Murph
Someone parked in my spot.
I mutter a curse as I park on the quiet street outside the farmhouse I call home, just off Main Street. Hauling my dusty duffle from the trunk, I glare at the blue Honda taking up the driveway space that would have cut my walk to the front door to just five steps.
The car means company, and I don’t like company. Accepting Joel and Win’s offer to move in with them meant getting away from a busy motel with people constantly coming and going, banging doors, yelling.
Moving into a project house meant quiet. And free. I’d have all the silence I wanted, and I’d pay my way by helping to renovate this house that Win and Joel could flip for profit.
On my way to the front door, I scowl at the Honda with out-of-state tags. Win’s truck takes up the other space. Joel’s black Toyota is missing so he must have already left for work at the firehouse this morning.
I open the door. It’s unlocked, which isn’t unusual.
My eyes are gritty from driving nearly all night from Wyoming to get back to Rios early. I’m ready to crawl into bed for the next few hours, but I pause in the entryway.
My nose twitches.
Perfume.
Lavender and peach.
Nice. Like, really, really nice. A smell that’s hitting me in my balls and making my dick hard.
I dump my bag by the front door since everything is going straight into the washing machine when I can be bothered to deal with laundry. There’s no use hauling it up with me. Then I head up the stairs. “Win? If you have a girl up there, you need to get her to move her car. I want my space back.”
He shouts back, though not from upstairs. Downstairs. The kitchen. “It’s Rose. She’s going to be staying here for a few days.”
I pause on the staircase, then continue up, too tired to walk downstairs to argue with Win when I’ve been craving a hot shower and my cool cotton sheets for the last three hours. “You know I don’t like people. Work people are fine. Home people are not—”
I grunt, rocking back as a petite, dark-haired woman slams into me at the top of the stairs. My hands automatically reach out, catching her as she stumbles back, nearly falling.
Big, beautiful chocolate-brown eyes widen in surprise.
Her nostrils flare, and a soft, stifled gasp slips out of her mouth. “You.”
A possessive growl rumbles from my chest as the scent of lavender and peach envelops me, so damned potent I ache to inject it into my veins. My hands tighten on her slim, bare arms, unwilling to let her go for a second now that I have her. “Scent match.”
Longing fills her gaze. This attraction is hitting her as hard as it is me.
I dip my head to claim a kiss.
“No!” she cries out. Wrenching herself free from my grasp, she sprints down the stairs, clutching the banister as she takes them two at a time. Long, chestnut-brown hair flows behind her.
I have never been so terrified in my life. She’s leaving. She can’t leave me when I just found her.
Every bit of my exhaustion evaporates, blown away by the white-hot adrenaline surging through me. “Wait!” I rush after her, desperate to stop her as she reaches the ground floor and I lose sight of her.
A door slams downstairs, and I leap the next six steps, my knees buckling as I barely stop myself from crashing face-first into the entryway’s hardwood floors.
It was a stupid thing to do, so I fully understand why I catch Win staring at me like I lost my mind from the kitchen doorway.
Standing beside him is a cute kid with brown hair and green eyes, in blue shorts and a gray t-shirt.
His mouth is also hanging open, though he looks less shocked and more thrilled by the idiocy that nearly left me with a broken neck.
“Where is she?” I demand.
Win shuts his mouth and points at a closed door.
“The bathroom?” I ask, incredulous.
Did she confuse it with the front door or what?
“She had her hand over her mouth,” Win explains as I hear the sound of vomiting coming from behind the door. Win glances at the little boy and mouths, “She’s pregnant.”
My eyes widen. “And the boy?”
“Her son, Ben.”
I look from the boy to the closed bathroom door where my pregnant scent match is throwing up, then I lean against the nearest wall, rubbing a hand over my gritty eyes. “This is too much information to process on two hours' sleep.”
“Are you a cowboy?” Ben asks, pointing at my brown cowboy boots.
“Rancher,” I say distractedly. “My family are cattle ranchers in Wyoming.”
His face scrunches in confusion.
He’s a little kid, so the word “rancher” probably doesn’t exist in his limited vocabulary. “It’s kind of like a cowboy. Still involves horses.”
His green eyes brighten like it’s Christmas morning.
From within the bathroom, Rose moans. “Cowboy? Oh god.” Her vomiting resumes, and I wince in sympathy.
