by Maisey Yates
Because she had, in fact, forgotten it.
Yes. A hatbox. Because of her perfectly reasonable objections to her friends’ insistence that she wear perky little shorts that left her thighs hanging out as well as the skintight T-shirt that could easily have won a wet T-shirt contest without being the faintest bit damp, she’d been forced to march downstairs and take a slip.
Carry a hatbox.
“Oh, sadness,” Kit had drawled after she’d read it out loud. “I must have left all my hatboxes in New York.”
They’d all jumped at the sound of something hitting the floor, loudly, in the next room. It was not the first time the farmhouse had come over a little strange. They’d all walked together, in a knot, over to the entrance of the dining room and peered in.
What should appear to their wondering eyes, but a freaking hatbox in the middle of the floor? Having levitated itself off the top of the china cabinet, apparently.
Kit had not spent a lot of time looking at hatboxes in her lifetime, magical or otherwise. Still, it was clear to all of them that was what the glossy pink-and-coral round box was. Complete with the sassy leather handle.
“Obviously it’s not a lasagna,” she said now. “It’s too hot for lasagna, and even if it wasn’t, who would carry a lasagna in a pink leather box?”
“I don’t think you should be looking at me like I’m the weird one here. You’re the one wandering around with a round box in one hand. I thought maybe it might be a small tuba, if it wasn’t a lasagna.”
She frowned at him. “It’s a hatbox.”
“You’re not wearing a hat, Kit.”
“If I was wearing a hat, why would I need a hatbox?”
And this was the problem with Browning. Every morning she would arrive at her shop, braced for the day ahead. She was ordering books. She was setting up accounts with the local distributor and its warehouse in Roseburg. She would be ready to open in August.
But then he would appear at some point or another. And he was...
Annoying.
That was the word she’d settled on.
He teased her. He confronted her. He was simply there, gleaming and beautiful and sometimes lounging around in her bay windows until every female in Jasper Creek seemed to stop and giggle and pay entirely too much attention to a store with no merchandise in it.
All annoying.
But the real trouble with Browning was that she had chosen not to enlighten him as to why she did ridiculous things like carry a hatbox for no reason, or laugh wildly at his every utterance. And he...rolled with it.
As if he found her eccentric, sure, but charming.
Kit had never been charming in her life. Charming was right up there with frivolous. Intellectuals were serious, not silly.
But Browning West didn’t know she was an intellectual. He had no evidence to support that. She was a woman who was opening a bookstore. A romance bookstore, filled with the only books that literally everyone felt perfectly comfortable sneering at. Openly. That was what Browning knew about her—that she liked those books. He was not impressed with her college degree, how many times she’d pretended she’d read Ulysses, or which luminous works of stunning prose she’d worked on. Those topics didn’t come up.
To Browning, Kit was a weird girl who had cried when she met him and was currently staring at him as though she didn’t understand why every other woman outside city hall wasn’t carrying her own hatbox.
And he likes you anyway, a voice inside her whispered, as he grabbed the hand that wasn’t holding the hatbox and started towing her across the field.
He didn’t seem to care that they were on display. That a tidal wave of whispers rose up and followed them as they went.
Kit thought that maybe she should offer up some kind of token resistance, if only to feel better about herself. But his hand was wrapped around hers and the last thing she felt was resistant.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
He looked down at her, and if she thought that looking at the sorts of things he did with his hands back in high school had been almost too much for her heart to bear, feeling his actual hand on hers was worse. Or better.
Worse! she snapped at herself. Much worse!
But all she could see was that fallen-angel face of his. That wicked grin on his lips, the too-bright light in his eyes.
“I told you,” he said, with exaggerated patience that seemed to set off a chain of fires inside her. “I have a motorcycle. I’m betting you’ve never been on one before.”
“I’ve done a great many things, actually, Browning, and you don’t know—”
“Have you, Kit?”
Her breath shuddered out of her. She told herself it was because his hand was so big. So deliciously calloused from what she assumed was a lifetime of all that hardy ranch work. And hot to the touch so that it shivered all the way through her.
“No,” she whispered. “I’ve never been on a motorcycle.” She cleared her throat, though it did not require clearing. “They’re very dangerous. The statistics—”
“Kit.” There was so much heat in his gaze then that she was fairly certain the town was not going to need its usual fireworks display. She could do it herself. She was doing it, right here on the grass as they walked. She was surprised no one had called in the fire department. “You’re going to be fine, I promise. All you have to do is hold on.”
CHAPTER FOUR
BROWNING WAS SURPRISED to discover that he liked romance novels.
His brothers had been horrified when he’d started whipping them out during their lunch breaks out on the ranch.
“You’re not really reading that?” Parker had sounded alarmed. Deeply alarmed. “Why are you reading that?”
“You should try it,” Browning had drawled, kicking back in the bed of his pickup. “Word on the street is, you could use a little instruction.”
But his surprising enjoyment of love stories paled in comparison to his appreciation for Kit Hall.
