Chapter 4
Willow
I feel him before I see him.
It’s not a sound or a scent. It’s a shift in my awareness, a sudden pull in my chest that has no explanation.
My wolf is alert, interested, in a way she hasn’t been since we arrived.
I’m scanning the room in the mirror, and then I’m not, because my attention has locked onto a man at the far end of the bar as if someone grabbed my chin and turned it.
Dark brown hair, pushed back from his face.
A flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. Tanned skin, a day’s worth of stubble.
He’s sitting with a beer, relaxed, talking to the bartender like they’ve done this a thousand times.
There’s a scar through his right eyebrow that gives his face an asymmetry I shouldn’t find attractive, but do.
He’s built the way men are built when the muscle comes from work: dense, functional, carved by repetition rather than vanity.
He’s looking at me.
Not the way the other men looked. Not the dress, not the legs, not the newcomer-in-a-small-town appraisal. He’s looking at my face. Specifically, at my eyes. And his expression isn’t flirtatious or predatory. It’s still. Arrested. Like he was in the middle of something and forgot what it was.
My wolf throws herself forward so hard my fingers tighten on my glass.
I look away. Take a sip of whiskey. My hand is steady. The rest of me isn’t. There’s a heat building under my skin that has nothing to do with the alcohol, and my nipples have tightened against the fabric of the dress in a response so sudden and so visible that I’m grateful for the dim lighting.
What the hell?
I don’t look at him again. I watch the mirror. He watches me. Not staring, just returning to me, again and again, the way your eyes return to a fire in a dark room.
Then he moves.
He doesn’t rush. Doesn’t swagger. He picks up his beer and walks the length of the bar with the easy confidence of a man who’s never had to prove he belongs somewhere.
He takes the stool next to mine. Not one seat over.
Not with a gap. Right beside me, close enough that I can feel the warmth of his arm near mine.
“You’re the woman from the general store this morning,” he says. His voice is low, unhurried. A Texan cadence that sits in the vowels without drowning in them.
“You were watching me shop?”
“I was buying fence wire. You were hard to miss.” He takes a drink of his beer. “I’m Conner.”
“Willow.”
“Just Willow?”
“Just Conner?”
He grins. “Touche. Wanna leave it at that?”
“Yep.” I nod, trying not to stare at his mouth, which is just the perfect combination of firm yet soft.
His knee shifts and brushes my thigh below the bar.
The contact lasts a second. A casual adjustment, nothing deliberate.
My body responds like he’s run his hand up the inside of my leg.
Heat blooms from the point of contact and spreads.
I press my thighs together, aware that my breathing has changed and willing it to settle.
“So what brings you to a place nobody comes to?” he asks.
“Bad navigation.”
“Uh-huh.” He doesn’t believe me. Doesn’t push. “You get lost often?” His fingers rest on the bar near his beer, and I’m looking at his hands. Broad, calloused, a leather cord bracelet at his wrist. Capable hands. The kind that know what they’re doing.
I know what I’d like them to be doing right now.
Quit it, Willow!
I take too long to answer the question, and he notices. One corner of his mouth lifts. Not a smile. A reading. He knows exactly what I’m thinking about his hands, and he’s not going to mention it.
“You live here?” I ask. Because someone needs to steer this conversation back to words.
“Born here. My family’s been in the Hill Country a long time.”
“Ranching?”
“Among other things.” He turns his beer glass slowly. “What about you? You don’t look like a tourist.”
“What do I look like?”
“Somebody with a reason to be somewhere. Just not sure this is the right somewhere.”
He’s perceptive. That’s either useful or dangerous. Both, probably.
“So what do you do when you’re not lost in small towns?” he asks.
“Ranch work. Stock handling, fencing, whatever pays. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.” All true. Every word. The most dangerous kind of cover—the kind built on real material. He can check every detail, and it’ll hold. What it won’t tell him is why I chose this particular town.
He nods. “Heard you were asking about that.”
He was listening. Or someone told him. Either way, in a bar this small, a woman asking about work is news.
“Nobody’s biting,” I say. “Your bartender told me to try the Forresters. So did everybody else.”
“That tracks. This place doesn’t open easy.”
“I noticed. Tried asking around today, and you’d think I was requesting state secrets.”
