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  She had her wrists draped over his shoulders, and now slid her palms down to rest on his chest, her eyes locked on the slender band of gold on her left hand. Her mouth moved silently as though having forgotten how to form words.

  Finally she said, her dark eyes meeting his, “I wear it for myself.”

  Ryan didn’t know what that meant, only that her look told him it was something she might never explain.

  His mind drifted to his ex-wife, Priscilla, and the feeling of having the entire world yanked out from under him when their marriage ended. He had a powerful reluctance to speak of it, so his family was still unaware he’d eloped during his final year of college. Even now he needed to carry on as though she’d never been a part of his life. He guessed it was the same with Carly and the late Mr. Clarke.

  “I understand,” he said.

  Carly’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You do?”

  He tried to choose the right words, feeling as though two conversations were happening, one verbal and one not. “I understand the ring is something personal. Private.”

  He felt her body soften against his and she let out a sweet-sounding sigh.

  “All I need to know about that ring is that it doesn’t commit you to someone who might have a problem with me kissing you,” he added.

  “I’m single, if that’s your question.” She seemed edgy as she stepped from his arms, her movements jerky. “But I’m not looking for love.”

  He nodded to let her know he’d heard the declaration. She was a woman who liked to let him know exactly where her limits and boundaries were.

  “Have I ever mentioned how much I like you?” He brushed a knuckle down the side of her cheek. She was vulnerable, yet prickly and difficult, and somehow everything he’d been waiting for.

  “So, if neither of us is looking for love, what are we looking for?” she whispered, lowering her lashes as though afraid to meet his eyes in case she saw rejection or judgment there. But she was leaning closer again, and the heat was building. She was tall, almost matching his height.

  “Companionship?” he asked, with a touch of irony. He adored the fact that she was bold, willing to lay it out there for him to accept or reject, not bending to what he wanted, and then locking them into something that didn’t work.

  “I don’t expect this to happen, but if we get to a more intimate form of companionship,” she murmured, her expression tight with challenge, “I’m an exclusive gal.”

  “Fine by me.” He didn’t have the time or inclination to try and juggle more than one woman. In fact, he could argue he didn’t have time for one. “So what are you hoping for? Shuffleboard? Darts?”

  “I mostly just want to argue with you, then kiss you.”

  Ryan considered hiding his smile, but figured there was no point. She seemed to do a decent job of seeing right through him and figuring out his intentions. Either that or they were cut from the same cloth and instinctively said what was on their own mind, coincidentally lining up with the other.

  He kissed her again, inhaling her sweet scent. The product she used in her hair was unfamiliar, but what he already thought of as wholly Carly.

  “You’re not going to be my girlfriend,” he said, when the kiss ended. He hated the hurt from old wounds that came up with the use of the word. But more so, he hated seeing that flicker of pain in Carly’s eyes, even though he was merely stating what they’d both expressed. He gave her a soft, wet kiss to ease the sting of their shared bitter truths. “I don’t do relationships.”

  She smiled against his lips, her body warm against his as her fingers tangled in his hair, knocking his hat to the hay-covered dirt below. She kissed him hard, then said, “Perfect. Neither do I.”

  He gave her another kiss, this one soon turning frantic.

  When they came up for air, he confirmed, “So this is a quiet thing between you and me?”

  “That sounds like something I can handle.” Her face had lost all traces of tension, and he smoothed a hand down her neck. She was smiling, looking more breathtaking than he’d seen her yet, and she was plenty breathtaking.

  “So this is good?” he confirmed, breathing her in, still reveling in gratitude for Carly.

  “It’s perfect.” One of her graceful long fingers pressed against his lips. “Just like this.”

  And then she kissed him again, illustrating once more how perfect they truly were.

  4

  Carly was going stir-crazy on the ranch. She’d spent days stuck with her own thoughts, replaying those kisses with Ryan, while turning over the soil in an old garden plot. She’d flip from trying to sort out her past hurts and failures to wondering if she and Ryan would find more opportunities to kiss. So far, they had. Each day she found an excuse to walk down to the stable, whether to grab an old piece of timber from the stack in one of the broken stalls, or suddenly having an urgent need to ask Ryan a question about his horses.

