After ripping a brush through my hair, I rushed down the hall. My lips felt chapped, no big surprise there, so I made a layover in the bathroom to slick on some lip balm.

Voices buzzed in the kitchen already, which meant I wasn’t only late, I was really late. As soon as I skidded into the kitchen, my eyes locked onto his and his onto mine. Jesse was already seated at the table with the rest of the hands, eating breakfast. After finishing the bite of food in his mouth, a grin spread across his face as he took me in decked out in my new clothes.

“Wowza! Don’t you look fabulous,” Rose said when she pulled her head out of the fridge.

“She sure does,” Jesse added, his grin stretching wider. The rest of the hands, along with Neil, turned and took a quick look. A few nods, a couple smiles, then they got back to their breakfast.

“Thank you,” I replied to Rose before glancing back at Jesse. I don’t think he’d blinked yet. “And thank you.” I hoped he’d pick up on the subtle inflection because I couldn’t just walk across the kitchen, kiss him full on the lips, and thank him for the clothes the way I wanted to. I wasn’t sure how his family would take it. I was still trying to figure us out for myself, so whatever Jesse and I had, we’d have to keep it quiet until we figured out just what it was.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said as I rushed over to the coffee pot. That was my area of expertise. I ground, made, and poured the coffee. After that first day, I hadn’t spilled any. Occasionally, I’d be brave enough to whip up the pancake mix or scramble the eggs, but manning the coffee was the safest bet.

“That’s all right, hun,” she said, waving it off. “Clem said you had a tough time sleeping last night. You could have slept in, you know?”

Clementine waved at me from where she flipped pancakes on the griddle while standing on a step stool. Her purple scarf was proudly on display.

“What kept you up? Mind, body, or both?” Rose asked as I grabbed the coffee pot.

I couldn’t look her in the eyes when I answered, “Both.” I promptly spun around and whisked toward the table.

I felt one set of eyes on me. So intently, I remembered the way he’d kissed me last night. It made me remember the words he’d said to me.

Reliving last night when I had hot coffee in my hands wasn’t a good idea. I stopped beside Neil and lifted the pot. “Refill?” It was a rhetorical question. Not once in the past week had Neil turned down a coffee refill.

“Please,” he said with a nod. “Did you end up going to the rodeo last night, Rowen? We didn’t see you there, but it was packed as usual.”

“Yeah, I went.” I focused on pouring coffee into his cup. I did a quick scan of the table and was relieved to see a certain seat empty. I wasn’t quite ready to see Garth Black yet.

“What did you think?” he asked, turning in his seat toward me. “This was your first rodeo, right? I bet it left quite an impression.”

“It certainly left an impression,” I replied as I set his cup back down in front of him.

“Well, good. I’m glad you could make it,” he said as I moved on to the next cup that needed topped off. “Did you do anything especially fun afterward?”

From across the table, someone started choking.

The guy sitting next to Jesse hammered his back a few times while Jesse took a few sips of water. “Geez, Jesse. Try chewing your food before you swallow it. Basic stuff here, buddy.”

Jesse lifted his eyebrows in acknowledgement, took another sip of water, and glanced my way.

I shot him a thumbs up and made a face. He shot me back a smirk.

“I just went back up to my bedroom and stayed there all night.” I continued to make the coffee rounds. Jesse picked his fork back up and dove into his breakfast, but his eyes shifted my way every few seconds. So much for playing it subtle.

“Sounds like an uneventful night,” Neil said.

“Perfectly uneventful,” I replied.

Jesse shook his head and grinned into his plate.

The pot was empty a few cups later. After a detour to refill, I headed back to the table. En route, Jesse lifted his full cup of coffee and took a drink. He didn’t stop until the cup was empty. He swung it from the handle with his finger and winked at me.

If he kept that up, the entire ranch would know something was going on between us.

“Refill?” I stopped beside him and held out my hand. I was likely imagining it, but his eyes twinkled a bit more this morning.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he replied as he handed me his cup. His hand grazed mine purposefully, and in that briefest of grazes, my heart picked up speed.

“Did you have trouble sleeping last night, too?” I asked innocently as I poured his coffee. No one was paying us any attention, but just in case . . .

“Maybe a little.” He twisted in his seat and gave me a not-so-innocent smile. “Once I did fall asleep, I slept great. Best sleep of my life even.”

I was one more flirty innuendo away from a blush. It took a lot to make me blush, and I really didn’t want to do it right here for all of these guys to witness.

“Did you have a tough time getting to sleep last night, too, son?” Neil spoke up. I almost jumped out of my skin. I didn’t think anyone could hear us above the din of conversations roaming around the room.

“Yeah, I did, Dad,” Jesse replied in a collected voice. Like he hadn’t just gone from talking in code with me about last night to discussing sleep with his dad a second later.

“You know, I did, too,” Neil said. “I kept hearing a bunch of creaking around and odd noises last night.”

