I stared at the laptop screen, watching the cursor blink, and tried to get them to stop. They wouldn’t. I pressed my palms against my cheeks. They felt hot. Had he noticed?
God, I hoped not. The last thing I needed was for Dalton King to know that when he’d leaned over me, caging me in with that massive body, I’d forgotten how to breathe. That for one insane moment, I’d wondered what it would feel like if he’d touched me. If those big, work-roughened hands had slid from the keyboard to my shoulder. My neck.
I pressed my thighs together, horrified at the flutter low in my belly.
No. Absolutely not. I was not doing this.
Dalton King was my boss. A cold-hearted bastard who’d made it crystal clear he thought I was some kind of gold-digger looking to trap him or his brother. A man who saw my curves and instantly dismissed me.
And I’d sworn off men. Especially men like him—gorgeous, confident, the kind who could have any woman they wanted and knew it. The kind who made promises with their eyes but never followed through with anything real.
Through the window, I could see Dalton striding toward the barn, shoulders broad and purposeful, like a man who’d already forgotten I existed. Which was fine. Good, even. That’s exactly what I needed—to be forgotten. To be invisible. Just another employee doing a job.
Except I wasn’t just another employee like the ranch hands he employed.
I was living in his house.
I’d be seeing him every single day. Sharing meals. Sharing space. And apparently losing my damn mind if the way my body had reacted to him was any indication.
I pulled my hands back and forced myself to breathe. In through my nose, out through my mouth. This was temporary. A few weeks. Maybe a month. Month and a half at most. I was good at my job—I could fix this mess faster than most people. And the pay Rhett had negotiated would cover a sizable portion of my mother’s medical bills. Enough to make a real dent.
Enough to matter.
My Aunt Carol had agreed to check on Mom while I was gone. Make sure she got to her physical therapy appointments. Help with groceries. The things I’d been doing for the past year while trying to work full-time and keep us afloat.
I could do this. Ihadto do this.
I caught my reflection in the window. Round face. Soft body that no amount of body positivity articles could make me feel okay about some days. I’d stopped dating six months ago after the last guy had suggested I might want to hit the gym together as a fun couples’ activity.
Translation—lose weight so he wouldn’t be embarrassed introducing me to his friends. I’d told him where he could shove his gym membership.
But it still stung. The words always stung. The sideways glances. The surprised tone when men found out I was smart—like curves and brains couldn’t coexist. The ones who fetishized my body type but wouldn’t be caught dead with me in public. The ones who thought a curvy girl should be grateful for any attention at all.
I was done. Done trying to mold myself to fit someone else’s ideal. Done pretending I didn’t hear the comments. Done hoping some man would see past my size to the person underneath.
And I was definitely done getting flustered over cowboys who looked like sin incarnate but had ice water running through their veins.
I’d known exactly how he’d felt about Valentine’s Day. Another day for me to feel inadequate when it came to the opposite sex. My heart had been bruised before, and I certainly didn’t want another red slash across it now.
I opened the first file and forced myself to focus. Numbers. I could do numbers. Numbers didn’t judge. Numbers didn’t ask questions about why a twenty-six-year-old woman was still living at home taking care of her mother instead of building her own life.
Numbers were safe.
The first spreadsheet was a disaster. Expenses categorized incorrectly. Duplicate entries. Payments that didn’t match up with invoices. Whoever had been doing Dalton’s books had either been spectacularly incompetent or deliberately hiding something.
Probably both.
I made notes. Cross-referenced bank statements. Built a timeline of discrepancies. Lost myself in the work the way I always did when the weight of everything else got too heavy.
Mom’s medical bills. The mortgage on a house that was too big for just the two of us but that she refused to sell because Dad had built it. The physical therapy that insurance only partiallycovered. The medications. The fear that one more setback would bury us completely.
I shook my head and pulled up another file. I wasn’t going to think about that. Not now. Not when I finally had a solution that might actually work.
One month here. One month of good pay. One month to make a real difference.
I could do this.
Even if my new boss was the antithesis of Valentine’s Day but looked like he’d walked straight out of a cowboy fantasy.