  She was about as transparent as a teenager with a crush.

  What she should focus on was getting a winter garden planted. She needed to get a few things sprouted, figure out why her goats weren’t producing milk, and finish rebuilding an old chicken coop.

  She needed to grow something. Anything. Even just a row of lettuce. Then she’d feel like a farmer, and focus a little less on Ryan.

  Unplugging her electric Mini Cooper, Carly climbed in and drove to town. She would stop by the hardware store for some winter produce seeds, such as onions, beets, carrots and lettuce, then grab a coffee at the Longhorn Diner to get some human interaction. She’d barely been off the farm since the library fundraiser dance, and figured spending time around others might help make her kissing relationship with Ryan feel less big and important.

  Although this morning’s kisses had been worth the wait. That man handled her sharp edges with apparent ease and amusement, and he kissed like nobody she’d ever met. How was it she’d sworn off men, then almost immediately found herself in a kissing relationship with one of Sweetheart Creek’s most eligible bachelors?

  Carly parked her car in front of the hardware store and shook her head. She never learned, did she? Maybe because it was fun until you had to actually learn the lesson being handed to you.

  As she crossed the sidewalk to the store entrance, she inhaled the brisk autumn air and admired the trees lining the street. The town’s pride showed with its picturesque downtown, its older buildings well-maintained and charming. Sweetheart Creek felt like the kind of place where parents didn’t worry about their kids being on bicycles, out until dark or crossing the road on their own. If she were to have children, she’d want them to grow up here.

  In the store, Carly loaded a basket with seeds and headed to the checkout. Minutes later, after explaining that she was starting a produce farm, she walked toward the diner with a full bag of gardening supplies and a giant grin.

  She was a few doors from the restaurant when she spotted an armadillo waddling down the sidewalk toward her. As she passed it, swinging her bag merrily, she gave the beast a cheery hello. It turned and hissed, exposing a frightening display of teeth. Startled, Carly let out a shriek, flinging her purchases in the animal’s direction while jumping back, landing awkwardly between two pickup trucks. The animal was in her bag faster than she thought possible. It selected the pack of sprouted seed potatoes she’d purchased as an experiment, and trundled off with its prize.

  “Hey!” She returned to the sidewalk and stomped her foot, her wallet clutched to her chest. The beast scurried away even faster, the potatoes still locked in its jaws.

  Hearing light laughter behind her, Carly turned to see Jackie Moorhouse coming her way.

  “You’d best not mess with Bill,” she drawled. “He can get a might nasty.”

  “He stole my seed potatoes,” Carly said with a pout. A cowboy who’d just exited the diner stooped to collect her scattered seed packets.

  “Thanks, Owen,” Jackie chirped.

  The man, who was about their age, tipped his hat af
ter depositing Carly’s belongings back in her reusable shopping bag.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “He just broke up with his girlfriend,” Jackie whispered, after he climbed into an old truck with the Sweet Meadows Ranch logo on the door.

  “He works with the Wylders?”

  “Yup. Ranch hand.”

  “I haven’t met him yet.”

  “He’s super quiet and shy.” Jackie pulled the diner’s glass door open. The front windows were plastered with signs supporting the high school football team. “Heading in?”

  “Thanks.” Carly hurried through the doorway, then hesitated, debating between the tables covered with red-and-white-checked cloths and the row of stools along the back wall near the kitchen. She didn’t want to assume she’d sit with Jackie, who had no doubt come to meet someone. And since it was nearly lunchtime, the tables would soon be in high demand.

  When Jackie stopped to chat with a group of women hunched over what looked like a bunch of recipes, Carly took a stool at the back, beside a man with flyaway white hair.

  “Well, hello. You must be Carly Clarke,” he said, as soon as she set her sea foam-green wallet on the countertop beside him and took a seat.

