“Jamie,” he said, his voice rough. “Do you have any idea what kind of invitation it seems like you’re sending out?”

She lifted her chin, gritting her teeth, ready to stand in defiance. “I didn’t know a conversation was an invitation.”

Then Gabe did something she didn’t expect. He reached out and cupped her chin, his eyes intent on hers. And he moved his thumb over her lower lip. A shiver went through her body, all the way down. “Don’t play games with me. Honey, this is serious.”

Honey.

He’d called her honey again.

Like she might be sweet or something.

Like she might be special.

And...and maybe she should make it an invitation. She wasn’t...innocent. Not really. She might not have practical experience with sex but she knew what it entailed.

Though the events of tonight made her question that.

She had always felt surrounded by sex in the way that she was surrounded by the rodeo itself. She might not ride bulls, but she understood the sport. She’d observed the way her brothers behaved with women they were interested in. Hell, she’d seen them waving hookups off early in the morning. She was sure they’d figured they’d gotten away with it, but Jamie had known what was happening in her house.

But suddenly it all seemed so mystifying and unknowable to her now.

She clasped her hands behind her back and twisted them together, making a knot with her fingers. “Serious how?”

“You need to know what you want. If you call me away from a woman I’m interested in, you better know what you’re doing.”

He was so...large and so very...male. And that had never once been something that seemed foreign to her. She’d grown up surrounded by big, masculine men. But Gabe seemed like another species right then. Something she had no experience with, and when he got in closer to her, the proximity made her dizzy.

“You don’t have a clue what you want, do you?” he pressed, those blue eyes like shards of glass, embedding themselves beneath her skin and making her feel hot all over.

“That’s bullshit,” she said. “I...I know what I want.”

“And what is that?”

“For you to tell Crystal to go away.”

He arched a brow. “So that you can take her place?”

A wave of heat rolled over her face. “I don’t know about that part yet,” she snapped.

“Jamie Dodge, do you not know something?”

“All right, maybe I don’t know everything. But I know enough to know that whatever I decided to do, it’ll all be fine. I know what I want, in the sense that I know that I want to go pro in the rodeo. I know that I want to get out of here. I don’t want what McKenna and Bea have. I don’t want to sit there and compare wedding rings and whatever. I’d like to live a little, though.”

“Are you propositioning me?”

His eyes were intense and blue, and they cut straight through her armor, and there was an answer she wanted to give, but it scared her.