Page 16 of His First Baby Rodeo

“I’m not freaked out,” she said. “But what about the chores?”

“We’ll go in the afternoon, when everything is done. If you’re up for it, I mean.”

She looked at him appraisingly, and Mac thought he understood. He had been pretty hot and cold with her so far, and it didn’t surprise him that she’d have trouble understanding why he was asking to spend time with her now.

“You sure?” she asked. “I mean, it’s not like you have to entertain me. I don’t mind if you don’t want to go.”

“No, to be honest I think it would be good for me to get out of the house for a while,” he said. “I’ll probably go either way. But I wouldn’t mind taking you along, if you’d like to get more of a feel for the area than you have so far.”

“Well, yeah,” she agreed. “That sounds pretty good. I think I’d like that. Sure, I’ll join you.”

“Great,” he said.

“Are you sure there will be enough time for it after the work is done?”

“As long as you can get finished by about three in the afternoon.”

“Yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem,” she said.

“Okay, sounds good. Meet me here in the kitchen when you’re done and we’ll get ready to go.”

“I appreciate this,” El said. “I was hoping you and I would be able to be friends, you know. But then it started to seem like maybe that wasn’t what you wanted, and I didn’t want to push you.”

“I’m just not used to having anyone around,” Mac murmured.Friends.Could they really be that? It was strange to think of El Moyle as a friend of his. Jeff was the one who was his friend.

But El was the one who was here.

“I guess you’ll get used to it in time,” she said, clearly unaware of the heavy thoughts on his mind.

“I guess I will,” he agreed.

They’d finished their dinner, and she took his plate from in front of him. As she bent down to grab it, she supported herself with a hand on his shoulder, and instantly Mac felt electrified.

It was hard to breathe while she was touching him. It was as if the whole world had narrowed down to that tiny place where her palm met his body, the brush of her thumb — it had to be accidental — against the exposed skin of his neck.

“Oh, shoot,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“What?” He looked up, startled.

“You flinched,” she said. “I just realized that’s your bad arm. I shouldn’t have been touching you like that. Did I hurt you?”

“Oh,” Mac said, grateful for the excuse. “Only a little bit.” The pain in his arm was the furthest thing from his mind. She hadn’t hurt him at all.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’ll be more mindful about that in the future, I promise.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said gruffly, getting up from the table. This was why he had to keep his distance from her! One dinner together and they’d already had an incident that he had no idea how to explain. El had already noticed that something wasn’t right, and he had no idea what to say to her about it — or if there was anything he even could say.

He’d already invited her out to the ridge, though, and he didn’t want to take that back now. He would just have to be very, very careful to keep his thoughts — and his hands — to himself.

CHAPTER8

EL

It was a good thing, El decided as she and Mac rode along the ridge, that he was so weird and distant with her sometimes. Because the fact of the matter was that he was hotter than she could have prepared herself for.

She was still kicking herself for the way she’d allowed herself to touch him yesterday. It was so hard to move around that kitchen while he was in there. The space wasn’t small, but he seemed to take up so much of it with his presence. She felt, constantly, as if he was drawing her in, as if the moment of their contact had been inevitable.

And then he had flinched.

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