  “Yes, I am,” she said in surprise.

  “Fiona’s been telling me all about her smart niece,” he said, with a warmth that made her think of her grandfather back home in Montana, even though that was about where the two men’s similarities ended.

  Carly glanced around for the waitress, Fiona Fisher, a distant relative on her father’s side. Almost at once she came sidling up, her bleached hair teased in a true Texas bouffant and her sparkly Western blouse catching the light.

  “Carly, dear. Haven’t seen you in ages.” The older woman gave a tsk. “What can I get for you today?”

  Before Carly could reply, Mrs. Fisher said to the man beside her, “This is my great-niece once removed, Carly Clarke.” She addressed Carly again. “Hon, this is Garfield Goodwin. The biggest flirt ever to step foot in Sweetheart Creek.”

  Carly glanced at the man, who was grinning at the waitress. Carly had a feeling he only had eyes for flirting with one woman in town, and she was standing right in front of him.

  “Just a coffee, please,” Carly said.

  “Carly’s working on creating an organic farm out on her ranch,” Fiona announced.

  “Are you now? That sounds like a job and a half,” Garfield said.

  “It is.”

  “You have experience with that sort of stuff?” asked a gruff voice on the other side of her.

  “Henry, don’t be that way,” Fiona warned.

  “No, that’s fine,” Carly said. She turned to the man, who was about the same age as Garfield, but more worn looking. “I’m working on it,” she told him.

  “You can’t just grow something without pesticides and call it organic,” Henry said, his wrinkled mouth moving as though debating whether to frown.

  “I know,” she said.

  “How’s your water?”

  “My water?” She looked at the counter in front of her. No water glass. No coffee yet, either.

  “In your well. How much can it pump? You don’t want to overpump or you’ll get bacteria. And if it goes dry from overpumping, your crop will shrivel right up in the summer heat unless you get enough rain, which is hard to come by when you need it. What’s the salt content in your water out at Lucky Horse? What minerals you got in it? Anything your crops need? What are you planning to grow, anyway?”

  “Um…” Carly felt as though she’d just been frisked by a dirt devil, one of those twirling dust-filled winds that blew around you, stinging your eyes, temporarily blinding you before it disappeared as suddenly as it had come.

  “In time, Henry, in time,” Garfield said. “She’s just fixin’ to get started, and doesn’t need to worry about every little thing right here, right now.”

  “She could lose her shirt if she don’t have good water or a well that can keep up with our dry spells. It’s not just the obvious, like bugs or soil-borne diseases, that can ruin your crop. Be responsible, Garfield.”

  The man shut up.

  “That’s actually good advice,” Carly hedged. It was best to know the specifics of what you were getting into, right? She’d run into that problem with Peter, then again with her business partner, Eaton, who’d been caught siphoning money out of their food services military contracts. As a result, she’d been clear and up front with Ryan about what their kissing meant, but she should be just as clear in her business plan, too. She should make a full assessment of what the farmland had going for her as well as against her.

  “I’ve sent soil samples out to be tested,” she said. “But I don’t know about my well.”

  “Talk to Tracey down at the town office,” Fiona suggested, placing a cup of coffee in front of Carly. “She might have records.”

  “Profit is a long time coming with ranches and farms. I hope you know that,” Henry said, seeding doubt in Carly’s mind about whether she could make this idea work for her. Her father had expressed his own doubts, reminding her how hard farming was. Was it wrong of her to want something of her own, something like what she’d had growing up? Land, independence and a feeling of self-sufficiency?

  “She doesn’t need much,” Fiona said. “It’s just her own mouth to feed. She’s not looking to become a major contender on the world market, Henry.”

  Carly shot her an appreciative look. Her aunt was right. She didn’t want to build a vast conglomerate, just a farm that would sustain her simple lifestyle.

  “Your great-nephew knows a bit about that stuff, doesn’t he?” Garfield said thoughtfully as he swiveled to face Henry.

