Page 2 of Second Chance With a Cowboy

“A CaramelCrapp-uccino? Was he serious?” a voice asked from behind the wall.

Everything inside Chevy froze—every muscle, every nerve. His heart might have stopped beating as well.

Even though he hadn’t heard it in ten long years, he knew that voice. Knew it as surely as his own.

“Leni?” he tried to say, but it came out as a horse croak.

She walked around the corner—her long, dark hair pulled up in a messy bun and secured with two coffee stir sticks—and his stomach pitched as if he’d just gotten the wind knocked out of him.

She looked almost the same. Although the teenage body of Eleanor ‘Leni’ Gibbs—which he also knew almost as well as his own—now held the lush curves of a woman. Curves that had him forcing a swallow as his mouth had gone as dry as the hay bales he’d been hauling that morning. She wore a navy apron over a pink polo shirt with the logo of the coffee shop across the breast pocket, white low-top tennies, and ankle-length jeans that hugged her generous hips.

Her eyes were still the same gorgeous, hazel green and for just one second—long enough for him to feel it to his core—they held the old tenderness he used to see there.

Then it was gone. Replaced with a sharp snap of anger.

He knew that look too.

It was the one she’d given him the night he’d told the biggest lie of his life and said he didn’t love her anymore.

He closed his mouth, which had fallen open at the sight of her, then opened it to speak, then closed it again as no words formed. He tried once more, and this time her name came out as a whisper. “Leni?”

Just as quickly as time had frozen for him, it suddenly sped up as blood surged through his veins, and his heart thundered in his chest, like the galloping of a herd of wild stallions. Even his hands started to shake, and he crammed one in his front pocket and gripped his phone tighter with the other.

“Well, as I live and breathe, if it isn’t Chevy Lassiter.” Her voice held a note of casualness, but he noticed her hand shot out to steady herself against the counter.

Good to know seeing him was having at leastsomeeffect on her as well.

She jerked her thumb at him as she spoke to the Johnson girl. “Is this the guy with the idiotic drink orders?”

The red-haired girl nodded.

Leni’s eyes flashed another spark of anger. “Did you come in here to poke fun at me for working as a barista in a coffee shop?”

Chevy stepped back, his gut aching as if she’d physically punched him in it. “What? No. Of course not. Why would you even think that?”

“Because you just ordered a Purple Unicorn and a Crappuccino.” She jutted out one hip and planted her fist on it. “Is this your lame idea of a joke?”

He hadn’t made a joke, but he was beginning to see that he’d been the butt of one. “No, really, it was my stupid brothers. I lost a bet and had to buy coffee—those aretheiridiotic drink orders. Not mine. I didn’t even know you were in town.”

“Yeah, right. I saw Dodge here just a few days ago. You’re trying to tell me he didn’t blab to you that I was here?”

“No. He didn’t say anything. I swear.” But he was going to say a few choice things to his baby brother when he got back to the ranch. “Really. I had no idea you were back.”

“I’m notback. I’m just filling in here for a few weeks for my sister.”

Leni’s sister, Lorna Gibbs, now Williams, owned the coffee shop. She’d been a couple of years younger than them in school. He was pretty sure she’d been in Dodge’s class, but had seemed older because she’d dated, then married, Lyle Williams, an upperclassman. The two had broken up about nine months ago—it had been ugly with Lyle making an ass of himself thenleaving town with the administrative assistant at the insurance company he worked for.

Lorna was left behind with a five-year-old son, a cute kid named Max, and a baby on the way, but she was better off without that jerk in her life.

“Oh yeah, I heard Lorna had a baby girl,” Chevy said. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s fine.” Leni’s voice was flat, monotone.

“How areyoudoing? I mean, how is your life? Are you happy?”

Are you still single? Please God, don’t be married.

His heart wouldn’t be able to take it if she were. He snuck a glance at her hand—no ring—and let out a sigh of relief.

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