Chapters (43)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Epilogue
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Readers Guide
- QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
Andra pushed up the sleeves of her sweater, once red but now faded to a rusty pink. She tucked an unraveling thread back into the cuff before she pulled the cutting board across the table and took a mushroom out of the bowl. After three days of rain, her whole house smelled of sagebrush and wet, dark soil, even though she’d showered and changed into clean clothes when she got home. LJ looked like he’d changed, too, but his jeans were wet up to the knees from walking through the tall grass to get over here. His shirt was dry, though, a soft cotton Henley that clung to his shoulders before falling loosely over the curve of his lower back.
She let herself look an extra minute because she was sitting at the table and he was facing away from her, working over two different skillets on the stove. The thickness of his shoulders did something deep inside her, and she wasn’t entirely sure what to call it. She imagined running her hands over his back, fitting her palms into the curve of his spine above the waistband of his jeans. Thanks to the night she’d surprised him at home, she knew how he looked without a shirt. Now she couldn’t stop imagining how it would feel to do more than look.
The thought of touching him was like the longing for a fluffy blanket on a frosty night, but it had a zing of danger, too, like a beautiful horse you knew was too wild to ride. She didn’t know what the hell to do with feelings that argued with each other that way.
She shivered and tucked one of her legs up under her on the chair, tugging the hem of her sweater out to cover more of her. LJ set down the spatula and crossed to the thermostat in the living room, bumping it up a couple of notches.
“I’m fine—don’t waste electricity,” she said. “I’m already wearing a sweater in June, for crying out loud.”
“How am I supposed to concentrate on cooking with your teeth chattering away over there?” He looked beside the couch, and then he opened the closet. “You’ve been getting soaked to the skin all day going from the indoor arena to the barns. A sweater isn’t going to cut it. Where are your throw blankets?”
“Don’t have any.”