The breeze gently ruffled Aria’s hair as she let the porch swing rock slowly back and forth. The scent of rich grass and damp earth tickled her nose. The moon hung like a huge pale blue ball in the sky. Its brilliance cast a surreal glow across the rolling hills surrounding the farm. Aria tucked her legs up into the seat and wrapped her arms around her knees. Sometimes she sat here in the evenings after the work was done just to relax and let the day’s challenges slide off her shoulders. Today was no different. In fact, today might even qualify as one of Aria’s most stressful. The visit from Paul Weatherby, Bella’s appearance, the whole situation had her feeling off-balance and uncertain about how to proceed.

She spotted a single headlight bounce down the two-lane highway on its way toward her farm. It was very obviously part of a pair, and that suggested the other one had been lost to an accident of some kind. The speed of that vehicle’s progress left no doubt in her mind as to who it was. Aria saw Laredo’s truck pull onto the dirt road from the highway. Even in the moonlight she could see the big swath of dirt lifting into the night air. The man was driving much faster than he should have been on a gravel road through the country, but when did Laredo Hernandez do what he should?

Aria had already tucked Bella into Aria’s old bed in her old bedroom. It had been an extremely odd experience. Of course, living in the house where her parents had raised her was also weird. But then her father had gone through the same thing. He had moved his bride into this house after the premature death of his mother. Aria’s grandfather had lived in the doublewide mobile home where Jorge and his cousins now lived. Back then, the ranch hands and grooms had lived in an old-style bunkhouse. When Aria’s grandfather passed, her father had offered the house to Jorge.

This place—Clouds End Farm—had been Aria’s home for her whole life. She had never really thought about future generations. Marriage wasn’t even in her long-term plan. When you grew up with an alcoholic father and a mother who hid it from the world, the prospect of marriage and family lost some of its luster.

Seeing Bella in that bed and kissing her forehead to tell her goodnight had caused a shift in Aria’s thinking. What if that was her life all of the time? What if every single morning she got up and helped kids get to the school bus? What if she taught her own children along with the other kiddos in her program? What would it be like to see smiling faces at the table each night? What would it be like to have a man come home at the end of the day and sit on this porch swing with her?

Somehow, it did not sound as distasteful as it once had.

Laredo’s truck slid to a halt right in front of the split rail fence flanking her front walk. Aria almost laughed at the way he leaped from the driver’s side door and slammed it closed almost all at the same time. The guy practically chopped himself in half trying to get out. Then he stumbled his way up the front walk as though he were literally afraid the whole thing was going to vanish.

“She’s here?” Laredo asked breathlessly. He had one hand on the porch railing and the other on the newel post. “She’s safe?”

“Yes.”

“I was almost all the way out to the main ranch camp when I got your text.” He actually bent over double as though he were trying to catch his breath. “Jaeger thought she might have gone out there.”

That was interesting. Aria wondered what would make Jaeger think that. “It would have been a really long way for a cab to take her. Here was bad enough. Thankfully the poor cabbie came to the door after Bella went into the barn. He wanted to make sure that I knew Bella was here.”

“She called a cab?” Laredo gaped. In the moonlight, his face looked pale and drawn. “Jaeger told us that she wants to be a rancher so he figured she went to Uncle Cal’s.”

“Ah. I suppose that explains why you took so long getting here. That’s a long drive.” Aria supposed that to a five-year-old with a limited amount of experience with his brand-new crazy family dynamic, that would actually make a lot of sense. Jesse certainly would have run to Cal. Bella was different.

Laredo was still gripping his hair as though he intended to yank it out. “But she’s here. She’s really here?”

“Yes. You have quite a smart kid.” Aria could not help but smile and chuckle a bit. “She used her debit card. She called a cab. She asked him to bring her here. And she even had the smarts to try and lie about her age.”

“You think all of that is smart?” He threw up his hands and glared down at her.

Aria sighed. “Stop glowering down at me and sit before you fall. You’re too upset to set one foot in my house or go in her bedroom. Bella is tucked up snug as a bug in a rug in my old bed. She’s probably asleep. She was half asleep and snoring when I left the room earlier. She was exhausted. I fed her and she seemed to feel better.”

Laredo lowered himself to the seat of her porch swing. It was sort of odd. It seemed almost like he didn’t know how to relax in such a thing. He shifted back and forth while the swing shivered and bucked.

Aria threw out her hand and put her arm across his midsection. “Okay. Sit still and relax. Sheesh! Just let yourself go with the flow of the swinging. It’s kind of like riding a horse. You know?”

