Shayleigh Hatch couldn’t believe—could not believe—that Austin Royal had shown up and spilled punch all over her shirt. A light colored one too—one of her favorites.

And why was he sitting in the back row, his fingers curled into fists and his eyes squarely on her?

Surely he wasn’t here for the anger management meeting. But he hadn’t left….

His shirt was blue and white plaid, and with the red punch stain, he looked like he was ready for the Fourth of July.

Shay forced herself to focus on the other thirteen people who’d come to the library tonight. Sometimes there were only four or five people in attendance, and she didn’t want to drive more people away because she couldn’t control her temper.

She’d worked too hard for too long to let a man—even if he was good-looking and charming—like Austin undo her composure.

“Shawna is here to meet with us,” Shay said, indicating the dark-skinned woman who had changed Shay’s life in the eighteen months since she’d retired from the Army and returned to Grape Seed Falls. “I’ll turn the time over to her.”

Shay stepped to the side so Shawna could have the floor, and she realized that all the chairs were filled—except for one right beside Austin.

Even her deep breathing wouldn’t help the feelings coiling through her now. Besides, sucking in a lungful of air of his delicious cowboy scent would be enough to drive her crazy—a different kind of madness, but madness all the same.

But she couldn’t leave. So she walked around the back of the room, intending to just lean against the wall. Austin stood before she’d come all the way to a halt and gestured for her to take the inside seat.

She couldn’t very well cause another scene, so she glared as hard and with as much of the fury she felt inside in his direction, not allowing herself to make full eye contact with him. It didn’t matter. She didn’t need to look at Austin to know the square shape of his jaw. The happy glint in his sky blue eyes as he fed the chickens. The smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose.

He’d grown out a beard in the last few months, which had taken his baby face into a man’s features—and something Shay could barely resist.

Austin preferred a dark cowboy hat, as Shay had never seen him wear anything but black, or brown, or dark gray. She’d grown up with her own cowgirl hat preferences, so she understood. She wasn’t obsessed with Austin or anything.

Certainly not.

Just because he was the only man in the past decade to stir something inside her that hadn’t so much as been disturbed since her high school boyfriend didn’t mean she noticed what kind of shirts he wore, or that his boots weren’t from any shop in town, or that he had a specific type of Texan drawl that made Shay shiver whenever he spoke.

Shawna took the group through a class on a strategy to deal with anger when it came on suddenly, like it did when she got bumped into by a handsome man and something spilled on the both of them.

She used her excellent peripheral vision to look at his shirt. It still looked wet to her, and as hers still was, she could only assume it was cold and sticky as well. She wanted to cross her arms over the stain to keep her emotions from leaking out, the way she’d done at that blasted wedding where he’d asked her to dance.

He’d been drop-dead handsome in a black tuxedo, all the edges tailored and crisp. He used a cologne or an aftershave with cedar and musk in it, and the scent called to her like catnip to a feline.

It had taken all of her willpower to sit only a table away from him, keep her mouth shut during the songs she knew, and hurry out as soon as was socially acceptable.

Just like now.

She couldn’t just make a run for it. Could she?

No. She sat inches from him, the magnetic field between them straining, while Shawna taught the lesson. When it was clear she was almost finished, Shay stood and squeezed past Austin, nearly falling into his lap.

She balanced herself with one hand against his strong shoulder, the electric current between them sharp and zipping from her fingertips to her shoulder. Yanking her hand away, she stumbled into the space between the row and the wall.

Cookies. Yes, she needed to get the cookies out. She hurried out of the room and around the corner to the small kitchen in the corner of the library. Since she liked to measure, mix, and bake when she was stressed, she had dozens of cookies in her freezer at the ranch. More than enough to bring to the anger management group every week for the next four months, probably.

She’d gotten them out of the freezer a couple of hours ago and arranged them on a tray in the kitchen here. With a quick swipe of her hand, she collected the cookies and headed back to the room where Shawna was finishing.

The librarians always made sure there was enough bottled water for the group, and Shay slid the tray next to the neat rows of bottles on the back table.

She stayed there rather than returning to that too-small seat next to that too-attractive man. Didn’t matter. He seemed to be able to track her, no special equipment necessary. Wherever she sequestered herself on the ranch, he showed up with questions and seemingly genuine interest about the affairs of the ranch.

And blast it, she’d helped him. Explained all she could. Number one, it was part of her job to lend help to the owners. Number two, if she wanted to keep her job for the full twelve months she was guaranteed, she had to “be agreeable.”

Seriously, that was the language in the contract. Since it was open for interpretation, Shay had done her best to be nice to Shane, Dylan, and Austin. But not too nice. Not nice enough to dance with Austin at his brother’s wedding.

And while she didn’t know everything about ranching, or even most of what happened at Triple Towers, she did want to keep her job there. It was comfortable at the very least, and Shay still didn’t know what else to do with her life.

