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‘For now, let’s add mending a fence to your resume.’

‘Ah, I don’t think Smokey will stand tied. If anything, she’ll pull that fence out the ground.’

‘She’ll be fine.’ TJ rammed one of the metal posts with both hands. ‘We set the posts in concrete. Here.’ He walked to her and took her reins. As soon as Skye had dismounted, he led Smokey to the fence and tied some fancy knot that Skye knew she’d never be able to replicate.

The moment he released her, Smokey started nibbling on the knot. TJ patted her neck. ‘Good luck getting out of that one, pretty girl.’

His tone curled through Skye’s womb. Lust, alarming in its intensity, gathered in an uncomfortable knot in her stomach, and surprised by it, Skye could only duck her head and pretend to dust off her jeans as TJ set out his tools and crouched by the fence. She might have been inexperienced, but she was still a flesh-and-blood woman living in the technological age. Between the internet, romance novels, and the vibrator Stevie had gifted her last Christmas, she had all the tools she’d ever needed for hot and heavy orgasms.

Or at least, she’d assumed she had.

And still, Skye just understood that TJ would know his way around a woman’s body.

‘Skye?’

‘Hmm?’

‘You okay there?’ He looked up at her, a slight frown marring his features.

Mortified by the direction of her thoughts, she cleared her throat and crouched next to him by the fence. ‘Yes. Show me what to do.’

‘Here.’ TJ tugged his gloves off and passed them to her. ‘Don’t want those city girl hands taking a barb.’

Skye didn’t argue, only tugged the gloves on. They were far too big but comfortingly warm. Thrown by the odd intimacy of his remnant body heat, Skye curled her hands inside the gloves as she watched him work.

TJ quickly and competently unthreaded the two lines of wire and slipped off the sharp barb. He dropped it onto the scrap of leather he was using as a work surface. ‘You do the next one.’

He moved aside, watched Skye closely as she mimicked his previous movements and easily slid the next barb off the broken wire. ‘Good.’ He reached for the wire stretcher. He attached both ends of the broken fence line to it and then ratcheted the stretcher until the wire was pulled tight. ‘Now, we’re just going to bend these ends into hooks, about six inches in width. And do the same on the other side and to the replacement wire.’

Skye watched, mesmerized, as his big hands worked, quickly looping and coiling the ends of the broken fence with the repair wire. By the time he was done, the new piece of wire stretched through where the previous gap had been.

TJ cut the loose ends and removed the stretcher. ‘Easy-peasy?’

‘I’m actually kinda impressed by how quickly you did that,’ she admitted. ‘I honest to God thought we were gonna be out here for hours.’

Like her, TJ was on his haunches, the blue denim pulled tight over his muscular thighs, his forearms resting on his knees. He angled his head up, meeting her eyes. ‘And you still came out?’

‘I want to learn.’ She smiled when he just stared at her, as if he couldn’t quite figure her out. ‘I was never allowed to do anything growing up – clubs, sports, anything my father hadn’t previously approved or that might be considered beneath his standard. I wasn’t even allowed to socialize with other kids from school who he considered beneath us.’

‘He sounds like an asshole.’

‘Yeah.’ Skye indicated the scraps of wire and tools lying on the leather. ‘This is legitimately romantic to me. Being able to choose what I do from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed is something I’ll never take for granted.’

TJ didn’t give her that pitying look people often did, even Andrea and Stevie. He raised one eyebrow comically and asked, ‘Are you saying it turns you on?’

Skye just gave him a playful shove, knocking him off-balance in his crouch so that he toppled over and onto his ass.

‘Whoops. Sorry,’ she said, her tone mocking.

TJ shook his head dramatically. ‘You know what this means?’ he asked gravely. But his eyes, glinting with playfulness, gave him away. A skitter of excitement danced up Skye’s spine, and even though she waited for that fear to kick in alongside it, it never came.

She pushed to a stand and took three quick steps back before he’d even gotten to his feet, but by the time she had turned, he was chasing after her, his manic laugh pulling a high-pitched squeal from a part of her soul she hadn’t known had existed.

Skye looked over her shoulder and saw him only a step behind her. She dodged at the last minute, dancing out the way as his arms closed on air.

‘I thought you were an athlete, TJ,’ she taunted.

He wheezed dramatically and bent over to place both hands on his knees. ‘You have youth on your side.’