He stopped fighting the rhythm, and very quickly they settled into a comfortable sort of back-and-forth movement. The crickets were chirping. The breeze was light. The air smelled of clean green grass and mountain air. In fact, there was probably no more romantic place to be at the moment.

Romance. Aria glanced down at her leg and noticed that Laredo’s was pressed against hers. He was warm and solid beside her. She could smell the spicy masculine scent of him lingering beneath her radar. He was such a handsome, virile man. This was a guy who could be a man while still maintaining a bit of the gentlemanly attitude that softened the rough edges of what might be considered brashness in anyone else. Perhaps that was what she was truly missing in her life. A man.

“What are you thinking?” he whispered.

She could feel him looking at her. His gaze burned. Her skin was tingling all over, and she wished that she could feel a little less like a teenager on her first date. “I was thinking that you smell good.”

“I smell good?” He sounded a bit baffled.

“You smell like sandalwood and fresh air. It’s really nice.” She wondered if he would think it strange that she actually had labels for his scent. Did it matter?

“You smell like roses,” he commented suddenly. “Sometimes I catch a hint of it on your hair when you walk by. It’s very faint, and somehow, that makes it even more attractive. You don’t have to drown yourself in it. It’s just part of you. Horses and leather and roses.”

She giggled like a little girl. “That’s weird. And what you’re smelling is my shampoo. So, maybe it just smells good to you that I bathe.”

“No. It’s not just good.” He leaned down and sniffed her hair. “It’s sexy.”

“Sexy now?” She turned herself sideways and looked up at him with an exaggerated waggle of her eyebrows. “Maybe it’s been too long for you if you think smelling like a barn is sexy.”

“Or maybe I just like you.” Laredo put one arm around her. There was a long pause. “Darren told me the truth about the riding lessons.”

It was odd, but until that moment, Aria hadn’t really thought about it. What had she expected anyway? Had she thought he would show up raving mad and screaming about betrayals? Had she expected him to be completely angry with them that they had gone behind his back? It didn’t seem as though he minded. He had already noticed that Smokey was here. Surely right now he could put two and two together and realize that Bella had run to Smokey as much as she had run to Clouds End Farm. So, why wasn’t he angry about it?

“I never liked lying to you.” She whispered the words because she felt such shame in them.

“I was angry at first.” Laredo sighed. “I’m not going to lie. I thought you had betrayed me along with every other member of my family.”

He stopped talking and there was a long pause. Aria didn’t speak. She didn’t want to interrupt. She could not help but think that what he really needed was a moment to gather his thoughts. This wasn’t a minor situation. This was life. It was his daughter and his family, and they had lied to him.

Laredo shuddered and exhaled a long, slow breath. “Then I realized that you were not a member of my family and yet you were the one looking out for my daughter.”

“Bella is a great kid.” That was an honest observation too. “You are damn lucky to have her.”

“And yet I’ve done nothing but screw it up for her since she was born.” The bitterness in his voice touched her deeply. He was so hard on himself!

“Laredo,” Aria began patiently. “You need to remember that you did not make Helena leave. You did not tell her to go. That woman turned you inside out, and she is toxic. If she were still a part of Bella’s life, things would be worse. Not better. That woman would have Bella turned inside out trying to live up to some impossible standard of behavior.”

“So, you don’t think I ruined her chance to have a mother figure?” Laredo said tightly. “I keep thinking that it was the rodeo stuff that drove her mother over the edge.”

“Helena was always the same. She never changed. You did,” Aria told him firmly. “You grew up. You evolved. You did what people are supposed to do. You became a better person, and she could not keep up because she is small-minded and emotionally limited and she cares more about image than anything else.”

“And yet she left me for a ranch hand.”

Aria rolled her eyes. “Whom she promptly turned into a rancher using your money. Don’t mistake yourself, Laredo. She won’t stay with that guy for long. Soon enough he’ll be on the discard pile and she’ll be looking for the next best thing to fill that empty hole she has inside. The best thing you can do is prepare Bella to be so confident and so sure in your love and your acceptance that when her idiotic mother comes waltzing back into her life, Bella won’t even know who she is much less care what she thinks!”

There was a long pause. Maybe Aria had said too much. Maybe she had overstepped herself, but she was tired of Laredo acting as if Helena’s decision was his fault. He hadn’t done anything. The woman had made her own choices.