It would have been my turn to choke if I had anything in my mouth.

“This house is older than you are, Dad. It creaks and makes odd noises all the time,” Jesse said with a shrug while he soaked up some hamburger gravy with a biscuit.

“Thanks for the age reminder, Jesse. Always something I love to be reminded of. But these were odd-er sounds.” That’s probably because your son climbed down a chimney, hurled himself into my room, and made out with me in ways that are probably illegal in this county. “Anyways, I’m sure it was nothing, but it looks like a few of us are going to be getting by on nothing more than caffeine and grit today.”

Jesse lifted his cup and took a sip. “Looks like it.”

I sighed with relief as I reached for the next empty cup. Breakfast was almost over, Jesse and I had dodged a few danger zones, and I’d managed to keep from kissing him the way I wanted to as soon as I walked in and saw him.

Maybe we could keep things on the D.L. until we figured them out and were ready to go public.

That was when Clementine shouted from across the room, “Rowen? Why were you wearing Jesse’s shirt this morning?”

Jesse’s fork clattered to his plate. The empty coffee cup in my hand clattered to the floor.

Chapter Nine

The Walkers had believed me. They’d believed my explanation as to why I’d been wearing Jesse’s shirt. Of course, I told them the truth—I didn’t have any clean pajamas and found it buried in the back of the dresser drawer—but I’d found adults were unappeasably suspicious when it came to teens. Especially when it came to the topic of sleeping around.

For example, if I’d woken up wearing some guy’s shirt at home, my mom would have just assumed we’d done the deed. She wouldn’t have asked for an explanation because she didn’t need one.

Neil and Rose, on the other hand, gave Jesse and me a curious look after Clementine’s announcement. I gave them a simple explanation, they nodded, then they got on with the morning. They trusted me. They believed me—they believed in me.

It had been a while since anyone had trusted or believed in me, and I didn’t want to do anything to betray them. Even if that meant Jesse and I had to admit what was going on between us sooner rather than later. I didn’t want to lie to them.

I knew the idea of their perfect son linking up with someone like me, with a less-than-perfect past, might make them uncomfortable, but the Walkers were quite possibly the most understanding and forgiving people out there. If anyone would give me the thumbs up to date their son, it would be them.

After I’d put a few loads of my clothes into the dryers, I wandered back into the kitchen. The guys were moving the cattle to a different pasture and wouldn’t come in for lunch, so we’d packed a sack lunch type meal, and I would drive it out to them in a few minutes.

Rose was stacking the sandwiches into a big cooler when I walked into the kitchen.

“Clean clothes are a mere dryer session away,” I said, walking over to help her.

“You know, my dear, you can always ask me or one of the girls if you need some pajamas,” she said as I started laying bottles of water into the cooler. “No need to go into the bowels of Jesse’s dresser in search of an old, smelly shirt.”

I almost corrected her. It wasn’t old and smelly. In fact, I’d take a shirt of Jesse’s any night over the finest, silkiest pajamas out there. “Okay, thanks. It wasn’t so bad, really.”

We were quiet for a few moments as we continued to load up the cooler for an army of ranch hands. The cooler was so big, I wasn’t sure Rose and I could move it on our own.

“Your mom called again,” she said slowly.

The chill Zen I’d managed to achieve at Willow Springs flew out the window. It always did when someone brought up the topic of my mom. Rose generally tried not to mention her, but she was in a tough spot. Since I’d refused to take any of my mom’s calls, my mom had moved on to Rose. Rose was the intermediary between Mom and me, and that wasn’t a role I’d wish on my worst enemy.

“She said she still hasn’t been able to get ahold of you,” Rose said diplomatically. That’s because I’ve hit ignore every time she’s called. “And that you haven’t returned her messages.”

“I don’t have anything to say to her, Rose. Her ultimatum included me working hard out here and not stepping a toe out of line. She didn’t say anything about pretending we have this great mother-daughter relationship where we check in with each other every day.” My voice was rising. It always did when I started down the rabbit hole that was my mom and me. “But I’m sorry you’re in the middle of this. I’ll give her a call so she’ll leave you alone.” I’ll just make sure to call when I know she’s at work so I can leave her a message and not have to talk to her directly.

“You do whatever you think is best, Rowen. I’m a big girl, and I’ve been dealing with your mom’s drama for decades now. I’m an expert in drama dealing with that woman.” Rose placed the last few sandwiches on top of the pile and closed the fridge. “She’s seeing some new guy, I guess. She said she wanted to bring him out here to meet everyone and have dinner.”

So much was wrong with those couple of sentences I glanced around, half expecting the apocalypse.

“She’s always seeing a new guy. There’s never not been a new guy in my mom’s life.” I couldn’t think of a single instance when her boyfriend lasted longer than two months. As old as she was, that meant she’d dated so many guys, if you laid them down in a straight line, they’d circle the earth once. At least once.