He laughs. Short, real, unforced. The sound does something warm below my sternum.
“Yeah, that sounds about right. People here are friendly enough, but they keep their fences up. It’s not meanness. It’s just… this land teaches you to mind what’s yours and leave other people to mind theirs.”
“You sound like you approve.”
“I sound like I grew up here.” He takes a drink. “It’s got its drawbacks. Not much changes. Same families, same land, same arguments going back three generations. But there’s something to be said for knowing where you stand.”
“And where do you stand?”
He looks at me. Holds it a beat longer than casual. “Depends on the day.”
I should steer this toward the Forresters. Toward the ranch, the territory, the families that came through and didn’t come back. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m wearing this dress and sitting in this bar and letting a stranger’s knee press against mine.
But what comes out of my mouth is: “Tell me something true about this place. Not the tourism-board version. Something real.”
He considers that. Not performing consideration, actually thinking.
“There’s a ridge east of town where the cedar breaks, and you can see all the way to the Pedernales.
On a clear night, there’s no light pollution for miles.
Just the sky and the limestone and the sound of the wind coming up through the valley.
” He’s not looking at me now. He’s looking at the memory.
“When I was a kid, my sister used to drag me up there after supper. She’d lie on the rock and name constellations she made up because she said the real ones were boring.
She had one she called the Runaway Horse.
” The corner of his mouth lifts. “Said it looked like it was galloping right off the edge of the sky.”
The past tense. Used to. She’d lie. She said. I hear it, and I don’t push.
“Sounds beautiful.”
“It is.” He comes back from wherever he went. His eyes refocus on mine, and there’s something unguarded in them for a second before he closes it. “You should see it while you’re here. Before you move on to your next town.”
“Who says I’m moving on?”
“People looking for work always do.” He finishes his beer. “They come through, ask around, stay a few days. Move on. The town stays the same.”
There’s no bitterness in it. Just observation. And he’s right—that’s exactly what I’m planning to do. Show up. Get what I need. Leave. The fact that it stings to hear him say it is a problem I’ll deal with later.
His knee touches mine again. This time, neither of us moves away.
The conversation continues, but it’s become a secondary track. The primary one runs underneath… in the way he leans toward me when I speak, the way I angle my body toward his without deciding to, the way every accidental contact sends a line of heat up my thigh that’s getting harder to ignore.
He reaches past me for a napkin, and his forearm crosses the space in front of me.
I catch his scent: soap, warm skin, and something animal that my wolf locks onto with a fixation that borders on obsession.
She’s pushing forward, trying to get closer to the source.
I keep pulling her back. She keeps returning.
“You- You said your family ranches,” I say, fumbling for something to take my mind off my body’s reaction to this man. “Cattle?”
“Beef, mostly. Some commercial cross. We run about two thousand head on the main spread.” He pauses. Takes a drink. The corner of his mouth twitches. “Had two thousand minus one, briefly.”
“Briefly?”
“Last Easter. One of the bulls—big son of a bitch named Hank—decided the east fence was a suggestion. Walked right through it. Took himself on a two-mile stroll down the county road and ended up in the parking lot of Cedar Falls Baptist Church right about the time the congregation was letting out.”
“No.” I shake my head in disbelief.
“Hand to God. Reverend Mullen came out the front door in his Easter vestments and found a fourteen-hundred-pound beast standing between his truck and the flower display. Hank had eaten most of the lilies by the time I got there.”
“What did the reverend do?”
“Stood on his truck bed and read scripture at him until I showed up with a rope.” His eyes are bright now, warm and open. “Hank didn’t care for Leviticus. Took out two folding tables and an egg hunt before I got the rope on him.”
I laugh. Not the polite kind. Not the strategic kind. The real kind. The one that comes up from somewhere I forgot existed, that makes my shoulders drop and my eyes close for a second. It surprises me. It’s been months since I laughed like that. Probably longer.
When I open my eyes, he’s watching me. And his expression has shifted into something I’m not ready for: warm, unguarded, interested in a way that goes past the physical. His eyes are dark in the bar light, with a depth to them that makes me feel seen in a way I’m not comfortable with.
His hand finds the bar near mine. His little finger touches the side of my thumb. That’s all. One finger. The smallest possible contact.