I want to help my scent match, but given I’m the reason she’s in there heaving up her breakfast, I figure the best thing I can do is keep my mouth shut and get her a glass of water.
Rose Hayes sits on the other side of the kitchen dining table, arms folded across her chest. An untouched glass of water is in front of her. Her eyes are wary.
Her son, Ben, is out in the backyard with Win, shrieking with laughter. Win volunteered to keep him occupied after calling his boss to let him know he’d be late to work, so Rose and I could have the most surreal conversation of our lives.
You only get one scent match, and not everyone finds theirs. At thirty-five, I was losing hope it would ever happen for me. But while it’s the happiest day of my life, I’m getting the sense it’s one of the worst for her.
I have a scent match, and my life just changed in ways I never believed it ever would.
To stop myself from flinging that dining table aside, hauling my scent match into my arms and claiming her mouth, I’m standing with my back against the kitchen counter, arms also folded, though not because I’m wary around her.
I keep wanting to touch her. To kiss her. To fuck her.
All of the above for hours, if not days.
“I don’t want a scent match,” she announces in a soft Southern accent, making it clear she wants no part of me.
Telepathy isn’t a thing with scent matches, but either she’s damn good at reading me, or I’m doing a shit as hell job of hiding my intentions around her.
Probably it’s a little of both.
“Is that right?” I murmur while scratching the itchy stubble on my jaw.
I didn’t shave before driving down to Wyoming, and I was too busy to pick up a razor while I was there. Typical that I run into my mate looking like a fucking hobo.
She lifts her chin, revealing the faint bite on the right side of her neck. “I just want you to know that before we get to talking about what comes next.”
I nod calmly. “That’s fair.”
She smiles. “Then we understand each other.”
Her plush pink lips are beyond tempting. I straighten as I uncross my arms. She gulps and sits back in her seat, her body language screaming that she’s ready to bolt.
I walk over to the dining table, pull back a chair, and sit. And I lean toward her, holding her gaze. “I’m going to be very clear that I want, and have always wanted, a scent match. That’s you, sweetheart. There’s no getting around what you are to me.”
Her back stiffens. “So what you want is more important than what I want, is that it?”
She’s looking for a fight, but I’m not about to give her an excuse to run. She can read me, but I can read her too.
I slowly shake my head. “No. I just want it to be clear now, so there’s no misunderstanding or confusion later about the reason for my persistence.
Something was keeping me in this town. I didn’t know what it was until you slammed into me at the top of those stairs.
” I point my chin toward the kitchen doorway without taking my eyes off her.
She’s highly likely to bolt if I look away too long.
“Whether we stay here in Rios with your son and unborn child, or I follow you back to Tennessee and we build our lives there, is up to you. But I’m not walking away from you.
You’re mine, Rose, and I mean to keep you. ”
She startles. “How’d you know I’m from Tennessee?”
I sit back in my seat, forcing myself to relax and not drag her into my arms. She’s not going anywhere. No need to crowd her and scare her by being too possessive. But it’s fucking painful trying to let go of this desperate fear that I’ll lose Rose as soon as I found her.
She’s skittish. It’s why I haven’t pressed to know more about the claiming bite on her throat—and there’s no mistaking that’s what it is—or why she’s here in Rios alone. But she has a past. And it’s painful. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.
“Did a bit of work on a high-rise in Nashville a few years back,” I say, my gaze sharpening when her shoulders tense. “If I’d known you were—”
“We would never have met,” she snaps, looking away.
My eyes drop to the bite on her throat, and I wet my lip with the tip of my tongue.
Wanting to cover it with my own. Wanting to know everything there is to know about the alpha who put his mark on her skin.
Where is he? No alpha would leave his pregnant mate alone, as sick as Rose is. “Probably not.”
Silence wraps around us. A couple of beats later, she glances at me. When I do nothing but sit in my chair, she relaxes. Her gaze returns to me, lingering this time. Those gorgeous brown eyes narrow with suspicion.
“Win said you weren’t a cowboy.”
She says it like an accusation, as if someone lied to her and she’s not happy about it.
Win has always been truthful, sometimes more than I’d like, so for him to be lying about anything is new to me.
He knows my family owns a ranch in Wyoming, and that’s it.
I’ve never said the word cowboy to him or Joel.