Who was not wearing her customary shroud today.
He hadn’t understood the sensation that had stampeded around inside of him when he’d first seen her on the lawn after the parade. All those long, absurdly un-sun-kissed limbs, as if she’d been living in a cave belowground. She was blinding in the heat and sun, but it turned out, Browning didn’t mind being cauterized by the sight of her. The little red T-shirt she wore not only clung, it flirted with the top of her gloriously short shorts. So that every time she breathed, he got a glimpse of the soft strip of her belly between the hem of her shirt and the top of her shorts.
And God help him, her legs.
She made a man feel something like religious.
Browning had stood there, completely ignoring whatever it was his sister-in-law Keira and her cousins were talking about—something about dogwood trees and their late grandmother—because he was fairly certain he’d been struck upside the head and been made a born-again virgin. Just by looking at Kit.
He had half a mind to check himself for the pimples that had disappeared along with that long-ago state, but he caught himself just in time. He’d mumbled his excuses to Keira and her family, nodded at his brother—while ignoring Remy’s smirk—and had made his way directly to Kit’s side like he was a boomerang.
Browning had never been whipped or anything close to whipped in the entirety of his adult life. He would’ve strongly objected to the term if anyone else had said it in his presence.
And yet when Kit’s sulky eyes had met his he was sure he heard the crack of one, echoing sharply in his ears. Stranger yet, he didn’t mind.
There were the shoes. An absurd pair of wedge things that should have had her face-first on the ground, rolling around without the use of either broken ankle. Or her hair, still hanging darkly around her as if, despite actually wearing reasonable summer clothes for a change, she
wanted to get her shroud in where she could.
He had spent more time than he cared to admit imagining what it would be like to gather up all that dark, silky hair in one hand, press his mouth to the nape of her neck, and taste her some.
For starters.
The fact that she was carrying a hatbox, whatever that was about, made it better.
She was an odd little thing and he felt a powerful need to get inside her. Her body, yes. But inside that head of hers too.
He tugged her with him to the street, where he’d parked the Harley he’d been tinkering on for years—mostly to irritate his brothers with what Colt liked to call Browning’s fake hobby. He handed her a helmet and watched as she buckled it on, that hatbox hanging from one wrist. Then he climbed on and nodded to the space behind him.
And waited, because one thing he knew about Kit Hall was that she never, ever did something without overthinking it first. He liked to watch the way her blue eyes sharpened. The way her brow furrowed. The way her thoughts were louder than whole bars he’d frequented in his time.
She considered him for a long while. Then she tottered closer in those shoes—seeming to be alarmingly comfortable walking on what were basically stilts—and climbed on behind him.
She wrapped her arms around his chest, that bizarre hatbox now sitting on his lap.
Browning would have carried twenty-five hatboxes like a circus clown if it meant she’d hold him like that. Behind him, she fought the natural position of her body on the seat for a moment or two before breathing out, hard, and then sinking into him.
He usually spent the annual picnic enjoying the many potluck offerings—not all of them the edible kind. Not when so many local women tended to think he’d be an excellent way to celebrate their patriotism. But he barely gave the assembled townsfolk another thought. He gunned the engine and took off, heading out of Jasper Creek and up into the hills.
He hadn’t thought much of the biker hero in the last book she’d given him, it was true. But he certainly got the appeal of a motorcycle and an open road.
It was a perfect summer’s day. The sun beamed down and the trees were green and lush. There were flowers everywhere—from carpeted fields covered in wildflowers, to beautiful displays on the front porches of the happy, tidy houses they passed in the valley. They wound their way through vineyards and farms, to the tops of hills with views that stretched in all directions. He took them back down to chase the river through the center of the valley, in and out of the shade of manzanitas and willows, past proud lines of cottonwoods and near enough to hear waterfalls tumble over the rocks on their way to the sea.
Finally, he stopped in the shade of a particular oak tree he’d always liked best, on the shore of a bright blue unspoiled lake hidden away from the rest of the valley on the land he was going to make his home one day.
“This is so beautiful,” Kit said softly in his ear when he turned off the bike, and she didn’t let go.
It seemed to take her a moment to get her bearings. To remember that she was melted there against his back, so he could feel every inch of her torso and those sweet thighs bracketing him. He wasn’t about to hurry her along. His head spun a little, like she was alcoholic, and he welcomed the opportunity to drink deep.
The way he had that night he’d danced with her in a crowded bar, when she was sloppy and silly and laughing like a loon for no good reason. Too sloppy and too silly to do anything but dance with her a little and regret the feel of her, too perfect in his hands, before packing her off into the care of her friends.
But he hadn’t slept much since then, because his dreams were too vivid with all the what-ifs.
He regretted stopping the bike at all when she moved, swinging her leg off and then taking a few steps toward the lake. She kept her back to him while she fumbled with her helmet.
And if he wasn’t mistaken, hit herself in the face with her hatbox.
Why couldn’t he get enough of this woman?
