Page 3 of The First Day of Breeding Season (Wildfire Ranch #4)
brYNN
Drew just stares at me for a long, painful moment after I tell him I packed up quickly.
Stares. At. Me.
Which, based on the terse email style I’ve gotten used to, I’m guessing is all I’m going to get out of him.
I thought he might be more welcoming.
Drew is just so…so…grumpy.
I knew he was curt in his emails, but I still thought this was going to go differently—on every level.
Not this horrible, obvious conflict playing across his rugged features. A muscle ticks above his jawline and those dark eyes churn stormily, like he’s trying to solve a problem.
Me. I’m the problem, and one he wasn’t expecting.
Which means he was expecting something else. Someone else.
“Did you think I would be older?” I push to the full extent of my five-foot-nothing-ness. Up close, he’s so much taller than me. “I’m about to graduate. I’m almost twenty-two.”
He laughs abruptly, hollowly. “Jesus Christ, you’re twenty-one?”
I drop my hand back to my side. “How old is Theo? Benji?”
His eyes narrow even more. “That’s not the point.”
Oh.
Oh .
“Because they’re men.” My throat tightens. I drop my eyes, but that only puts his work-drenched t-shirt in front of me. The damp streaks of sweat enhance the heavy muscles of his chest, and the worst thought I could possibly have in this moment flutters into my mind.
He would look so good in a shower, washing all of that off.
Horrified, I close my eyes, but it’s too late. I now have a new up-close fantasy of Drew Lowry that’s ten times more intimate than anything I imagined when he was just a guy on the other end of an email who I caught glimpses of on YouTube.
I thought about his thighs , sure. But not his bare chest. Not soapy, sudsy water sluicing over his muscles .
“Because it doesn’t matter that I’m nearly twice their age,” he murmurs, low enough that I could, for a second, pretend that he didn’t say it at all.
“Open your eyes, sweetheart.”
In disbelief, I blink up at him.
He looks as shocked as I feel. “I shouldn’t have said all of that,” he adds gruffly.
“But you need to know what you’re getting into here.
I’m drawn to you in a dangerous way. I’m gonna look at you in ways that I shouldn’t, I think.
And I won’t touch you, I promise you that, but…
I don’t have a lot of practice hiding my feelings.
Everyone around here will tell you that.
Except with them it’s frustration and impatience. I’m a demanding boss.”
“I don’t mind working hard,” I say in a rush.
He nods. “I know that from your emails. But you’re gonna need to give me some time to lock down this reaction I’m having to just how pretty you are. It’s unexpected, that’s all.”
I think about telling him about my own inappropriate thoughts. But that might be like pouring fuel on a fire that should just be stomped out.
He is going to be my boss all summer, after all.
He should treat me just like Benji and Theo.
Maybe I need to recalibrate all my thoughts about him.
Erase the ranching competence porn I devoured before I got here.
Erase how good he looks after a morning of hard work.
He says he’s a demanding boss. I should focus on that.
Drew Lowry is growly and unbearable, and I need to approach him with caution.
So I drag in a breath and open my eyes, smiling brightly. “Let’s start over.”
This time when I stick my hand out between us, I’m painfully aware of how eager I look.
His hand stays at his side for a beat too long, and just when I'm about to drop mine again and die of embarrassment, he moves.
His fingers wrap around mine, all the way around.
My hand completely disappears in his oversized mitt and unfamiliar heat races through me from the contact, pooling low in my belly.
I'm the one who shakes our hands firmly.
But he's the one who doesn't let go.
His grip on my hand tightens.
“Brynn,” he says, my name tumbling roughly over his lips. And maybe he was going to say something else, but then his gaze shifts, his eyes tightening, and he focuses on my t-shirt.
I'm wearing one of the tongue-in-cheek horny shirts that everyone on campus wears, and it says, in very small letters, I Study HARD at CLIMAX Springs . Well, all the words except hard and climax are very small. Those are bigger, large enough that from a distance that's all anyone would see.
Unfamiliar heat floods my cheeks and spreads down my neck.
Everyone around here wears Climax Springs gear and makes orgasm jokes.
But somehow it’s different in this moment.
He curses under his breath, then lets go of my hand abruptly to adjust his hat, lifting it up and then jamming it back onto his head. “You can’t wear shirts like that. Gives cowboys the wrong idea.”