“No, eventually he started coming to events sometimes. Mostly after I started winning a lot. The thing about my dad is he does reckless things. But he’s not vindictive. He didn’t sell the horses to get back at me. He did it because he thought he was removing an obstacle.” He shook his head. “I guess everyone just does their best.”

Gabe didn’t look vulnerable, but Jamie could feel it, down beneath that hardened exterior of his. Because it reminded her a lot of hers.

And suddenly...

She wanted to take care of him.

She wanted to make him feel good. Wanted to reach that place inside him somehow.

He’d left her with a thousand questions on Saturday when he’d come to her house. And now a few of them had been answered. But it hadn’t simply satisfied her curiosity about him; it had just made her connection to him feel all that much more pronounced. Made her want to know even more. To get beneath his clothes. Beneath his skin somehow.

And suddenly, it made her feel a little bit less vulnerable about the whole thing. Particularly because it made him more human.

In the fact that it was suddenly not just about her, not just about her embarrassment, or the vulnerability she’d felt when the two of them had made love, she felt...

She rounded the desk and came to stand in front of him. He was sitting in the office chair. It was an incongruous scene. This big, rough man who didn’t belong indoors at all sitting in front of a computer, his hat tipped back on his head, his jeans battered and dusty, his hands dirty and scarred from hard labor.

She didn’t care for the computer. The office. Any of the fancy things.

But she seemed to care a lot for him. She bit her lip, and then grabbed hold of the back of his chair, bending down and kissing him, the way that he had done at her house Saturday. Quick. Decisive.

She straightened. “Could we...? Could we maybe have sex again?”

He growled and pulled her down onto his lap. “Jamie,” he said, “I thought you weren’t going to ask.”

“Well, I didn’t figure I’d have to. I thought maybe you would take the initiative.”

“I didn’t know if you wanted to.”

“Well, neither did I. So I guess that’s fair enough.”

“Tonight,” he said. “Come to my place tonight.”

“Okay...”

He cut that word off with a kiss. Deep and hard, his whiskers rough against her skin, his hand calloused and glorious as he cupped her cheek and took the kiss even deeper. When they parted, Jamie could barely breathe.

“Tonight,” she said, peeling herself up off him, her legs unsteady.

“Yep,” he said.

Jamie backed out of the room and headed down the center of the barn, making her way to the stall that contained the horse she was going to work with today.

Her head was filled with Gabe. Her body affected by his touch. By the way it had felt to be in his arms. It was like she could still feel it.