It didn’t do much for his ego that he could not only not answer that question, but needed a moment or two to handle himself before he followed her. When was the last time he’d reacted to anyone like this?
But he knew the answer. Never.
He took her helmet and the hatbox, and placed both on the bike with his. Then he returned, standing next to her as she looked out over the stretch of mountain-fed freshwater lake that had always been his favorite spot in the world. No houses. No cars. No speedboats or overenthusiastic paddleboarders or grumpy fishermen in the weeds.
Just the blue of the water, the green of the hills, the even brighter blue of the sky. In the winter the mountains were dusted in snow. In the spring the flowers and trees rioted with color. There was no season he didn’t love in this place.
And she was the only woman he’d ever brought here.
“Someday I’m going to build a house over there,” he told her, and he was horrified to hear those words come out of him. He sounded like the man he’d never pretended he was. Had never wanted to be. The kind of responsible grown-up who did things like plot a life that would involve building houses. Settling down.
In the back of his mind, he’d always assumed that he’d start thinking about those things right about the time he found the person he’d share them with. And he’d always known what kind of girl that was going to be. Cheerful. Easygoing. Happy-go-lucky, just like him. Undemanding, uncritical, and really, more a beam of sunshine than a person.
Not a walking shroud who thought he was kind of dumb.
He was definitely not thinking about that. Not now. Not here.
Kit slid a look his way, then looked back across the lake toward the open field that was begging for that house he wasn’t thinking about. “I don’t think I realized we were on the ranch...”
“We are and we aren’t. This isn’t the working part of the ranch. This is just my acreage.”
He never said things like that. That sounded way too much like his parents, always talking about land and water rights and all kinds of other things Browning pretended he didn’t understand.
He lived in one of the bunkhouses near the main house where he could have his independence and also be on hand for the twenty-four-hour duties that came with ranching. He’d figured there would be time enough to bore others with his every last opinion on the water table.
“You’re lucky,” Kit said.
Browning had never heard that note in her voice before. He’d heard her rant passionately about books. He’d heard her on the phone, sounding professional and in charge. He’d heard her with her friends, the four of them sounding the way he thought he and his brothers must, sometimes. That was what happened when you knew people for a lifetime and liked them all the while.
But he’d never heard her sound wistful before.
“I suppose I am,” he agreed. “It never feels that way, does it?”
Her mouth curved into that wry smile that made him lose his place in the world. “I couldn’t say. No one’s offered me an acreage or two.”
Browning acknowledged that with a nod. “Everybody is used to their own kind of normal, whatever it is. We each got to pick out our fifty acres on the day we turned eighteen. And I’m fourth, so I already knew what my older brothers took and it seemed pretty clear to me that they all got the better bargain. Colt took most of the hill right across from the ranch complex because he’ll be running it one day. Smith took the furthest possible chunk that he could, way out where our property backs up into BLM land, where he can hermit it up as he likes. Remy chose a good plot but he works his wife’s land these days. And I could have picked working land, but I chose this instead. Because it’s pretty.” She was the only person alive he would dream of saying that to. He shrugged it off to compensate. “They’ve all made fun of me ever since for picking a vacation home, not a ranch.”
Kit’s gaze held his, serious and direct.
“Why do you need your own ranch? You already have one.”
He found himself grinning. “My feelings exactly.”
There was the blue sky and the blue water, then the blue of her eyes, and the shade of the oak tree did precious little to take the edge off any of it.
“I’ll admit,” Kit said, turning her face back to the water, “I didn’t expect to like that motorcycle so much.”
“Everybody likes motorcycles, Kit. Or there wouldn’t be any.”
“Thank you,” she said, her voice soft. But when she turned back to him, the look in her eyes...wasn’t. And Browning stopped thinking about half-formed dreams of someday he’d never thought would arrive and concentrated on this day instead. “That really was fun, unlike the disgusting spitting contest.”
“The bike wasn’t our adventure.” He grinned. “That was only the transportation.”
“You distinctly said that it was the motorcycle ride.”
“If you cast your mind back, you’ll find I didn’t. I asked you if you’d ever ridden a motorcycle before. I didn’t say that riding one would be the thing.”
“The clear implication was that it was the thing.”
“It’s not.”
He’d grown deeply invested in watching this woman fume. The way it made her eyes seem to change color, taking on the whole of the summer sky. The way she could keep her face so serious, so solemn, while she blushed everywhere and gave herself away.
“If you want to go back on your word...” Browning drawled.
“I do not.” She folded her arms over her chest, a gesture which was very, very different when she was wearing a skimpy little red T-shirt. Normally there were summer scarves and billowing shrouds. Today, he could see her perfect curves, the compass she wore around her neck, though he doubted Kit Hall ever allowed herself to get lost, and better yet, that tempting swath of belly.
He was going to devour her whole.
“Well?” she asked dryly. “What fun thing do you think we can do here at this deserted lake, off in the middle of the West ranch, where no one will ever find us?”