Colt stretches and rolls his shoulders like he's preparing for a fight. The morning suddenly feels finite, like sand running through my fingers.
Beau stands suddenly, his chair scraping against the floor. "Actually, I was thinking Lucy might want to come to the ranch today. Check on Darcy. See how our girl's doing."
Hope surges so fast it actually hurts. "Really? She's okay for visitors?"
"More than okay. She's been asking for you." Beau's slight smile transforms his whole face, makes him look younger, less burdened. "Well, as much as a calf can ask for anything. Moos every time someone mentions your name."
The joy that floods through me is immediate and overwhelming. Without thinking, I launch myself from my chair, throwing my arms around Beau first, then Colt, then Gabriel. They're all solid and warm and smell like coffee and morning and safety, and for a moment I let myself pretend this is normal.
That I'm a woman who gets to hug the men she cares about without it being complicated, without it being borrowed time.
When I step back, they're all looking at me with soft expressions that make my heart do acrobatics, and the air between us crackles with things unsaid.
"I should get dressed," I say, suddenly aware again of my pajamas and the way they're all very carefully not looking at certain parts of me while somehow still seeing everything.
"Take your time," Beau says, his voice rougher than usual. "I'll wait outside."
Twenty minutes later, I emerge in dark jeans and a soft cream sweater to find Beau leaning against his truck, looking like every cowboy fantasy I never knew I had.
When he sees me, he straightens and moves to open the passenger door with old-world courtesy.
"Ma'am," he says with exaggerated formality, and I laugh despite the tension coiled in my stomach like a spring.
His hand settles at the small of my back as he helps me up into the truck, and the contact sends electricity racing up my spine. When he leans across me to grab the seatbelt, I have to fight the urge to turn my face into his neck and breathe him in.
"Comfortable?" he asks, and his voice has dropped to something lower, more intimate.
"Perfect," I manage, though comfortable is the last thing I am with him this close, with the memory of Gabriel's kiss still burning on my lips and the knowledge that I'm falling for all three of them in different, dangerous ways.
The drive to Blackwell Ranch passes in charged silence, broken only by classic country on the radio. Beau's hands are steady on the wheel, but I catch him glancing at me when he thinks I'm not looking.
Darcy is waiting for us in the barn, and the sight of her healthy and alert and very much alive brings tears to my eyes. She's grown in the past week, filled out and gained the kind of strength that speaks of a full recovery, and when she sees me, she actually moos in what I choose to interpret as pure joy.
"Look at you," I whisper, dropping to my knees beside her stall without caring about my jeans. "You beautiful, perfect girl."
"She's been waiting for you," Beau says softly, and when I look up at him, there's something tender in his expression that makes my heart stutter and skip.
We spend the morning working together, checking on the other animals, walking fence lines, talking about everything and nothing. Beau is patient with my questions, amused by my city-girl observations about ranch life, and gentle when I stumble over unfamiliar tasks.
He shows me how to properly check a horse's hooves, how to read the weather in the way cattle cluster together, how to move through a herd without spooking them.
When we break for lunch, he leads me to a common area where several ranch hands are already gathered around a large wooden table that's seen decades of use. They'repolite but curious, and I can feel them evaluating me, trying to figure out what I mean to their boss.
"About time you brought some decent company around here, boss," says an older man with weathered hands and kind eyes that have seen plenty of seasons.
Beau actually blushes, color rising in his cheeks as the other men chuckle. "Mind your own business, Dutch."
"Just saying it's good to see you smiling again," Dutch continues, winking at me conspiratorially. "Been too damn long since this place had a woman's touch."
The casual assumption in his words, that I belong here, that I'm going to be a permanent fixture, should probably worry me. Instead, warmth floods my chest .
The afternoon passes too quickly, like all good things do. Beau shows me parts of the ranch I haven't seen before, tells me stories about his grandfather and the early days of building the operation, shares pieces of himself that I suspect he doesn't often reveal.
By the time the sun starts to sink toward the mountains, painting everything in shades of gold and amber, we're both vibrating with tension that has nothing to do with the evening's plan and everything to do with the way he keeps finding excuses to touch me.
A hand at my elbow when we navigate uneven ground. Fingers brushing mine when he passes me something. His palm warm and steady against my back when he guides methrough doorways. Each touch burns through my clothes like a brand.
The drive back to Gabriel's feels different from the morning trip. Heavier. Loaded with possibility and want and the knowledge that something is going to happen between us, something that will change everything just like the kisses with Colt and Gabriel did.
