Laney glanced at Bailey, who slumbered on the bottom bunk in the bedroom she’d chosen. She’d taken a bath in the big, free-standing, clawfoot tub and then fallen asleep with her silky hair still twisted in the towel on her head.

Laney felt as weary as Bailey, especially after her own hot shower. She’d put on a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt, and had been running a towel through her hair when Graham had texted.

Dinner’s ready. Come down now if you want to eat with me and Annie.

“Come down now,” she repeated, shaking her head. He really was the beast from that children’s fairy tale. If she doesn’t eat with me, she doesn’t eat at all ran through her head, and she set her phone on the dresser so she wouldn’t answer him immediately.

She didn’t want to wake her daughter, but she was hungry. Graham could wait a few minutes to get a reply, and Laney wouldn’t wither away if she didn’t eat for another little bit. She moved to the window and watched the weather outside.

The visibility couldn’t be more than five feet, as she couldn’t see even the tall trees she knew stood in the back yard. Clearwater whined, and Laney automatically bent down to scratch the dog’s head.

“I know,” she said, though she had no idea what she knew. She knew she’d ben fighting feelings for Graham Whittaker since her teen years. Sure, she’d gotten over him pretty fast when he’d left Coral Canyon and gone to college. Then she’d met Mike and fallen madly in love. They’d only been together for four years and had been divorced for three.

No, she hadn’t thought about Graham during her marriage. Or at all in the years since Mike had left. Well, until this past year, with Graham back in her life—sort of—and Mike out of it.

Her ridiculous feelings had been what kept her heading over to his place whenever he texted or called. Her insane hope had ballooned with each interaction, and she hated that she always crashed after their brief encounters.

Sometimes he didn’t even look at her when she came to help him. To be fair, he was shouldering the huge burden of running the energy company, as well as trying to learn how to manage horses, the lodge, and the land that came with it.

But he was wealthy, and he hadn’t had to do all the work required. If she could afford a housekeeper and a cook, she’d have them too.

Barry barked, startling Laney away from the window. “Shh,” she chastised the dog, casting a quick glance at Bailey, who hadn’t moved or awakened. “What’s wrong?”

A big, black lab poked his head around the corner, clearly the source of the barking from Barry. “Hey, there.” She smiled at the dog, who had white hairs around his mouth and nose. He was clearly old, and nothing of a threat, as he came around the corner slowly, his tongue hanging out of his mouth and his eyes drifting halfway shut as if to say Hey, guys. Want to take a nap together?

Laney greeted him and crouched down to stroke his head and scrub behind his ears. “What’s your name, huh?” She caught his tags and twisted them so she could read them. “Bear.” She grinned at the dog. “Seems about right.” She let him move on and sniff her dogs, and the three of them started a chain to get to all the best parts of each other.

She hadn’t pegged Graham as a dog-lover, and she’d never seen the lab around the lodge. Did he keep the animal confined to the house? After all, Laney hadn’t been inside the lodge for years—not since she and Mike had been married here—and she really liked that it looked nothing the same.

No, this Whiskey Mountain Lodge was fit for celebrity weddings and receptions—and not the country bumpkin kind she’d had. No wonder the previous owner had sold. This place was too ritzy for the clientele Coral Canyon normally attracted, and she knew Will had had trouble keeping the place filled.

Although Jackson Hole—an upscale, very touristy, artsy-fartsy hot spot in Wyoming—only sat about a half an hour down the highway, Coral Canyon enjoyed a slower pace of life. One Laney really liked and didn’t want replaced with what Jackson had, especially if the people were going to be coming within a mile of her front door..

But Graham wasn’t using the lodge for its intended purposes. Though the rooms didn’t have an ounce of dust in them, they also had a general feel of disuse. Emptiness. Abandonment.

All the sheets were clean, and every room had beds that were made up. She wondered if Graham had seen to that or hired someone. If she was a betting woman, Laney had her money on the housekeeper.

Bailey moaned, and Laney decided that was a great time to wake her and go get something to eat. She couldn’t stay asleep much longer anyway, or she wouldn’t go to bed that night.

“Bay.” Laney swept her fingers across her daughter’s forehead, smiling when her blue eyes opened sleepily. “Are you hungry? Want to go eat something?”

“Yeah.” Bailey yawned and Laney helped her up.

