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Her arm started to ache the way she was laying so she rolled over onto her back again and stared into the dark at the ceiling. The groan of bed springs as Nate climbed onto his bed echoed through the floorboards and Mieka held her breath.

Did he sleep naked?

She hadn’t actually seen him naked even though they’d had sex. She hadn’t even seen his cock. It’d been so fast, so dark and they’d both been so drunk that they just lifted her dress, pulled her thong to the side and went at it.

It wasn’t her first one-night-stand, and she knew that it wasn’t Nate’s, either, but it was the first one-night-stand that she’d ever had with a guy and then been forced to see him again.

Exhaling a deep breath, she pinched her eyes shut again, determined to finally get some sleep. Maybe she needed to go and find more of Triss’s lemonade?

She’d give it another twenty minutes and if she was still awake, then she’d go find something to help knock her out.

The house was quiet, save for the quaint creaks and groans that came with something that was nearly a hundred years old. She wasn’t even thirty-five and already she creaked and groaned, what did that say about her?

She was just feeling the pulling effect of sleep when her phone buzzed on her nightstand.

Get some sleep, Minx. I have a full day planned for us tomorrow.

Well, now she was wide awake. How did he know she was still up? Did he have a camera in her room somewhere like he did in the stables? She knew they had cameras in the stables because Triss had told her about the time she and Asher got busy for the first time—which was in the barn—and Nate saw them on his phone. It was how they kept a close eye on the horses, particularly the pregnant ones.

She texted him back immediately. I was asleep, thank you. And maybe I don’t want a full day of plans.

Liar. You weren’t asleep. And yes, you do want a full day of plans. You can’t wait to see what I’m going to do to show you how great a life in the country and on a ranch can be.

She pulled her phone away from her face, activated the camera option, flicked on her table lamp and took a picture of herself giving the camera the middle finger with a sassy glare on her face, then she sent it to Nate along with the message. Get to sleep yourself, Cowboy. I don’t have horses to milk in the morning.

He replied immediately with a laughing emoji and the message: Neither do I. We don’t milk horses here, you weirdo. Just another thing I guess I’ll have to teach you. Put your hair in a braid, too. Goodnight.

She glared at his message for a full minute. Did he just tell her how to do her hair? The nerve!

Well, she’d show him, she’d put it in a braid all right, but she’d do it her own way. He probably wanted her to do a simple French or Dutch braid down the back, but she’d learned some pretty fancy updos working as a dancer for so many years. She’d braid her hair, but it wouldn’t be what he was expecting at all.

Ooh, you rebel.

She rolled her eyes at her own thoughts, growled and flopped over to her belly, splaying her arm out like a starfish. Normally, she slept on her left, but with her broken arm that was impossible, which made getting comfortable for sleep a task and a half.

She growled again, sat up, fluffed her pillow and tried again.

Over twenty minutes passed and she still wasn’t asleep, so careful not to wake the house with the noisy way the door stuck to the jamb when you tried to open and close it, she padded barefoot out into the dark kitchen. Only the light over the stove was on.

Triss kept her lemonades in the fridge and told Mieka to help herself, so she did just that, grabbing a brand-new bottle and drinking half of it straight. It tasted great and went down too easy.

A creak on the floor upstairs made her pause mid swallow and stare into the darkness.

She wasn’t ready to see Nate again. Not after their moment in the barn, or his confusing text messages.

A door upstairs opened and she quickly stowed the rest of the lemonade back in the fridge and ran down the hall to her room, opening and shutting it way too fast and noisily. She cringed as she closed it, then jumped back into her bed and pulled the covers over her head.

Why was she doing this? It wasn’t like Asher, Nate or Triss would open her door to check if she was actually asleep. She was a grown ass woman, she could get out of bed and go into the kitchen if she wanted to.

She was behaving like an idiot. An idiot child.

Pulling the covers off her head, she glanced up at the ceiling, gave it two middle fingers since beyond the ceiling was a sexy and infuriating man, then she closed her eyes and refused to open them until morning. Which she knew would come faster than she wanted it to, bringing with it a blue-eyed rancher with a dimple and dick she couldn’t forget even if she tried.

And boy had she tried.

“Mornin’, Sunshine,” Nate said with a smile as he took a sip of his coffee at the breakfast table. “Trouble sleeping?”

“My arm was throbbing last night. I’m used to sleeping on my left and I can’t so… yeah, sleep was hard.” She sat down at the table across from him and thanked Asher for the mug of coffee he placed in front of her.