“What are you doing here?” she said before she realized he probably couldn’t hear her through her glass and his.

She turned the engine off and got out of her truck. Gabe did the same.

“What are you doing here?” she asked again.

“I figured I’d better check on you.”

“You couldn’t have called?”

“I actually did. You didn’t answer.”

Jamie reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. Well. She had a missed call.

“I didn’t feel like I should leave things the way that we did last night.”

“Well...come in.”

Jamie edged into the center of the room, feeling for the first time ever like her cabin might be too small. Certainly too small to sustain this man’s presence.

Jamie had always loved her little house. It was homey, and different from the cabins that the guests stayed in at the ranch. The kitchen area was small, with the woodstove for cooking—which Jamie never used—and a lovely, solid oak pantry at the back of the room lined with jars that contained nothing, but were lovely to look at all the same.

There was a small living room area with a love seat and chair that Jamie had claimed from the main house when her father had left and Wyatt had brought in his own furniture, that was less than twenty years old.

The only new thing in the whole house was the large rug she had put underneath the coffee table. It covered the scarred, pitted wood floor. A dark red with green stripes, and pine trees and black bears in a pattern.

She liked it because it reminded her of the outdoors. And even when she was inside, it was the thing she preferred to be thinking of.

Gabe was so big, so devastatingly attractive, and looking at him head-on made her heart feel crumpled up again. Made her feel like she was on the verge of tears. If he touched her...

Well, she didn’t know what she would do.

Cry. Throw herself at him. One. Both.

One thing was sure; she was certain to make an idiot out of herself.

So she took a step back, putting the love seat between Gabe and her.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said.

Jamie poked herself in the arm. “Yes. It seems like I’m okay.”

“Jamie...”

“I’m fine. You’re the one who was worried. I’m not worried.”

“Okay.” He took his cowboy hat off his head and pushed his hands through his hair. She tried not to think about what it had been like when she’d pushed her fingers through his hair.

It was a weird thing, standing across from a man she’d seen naked. A man she’d touched all over.

How did people do this?

They did all the time. Managed to be in the same room as people they’d been naked with. Hell, everyone in her family did it on a regular basis.

People in the Gold Valley Saloon no doubt stood in the room when strangers they’d been naked with were in residence. There were few enough people that the going out and drinking crowd probably had a lot of crossover when it came to bed partners.