Page 90 of Dusty Spur Ranch Cowboys
Easier than pretending I still remembered how to need another person.
Then Arizona crashes into my life, kisses me like she’s got nothing left to lose, and tears straight through every wall I’d spent years convincing myself I needed.
I don’t know what the hell that means.
I only know that when I look at her, the idea of letting her walk out that door already feels unbearable, and that scares me a whole lot more than wanting her ever could.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Arizona
Morning finds me before I’m ready for it.
I blink against the sunlight spilling through the curtains, then frown at the ceiling overhead because it isn’t mine.
A faded water stain stretches across one corner, somebody’s old baseball cap hangs from a bedpost, and a framed photograph of Sadie sits on the dresser beside a half-finished book.
Emmett’s room.
Memory catches up fast enough to warm my cheeks.
I turn my head and find him asleep beside me, one arm thrown across the mattress, blond hair flattened on one side and sticking straight up on the other.
Yesterday he’d looked every bit the handsome cowboy every woman in town secretly notices. This morning he looks like a man who lost a fight with his pillow.
A laugh slips out before I can stop it.
His eyes crack open. “Morning,” he mumbles, his smile arriving before the rest of him wakes up.
“Morning.”
He rubs a hand over his face, squints at me, then catches me looking at his hair. “You can say it.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“I was trying to decide whether a bird built a nest in it or just considered it.”
He drags his fingers through the mess, succeeds only in making it worse, and sighs. “That bad?”
“I’d leave it. It’s got personality.”
“So do rattlesnakes.”
“I didn’t say it was good personality.”
He laughs, still waking up, and I smile before I can stop myself. The expression fades just as quickly because this is exactly how people end up holding onto places long after they leave.
One good night turns into breakfast, breakfast turns into another conversation, and before long you’re learning little things that never quite leave your mind.
That’s never been my style. I meet people, we have our fun, and I drive away before either of us starts imagining more.
Except I never made it to my truck last night. I fell asleep instead, and now I’m sitting in Emmett Holt’s bed with morning sunlight bursting through his window while his daughter sleeps somewhere down the hall.
Waking up beside him feels far riskier than anything that happened before we closed his bedroom door.
His smile softens as he watches me. “You okay?”
