Page 17 of The Trouble with Love

“Oh, but my dear, you can.” Everleigh nods behind me, turning my attention to the tall, broad-shouldered cowboy who had me pushed up against a stable earlier.

I grossly underestimated how good it would feel for my body to be tangled with his. How effortlessly he held me in his strong arms, as though I weighed little more than air. The darkening of his gray-blue eyes as they bored into mine, our lips a feather’s width apart, still has my pulse off the charts all these hours later.

Ryder catches me staring from across the barn and starts to weave his way through the crowd toward my safe corner. My pulse instantly triples. It’s suddenly a hundred and twenty degrees in this barn, despite the cool evening breeze drifting in through the open doors. I can’t decide if I want to run to him or far, far away from him. There’s an intensity between us that intimidates the hell out of me. One that was easy enough to ignore until our bodies were tangled together and our breaths mingled.

What the hell? Is he a good omen or a bad omen? I have no idea. Good fucking grief, I sound like Nadia.

Maybe I should be brave…

My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I yank it out like my life depends on it. Nadia’s name appears on the screen as if I just summoned her. “Gotta take this,” I say, zipping through the crowd to my closest escape in the opposite direction of Ryder.

I’ll be brave tomorrow.

“Hey, Nadia!”

“It’s not about the letter.”

“The letter?”

There’s a long pause on the other end. “Just how good was he? Do you still have orgasm brain? Oh my god, did you guys do it again?”

“No!” Outside, I hide in a quiet, shadowy corner in the back of the barn that is thankfully free of people. I spot someone in a cowboy hat off in the distance near the tallest silo, but he seems preoccupied with someone else.

“You’re panting. Are you doing it right now?”

“No one is doing anything.” A heifer looks up from the other side of a gate. Considering Bella is nearly deaf, I should probably bring my volume down a few dozen notches.

“No one?” she asks in a near pout.

“I mean, I almost kissed him, but that’s beside the point. The letter you said?—”

“I said it’s not about the letter.”

“Oh.” I can’t decide if I’m disappointed or relieved, and that unsettles me. My entire ten-year plan hinges on acceptance into the oncology program. A dream I’ve clung tightly to for the past two years. It’s the piece that makes everything make sense. “I guess it’ll get there when it gets there.”

“You’re one hundred and ten percent sure you don’t have orgasm brain?”

“I wish…” I let out a long, slow breath, but it does little to calm my erratically beating heart. Because I’d really, really like to have orgasm brain at the hands of Ryder Stone. He might come off as grumpy and brooding, but I bet that man knows his way around pleasuring a woman. Damn umbrella drinks. Without their influence, I might’ve kept my hands to myself last night. I wouldn’t have had a reason to play-tackle him earlier. Now, it’s as if our bodies are magnets, drawn to each other constantly. “So if it’s not about the letter—wait, is something wrong? Did our apartment flood? Did the clinic burn down? Are you in the hospital?”

“Has anyone ever told you that all those negative thoughts are going to manifest into your life if you’re not careful?”

“Yes, you have.” I let out a soft laugh that eases some of the tension I’m carrying in my shoulders. How am I this wound up? “Only every day.”

“Try thinking about more positive things. Like actually kissing said cowboy instead of almost doing it.” As if her words conjure the grumpy cowboy himself, Ryder appears around the corner of the barn, bathed in moonlight. The shadows hide his face beneath his cowboy hat, but I can tell he’s searching for something—someone. “Nothing is wrong, Macy. You just never called to update me on last night. I was hoping to live vicariously through you. Hopeful you’d gotten good and laid.”

Ryder, no longer searching, struts toward me. The man must have impeccable night vision. A military acquired skill? I gulp a swallow as he steps into my shadow-covered space, and I meet those intense eyes head on.

“Not yet.”

“Why did your voice get all husky?” Nadia demands.

I don’t know how it happens, but I end up with my back pressed against the side of the barn. Ryder hovers over me, his large frame both intimidating and comforting. He rests one hand against the barn, next to my cheek. Our bodies aren’t exactly touching, but there’s an intense heat swirling between the nearly nonexistent gap. The pull intensifies.

“Umm… call you back.”

Ryder lips lift into a devilish smile.

“Macy, don’t you dare hang up this?—”

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