Then Laredo gently put his arm around Aria. He leaned down and rested his lips against her hair. She felt him inhaling deeply and shivered. It was becoming chilly outside as the night wore on, but she wasn’t shivering because of the weather. This was more.

She leaned against him. Wrapping her arm around him, she pressed her palm against the soft cotton of his T-shirt. She felt the warm, hard contours of his chest beneath the fabric. It was a mystery how the man managed to stay so fit when he had been stuck behind a desk for so very long. Perhaps he was just meant for more.

Aria lifted her chin to look up at him. He cupped her cheek in his hand. His thumb gently traced her lower lip and her jawline. The contact was electric. She loved the way it felt when he touched her with such gentleness. Her heart was racing and her lungs were working double time. It didn’t matter. She was utterly focused on this man and this moment.

She looked up at him in the muted moonlight. A hank of his dark hair fell across his forehead. Unable to resist, she reached up and gently pushed it aside. She sifted her hands through his silky soft black hair. The curls twined around her fingers. He made a low noise in his throat, and the sound seemed to reverberate through her body.

Laredo leaned down and gently brushed his lips over her forehead. Then he kissed her cheeks one at a time. The gentle feel of his kisses set her on fire. Heat lanced through her body and culminated at a point deep inside her core. A tangled knot of need began to build low in her belly, and she wondered if this was the moment she had been waiting for without even realizing it.

“I need this,” she whispered as she reached up and dragged his lips to hers.

She kissed him deeply. Sliding her tongue over the seam of his mouth, she waited for him to open and welcome her inside. He tasted spicy and male. The flavor was everything she could have dreamed of and more. His tongue moved languorously against hers as they made love with their mouths in a slow, unhurried mating of wills.

He slid his arms around her body and half pulled her onto his lap. She loved the way it felt to be held by him. Laredo was so strong and so masculine. She felt utterly feminine and very spoiled. His hand moved against the outside of her thigh, and she wished that she were wearing nothing instead of still being in her blue jeans. He let his fingers gently probe beneath the hem of her T-shirt. He continued to lazily explore her mouth with his tongue as his finger inched over her ribs.

Aria fought the urge to squirm as he worked his way over her sides. Her skin was on fire, and she felt her breasts grow heavy with arousal. When Laredo’s hand gently rubbed the underside of one breast, she thought for sure she would wiggle right off his lap.

He cupped her breast through her bra and rubbed his thumb across her nipple. The tiny bud grew taut. Blood rushed to her breasts, and she felt both nipples harden to a point just below pain. She cried out against his lips. Arching her back, she pushed her breasts into his hands and felt the need curl tightly inside her body. She pressed her thighs together and moaned as she sucked lightly at Laredo’s lower lip in a fit of desire.

“God, you are so sexy,” he murmured against her lips. “Do you have any idea how much you affect me? I want you so badly I can hardly hold back.”

She loved the idea that she affected him this way. It was exciting, and it made her feel as though the whole world were filled with possibilities that had never been there before. She pressed her body closer to his as he squeezed her breast and lightly twirled her nipple between his thumb and index finger. She moved her lips from his mouth to his neck. Nipping gently at the base of his throat, she heard him suck in a quick breath. That was when she knew beyond doubt that he was just as affected as she was.

Aria moved her hand to his waist and tugged his shirt free of his pants. Finally she could press her hand against his bare chest. She felt the taut surface of his belly lightly covered in a dusting of coarse hair. The texture of his skin and all of that masculine hair was exciting. She moved her hand up underneath the fabric and felt the warm resilience of his flesh against her hand.

“I love it when you touch me,” he whispered. “Your hands are like magic.”

She leaned away from his chest, which was a bit tricky because she was still sitting in his lap. Then she lifted his T-shirt and gently scored his skin with her nails. “So, this feels good?”

“Yes,” he groaned. His eyelids were fluttering.

Then she plucked gently at his nipples in the same fashion he had done with hers. She was still tingling with excitement. And now he quivered beneath her hands too. The anticipation between them was at a fever pitch. There was something so very primal and pure about this desire Aria felt for Laredo. It was unhurried and it was natural. Perhaps that meant that it was right.

“Aria,” he whispered in her ear. “I want you so badly. Did you know that? Do you have any idea how you affect me?”

She pressed her lips to his chest and gazed up at him in the semi darkness. She heard the chain on the swing shiver just a little at their combined weight. Then she pressed an open-mouthed kiss to his bare chest.

“I think it might be similar to the way you affect me,” she told him with more than a hint of sass. “And I think I’m going to like it a lot.”