  “That boy is always messing with some big idea. I can’t keep up with them all.” He waved his hand as if swatting at a persistent fly, then pushed off his stool, unfolding his wallet to drop a few bills on the counter.

  “He took some classes,” Fiona said, scooping up the cash as though afraid Henry might take it back if she left it there too long.

  “Who took classes?” Carly asked, perking up as she added milk to her coffee. She could use a resident expert to help her start off on the right foot.

  “Which of the boys was it?” Garfield asked, as Carly took a trial sip of her coffee. “Why, that was Ryan, wasn’t it? Ryan Wylder.”

  Carly began coughing.

  “You’ve met?” Fiona asked, a mischievous twinkle flashing in her eyes.

  “Who’s met who?” asked a woman behind Carly. It was Jackie, slipping into Henry’s spot, smelling like apples and strawberries.

  “Yeah, the youngest whippersnapper,” Henry said, turning to leave. “He’s got a smart mouth and is too independent for his own good. Stay away from that one.”

  “Carly’s met Ryan,” Fiona said to Jackie with a pointed look.

  “Oh, the handsome Wylder boys,” she exclaimed, pretending to swoon. Henry let out a disgusted grunt and trotted off, while Jackie fanned her face with a hand. Carly laughed despite herself. She’d met Jackie Moorhouse when she’d first moved here, and had thought she was a bit much. And naturally, had taken an instant liking to her.

  Ryan was hot, all right. But Jackie’s reaction made Carly wonder if he was a player and she’d been caught in his trap of effortless charm.

  She took a sip of coffee while considering that idea.

  If he was a player, did it matter? They weren’t doing anything more than kissing. No relationships. No commitments other than to keep it monogamous if it got more physical than kissing. Come to think of it, that kind of had a whiff of relationship, didn’t it?

  “Carly, have you met Jackie Moorhouse?” Fiona gestured to her.

  “We met at the library fundraiser dance.” Jackie turned to Carly. “Are you a football fan?”

  She shook her head. Peter had loved football, and since his passing she’d made a habit of avoiding anything he’d liked. But she’d always enjoyed football, and had been a fan long
before she’d met Peter. Back in Montana, her family used to drive into the city to watch college football. Then while attending Southern Methodist University in Dallas, she’d go watch the Dallas Cowboys. Now that she thought about it, she missed it.

  “I haven’t been following it lately,” she said truthfully. “I used to be a huge fan and even took player statistics for a college team at one point.”

  “Our boys are going to State,” Jackie said, clamping her hand on Carly’s forearm. “They made it through bi-district playoffs and they have area playoffs this Friday.”

  “Don’t go putting your cart before the horse,” Mrs. Fisher warned. “The boys still have to win four more games before they make it to the state championship game.”

  “They’ll choke at State. They always do,” Henry predicted, reaching between Carly and Jackie to grab his forgotten sunglasses, and making Carly jump.

  “They had better not,” grumbled another voice from behind her. “This is my son’s last year to win.”

  “They’ll win, Davis,” Jackie said confidently. “Riverbend’s team isn’t as strong, so we know the Torpedoes are making it to regionals at the very least.”

  “They’d better.”

  She turned to Carly. “The boys are playing their next game in town on Friday. Are you going to come watch?”

  “Friday?” Carly repeated.

  “You’re free?” Jackie said, sliding backward off the stool. “Perfect. I’ll pick you up. You’re at the ranch by the Wylders? What’s it called? Lucky Horse?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great. Wear something cute. Red and white are the team colors. We’ll sneak down to the sidelines and help out the team in return for free admission.”

  “What?” Carly said, but the woman was already scooting out the diner’s front door, her pink cowboy boots clacking quickly, like she had somewhere to be. Carly turned to Fiona. “What just happened?”

  “Ryan’s afraid of Jackie,” her aunt replied. “So he’s off her list.”

  “What?” What list? How did that explain things? Suddenly she was going to a football game on Friday and helping the team? What was she even helping with?