Page 23 of My Cowboy Trouble (The Cowboy Romantic Comedies #1)

KENZIE

I'm already elbow-deep in mucking out Thunder's stall when Trent appears in the barn doorway at exactly five-forty-five a.m., coffee mug in hand, looking like he's about to deliver bad news or a lecture on proper manure distribution techniques. Possibly both.

He stops dead when he sees me, his eyebrow doing that little twitch thing that means his carefully ordered world has been disrupted by something as catastrophic as me being early. Or on time. Or existing, really.

"You're working," he says, like he's announcing that I've spontaneously developed superpowers.

"Astute observation." I lean on the pitchfork, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand.

I've been at this for an hour, and Thunder's stall is almost pristine.

Well, as pristine as a place where a thousand-pound animal shits can be.

"Some of us don't need a detailed schedule to be productive. "

"It's not even six."

"I'm aware of the time, Trent. I have a functioning brain and a working watch." I gesture to my wrist, where my Apple Watch is currently telling me I've already burned 200 calories and taken 3,000 steps. "Amazing how that works."

He takes a sip of his coffee, studying me like I'm a puzzle he can't quite solve. "Couldn't sleep again?"

"Gavin snores. Asher talks in his sleep. And you—" I point the pitchfork at him, "—you pace. All night. Back and forth like a caged animal. The floorboards in this house are old, Trent. They creak. Loudly."

"I wasn't pacing."

"You were absolutely pacing. From your bed to the window to the door and back again. For three hours. I counted." I dump another load of soiled bedding into the wheelbarrow. "What were you thinking about that required so much floor-wearing?"

His jaw tightens, and he doesn't answer. Of course he doesn't. Trent Mercer would rather eat his own hat than admit to having thoughts that don't involve feed schedules or equipment maintenance.

"Let me guess," I continue, because apparently I enjoy poking sleeping bears. "You were mentally reorganizing the tool shed. Or calculating optimal hay storage configurations. Or maybe composing an epic poem about proper cattle rotation techniques."

"I was thinking about you."

The words drop between us like a stone into still water, creating ripples that spread out in all directions. I freeze, pitchfork halfway to the wheelbarrow, a piece of straw hanging from the tines like a tiny surrender flag.

"Oh."

"About the other day. About the town. About what they said." His knuckles are white around his coffee mug. "About whether I handled it wrong."

"You didn't handle anything. You weren't even there."

"Exactly." He sets his mug down on a nearby post with more force than necessary. "I should have been there. Should have been the one telling those assholes to keep their mouths shut about you."

"Gavin handled it fine."

"Gavin shouldn't have had to handle it at all. It should have been me." He runs a hand through his hair, messing up the neat style he probably spent all of three seconds perfecting. "I'm supposed to protect this ranch. Everyone on it. That includes you."

"I don't need protecting, Trent. I can take care of myself."

"Can you?" He steps closer, and I can smell his soap—something clean and masculine that makes my stomach do stupid fluttery things.

"Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you're trying to prove something to people whose opinions don't matter.

Working yourself to exhaustion, taking on more than you should, pushing yourself to?—"

"To what? To belong here? To prove I'm not just some useless city girl playing dress-up?" I slam the pitchfork into the ground, the handle vibrating with the force. "Because that's what they think, isn't it? That's what you thought when I first showed up."

"That's not?—"

"It is exactly what you thought. Don't lie to me, Trent. You took one look at my designer dress and Jimmy Choos and decided I wouldn't last five minutes. You gave me that list of impossible chores hoping I'd quit and go home."

He doesn't deny it, because he can't.

"But here's the thing," I continue, my voice rising in direct proportion to my frustration.

"I'm still here. I'm mucking stalls and fixing fences and learning to rope cattle and not dying in the process.

I'm holding up my end of whatever this is we're doing.

So when exactly do I stop having to prove myself to you? "

The barn goes quiet except for the soft sounds of horses moving in their stalls and Thunder munching his breakfast. Trent's looking at me like he's seeing me for the first time, his gray eyes intense in a way that makes my skin feel too tight.