“Let’s brush your hair out first.” Laney turned to find Bailey’s backpack and found all three dogs curled up together at the foot of the bed. She chuckled, pulled out Bailey’s brush, and ran it through her daughter’s hair. “All right. Let’s go see what this cowboy bachelor eats.”

They held hands on the way down, and Laney counted eighteen steps from the second floor to the first. Everything about the lodge seemed super-sized, including the man who sat at the dining room table with a strawberry blonde at least a decade younger than him. Annie Pruitt. She cleaned a lot of places around town, as her family owned the only residential maid service in Coral Canyon.

“Hey.” Laney passed in the lane between the dining room and the kitchen, glancing to her right where they ate, and then left, where a huge kitchen waited. She’d seriously never seen so many cupboards before. An island ran down the middle of it, and her heart squeezed with jealousy when she saw the double ovens.

“Beef roast.” Graham touched her lower back, which made Laney jump. She hadn’t even heard him get up. “Right there.” He guided her over to the food as if she couldn’t see the big, black pot of meat, the tray of foil-wrapped baked potatoes, and the bowl of salad the size of Rhode Island.

How many people was he expecting?

“Hey, Bailey,” he said. “Want me to help you?” He glanced at Laney, but not nearly long enough to make true eye contact, and picked up a plate. The little girl tucked her hair shyly and looked at Laney.

“Go on.”

Bailey was used to having Laney or her grandmother help her, but she fell easily into bossing Graham around, and demanding more croutons, and saying she didn’t want ranch on her potato.

Laney kept her smile to herself as she made her loaded baked potato and took more beef roast than she probably should’ve. But she loved a good roast, and it had been far too long since she’d had one. She took a seat across from Graham, which was probably a bad move, since she’d have to look at that gorgeous face during dinner.

“Mm,” she moaned as she took her first bite, with the au jus practically dripping down her chin. “Where did you get this?”

“It’s one of yours,” Annie said, flashing a smile in Laney’s direction.

Pride flashed through Laney, but she shrugged one shoulder as if it didn’t matter if the beef had come from her biggest rival. “Oh, well, it’s delicious.” She took another bite and watched Graham as he practically inhaled the food on his plate. He had very little salad and quite a lot of meat, and Laney supposed he needed to protein to keep all those muscles in such good shape.

Embarrassed by the course of her thoughts, she ducked her head and filled her mouth with more food. Graham wasn’t particularly loquacious, but Laney wasn’t either. So the scraping of silverware against china became the only sounds.

“Where are you living now?” Laney finally asked Annie.

“I’m on Blackberry.” She took a long drink of her water. “I live with my sister.” She flicked her eyes toward Graham. “She thinks I’m the luckiest woman on the planet.”

“Why’s that?” Laney watched Graham, and though he didn’t look up or react, he was definitely listening to the conversation.

Annie cocked her head toward Graham. “You know.”

Oh, Laney knew, but she wanted Annie to say it out loud. “She thinks Graham is…handsome?”

That brought his head up and his eyes to hers for the first time that evening. He did have exquisite eyes, and Laney had lost herself to them many times.

Annie twittered and nodded before collecting her plate and standing up. She moved into the kitchen, and still Laney and Graham stared at one another. Annie said something, but Laney didn’t know what.

Graham seemed to have his faculties about him, because he nodded and said, “Sure, thanks, Annie,” without removing his eyes from Laney’s.

Heat started to fill her from top to bottom, making her skin sear.

“Mom?”

She finally tore her gaze from Graham’s, feeling a bit light-headed and definitely like she’d just confessed her teenage crush on him, and the one she’d been entertaining since his return to Coral Canyon.

“Hmm? Yeah?”

“I was wondering if I could feed the dogs and play with them.” Bailey looked at her, and Laney examined her daughter’s plate.

“You didn’t eat a whole lot.”

“I’m not that hungry.”

“The dogs can eat it,” Graham said.

Laney automatically didn’t want Bailey to feed the table scraps to the dogs, though they fed their blue heelers leftovers all the time. There was just something about how he said things like they were law and all would follow his directions, no matter what.

In the end, she nodded to Bailey, who took her plate into the kitchen and set it near the dog bowls on the far side of the room. Annie worked in the kitchen, putting away the leftover food, and they seemed far away from the bubble around Laney and Graham.

