Page 7 of Oops, I Fell For The Ranch Hand Next Door

I know this because I’ve been staring at them for the past hour, counting knots in the wood grain and cataloging the way morning light slants through the window in pale sunny stripes. Eli’s spare bedroom smells like sun-warmed pine and something else, leather, maybe, or the faint musk of a man who works outdoors. The sheets are soft against my skin, worn from washing, and somewhere beyond the closed door I can hear movement. Water running. The scrape of a chair across floorboards.

My lips still ache from his kiss.

I press my fingers to my mouth, and the phantom pressure surfaces: the grip of his hands spanning my waist, the doorframe solid against my spine, the sound he made low in his throat when I’d risen onto my toes. My body had responded to him with an intensity I couldn’t categorize or control, every nerve ending firing at once. I’d wanted to climb inside his skin. Then he’d pulled back. Told me to sleep. Left me standing in the doorway aching, my pussy pulsing with want, and confused and more awake than I’d been in months.

I should leave. Pack my bag, get in the car, drive until Texas is a memory and this ranch is just another place I ran from. Because that’s what I do now. I run. First from Mercy General and now from… from whatever this is.

My survival patterns are screaming: too fast, too much, you’re going to disappoint him.

But my body wants to walk into that kitchen and finish what we started.

I throw back the covers before I can talk myself out of moving. The borrowed sleep shirt, his sleep shirt, has ridden up during the night, bunched around my hips. I tug it down as I stand. My reflection in the small mirror above the dresser shows exactly what I expected: tangled hair, pillow creases on my cheek, the kind of exhaustion that lives in your bone marrow. I look like someone who’s been running for three days straight. I look like someone who forgot how to stop.

The door opens onto a narrow hallway. Morning sun floods the main room, turning everything amber and gold. Eli stands at the stove with his back to me, shirtless, shoulders broad enough to block the window behind him. His muscles shift beneath tanned skin as he reaches for the coffeepot. I stop in the doorway. Track his movements. Catalog the scar curving around his ribs, pale against darker skin, old enough to have faded but recent enough to guess at the mechanism. Burn, maybe. Or impact trauma.

He turns, coffeepot in hand, and catches me staring.

For three seconds, neither of us moves. He tracks down my body, my bare legs, borrowed shirt, the mess of my hair. Raw, unfiltered hunger shows on his face. The air thickens in my lungs. The base of my spine tingles, spreading up my back in a wave that makes my shoulders draw together. This is what disruption looks like: my pulse slamming against my ribs, my skin flushing from collarbone to hairline, every coherent thought dissolving under the weight of his attention.

“Coffee’s ready.” His voice comes out lower than it did yesterday, rougher. The sound bypasses my brain entirely and lands somewhere inside my belly. “How do you take it?”

“Cream. No sugar.”

He pours without breaking eye contact, adds cream from the small carton on the counter, and crosses the room to press the mug into my hands. His fingers brush mine during the transfer, and the contact sends a shiver racing up my forearm, raising goosebumps despite the cabin’s warmth. I nearly drop the mug.

“You didn’t have to make breakfast.” The words are automatic, defensive, the same deflection I’ve been using for years.

“I know.” He moves back to the stove and flips eggs in the skillet. “Sit down, Jessie.”

The quiet command makes my knees weak. I should argue. Should offer to help, should do something productive, should prove I’m worth the space I’m taking up. Instead I sink into the chair at the kitchen table and wrap both hands around the mug. The ceramic is warm against my palms. Steam rises, carrying the bitter-bright scent of coffee made strong enough to strip paint.

He plates eggs with peppers and onions and toast, sets the food in front of me, then drops into the chair across from mine with his own plate. We eat in silence. The eggs are perfectly cooked into a soft scramble, still creamy, and the toast is buttered to the edges. I take three bites before my throat tightens and I have to force the fourth swallow.

“Aside from Luanne, when’s the last time someone cooked for you?” he asks.

I blink. “What?”

“You’re staring at that plate like it might disappear.”

My face goes hot. I force myself to take another bite, chew, and swallow past the constriction. “I don’t remember. A while.”

“More than a month?”

“More than a year.” The admission slips out before I can stop it. I’d been living on vending machine food and whatever I could eat standing up between patients. I hadn’t sat down for a meal in so long I’d forgotten what it meant to be the one receiving instead of giving.

Something shifts in his face, not quite anger, but close. A tightness around his mouth, a muscle jumping in his jaw. He stands and refills my coffee without asking. Adds cream the way I like it. Sets it down within reach.

“We should talk about last night,” I manage.

“What about it?”

“The kiss. I shouldn’t have—it was fast. We don’t know each other. I’m a mess.” The words tumble out in a rush, tripping over each other. “You were being kind, and I made it into something else and—”

“Jessie.” My name cuts through the spiral. “Stop.”

I stop.

He leans forward, elbows on the table, and pins me with dark eyes that strip away every layer I’ve spent decades building. “I kissed you because I wanted to. Because you stepped forward instead of back. Because you’ve been running for three days straight and I wanted to give you a reason to stay still.”