Chapter 11 Rose
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ROSE
I strolled into the main house kitchen with a weird giddiness I hadn’t experienced in ages. The kind of feeling that made me want to hum, which was so unlike me that I almost checked myself for a fever.
Kaya was already at the stove, scrambling eggs. She took one look at me and her spatula stopped moving.
“Oh my God,” she said.
“Good morning to you too.”
“Oh my God.” The spatula pointed at me like an accusation. “You had sex.”
“I did not—”
“You are glowing. Rose Gracen, you are standing in this kitchen glowing like a woman who got thoroughly, comprehensively—”
“Kaya.”
“—railed.”
I pressed my lips together hard. “I’m going to need you to stop talking.”
“Was it good?” She was grinning so wide it looked painful. “Of course it was good. Look at you. You’re floating. You haven’t floated since— actually, I don’t think you’ve ever floated. This is historic. I’m marking my calendar.”
“You’re fired.”
“You can’t fire me. I’m the only person who knows how to work that overpriced coffee contraption.” Kaya dropped the spatula and marched across the kitchen until she was right in my face. Her smirk faded into something real and sweet. “Rose. For real though. I’m thrilled for you.”
My throat tightened unexpectedly. “It’s not— we’re not— I don’t even know what it is yet.”
“You don’t have to know what it is. You just have to enjoy.” She squeezed my arm. “Just live a little.”
I poured my coffee and didn’t trust myself to speak.
“So,” Kaya said, going back to the eggs with a casual tone that fooled nobody. “It’s the Scotsman?”
“We’re not discussing this.”
“I’m just confirming. Because if it was Hank, I’d need to seriously recalibrate my understanding of the universe.”
I choked on my coffee.
Kaya grinned triumphantly and went back to cooking, humming something that sounded suspiciously like a wedding march.
“If you say one word to anyone—” I started.
“Please. I’m a vault.”
“You told Hank about the time I had a panic attack at the store.”
“That was different. That was concerning. This is fucking fantastic.” She jabbed the spatula at me again. “Not a peep. Cross my heart.”
I was about to respond when footsteps sounded in the hallway. Graham appeared in the kitchen doorway, freshly showered, looking annoyingly put-together for a man who’d had approximately four hours of sleep.
My entire body went hot.
Not from attraction, though that was there too, instant and inconvenient.
From panic. Because Kaya knew, and Graham didn’t know Kaya knew, and if she said something, anything, even a look, he’d think I’d told her.
That I’d come straight to the kitchen and spilled everything like a teenager after prom.
Which I absolutely had not done. My face had betrayed me. There was a difference.
“Morning,” Graham said, his eyes finding mine with a warmth that was going to get us both caught with everybody if he didn’t dial it down.
“Morning,” I said, lunging for the sugar bowl.
Kaya didn’t bat an eyelash. She just kept working those eggs.
“Coffee’s fresh,” she told Graham in a neutral voice. “Mugs above the sink.”
“Cheers.” He moved past me to the coffee station, his arm brushing mine, barely, just the sleeve of his flannel against my wrist, and my whole body registered the contact like a seismograph.
I gripped my mug tighter and stared out the window.
“Sleep well?” Kaya asked him, and the question was so perfectly innocent that only I could hear the blade tucked inside it.
I shot her a look.
She didn’t even glance at me.
“Best I’ve slept in weeks,” Graham said, and it sounded so genuine that it made my throat tighten and my face burn simultaneously.
Kaya’s mouth twitched. One millimeter. She caught my eye over Graham’s shoulder and gave me a look that said you’re welcome and I’m never letting you live this down all at once.
I threw a dish towel at her head.
Graham looked between us, confused. “Did I miss something?”
“No,” I said.
“Inside joke,” Kaya said, at the exact same time.
Graham raised an eyebrow but had the good sense not to push it. He took his breakfast to the table, and I spent the next ten minutes pretending to be deeply interested in the booking calendar while Kaya silently radiated smugness from the stove.
Graham caught up with me on the path between the main house and the barn. The morning was sharp and clear, the kind of October day where the sky looked painted on.
“Got a minute?” he asked.
“For you? Maybe.” The flirtation slipped out before I could catch it. Apparently sex had broken my filter.
He smiled, the real one, not the camera one, and fell into step beside me.
