Slow Burn Cowboy

This kind of thing was always worse when his life was thrown off. That awareness. Those moments when he would look at her and instead of seeing her very familiar face, he would be jarred by some new angle of her beauty.

It was more than just features, though on their own they were pretty enough. It was the glitter in her eyes when she was about to say something she thought was hilarious. The way she struggled to hold back a laugh at her own jokes. The insane things that came out of her mouth when she was rambling because she was nervous or excited, or just hopped up on caffeine.

Those moments when she was more than a pretty face or a damned fine figure. The moments when he saw a woman who was beautiful all the way down. The kind of beauty years couldn’t fade.

Those moments were a big damn problem. Normally, he had a better handle on this.

But then, normally, he had a better handle on his life.

“You know,” she said, breaking him out of his thoughts, “with the extra help from Cain you could afford to do more of your own product. I would really, really like to offer some milk that isn’t ultra pasteurized in my store. We could sell it in a glass bottle. People would love it.”

He groaned. “We’ve been through this already. I don’t have the time. My grandfather wasn’t interested and that was for a reason. We’re better off just taking the contracts from bigger dairies.”

“Not necessarily. The demand for this kind of thing is huge, and I love carrying local products in the store. I want more cheese. More of your cheese.”

He snorted. “Now there’s a sentence you don’t hear every day.”

“Maybe if you didn’t make cheese.” She let out an exasperated breath. “Just think about it. Think about the opportunity that having extra help would present you with. Instead of being a stubborn ass.”

With her poking and prodding him he forgot why just a moment ago he had been feeling tense and like he was a little too big for his skin. Why he had been so captivated with her. Because now, he was less captivated by her beauty and more irritated by that stubborn set of her chin that let him know she wasn’t going to back down.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, mostly to get her off his back. He took another sip of beer, then decided to leave the rest. “I need to go.”

“Fine,” she said.

He stood, and so did she. Then he moved away from the couch, heading toward the door and she reached out, breaking that unspoken wall between them as her fingertips touched his shoulder.

He jerked back as though he’d been burned. There was something strange in her expression then, like she was a baby deer that had been startled. Then the air changed, and it all just felt weird.

“Thank you,” she said, the words coming out of her mouth in a hurry.

“You’re welcome,” he returned, his voice sounding rough even to his own ears.

For a moment, he just stood there. And so did she. It all settled around them, the weirdness, the tension, and he had a feeling that if he didn’t hurry up and get out the door it might wrap itself around them, and then they might find themselves being inexplicably drawn toward each other.

It was either that, or she felt nothing at all while he was standing there gasping for breath. And he did not need to make a move to try and confirm which it was.

So he did exactly what was expected, exactly what was needed. And he moved his ass toward the door.

Once he got outside, the cool night air did a lot to break up the leaden feeling that had settled in his lungs. It had been a day of weird stuff. And tonight had just been the cherry on that terrible sundae.

Tomorrow morning would come, sure and constant as anything. And he would see to his routine. He would get the cows set up for milking, get the milk prepared for processing. He would ride the fence line making sure that everything was shored up.

He would survey the land that had been his whole life since he was sixteen years old. And even if everything wasn’t settled, he would at least have some clarity.

He just had to make it through the night.

Good thing there was a bottle of whiskey waiting at home.

CHAPTER FOUR (#udbd83345-e894-5bdf-8835-3bfa8ab29052)

HER STORE WAS TINY. It was just so tiny. Lane loved it. She really did. But for some reason when she walked in that morning and turned the closed sign, signaling to the citizens of Copper Ridge that it was time for them to come and get their specialty food items, she was incredibly aware of the fact that the empire she had built was most definitely a miniature one.

Cord was still in her head. She hated that. Him and all of his achievements.

Shaking off the mood, she crossed her arms, surveying her surroundings. If she rearranged the things in the corner, mounted some crates and baskets to the wall, she could most definitely fit in more stock. She didn’t mind the slightly crowded feeling to the place. It was quaint, if she said so herself. Particularly when combined with the red brick and the dark metal decor she had incorporated.

Yes, right over there in the corner would be where she fit the new fridge that she could keep Finn’s dairy products in if he wasn’t such a stubborn cuss.

She wondered idly how Alison would feel about making jam. She worked with fruit when she made her pies. Maybe the addition would be a welcome one. Lane would happily sell them in her store.

She already provided some of the berries for Alison’s bakery, Pie in the Sky; she could always get more intense about her berry collection and provide her with more. Blackberries, marionberries and raspberries grew wild on her property. She could always make jam, she supposed.

She was still musing about various forms of product expansion when her first customers came in. They were tourists, visiting the Oregon coast for the first time all the way from Denver. Lane chatted with them for a while, helping them select products that she considered to be quintessential Copper Ridge items.

Then she referred them to The Grind, her friend Cassie’s coffee shop across the street, for a caffeine fix before ringing up all of their items.

“It sure would be nice if there were a way to order these from home,” the woman said, examining a can of wild caught salmon that had been provided to Lane’s store by local fisherman Ryan Masters.

“Yes,” Lane said, the idea turning over in her mind. “It would be.”

She was still musing on that when the door opened again and Finn came in. “The power in your house okay?” he said, by way of greeting.

“Everything was fine when I left this morning. Nary an attic possum.” She paused. “Thank you again for coming out.”

It had occurred to her last night that she didn’t thank him enough. She just kind of assumed that he would take care of things for her. Probably because he always had.

“Sure,” he said, clearly as uncomfortable with the thanks as he’d been the previous evening.

He meandered through the narrow aisles, divided by wooden shelves. It made her even more conscious of how small the shop was to watch Finn’s broad-shouldered frame moving through the tight space. For some reason, she just stood and watched him for a second. Watched as his blunt, masculine fingers drifted over the merchandise, as he paused over a small jar of caviar. “Do you actually sell any of this?”

“Yes,” she said, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “Not a lot. But some.”

She considered it for a moment. The caviar. She really didn’t sell that much. But right now, her store seemed to be straddling the line between tourist trap and specialty store for the few people in Copper Ridge who had a lot of excess time to shop for specific ingredients and cook with them too.

“Focus,” she said. “That’s what I need.”

“To... Finish your crossword? Or...?”

“For the store,” she said, ruminating while she spoke. “I need to do something to focus its offerings.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, I kept a lot of stock simply because it’s what the old owner carried. But I’ve had the business now for going on five years, and I think it’s time I started taking it more firmly in the direction I want to see it go.”

The need, the burning sensation in her chest, was suddenly manic. Because images of her once-beloved ex parading himself all over national television, reaching levels of success that she would never, ever achieve, had made all of this feel small. It wasn’t, and she knew that. She had never had political aspirations. She wouldn’t be happy being a public figure. So it was pointless to compare herself and her level of accomplishment to Cord, or to anyone else for that matter.

But she was.