Page 4 of The Cowboy Who Came Home

Her eyes came back to his. “I wasn’t invited.”

“I’m inviting you.”

She shook her head again, that lovely blonde hair swaying with the motion. “I have a lot to do tonight.” She scanned him down to his boots. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I’m the one who lives here,” he said. “I mean, sort of. For the next little while.”

“Are you out of the Army then?”

“Yep.” Finn rocked back onto his heels and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “I retired at my ten-year mark, and now…I’m here.”

If that didn’t scream, I still don’t know what my life should be, Finn didn’t know what would. He might as well have broadcast it from the speaker system and into the peace and serenity that still existed here at his family ranch.

“Well, welcome home.” Edith smiled at him and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’m glad you’re here, safe and sound.”

Finn was glad for that too, and he could talk for years and still not tell his friends and family everything he’d done in the past decade. Some of it he couldn’t talk about.

“You seein’ anyone?” He figured he might as well go straight for the bullseye. No sense beating around the bush, not when his attraction to this woman buzzed and fizzed through him. It popped and soared, and Finn needed to know if he could take her to dinner and when.

“No,” she said.

“Married?”

“No.” She shook her head again, those eyes shining like sapphires in a dark night. How could he have forgotten about her eyes?

“When can I take you out?” he asked.

Edith blinked at him, but Finn had learned in the Army to be direct. Maybe he was coming off a little strong. “I mean, I just got home, and I’ll need to settle in, but I’d love to get your number, so when I’m sitting in front of my schedule, we can set something up.”

Finn told himself to stop talking. He’d put a lot of words out there, and he just needed to stop. Edith looked like he’d hit her with a wet eel, and the cold water had just now started to spark with the electricity.

She blinked a couple of times, then opened her mouth only to promptly close it again. She once again looked back to the homestead, but Finn refused to do that. He could practically feel the eyes of this place on him. His momma’s. Daddy’s too, though he tended to leave Finn be until he had his lectures all planned out. The other cowboys. Heck, the building they stood in front of was filled with people who knew him and his parents, would be at the party tonight, and could see through each and every window—as the whole front was made of glass.

His skin itched to be somewhere no one could see him, but he couldn’t walk away from Edith without getting her phone number. He wouldn’t.

It had been a long time since Finn had been face-to-face with a woman who made his feet shift and his throat go dry. He cleared that as he tried to find solid ground beneath his boots, and he knew Edith saw and heard it all.

She gestured half-heartedly toward her car. “My phone’s in there.”

“You don’t have your number memorized?” Finn teased, adding a smile to his face as he pulled his phone out so he could type her number into it. He focused on the screen for a moment, just long enough to put in his PIN and get the phone open. Then he looked at Edith again. “We can just…text. Talk. If you decide you don’t want to go out with me, okay.”

“It’s been ten years,” she said. “I just…don’t even know where to start.”

“How about with giving me your phone number?” He felt sparky and electric himself, and he hadn’t had this much energy running through him in a long time. If ever. “Or I can give you mine, but you know, your phone is in there.” He nodded toward her blue SUV.

“Good to see the Army didn’t beat your humor out of you,” she said dryly, placing one hand on her hip. That only accentuated her curves and caused Finn’s smile to widen.

He tried to beat it back down. “Seriously,” he said. “We don’t have to go out. No pressure. But I’d love to catch up with you. Find out what these past ten years have been for you.”

Something shuttered right over those eyes, and Finn wasn’t sure what. He also didn’t want to find out from his momma, though surely she knew. Ranch wives had a special network in Three Rivers, whether it was official or not, and his momma had been hovering around the gossip mill here in town for two and a half decades.

She’d know.

In fact, his phone chimed as a text from her popped up on his screen. Dread weighed down his chest on his next breath, because she’d asked, Where did you go? We need you here to go over some things.

He needed to get back before she sent out a search party. He looked up. “Where are you living? Maybe I’ll just come by once all the hoopla of my coming home has died down.”

Edith had folded her arms around herself, almost like she was trying to ward off a chill. Or something bad, he thought. Could that be him? Could she not feel this energy between them? How could that be one-sided?

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