“Hey,” he said, drawing her attention back to him. Something about him had softened, and Laney felt her whole body turning into a warm marshmallow. It had been such a long time that a man had made her feel this way, she had no defense and no way to keep herself from swooning over him.

“What are you going to do tonight?” he asked.

Her eyebrows went up. “I don’t know.” She rarely had any time to herself, and even when she did, there was work to be done around the house. Dishes. Laundry. Bills. Dogs. Bailey. If she was lucky, she got in twenty minutes of reading while she lay in bed. Most of the time, she fell asleep with the e-reader on her chest and woke sometime in the middle of the night when Barry started snoring.

“Maybe you’d like to watch a movie.” He cut a glance toward the kitchen, but Annie kept her focus on the chores.

Surprise pulled through Laney. “I can’t remember the last time I watched a movie.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she wanted to suck them back in. “I mean—”

“I know exactly what you mean.” His hand moved across the table and touched hers. Almost in the same instant, he pulled it back almost like he’d been shocked.

Laney certainly had been, physically and mentally. She blinked at him, willing him to explain himself.

Instead, he picked up his cowboy hat and stuffed it on his head. “We work too much.” He stood, leaving his plate on the table like a servant would come around and clean up after him. In fact, that was exactly what Annie did, swooping in to take the dish and go back into the kitchen.

Graham had gone through the arched doorway that led into the foyer, but his bootsteps now moved down the hall to the south side of the house, fading until Laney couldn’t hear them anymore.

What on earth had just happened?

We work too much. We work too much. We work too much.

The words reverberated around inside her head long after she’d helped Annie get all the food put away. She sat on a plush couch in a comfortable living room with Annie down on the other end while Bailey played with the dogs on the floor. Annie put something on the TV that was entertaining enough, not that Laney had been able to focus on it.

Oh, no. All she could think about was Graham, where he’d gone, and when he might return. Was he working?

“Does he work all the time?” she asked Annie, who swiveled her head toward Laney.

“What?”

“Graham. Does he work all the time?”

Annie shrugged. “Most of the time, yeah. He won’t let me in that office of his, and whew.” She waved her hand in front of her nose. “I wouldn’t go in there even if he did.”

Laney had the sudden urge to see Graham’s office. She couldn’t imagine it being anything but straight-laced and orderly, but Annie’s assessment was clearly different.

A half an hour passed, and Laney was about to suggest bed to Bailey, when Graham appeared. “We could put something on in the theater room,” he said, his voice much softer than any previous Laney had heard him use.

Annie switched off the TV with an exaggerated yawn. “Oh, I’m tired. I’m going to head to bed.”

“Bailey needs to get to bed too.” Laney met her daughter’s eyes, already prepared for the fight. “It’s already twenty minutes past your bedtime, and the dogs can sleep with you.” She cocked her head in Graham’s direction without looking at him. “Well, our dogs can. I don’t know about Bear.”

“If he can get on the bed, he can sleep with you. He’s got bad hips.”

“How old is he?” Bailey asked.

“Just turned ten.” Graham sounded like he’d gargled with sandpaper, his voice rough and low.

“I’ll take her up, if you want,” Annie said, a pure smile on her face. Laney couldn’t help wondering if the woman had gotten some sort of weird idea about her and Graham.

Bailey got up and put her hand in Annie’s, much to Laney’s surprise.

Fighting exhaustion and thinking of those eighteen steps, Laney said, “Be sure to brush your teeth, Bay.”

The little girl gave Laney a kiss and said, “Come on, dogs,” before going with Annie. All three dogs jumped to their feet and followed, making Laney smile in appreciation for the canines.

“You love dogs,” Graham said.

Laney let out the sigh she’d been holding in. “I do.” She looked at Graham fully again, hoping they wouldn’t get locked in that strange stare-fest again. “What about you? Have you had Bear for his whole life?”

“He was my father’s dog.” The lines around his eyes tightened for a breath, and then he relaxed. “We really can go down to the theater room. It’s much more comfortable.”

Laney had no doubt about that, and it was with more than a little bit of uncertainty that she said, “All right,” and stood to follow him to a set of steps off the dining room that led into basement. Or would it be a dungeon?

The beast and his lair, she thought with an internal chuckle as she descended the steps behind his broad shoulders.