“It just felt really important,” she said. “I couldn’t stand to see him suffer like that.”

“I know. It’s one of the things I like about you.”

He began to position a Band-Aid over a particularly deep one and she winced, air hissing through her teeth. He paused, leaning in and blowing cool air over the wound. She shivered. His breath against her skin was a whole revelation.

No. They couldn’t touch casually anymore. But his touch had transformed into magic, and right now she wasn’t sure she would trade the two things.

Sunlight filtered through the window and illuminated his face. Spiked the tips of his lashes with gold, those brown eyes looking more whiskey in the light. It even highlighted his stubble. Then she noticed. For some reason now every little detail of his face—it all seemed to matter so much.

She swallowed hard. He licked his lips and looked up at her, met her gaze. Her heart started thundering. Hard.

And she was feeling pretty glad that they hadn’t made any kind of decisions or thrown down any gauntlets or anything earlier in the day. Sure, that had been his suggestion, but it was seeming like a very good suggestion right about now. She was about to ask him to do something naughty. About to open her mouth and flirt with him. Ask him if he wanted to kiss it and make it better. When Iris breezed into the room.

“Sammy. Are you okay?”

She and Ryder jumped, like a pair of startled raccoons that had been caught getting into some feed.

“I’m fine,” she said, jerking her hand away from his and lowering it to her side. “I was trying to rescue a calf.”

“She was,” he grunted.

“Okay,” Iris said.

She was carrying a bag of groceries, which she set on the counter and began methodically taking out. And of course, she had no idea what she had interrupted, because it would never occur to her that she might have interrupted something like that between Ryder and Sammy.

Each piece that she pulled out of the bag was like torture.

Sammy felt like she was made of sexual frustration. And as the seconds ticked on she found a sort of gratitude for it. Because maybe Iris had to save them from doing something stupid.

She was in a weird space. Feeling obsessed with Ryder and what he could make her feel when she should be dealing with the fact that she had nearly had an emotional meltdown and gone off and had a baby with a stranger.

Yes. At some point she was going to have to deal with that.

“Can I help?” Sammy asked.

Iris looked at her like she was insane. “No. Your hands are all messed up.”

She looked down at her Band-Aid-covered paws. “Sure. I suppose they are.”

“There’s no suppose about it. I don’t want you touching any of the food.”

“She is disinfected,” Ryder pointed out.

“Gross. It doesn’t matter.” Iris looked at him. “You could help, though.”