LITMIR.BIZ

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had been trailing him for too long. Quit, already, he ordered. But it was no use with Jenny standing in front of him looking like a cowboy’s dream. Damn.

      A flicker in Jenny’s eyes echoed his desire.

      “Matt,” she said, gripping the gray blanket against her chest. It rose and fell with her shallow breaths.

      He tried to say her name, but nothing came out. He stepped toward her. His boots hit the floor too loudly in the quiet room.

      He finally admitted what he’d been denying to himself. That he’d been aware of her growing up not in the last couple of months, but in the last few years. She’d been calling to him and he’d done his best to hide from her.

      Jenny stared at him with heat in her eyes, with smoky knowledge and a woman’s desire.

      Lately, she’d been trying to reel him in like a calf at the end of a rope, but he was too smart for that. He’d resisted her. But here? Now? When she stood in front of him like a slice of heaven on earth?

      “You play with fire, kid, and you’re going to get burned.” His throat hurt, sounded raw.

      “I’m not a kid,” she said. “I’m twenty-two.”

      She dropped the blanket and air hissed out from between his teeth. His gaze shot around the room, trying to look at anything but her, but in the end, he was only human.

      Her thick braid fell over her shoulder to tease the nipple of one of her breasts. He groaned. Those breasts. Those mile-long legs.

      He tried to be noble. “We’re friends, Jenny. This could ruin it.” He forced his lungs to expand and inhaled the scent of lilacs. God, she was beautiful. “I know about these things. You don’t.”

      “I want to be more than friends, Matt.”

      A sheen of sweat broke out on his upper lip.

      Itchy and unsettled and angry, he yanked her toward him. Roughly. Her breasts hit his chest, warm through the damp denim shirt.

      She wanted to be a woman? Fine, he’d treat her like one.

      Matt settled a hand on her hip. He’d held a lot of women in his time, but Jenny’s skin was softer than any he’d ever touched.

      She opened her mouth to speak, but he didn’t want to talk. He brushed one eyelid with a featherlight kiss then moved on to her cheek, and the corner of her mouth. She shivered.

      “No regrets, Jenny,” he said, his voice husky. “This is sex. Nothing more.”

      “I want you, Matt,” she told him. “What do you want?”

      He felt the long-denied truth a split second before he said, “This,” and his mouth came down on hers, heavy and demanding.

      A rough exhalation escaped him. He braced his arm across her back and crushed her to him, forcing his erection against her belly.

      Jenny breathed one word. “Yes.”

      He spread the blanket on the floor and brought her down with him. He lay on his back and pulled her to kneel above him so he could watch the firelight pour over her curves like molten caramel. While the windows rattled with the violence of the storm outside, the fire sent shadows leaping across the walls.

      Jenny unbuttoned Matt’s shirt while he unzipped his pants.

      She smiled. He reached up to taste that smile.

      Wrapping his arms around her, he gave her every particle of himself, taking as much as she had to offer. When he entered her, he felt like laughing, crying, shouting from the mountaintops.

      Jenny came apart in his arms then lay against him as trustingly as a newborn kitten.

      Matt followed her into a nameless bliss, found peace, and whispered, “I love you.”

      Get out of here.

      Firelight limned the ancient furniture Matt knew too well.

      Run.

      He couldn’t breathe.

      I love you? Where the hell had that come from? It was a goddamn lie, just like everything else in this hole he’d grown up in.

      Jenny lay sleeping beside him. Maybe she hadn’t heard. She must have.

      She craved a family. Damned if he’d hang around to fulfill her dreams. He couldn’t do it.

      He should have stopped this, should have left it at friendship. Sex always screwed things up.

      He pulled his arm out from under her head and sat up. He looked frantically around the room. Shadows of bad memories danced in the corners, thickening the air, choking him.

      Bile rose in his throat.

      Get the hell out of here.

      No way did Matt do the white picket fence, the vows at the altar and the “I’ll love you forever” crap. No way did he do kids.

      Marriages ended badly. With a bang.

      I love you. What was he thinking?

      The fire had long since died, and now the candle flickered out. Darkness pressed on his lungs.

      Matt dressed in the dark, his fingers thick and clumsy. He fumbled on the table for his hat, slammed it onto his head and stepped toward the door. The floor creaked.

      When Jenny rolled over, his throat constricted, and he felt that marriage noose tighten around his neck.

      She sighed, still asleep.

      With shaking hands, he pulled on his boots. Opening the door a crack, he squeezed out then rushed through the storm and climbed into the Jeep, the lowest of the low, a jerk. A coward.

      He’d never promised Jenny he was anything other than that, any better than his father or his grandfather before him. Long men didn’t do responsibility.

      He couldn’t have been more honest. This is sex. Nothing more.

      But was it only sex?

      Aw, shut up.

      When he roared out of the clearing and across the prairie, the Jeep sprayed rooster tails of mud and water. Sayonara, Jenny.

      Five years later

      JENNY LIFTED another forkload of hay into Lacey’s stall. She had mucked out too many stalls today, fed too many horses. Her muscles throbbed with the strain.

      She’d been exhausted lately, doing both her jobs and Angus’s.

      Angus hadn’t even turned out for the branding last week. Jenny had handled it all, had called in friends and local teenagers to help with the job. It had been a big one. They’d had a good crop of calves this year.

      Maybe soon, he would feel up to doing more around the ranch. He’d been grieving for his dead son for a long time, a couple of years now. It was time to rejoin the land of the living.

      The low rumble of a pickup truck caught her attention as the vehicle pulled into the Circle K’s yard.

      Jenny tossed her rake against the wall and stepped outside, happy for the break until she recognized that black truck and the horse trailer behind it.

      Her heart writhed against her ribs.

      Why was Matt Long in this corner of Montana five years after he’d left?

      She’d hoped never to see him again.

      When he stepped out of the truck, still as gorgeous as ever, Jenny’s traitorous heart twitched, but she forced it to settle down. Fast.

      Shallow charm and a killer grin wouldn’t turn her head this time. She’d learned her lesson when he’d run out on her.

      He could no longer set her on fire. The only thing that burned for him within her now was anger.

      His five-year absence hadn’t been

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