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“I don’t mind, though,” he says abruptly. “I’m fortunate. I get that.”

“It’s okay to acknowledge the downsides,” I say gently. “Did you ever go back to the ranch where you learned how to cowboy?”

He shakes his head. “It shut down, and the owners parceled it up and sold it off. It thought about buying it when I heard it was going up for auction, but things happened, and I fell behind.”

For a minute, the only sound is the clip-clopping of the horses.

“I’m glad you’re getting to come back to Wyoming and take a break,” I say after a while. “It can’t fix everything, but it can help.”

He glances sideways at me, dark eyes shadowed by his hat, face damn near unreadable.

“Yeah,” he says, voice rasping. “I’m glad I came back too.”

He’s not talking about the land or the cowboying, that’s clear from the way he’s looking at me. My stomach does a swoop and a flip that makes me want to throw up and bite my lip all at once. We said last night was a one-off. Riding next to him, I kind of wish we hadn’t had that conversation. Is it possible to develop feelings for a stranger after a single night together?

Is it him?

Or is it the whole country singer glitter that’s putting stars in my eyes?

I don’t know, and now I’m so confused, and my face feels hot and he’s still looking at me. Flustered, I dig my heels into Gabe’s side, and he breaks into a brisk trot. Right away, Coen matches my speed.

“Where you headed so fast?” he drawls.

“Catch me if you can, I guess,” I call back, urging Gabe into a slow canter up the hill.

He comes after me, but we’re going too fast to talk now. I loosen the reins and let Gabe switch between a trot and a canter all the way around the pasture. There’s still some fence left to check, but I’m ready to be away from him and let my lungs stop tying up in a knot every time I glance at him. So, I turn Gabe home without a word, and Coen follows, cutting across the pasture to the barn.

He’s sexy and sweaty, shirt sticking to his chest when we both dismount.

“Here,” he says, taking the reins from my hand, “let me cool down the horses and put them away.”

“Alright,” I say, backing away with a plastic smile. “I have to go…start breakfast.”

He doesn’t move for a second, standing with a slight frown on his face. The way he makes eye contact might be the most intense I’ve ever encountered. I don’t know how I survived last night with him sliding inside me, big, dark eyes looking into mine. I was drunk on it then, and right now, I’m not sure if I’m still drunk or having a bad hangover.

“Bye,” I whisper.

He doesn’t move or speak. I back up and start across the lawn, heart pounding. As I slip through the porch door, I glance over my shoulder, and he hasn’t moved, but there is a little smile on his mouth that wasn’t there before.

I shut the door firmly and go into the kitchen. My entire body is tingling and sweating. I gather up my hair and hold it off my neck.

Today is shaping up to be far hotter than anticipated.

CHAPTER EIGHT

COEN

I don’t want to disrupt her life more than I already have, so when I lie awake at night and every mistake I’ve ever made runs through my head, I stay right where I am. The first few nights go by like this. By the third night, I get out my notebook and sit on my bed, holding the pen but not writing anything.

I’ve never been the kind of writer who waited for the muse. I read an article about how often creatives struggle with the constant pressure of their job and decided I would try to look at it more as a trade, where I did my work and shut my brain off. Maybe if I clocked in and clocked out, I could hold my head together. It hasn’t worked, but I still pretend it will.

There’s nothing to clock out of. My brain never stops churning. My work is on my phone, and my phone goes everywhere in my pocket.

So, I sit up and stare at the opposite wall, thinking about everything I did the first year, after Western Midnight Blues hit the charts. The first day it happened, I was in a diner having a coffee, and Jamie appeared on the other side of the window. I remember thinking something bad had happened, maybe his mom or his sister got hurt, but then he started jumping up and down on the salty, snowy street.

He tore inside and slammed a piece of printed paper on the table.

There it was, my work at number one.