He was broader than I remembered, his shoulders filling out a dark green flannel that stretched across his chest in a way that made my brain short-circuit.
His jaw was sharper now, shadowed with a short beard that made him look half-grizzly bear. And the lines around his eyes were deeper, the kind that come from years of squinting into sun and wind.
“Mallory?”
I knelt down beside him to help pick up the papers.
“Hi, Zane.” My voice came out breathless and a little too high, nothing like the composed professional woman I’d been pretending to be for the last hour.
He stared at me as though he couldn’t believe I was really here, and our faces were suddenly very close.
We were close enough to remind me why seeing him again was such a terrible idea.
If I’d leaned forward even slightly, our lips would have touched.
My heart stuttered, then restarted in a completely different rhythm.
His dark hair was even longer than it had been, pushed back carelessly, and all the years that had passed since I’d last seen this man suddenly disappeared.
Zane’s mouth opened, silently working to say something.
“You’re back.”
“Yeah. I guess I am.”
His fingers brushed mine as we both reached for the same sheet of paper at the same time, and the contact sent a jolt up my arm that I felt all the way to my collarbone.
His hand was warm and rough with calluses, and he didn’t pull away immediately. Neither did I.
We straightened up together, and he handed me the stack of pages he’d collected. I pressed them against my folderand clutched the whole thing to my chest like a shield. Zane Thompson was the one man I’d been both hoping and dreading to see.
“It’s been a while,” he growled, his eyes moving over my face with an intensity that made me feel like he was cataloging every change the years had written there.
After his initial surprise, his expression had turned careful, guarded in that quiet way I remembered.
Zane was a man who kept his real thoughts locked behind a door he rarely opened. And seeing him again made my chest ache something fierce.
“Twelve years,” I said, then immediately wished I hadn’t because it sounded like I’d been counting. Which I had. “You look good, Zane. You look really good.”
Stop talking, Mallory.
“So do you.” His gaze held mine for a beat longer than casual, and something flickered in those brown eyes before he looked away toward the street.
“You in town visiting your folks?”
“Sort of. I’m staying at their place for a bit while they’re in Texas. Just, you know, taking some time.” I was stammering. I, Mallory Carpenter, who had once pitched a million-dollar campaign to a room full of Fortune 500 executives without breaking a sweat, was stammering on a sidewalk in front of a man in muddy work boots. “I’m actually in the middle of an exciting career change. New chapter, fresh start, all of that.”
The lie came out bright and shiny and completely unconvincing, at least to my own ears.
But Zane just nodded, steady as always, like he’d take whatever I gave him at face value because that was the kind of man he was.
“They’re at a livestock auction,” I blurted out as a drop of rain landed on my shoulder.
“Yeah? I thought they went out of the cattle business a few years back.”
They had. After a big financial setback. One they refused to let me help them fix.
“They’re getting back on their feet again. Right now they’re getting a handful of breeders to start a herd back up.”