"You don't," he says finally, his voice rough. "You don't have to prove anything to me. Not anymore. "

"Then what's with the death glare every time I walk into a room? The constant criticism? The way you look at me like I'm a problem you need to solve?"

"Because you are a problem I need to solve.

" He steps closer, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact.

"The problem is that I want you to stay, and I don't know how to ask you to.

The problem is that I lie awake thinking about you instead of sleeping.

The problem is that you've turned my entire world upside down in less than two weeks, and I don't know how to function when you're around. "

My mouth falls open. I actually feel my jaw drop like I'm some cartoon character who just got hit with an anvil.

"I don't—you don't—what?"

"You want to know what I was thinking about last night?

" He's close enough now that I can see the tiny flecks of color in his eyes, close enough to count his eyelashes if I were the type of person who counted eyelashes.

Which I'm not. Usually. "I was thinking about how you looked when you came home from town.

Hurt. Angry. Ready to fight the world. I was thinking about how I should have been there to fight it for you. "

"Trent—"

"I was thinking about how you hum while you brush Pepper, and how it's the first time I've heard music in this barn since my father died.

I was thinking about how you organize things when you're stressed, and how you've organized my entire life without even trying.

" His hand comes up to cup my face, thumb brushing across my cheekbone.

"I was thinking about how you taste like coffee and determination, and how I want to find out what you taste like everywhere else. "

The pitchfork falls from my suddenly nerveless fingers, clattering against the stall door. "Everywhere else?"

"Everywhere else." His thumb traces my bottom lip, and I have to resist the urge to bite it.

Or suck it into my mouth. Or do several other things that would definitely not be appropriate in a barn at six in the morning.

"I was thinking about how you challenge me, how you don't back down even when I'm being an ass, how you see right through all my bullshit and call me on it. "

"You are being an ass most of the time."

"I know." He laughs, short and rough. "I'm trying to protect myself. From wanting something I can't keep. From caring about someone who's going to leave."

"Who says I'm leaving?"

"You do. Every day. You count down like you're serving a prison sentence."

"Maybe I'm not counting down to leaving. Maybe I'm counting down to something else."

"Like what?"

"Like figuring out why I don't want to leave." I reach up to cover his hand with mine, pressing it more firmly against my face. "Like figuring out what this thing is between us. Like figuring out if you're ever going to stop treating me like I'm temporary and start treating me like I'm here."

He stares at me for a long moment, his eyes searching my face like he's trying to memorize every detail. Then he steps back, picking up his coffee mug with hands that aren't quite steady.

"We should finish the morning chores," he says, his voice carefully neutral. "The horses need hay."

And just like that, the moment shatters. He's back to being the responsible ranch manager, and I'm back to being the temporary city girl who doesn't know which end of a horse bites.

Except now, I know he wants me to stay. Now, I know he thinks about me when he can't sleep. Now, I know he wants to find out what I taste like everywhere else, which is honestly the hottest thing anyone has ever said to me in a barn. Or anywhere, for that matter.

"Right," I say, bending to pick up the pitchfork. "Horses. Hay. Very important."

"Very important," he agrees, but his eyes are on my ass as I bend over, and when I straighten up, his coffee mug is back on the post and he's looking at me like I'm something he wants to devour.

"Trent?"

"Yeah?"

"For the record, I want to find out what you taste like everywhere else too."

His sharp breath is audible from three feet away, and I grin as I push the wheelbarrow toward the next stall. This is going to be an interesting morning.

We work in charged silence for the next hour, hyperaware of each other's every movement.

When Trent reaches for a feed bucket, I track the flex of muscles in his forearms. When I bend to pick up scattered hay, I feel his eyes on me.

It's the most sexually frustrated I've ever been while mucking horse stalls, which is saying something since I never thought mucking horse stalls could be even remotely sexual.

I'm proven wrong when Trent demonstrates the proper way to distribute horse stall bedding, something I never knew existed ‘til now.

His movements are efficient and controlled, and somehow watching him spread straw becomes one of the hottest things I've seen since Gavin fixed the barn roof shirtless.

There's something about competence that's incredibly sexy, and Trent Mercer is competent at everything he does.

And I mean everything .