Shawna finished her class, and the participants clapped. Shay made her way to the front as the other woman sat down. “Thank you, Shawna,” she said. “Does anyone want to share anything that happened this week and how they handled it?”

The anger management meetings weren’t anything like what Shay had seen in movies or on TV. She’d hesitated attending her first one, imagining herself sitting around in a circle while she detailed how infuriating slow drivers were.

No, thank you. She didn’t need to air her dirty laundry in public.

But she had come eventually, and the meetings weren’t anything like what the entertainment made them to be. Shawna was a licensed therapist who taught strategies for managing stressful situations, gave homework exercises the participants could try at home during the week, and every couple of months, the meeting was just a social gathering while Shawna met with people one-on-one.

Tonight, no one raised their hand to share, and Shay felt pressure to fill the silence. But she didn’t. The Army had taught her that sometimes silence was good, and sometimes it was okay to just let the quiet into your soul so you could feel and hear what you needed to feel and hear.

“All right,” she finally said. “Well, I brought double chocolate chip cookies and butterscotch chip blondies. Help yourself.” She gestured toward the back table and the people stood, some of them chatting with each other, some heading straight for the refreshments, and a couple quickly ducking out the back.

Austin hovered next to his chair, his eyes trained on her. She wished she didn’t like it so much. At the same time, his curiosity was like a scent in the room that annoyed her to no end.

She couldn’t just leave the meeting. So she employed a strategy Shawna had taught several months ago. She faced her challenge. Met it head on. Looked right into Austin’s stunning blue eyes and held them with hers.

No.

The word rang in her ears as she drove out of town and back toward the ranch. She’d said it at least a half a dozen times while talking to Austin.

Is there a meeting next week?

No. That had been an easy one.

Are you in charge every week?

No. She could’ve elaborated for him. Explained that she was simply the person who ran the group on the second Thursday of the month. She wasn’t in charge. She didn’t organize anything. That was all Paula Hurdle, and she attended if she could. Tonight, though, she’d had an orchestra concert for her daughter.

Do you always bring cookies?

No. Technically, she hadn’t lied. Sometimes she brought brownies or coffee cake.

Are you angry with me?

No. And really, she wasn’t. She knew she wasn’t. But projecting her anger onto him and his brothers was easier than carrying it on her own shoulders or placing it where it really belonged.

Did I do something wrong?

No. It wasn’t his fault he had a perfectly symmetrical face, or muscles everywhere, or eyes so blue she could practically dive into them and swim around. That blame belonged to his parents.

Do you want to go grab, I don’t know, a coffee or an ice cream cone?

That one had been so terribly difficult to answer. Because everything inside Shay definitely wanted to go get coffee with Austin Royal. Or ice cream. Or both.

No.

And so Shay drove down the lonely road by herself, her fingers gripping the steering wheel just a little too tightly. When she returned to her cabin, Molly and Lizzy greeted her at the door, their German shepherd tongues hanging out of their smiling mouths. “Hey, girls.” She gave them both a quick pat, glad when some of her tension left her body. “Let’s train, okay?”

Shay cut a piece of steak into tiny training bites and took the dogs out the back door. The light on the back porch shone far enough for her to do basic tasks, and she sent the dogs after a ball to begin with.

If she could focus on them for a while, let her spirit play with theirs, she’d calm down. Working with dogs had always been an outlet for her emotions, as had been singing.

She’d give up the singing when her mother died. Dropped out of the church choir and everything. Not that it mattered. She’d enlisted two months later and would’ve had to quit when she went to Basic Training anyway.

Her father had asked her to sing something for him every day once she’d come home. She’d refused every time. Singing was something she did with her mom, something she’d learned from her mom, and it simply felt wrong to do it in a world where her mom no longer was.

“Down,” she told the dogs, glad her voice didn’t crack with the emotion streaming through her. Some days, she barely thought of her mother. Sure, she was always there, lingering in the back of Shay’s mind. But the fact that she couldn’t call her didn’t hurt too badly.

Other days, Shay felt like someone had dropped a piano on her chest and was pounding on the keys, sending painful reminders with every discordant note that her mother was gone.

With both dogs down, she rewarded them with a bit of steak. A truck’s engine rumbled into the night air, and headlights beamed down the lane for just a moment before Austin pulled into the garage.

She couldn’t see him. Her cabin was too far away for that, and it was dark besides. But somehow, her body knew he was in the near vicinity, and it wasn’t happy that she’d turned him down for coffee.

Shay couldn’t believe he’d asked again. She wondered how many times he’d ask to spend more time with her, and she wondered how much longer she could keep resisting him.

Did she even want to keep resisting him?

No.

The word flew into her mind and out of her mouth before she could even think. She was really starting to hate the word no.