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“Yes, please.” She grabbed his arm. “But before we leave, who’s that tall drink of water that was standing in the back? The one guy under sixty besides you? Julia didn’t invite him, did she? Because then I might have to forgive her.”

Brad laughed, spitting his beer out. He wiped at his chin and cheeks with the sleeve of his shirt.

“No way, sis. He’s off-limits. That’s your new neighbor, Owen Johnson. He just bought the farm next door to Mom and Dad’s. I guess he just retired out of the military and wanted a simpler life from what I gathered at the last Sunday dinner. Mom and Dad invited him, but they barely let him get a word in edgewise. Dad kept going on about the unusually dry season.”

“Figures. So, this guy showed up in the middle of nowhere to buy a farm. Why do people do that?” she asked, intentionally ignoring her brother’s comment about Owen being off-limits. “I could teach him about a simple life. Beach, beer, and a book. Or in my case, the beach, a cocktail, and a trashy romance. Different recipe but same result—instant relaxation. Anyway, he’s cute.”

She glanced past Brad into the house and caught Owen chatting up her old driver’s ed teacher. Her throat went bone-dry, something she only partly blamed on the arid mountain air.

“Nice, too. Which is why I’m going to ask you to steer clear of him. You’ll just break his poor heart, and I kinda like the idea of grabbing beers with the guy. Don’t mess it up for me.”

Brad was teasing, but he was right. As cute as her new, albeit temporary, neighbor was, she had to put him off-limits. Paulo might not have control of her heart anymore, but travel did.

Still, watching her new neighbor, jeans tight on a butt that if she allowed herself to say so was perfect and downright touchable, she couldn’t help but wonder what the rest of the body underneath those clothes would look like. And whether he knew how to use it.

More than just the heat emanating off the patio flushed her cheeks. She stole her brother’s beer and put it to her forehead.

She needed to make herself a cool bath, grab a glass of rum, and try not to imagine her mom’s new neighbor joining her in the tub. There was no time in her life for a cowboy, not even one as hot as Owen Johnson.

She’d better figure out her next move quickly and get the hell out of Banberry while she could.

CHAPTER THREE

Meeting the Neighbors

Owen sat onthe edge of the faux leather couch. His foot tapped on the tile floor in rapid fire, the cold Amstel in his hand the only thing keeping him sane. He put the beer between his legs and cracked his knuckles one by one.

This wasn’t his scene—the piano music in the background, the trio of elderly women pelting him with questions, a tray of color-coordinated veggies on a glass plate on the table in front of him. Eggs of a questionable nature ingested whole by damn near everyone.

But then he’d look ather. The guest of honor.

When she’d arrived, none of the questions, or questionable food, bothered him one bit. She’d walked in, paused with her eyes shut, her lips parted in a smile, and he was no longer hungry, for food at least.

All he saw, heard, comprehended, was his new neighbors’ daughter, Paige.

The world had slowed down for him the way it did in a firefight. Each hand gesture was an exaggerated movement that took on significance, each facial tic analyzed and acted upon.

Her sharp inhale of breath as she registered the people there for her.

A small bead of sweat on her brow.

Watching it trickle down till it got lost in her manicured lashes.

He inhaled her scent like prey he hunted. It was the first time since he’d left Afghanistan that he’d had a moment like this, the flooding of his senses that alerted him to a different kind of danger now.

A white-haired lady who couldn’t be younger than seventy sat beside him and put her hand on his knee, blocking his view of Paige.

“I heard you were in the service, son. My husband was, too. Army for more than thirty years. Vietnam, Korea—he saw it all.” Owen smiled the grin he’d mastered for public ceremonies.

“Well, thank you for his service. Yours, too.”

“I’ve always said it’s harder on you fellas now, though always heading off to fight, leaving family behind. I’ll bet you’ve got some stories, don’t you, hun?”

“None that you’d find interesting,” he said, his voice steady. He wasn’t being coy; he just really didn’t want to discuss that part of his life anymore.

He let the woman bring him a beer and a glass of water mostly so she wouldn’t notice how he couldn’t take his eyes off Paige. He’d caught her staring at him after she’d said her obligatory hellos but couldn’t tell whether Paige’s icy appraisal meant he didn’t fit the bill. He surprised himself with how much he actually cared.

It was so unlike him for a woman to turn his head this literally that he wondered if he was coming down with something. Because something he’d never ascribed to was the idea that a person could fall head over boots at first glance.