Don’t close the door when opportunity knocks, the voice in her head said. Didn’t you just tell him to face his fears? Well, take a dose of your own medicine.

“Yes,” she said again. “Pretzels would be great, and bring that package of chocolate kisses I saw in the pantry. I like salt and sweet together.”

“You can have as many of my kisses as you can handle,” Cody chuckled.

“Don’t promise what you can’t deliver.” Stevie flirted right back at him.

“Want to give that a try?” Cody returned with half a bag of chocolate and an unopened one of pretzels.

She held up the kisses. “See, only half a bag. I could put away two bags between now and bedtime. Oh!” She clamped a hand over her mouth. “You were talking about real kisses. This is a failure to communicate. I thought you were offering me as many of these as I could handle.”

“Sure, you were, but to clear things up…” Cody bent forward, tipped her chin up with his fist, and kissed her on the lips.

Stevie was glad that she was sitting down because her knees went all weak. When the kiss ended, her heart was pumping double time, and her pulse raced like she had just run a marathon.

“How many of those can you handle tonight?” Cody asked as he sat down on the other end of the sofa.

“As many as you can, Dr. Cowboy,” she lied. One or two more of those and she would be unbuttoning his chambray shirt.

“We’ll test that theory when you are completely well. Don’t want to overload your brain with too many endorphins,” he said with a grin.

“Or yours either,” she told him.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Glad to be free of the confines of the stall, Dixie and her adoptive sibling romped around in the corral while their mother, Maggie, kept a watch from a distance. Sonny sat in a lawn chair just inside the barn and kept an eye on all the alpacas plus the heifer and her newborn baby calf. Animals and humans alike seemed to be enjoying the nice warm sun and trying to ignore the breeze blowing down from the north.

“Can I get you anything?” Stevie asked as she dragged a couple more chairs over for her and Pearl. “There’s water, bottles of sweet tea, and apple juice in the tack room refrigerator.”