Her name comes up in my head like a struck bell, resonating with a long trail that never seems to end. I have to close my eyes and set the hammer down before I lose it.
She was just standing in my doorway. That's all. In her worn-in boots, soft jeans, and a tight T-shirt that clung to her mouthwatering tits.
She asked me about smithing as if she'd spent her whole life in a forge, and then she walked backwards out with a smile that said she'd seen every filthy thing that crossed my mind.
Anda lotcrossed my mind.
I open my eyes and drop the hook in the scrap bin with a clang that spooks a barn swallow out of the rafters. My hands are shaking a little. Enough thatInotice. That hasn't happenedsince I was twenty-two and had my first real fight behind a bar in Austin.
I have not wanted a woman this fast since—hell—I don't know that Ieverhave. Not like this. Not the way you want a cold drink when you've been in the sun too long, not the way you want a meal when you’re riding the range and haven't eaten since breakfast.
I've wanted women. I'vehadwomen. But none of them ever made me ruin a piece of work. None of them walked out of my forge and left me standing there hard in my jeans over a conversation about metal and fire.
She's only here for six days.
That fact sits in my chest like a rock while I bank the coals, wipe down the anvil, and hang the hammer.
She's a guest on vacation from whatever real life she has, and by next Sunday she'll be somewhere else with her sweet mouth and that copper in her hair. And she won’t remember a blacksmith who made her friend's belt buckle.
Why would she?
This is just a forty-year-old man's body waking up out of a long nap and getting confused about how it’s supposed to act in front of a sexy as sin cowgirl.
That'sallit is.
I lock the forge and walk back to my cabin, awkwardly, because my jeans are still tight.
The cabin is small, but a nice home. It’s got one room, a sleeping loft, and a kitchen I barely use. It’s tucked into a stand of live oaks the ranch lets grow however they please. I've lived here nine years. I know which board on the porch creaks. I know which cabinet door won't stay shut. I know the way the light hits the floor at four-thirty in the afternoon and how the quiet at three a.m. weighs different than the quiet at sundown.
I know this life down to the nails.
It's supposed to be enough.
Until this afternoon, I'd have told you it was.
I slide off my bandana and dunk my head under the kitchen faucet since the shower's going to take five minutes to heat up and I need to cool down now. Cold Hill Country water runs down my neck and under my collar and I stand there gripping the edge of the counter with both hands, dripping on my boots, and still the only thing behind my eyes is that pretty mouth.
A full bottom lip with that little dip in the top one. The way it moved when she spoke…and smiled at me.
I want to know what that mouth tastes like.
I want to know what every inch of her tastes like.
Fuck.
I straighten up and catch my reflection in the small mirror with a chip in one corner, near my window.
On a good day I don't love what it shows me.
Today it shows me a man with wet hair dripping into his eyes, a beard gone past scruffy, and an expression I haven't seen on my own face in so long it takes me a second to name it.
Hunger.
That's the word.
I lookhungry.
And not for Cook’s smoked ribs.