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They marched deeper into the bar, and Quinn recognized some men from the ranching collective and made her way there quickly. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Quinn Sullivan. You may remember me from the meeting the other day. I just wanted to talk to you about...”

“Put away your religious tracts,” said a lazy, laconic voice from across the bar. She didn’t have to look to know who it was.

The goose bumps on her arms gave it away.

“This has nothing to do with religion,” said Quinn.

“I don’t know. You sure seem to have that kind of bright-eyed fervor.”

Quinn couldn’t decide if that was a compliment or not. She decided it wasn’t.

“Mr. Granger...”

“Miss Sullivan,” he said. “I am busy.”

He gestured toward a blonde sitting on his left. Quinn honestly hadn’t noticed her.

And she felt...

She didn’t like what she felt at all.

It wasn’t her fault that Levi Granger was the best-looking man she’d ever seen in her life. It wasn’t.

She could remember very clearly a time when Levi had come to the ranch to talk to her dad about something.

The soybeans, she assumed.

She had been fourteen. She had seen Levi before, but for some reason that time it had been like seeing him for the first time.

It had burned itself into her psyche, into her consciousness. It had changed everything. Everything she had ever dreamed about, fantasized about... Not that she really had fantasies at that point. But she had really thought that a smooth-faced boy from one of the popular dance bands was cute, and also the Fox from Robin Hood. And all of it had been vague and disconnected from anything real. And then suddenly it had all slammed into her, visceral and far too big for her body to contain.

She had always been a creature of feeling. She always had a temper, and then as an extension of that, she had always been very excited when she was excited, and happy when she was happy.

And so, the moment she had seen Levi she had been immediately, viscerally, passionately in lust.

She had at least been smart enough to know that it wasn’t love.

But just very suddenly there was no one and nothing else that would ever do for her. His square jaw, dark hair, blue eyes and solid frame had lit her on fire. And it hadn’t mattered that he was twenty-five; in fact, it had been the appeal of him.

All of the men at Four Corners were familiar. And more than that, the ones she went to school with were boys.

Levi had been a man.

She had grown out of that, mostly. She didn’t flutter anymore when she saw him because she didn’t flutter in general. She had been to college in the intervening years, and she had met a great many men, none of whom had felt compelling to her.

So she simply hadn’t, and if the holdover of remembering the visceral impact Levi had had on her body had influenced that, then fine. She had used it as a talisman.

Convenient when she was hundreds of miles away from him, less convenient when she was only a mere few inches from him. He was the biggest barrier to her current goal, and he had another woman on his arm.

“You were the one who spoke to me,” she said.

“Because I see what you’re up to. And I’m here to tell you, it’s not going to work. I happen to know for a fact that your permits are going in for review tomorrow, and it isn’t going to go your way.”

“You can’t...you can’t possibly know that,” she said.

“I possibly can. My case was made, and it was made well, and you’re simply going to have to deal with that, Miss Sullivan.”

“I...I will not.”