Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 44297 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 221(@200wpm)___ 177(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44297 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 221(@200wpm)___ 177(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
He’s bigger than I remember. Not only tall, but broad in a way that fills the entire frame, like he’s expanded to fit this rugged ranch house, one meal and tossed hay bale at a time. His shoulders are bare and sun-browned, muscles shifting under skin that looks carved by heat and work. His jeans sit low on his hips, the line of his trim waist disappearing into denim that’s been worn soft by years of riding and sweat. Veins standout on his rounded biceps, exuding strength and vitality.
He wasn’t like this when I was a kid. Back then, he’d been lanky and severe, all sharp glances and colder silences. Now he’s a man in full. Solid. Weathered. Beautiful in a way that hits like a blow I wasn’t braced for.
My heart lurches hard enough that I feel it in my throat.
I shouldn’t be reacting like this. Not to him. Not to someone who once couldn’t stand to be in the same room as me, even when I was mopping the perspiration from his dying father’s forehead. But my body doesn’t know that or doesn’t care. Arousal, low and tight, curls in my belly—tainted by a mix of nerves, heat, and the humiliation of feeling anything at all in this moment, of all moments.
Then his eyes sweep over me. Slowly. Thoroughly.
Face.
Chest.
Hips.
Everything fuller and curvier than before.
An even slower climb back to my face.
I’m aware of the exact moment when his gaze lands on my breasts.
There’s a tiny pause, barely a heartbeat, but it’s enough. His eyes darken in the slightest, sharpest flicker of recognition, like he’s noticed something he shouldn’t.
My breath catches, and heat shoots straight up my neck. When I left this ranch, I was skinny and barely filled an A-cup. Now I’m aching and swollen in a way I can’t hide, not even with my arms pressed tight across my chest. After having a child, my curves have remained, leaving my thighs thick, my ass rounded and my hips wide. I’m a whole lot more woman than he’d expect me to be.
And the worst part, the truly mortifying part, is the sensation that follows his perusal. A deep, heavy pulse behind my nipples, the first warning of letdown.
Not now. God, please not now.
But my body is unconcerned with timing or dignity. It reacts to stress and whatever else I’m feeling. It builds in a slow, painful throb that promises dampness if I so much as breathe wrong.
Still, somehow, I hold my ground. My knees are weak, my palms slick, and I desperately want to look anywhere but directly at Wade Crosby. But I force myself to meet his hard eyes.
“I’m here about the job,” I manage, though my voice is thin, scraped raw, too tight in my throat to sound like mine.
Wade’s mouth moves in a twitch of amusement. He offers no greeting; he just keeps watching me like I’m some wild animal that wandered onto his land, and he’s not sure whether to feed it or shoot it.
Then, without a word, he steps back and holds the door open wider.
“Come on in, Joelle,” he says finally, his voice low and slow like a leather saddle dragged over gravel. “It’s been a while.”
Chapter 2
Wade
It takes me a second to recognize her.
She’s older, obviously. Softer and curvier in some places, and harder and tireder in others. But her wide brown eyes, full of flight and wariness, haven’t changed a damn bit.
Joelle Connors.
Back when she lived here, she was all elbows and attitude, a teenager trying not to disappear in a house she didn’t belong to, dragged in by a mother none of us could stand. That woman waltzed into our father’s life and knocked everything sideways. I stand by my belief that she could smell the cancer on him before he was diagnosed. She was a hyena who wanted her piece of flesh, rotten or not. Joelle wasn’t the problem, not really. But she was a piece of it, and a reminder of the whole damn mess.
And now she’s here on my porch.
She’s shorter than I remember, and shabbier. Her faded shirt clings to huge breasts and rides up a little at the waist, revealing the curve of her belly.
She looks nothing like the kid who used to flinch when I passed her in the hall. She looks like a woman. A tired one. A proud one. One whose physical changes indicate she might be a mother.
And Jesus, she’s leaking. Not a lot. Just a slight darkening on her shirt, like sweat, but in a circle around where her nipple would be.
She brushes past me without a word, careful not to make contact, but tension radiates off her like midday heat. I close the door and watch her move through the space like a ghost returning to an old haunt.