Page 1 of The Cowboy's Off Limits Option

Chapter One

Callie

There he is-- in those jeans that fit just right, with his boots on and his shirt off. The man's body should be illegal.

He's standing on top of a stack of hay bales piled on the back of Rowan's flatbed pick-up, tossing them off the truck to my brother while I do my best to act like I'm completely oblivious to the defined chest, the stacked abs, the v of muscle descending below the silver belt buckle... because if Rowan knew that his best friend turned my panties into a sopping wet mess, he'd come unglued.

Not that my brother's hottest friend is in any danger.

He hasn't noticed me since I was a kid, making mud-pies with my friend, Ginger. I still remember him telling me that girls that played in the dirt were gross. Which is only one of the many reasons he's never going to see me as anything more than his buddy's kid sister.

Sigh.

Back to working in the garden-- tending flowers and herbs. Still playing in the dirt after all these years, guaranteeing that Archer Dean O'Leary will always think of me as a gross little girl.

I've been swooning over him since I was nine.

At an age when most girls were still convinced all boys had cooties, I was experimenting with make-up and jewelry-- Mom and Dad were not going to let me get high heels-- trying to figure out what it took to get a boy's attention.

All it took was a few years for the boys in my class to hit puberty and me getting my curves faster than most other girls-- turns out, getting aboy'sattention is easy. Problem was, I was trying to get aman'sattention.

Unsurprisingly, I never stood a chance.

It would have been pretty creepy if Archer'd noticed me back when I was a desperately crushing preteen; he's an entire decade older than me, after all.

But there's no reason he couldn't notice me now that I'm a grown woman.

Except for maybe my over protective brother, I guess.

I know he loves me, but I'm sure Rowan would lock me in a tower if he could. It's probably a good thing Archer isn't into curvy girls that play in the dirt, because if he ever did notice me that way? It wouldn't just end his friendship with my brother, Row would probably kill him.

Sitting back on my heels, I wipe sweat off my brow with the back of my hand, still holding the trowel I've been using to work the soil in the small flower beds.

The September sun is doing its best to hang on to summer as long as it can, dousing Slow River in a heat wave even though I've already had to pull the summer annuals out of the garden.

The bib of my overalls sticks to my back and I unhook on shoulder strap in an effort to get some relief. The strap fallsforward, letting the corner of the bibs hang loose. Fresh air hits my sweat-soaked tank top and I wish I'd worn shorts instead.

My eyes track Archer's movements without my permission.

The hay bales are still stacked three high on the flat-bed truck and he stands on top of them, stretching his muscles under the high sun as if this is actually a work-out for him.

Archer Dean is one of the O'Leary brothers. They own the Delta O Ranch out of town where the Slow River branches out into a false delta with half a dozen braided streams crisscrossing the valley before rejoining into on river that runs out of the low lands through the Flying R and on to where ever it finally makes it way to the ocean.

I've seen Archer put in much harder days of work than just tossing a few bales of hay off the back of my brother's truck. Maybe it's just the heat that has him making a fuss today.

Archer Dean

I've gotabout a dozen things that need my attention back at the ranch, but I couldn't pass up an opportunity to help my buddy unload the bales for his animals. Not when it means getting to see Cal.

Fuck, she's got me acting like a dumb kid-- standing up here on top of the hay stacks on the truck with my shirt off, putting more effort than necessary into flexing my muscles as I lift the hay bales and throw them to the ground. Hoping she's gonna notice.

Sweat runs down my chest and back. I stand upright and twist my torso-- partly for the stretching after all the bending tograb the heavy bales, partly making a damn fool of myself up here, hoping the movement might catch Cal's eye.

I've been obsessed with Calla Lillian Maye since not long after she came of age. Which should have been good timing, considering I'm ten years older'n her. If she was any other girl in the whole world, I'd have asked her out. Done my best to make her fall for me. Courted her and married her and had her chasing my kids around the yard all day while I chased her around the bedroom at night.

Best thing about doing physical labor out here in the valley's blazing, late-summer sun is that it does a good job of keeping my dick from causing a scene when thoughts like that start running through my brain.

It also helps a lot that my best friend is standing on the ground, waiting on me to toss down the next bale-- and if he knew the filthy ideas I had about his baby sister, he'd dig those hay tongs into my hide.

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