now you’re being chivalrous?”

      He shrugged again, then went ahead and walked into the barn in front of her. She scowled, but followed after him.

      And then she stopped dead. There were coils of fence rolled up and stacked six deep against the back wall. A pile of lumber lay on its side on the ground, fenceposts, she assumed.

      And there was a tractor sitting in the middle of the barn that had been pulled apart.

      “What exactly are you doing with the tractor?” she asked.

      “Making sure it’s fixed.”

      “You’re going to fix it? Do you know what you’re doing?”

      “Kind of. I have a little bit of experience doing emergency fixes on heavy equipment. Plus I called Anna McCormack for a consult. She said she could order a couple of parts for us at a lower rate, and gave me some instructions over the phone.”

      “Doesn’t she want to do it so she can get paid?”

      “She was happy enough to help me out. I explained the situation to her.”

      Right. So Clara was on the receiving end of pity tractor help. Well, wasn’t that what all of this was? Pity help?

      “Great,” she said, knowing she didn’t actually sound like she thought it was great.

      “And the fencing is for the bison.”

      “Right. I forgot you were actually doing that. Bison.”

      “Unless you’re planning on running this place the way your father did, then I think you’re right and beef is completely pointless. But if you want to go the direction of that more organic, specialized stuff...”

      “Right. I get it.”

      “You only have to put up with me for a limited time, Clara, and the sooner we get things sorted out, the sooner I can get out of your hair. I’ve actually done research on this,” he said, the expression on his face sincere and not at all pitying. She wasn’t sure what to do with that. “And I mean, I went over a lot of options. Sheep. Llamas.”

      “Llamas?”

      “I discounted that pretty quick. They’re mean as far as I can tell.”

      “Don’t they spit?”

      “That is what I hear,” he said.

      “I could do without spitting livestock, to be honest. Apart from everything else, I don’t need an animal hocking a loogie on me while I’m trying to take care of it.”

      “Fortunately for you, bison don’t spit. I think they’re the best option for this area, and for your property in particular. But they need damn sturdy fences.”

      “Apparently,” she said, surveying the equipment.

      “I saw your beehives, or whatever those are. I didn’t want to get close, you know, in case I became a target.”

      “I have a suit,” she said. “A bee suit.”

      He arched a brow. “Like a bee costume?”

      “No,” she responded primly. “The kind you put on that keeps them from stinging you.”

      “Less interesting than what I was imagining.” His smile was wicked, and she wondered exactly what he had been imagining. Probably nothing. Probably he was messing with her. Or maybe it was still just the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

      “Less interesting, maybe,” she said, still not quite sure what he meant by that, “but effective.”

      “Well, sometime you’ll have to show me. The bee suit. And the bees.”

      “Sure,” she responded.

      He reached over toward a peg on the wall and took his T-shirt off it. It was gray and faded, and when he pulled it over his head, she was powerless against the urge to watch the way the motion affected his muscles. The way they shifted. The way they bunched. Rippled.

      The material of the T-shirt was thin, and it clung to his body, and for some reason, it didn’t seem any less obscene than his near nudity had. She swallowed, and it was hot and prickly.

      “Dinner should be ready,” he said.

      She blinked. “Dinner?”

      “Yeah, I put something in the Crock-Pot.”

      “I have a Crock-Pot?” She wrinkled her nose.

      “Actually, I don’t know if you have a Crock-Pot. My future sister-in-law sent one. To be clear, I didn’t cook, I just followed her instructions.” He smiled, sure and easy. She didn’t feel sure or easy. She felt clumsy, awkward. She couldn’t figure out why.

      “Thanks,” she mumbled, following him out of the barn and back up the well-worn footpath that led to the house.

      She didn’t really know what to expect when they got to the front porch. If he would stop at the door or assume he was joining her for dinner.

      When he opened the door and held it for her, she assumed he would be taking his leave. But then he came inside behind her, his heavy footsteps making that first floorboard squeak. It made her feel conscious of how long it had been since she’d spent any meaningful time in the house with someone else. That second squeak upon entry.

      It made her feel unaccountably lonely. Sad.

      She didn’t know why a squeaky floorboard had the power to do that.

      Alex walked across the kitchen and opened a few cabinets, his movements confident even though he clearly didn’t know where anything was. His gestures were broad, firm. When he took the bowls out of the cabinet and set them down on the counter, he didn’t do it tentatively.

      It was funny because she had watched Asher make her drink this morning and yet again she had thought of his movements as elegant. There was nothing elegant about Alex’s movements. They were like the rest of him. Rough, masculine. Somehow lethal-looking.

      She had imagined that when Asher put his hands on her skin, if he ever touched her hand, he would apply that same fine elegance to his actions. If Alex ever touched her, with all that hard-packed muscle, and those work-roughened hands, he might break her.

      Why are you comparing them?

      A good question. Probably because she had such limited interaction with men. And these particular two men were as opposite as they came.

      Anyway, Alex didn’t fare well in the comparison. And she ignored the strange tightness in her lungs that accompanied that thought.

      She didn’t want to be broken. She was broken enough.

      He opened the Crock-Pot, and ladled a couple big scoops of stew into one of the bowls. “Come get it,” he said, pushing the bowl away from him slightly, before picking up the second one to serve himself.

      Her throat tightened. Almost closed completely. She opened the silverware drawer and took out a spoon, then retrieved the bowl. “Thank you.”

      “Sure.”

      He got his own spoon, then took two cans of Coke out of the fridge, sliding one over to her before he popped the top on his own and took a seat.

      That was two times he had served her first. It shouldn’t matter.

      But she noticed.

      She pressed her spoon down into the thick stew and tilted it sideways, grimacing when she unveiled an onion. She carefully shunted it off to the side and