Page 25 of Rancher's Return

“Yeah. That is true.”

They walked into the house, and Lily and Colton went off into a sitting room to the left. She heard noise coming from the kitchen and popped her head inside. “I just have a couple of bags to bring in,” she said.

Buck was facing away from her, standing at the sink. His shoulders broad, his waist tapered. He was... He was gorgeous. It was problematic.

She realized right then that maybe she wasn’t a paragon when it came to not dating so much as no one had ever been interesting enough for her to upset the delicate balance she had with her daughter. She had never met a man who tempted her to risk anything.

She had thought she was just super responsible and enlightened. She had been a little bit self-righteous about it, truth be told. Yeah, on the surface, she’d tried to pretend she was okay with how everybody else lived their own lives, but actually, she had let herself get very up her own rear about the whole thing, and she could see now in that moment just how ridiculous it was. Because Buck Carson was bad on every level.

Getting involved with him would be wrong.

And she was tempted.

Because he was compelling. Beautiful.

He turned to face her, and the hard, stark lines of his expression took her breath away.

Those blue eyes, chiseled cheekbones and square jaw. It was like he was carved out of granite.

And suddenly, her fingertips itched to trace the lines there.

She was so screwed.

She couldn’t pretend it was just a lack of male interaction. Because she was around men all the time. She lived in the world. There were plenty of single dads at the school. And they didn’t make her feel like this.

She did wonder if there was some kind of sickness in all this. If she had some thwarted feelings from the past where he was concerned, and that was informing everything now.

“Yeah,” he said, grabbing a dishrag and drying his hands. “Sure.”

He did not look domesticated, and yet the vision of him in the kitchen doing the dishes like this was domestic. There was something about the contrast that was... Too much. Way too much.

“Just a second.”

She scurried outside and grabbed her bag of groceries, bringing it back in. “I thought I would make us stew. I have a loaf of bread that I made this morning.”

“Sounds great,” he said.

“Yeah. It will be. I am a great cook.”

“Glad to hear that.”

“Especially since you’re going to benefit from that cooking.”

“Also, it’s related to the investment that I’m making.”

“True.”

Silence fell between them, and she covered it up with movement, briskly making her way across the kitchen and beginning to unload the grocery bag. “I’m going to need a knife and a cutting board.”

“Pretty sure I know where that is.”

“If I find it faster than you, I’m going to shame you.”

“The good thing about having a sister-in-law who owns a bar is that a lot of times I just pick up hamburgers from there.”

“Oh, I mean, the burgers at Karen’s place are good, but come on, not if you have themthatoften,” Marigold replied.

“Do you actually go to the bar?” he asked. “There’s not an embargo on my whole family?”