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I dig my credit card out of my crossbody. “Honestly, I could go for a cold beer. Let me buy you one or three for letting me tag along again today.”

I was able to get away from my laptop and Bellamy Brooks for a couple of hours this morning, so Wyatt took me under his wing for a second time and showed me the ranch office, introduced me to the farrier—a guy who takes care of the horses’ legs and hooves—and then took me to the equipment barn, where he explained what each of the enormous machines parked there did.

It wasn’t physically taxing work, but it was important, and I feel like I learned a lot. This beer is well deserved.

“You don’t have to buy me a drink,” Wyatt says. “It was my pleasure.”

“I insist.”

Wyatt smiles at the bartender when she heads our way. “Hey, Tallulah. How you been? Ankle any better?”

“They took the boot off on Tuesday. It’s still a little sore, but worlds better than it was. Only what I deserve for attempting the Cupid Shuffle four whiskey sours deep.” Tallulah smiles, then glances at me. “This Mollie Luck? My wife has told me all about you.”

“Tallulah is married to Goody,” Wyatt explains. “They tied the knot, what, three years ago now? John B officiated the ceremony right here at The Rattler.”

“Three years and three months of wedded bliss, yeah.” Tallulah extends her hand. “Welcome to my bar, Mollie. We’re happy you’re here. What can I get you?”

A bubbly warmth rises in the back of my throat. I don’t know this woman, who married a lawyer in a bar in a ceremony officiated by a veterinarian, but I already like her.

I take her hand and give it a firm shake. “Thank you so damn much for having me. I adore your place. I’ll have a Shiner Bock, please.”

“Make that two.”

My heart takes a swan dive at the sound of the gravelly voice behind me.

I glance over my shoulder, and my heart falls to the goddamnfloorwhen I see him.

Cash.

He stands a few feet away, one hand tucked into the front pocket of his jeans. He’s wearing a baseball hat.

Abackwardbaseball hat. Add to that his broken-in Wranglers and the clean white tee that stretches across his chest and shoulders in the most mind-bogglingly sexyway imaginable, and you have one very tall glass of water.

Cash is a smokeshow when he’s doing his cowboy thing, no denying that.

But in these neon lights, inthathat andthosejeans, he is…epically, obscenely hot. My pulse riots, a bloom of pure, unadulterated desire spreading between my legs.

Squeezing them together in an effort to cut that shit off at the pass, I blurt, “I thought you weren’t coming.”

He comes to stand beside me at the bar and meets my eyes. “Changed my mind. You gonna leave now, City Girl?”

“I will if you keep calling me that.”

He smells like he just got out of the shower, the scent of clean, simple soap rising off his skin. I detect a hint of something subtly minty and herbal too.

I do my best to ignore it. But this man would get eatenaliveat the bars I go to in Dallas. I mean that literally. Men and women would be all over him. Looking around The Rattler, people seem to notice Cash, but no one’s approaching us. Why not?

Maybe, like me, they’ve witnessed his less than friendly side.

Or maybe he’s already slept with them. Does Cash get around? And why does that thought make my chest cramp?

I need to stop thinking about this shit.

“You drink Shiner Bock,” he says, forehead creased in disbelief.

Looking away, I put my card on the bar’s gleaming wooden surface. “Of course I do. It’s delicious. I was just about to buy Wyatt and myself a round as a matter of fact.”

Cash pushes my card aside. “Your money’s no good here. Tallulah, put it on the tab.”