The Last Christmas Cowboy, стр. 27
She stopped, and she knew it wasn’t the cold air that had suddenly taken her breath away.
She remembered walking down those steps, holding two metal camping mugs in her small hand. Her mom beside her with a kettle full of stove-top coffee.
“It’s cold out this morning.” Rose could remember clearly looking up at her mom, seeing her smile. Her dark hair had been loose, blowing in the early-morning breeze. “They’re going to need their coffee.”
“Good thing we’re here to bring it to them.”
Her fingers tightened around the kettle and mugs she was carrying now.
She had so few memories like that. And she tried not to let them surface. Because when they did the grief sliced so sharp and hard she couldn’t breathe.
The barn door slid open, the sound loud and grating in the silence of the winter dawn. And there was Logan, standing backlit by the light inside, a warm glow around his muscular frame.
“You all right?”
“Yeah,” she said, blinking hard.
Except out here there were memories that she didn’t want, and in there was him. Neither one seemed particularly safe right at the moment.
“This time of year,” he said, his voice rough.
She nodded, unwilling to say anything or show emotion that might make him...do something.
She didn’t know what he might do. Yesterday he had transformed himself into a particularly scary stranger. Certainly not the guy who had laughed and flung shavings at her when she had been fifteen.
And she didn’t know which Logan she was going to get this morning.
Then he smiled. “Good. Let’s go. We have to move the cows from one side of the ranch to the other. We gotta get them up from the creek down to the lower pasture.”
“It’s freezing,” she muttered.
“I know. But when you signed on for this life of glamour that is being a rancher, you signed on for this.”
“A life of glamour,” she repeated.
He jerked his head back toward the barn, and she trudged toward him. It was the weirdest thing. When she moved past him she could feel the hair on her arms standing on end beneath the sleeves of her coat. Could feel a prickling in the back of her neck.
She hadn’t even been that close to him. He hadn’t touched her.
It was just a strange awareness that settled itself over her like another layer.
She didn’t feel quite as cold anymore.
“Got your horse ready for you.”
He went into the stall and led her horse, Raisin, out to her, all tacked up. She frowned. “Thank you.”
That was surprising. But then, maybe he had gotten out of bed a lot earlier than her.
“I have coffee,” she said.
“Well, I can stop for a quick cup but then we need to get a move on. We’re going to be battling daylight today. Sundown is at five.”
“Sunup hasn’t even happened yet,” she said.
She poured some coffee into a cup and handed it to him. He smiled.
And she felt again like she was back in the barn nearly twenty years ago, helping her mom bring coffee to her dad and uncle.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, his blue gaze far too sharp.
She lifted a shoulder and offered him nothing. She wasn’t the one who’d made it weird. He owed her an explanation. She didn’t owe him anything.
She waited to see if he would ask if it had anything to do with what had happened between them last night. It didn’t. Except, it was definitely part of why she felt weird this morning. She was sure of that. But she wasn’t going to bring it up. She refused. It was up to him. He was the one who had...
She remembered that she had picked up a soda can and thrown it at his back.
Okay. She’d acted a little bit strange. And he had escalated it. But he was the one who had touched her. And that was the reason why her skin felt particularly prickly this morning. So, she felt like it was up to him to address that.
Instead, he took a sip of his coffee, while patting her horse on the rump. That the gesture felt pointed, particularly when his electric blue eyes met with hers, was likely her problem.
Or maybe it wasn’t.
But either way, he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to discuss any of it.
As they finished their coffee, mounted their horses and headed up toward the creek, Rose kept her eyes on his broad shoulders and back.
He was a brilliant horseman. She had always admired the way that he worked with animals. Today, though, the way that she looked at his movements, his body, felt different.
When he angled the horse, she noticed the way his hands gripped the reins. She knew how rough they were now. Because he had touched her face, her neck. Her collarbone. Yes, she had to catalog specifically every part he had put his hands on. It seemed important.
They were strong, too. The way he guided his horse with very little movement at all spoke of not only his strength, but his connection with the animal. With the very land itself. Because he seemed to know each dip and hollow in the path, in the hills, like he had a map written on his heart.
She understood. Because the same map was written on hers.
Because no matter how difficult the memories here at Hope Springs Ranch could be, those memories were the stuff of what she was. What had made her. And what sustained her now.
When his fingers moved slightly over the reins, she felt an answering whisper against her skin. A deep, low pressure between her thighs.
She jerked her eyes away from him, and forced herself to look at the view around her. That was the problem with all of this raw, natural beauty being