“Our booking ends Friday,” he said.
I knew that. I’d been trying not to think about it since somewhere around three in the morning, when he’d been asleep beside me and I’d been staring at the ceiling doing math I didn’t want to do.
Three days. Then he’d pack up his team and fly back to Scotland and I’d go back to being the woman who talked to her horses more than she talked to people.
“I’d like to extend,” he said. “Another two weeks.”
Relief hit me so fast it was embarrassing.
“The content’s working,” he continued. “Jamie’s ranch videos are outperforming everything we’ve done this year. Dex has been talking about a longer series.” He paused. “That’s the professional justification.”
“And the unprofessional one?”
He stopped walking. Turned to face me. Reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers brushing my jaw, and the gentleness of it made my breath catch.
“I’m not ready to leave you,” he said. No strategy. No charm. Just the truth, delivered like it cost him something.
Our eyes met and let myself feel it. The relief, the want, the terrifying realization that I didn’t want him to go either. That somewhere in the last two weeks, this man had gone from intruder to the person I most wanted to see in the morning.
“I’ll have Denise draw up the extension,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Two weeks. Same cabins.” I started walking again before my face could betray how happy I was. “Don’t make me regret it.”
He caught up in two strides. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
We walked the rest of the way to the barn close enough that our hands brushed with every step, and neither of us moved away.
The barn door was heavy. I pulled it open one-handed, the familiar creak filling the space between us, and the smell hit me the way it always did—hay, leather, warm animal, home.
Afternoon light fell through the high windows in angled columns, turning the dust into something that looked like it belonged in a painting nobody would believe was real.
Graham followed me in. The door swung shut behind him, not latched, just resting closed, and I was aware of that in a way I shouldn’t have been. Aware of how easy it would be for someone to push it open. Kaya. Hank. Anyone.
I didn’t latch it.
That should have been my first warning.
“I need to check Starlight’s water and top off the hay nets,” I said, already moving toward the tack room, already putting tasks between me and the feeling that had been building since our hands brushed on the path.
Since this morning. Since last night, if I was being accurate, which I didn’t want to be.
“I’ll help,” Graham said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
He said it simply. No charm, no agenda. Just a man who wanted to be near me and wasn’t pretending otherwise.
We worked side by side. Hay nets first. I pulled the bales from the stack while Graham cut the twine and shook the flakes loose.
His forearms flexed with every motion, and I was furious at myself for noticing, because I’d seen a thousand people handle hay bales and not once had the sight made my mouth go dry.
Cassie watched us from her stall with the knowing expression of a horse who’d seen everything and judged most of it.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I muttered to her as I passed.
Graham glanced over. “Talking to the horses again?”
“She started it.”
He grinned. That real one. The one that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made his whole face go warm, and I had to look away because looking at it did something dangerous to my chest.
We moved to the water buckets. I crouched to check Starlight’s trough and Graham was right there, kneeling beside me, and the proximity was suddenly unbearable.
His knee against mine. The smell of him: soap, coffee, something underneath that was just him, warm skin and outdoors and the faint ghost of the flannel he wore every morning.
Our hands collided on the bucket rim.
Neither of us pulled back.
“Rose.” His voice was low. Not a question. Just my name, said like he was testing whether he was still allowed to use it.
I looked at him. This close, I could see the flecks of gold in the gray-green of his eyes. Could see the exact moment his attention dropped to my mouth and stayed there.
“We’re in my barn,” I said.
“Aye.”
“The door isn’t locked.”
“I noticed.”
“Anyone could walk in.”
“They could.”
I should have stood up. Checked the trough. Made a comment about water levels. Done literally anything that a rational, responsible ranch owner would do when kneeling next to a man who made her forget that rational and responsible were words.
Instead I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him toward me.
The kiss was immediate and filthy. Not the slow-building tension of the lounge, not the urgency of last night in my cabin.
This was broad daylight, middle of the morning, horses ten feet away, and I didn’t care.
His hand went into my hair and his mouth opened against mine and I made a sound that would’ve embarrassed me if I’d had any pride left.
I didn’t. He’d burned through it.
Graham pulled back just enough to breathe. “Here?”
“Here.”
“Rose, if Kaya walks in—”
“Then she’ll have a really good story.” I pulled him back by the collar. “Shut up and kiss me.”