Chapter Nine
Sierra woke up in a muddled rush of heat and had no idea where she was.
The last thing she remembered—
But then the oddly hot and hard thing she was lying against in such a strangely tangled-up position moved , and she remembered everything.
Boone.
She pushed herself back in a rush and everything seemed to swirl around her, then settle into place at once.
She was on Boone’s couch.
She wasn’t wearing her pants.
She could also remember exactly why she wasn’t wearing them.
A new heat seemed to shoot all the way through her as she looked down at the heavy furnace that she understood was Boone himself, expecting to feel another kick of wild embarrassment.
Or something worse.
Boone was lying on his back, his hands stacked beneath his head and those hazel eyes of his fixed on her.
“Morning,” he said, so calmly it almost sounded like a drawl.
“Take a breath, Sierra.”
She did.
And realized immediately that she’d been holding hers.
“It’s very early,” he told her, and nodded toward the windows, which were dark.
“I have to go milk the cows. Everything is exactly the same as it was yesterday. We’re fine. Okay?”
When she only stared back at him, too shellshocked to even move, he grinned.
And there was something about that grin.
It seemed to curve into her, too.
It was so… him . She’d seen Boone grin a million times, but this was different.
This was theirs .
She felt something inside her stutter at that.
“There’s coffee in the kitchen,” he said, his voice that impossible rumble, and now she’d actually felt his voice.
Right there against the softest part of her when he’d made those noises while he was busy—
Good Lord.
She could feel herself getting breathless and hot at the very idea.
And she had the strangest feeling that he knew exactly what was happening to her.
Nuclear began to seem more and more like a perfectly appropriate word to describe this.
The only word.
“Come on down to the barn when you’re ready,” he said.
“Feel free to take a shower. Or whatever else you want.”
Then he sat up—an easy, athletic jackknife that seemed to require no effort at all from him.
And she’d known that he was in good shape.
Everyone knew he was in good shape.
He worked with his hands, for God’s sake, and was constantly moving, and he looked the way he looked.
She’d understood that he was handsome and fit in the abstract .
But suddenly the specific shape he was in seemed personal.
To her.
Especially when Boone, her very best friend in all the world, reached over to take her chin between his thumb and forefinger.
Then held her face there as he kissed her.
Not a quick little kiss.
Not a peck.
He was focused.
Determined. And thorough.
Very, very thorough, until she was panting and he was grinning against her mouth.
“Cows, baby,” he said against her lips.
“Got to think about the cows.”
And when she still didn’t move, he moved her.
He just… picked her up and set her back down again further away on the couch so he could angle himself off of it.
Then Sierra sat there, a lot like she was paralyzed, as he moved around the dark house.
He disappeared into the back and she heard the water running in the pipes.
Then he came out in a slightly different version of the jeans and T-shirt he’d been wearing last night—his uniform, she knew.
He went to the kitchen and came back out with the insulated mug he carried with him in the mornings, and a regular mug that looked like it came from the Farm and Craft Market.
He plunked the ceramic mug down in front of her and she didn’t even have to look at it to know it would be made perfectly to her preferences.
Heavy cream, light sugar.
This time, he kissed her on the forehead and laughed when she only stared back at him.
“Drink your coffee. See you soon.”
That he walked out of his house and left her there.
It seemed take Sierra a very long time—after she heard his truck pull away, after she’d sat there in the quiet—to realize how early it really was.
The darkness outside had only the faintest tinge of deep blue.
There were still stars.
She reached out to pick up the coffee mug, then curled up on that couch to drink it.
She waited for one sip, then the next, to encourage her brain to start firing.
But the truth was, she couldn’t make any of this makes sense.
She had asked him last night, but she didn’t feel that the question had really been answered.
How had she missed this?
Because she had meant it every single time she’d told Matty that there was nothing between her and Boone.
She’d been telling the truth.
She could hear Boone’s voice in her head.
You wanted to be blind , he’d said.
It was safer that way.
Today she felt anything but.
Still, it was a different kind of precariousness.
She felt as if a bull had been let loose in a China shop, except the China shop was inside of her.
And despite all the clanking around, she really couldn’t tell if she minded all that much that the China was broken.
If, maybe, the China had needed to break.
She got up and took a moment to marvel at the fact that she was standing in Boone’s living room, where she had been many, many times before.
This time without her jeans on.
That was… something.
She went down the hall to the guest bathroom, and didn’t do anything more than glance toward the far end of the hall where she knew Boone’s bedroom was.
But it was a lingering sort of glance, she could admit.
“Get a grip,” she muttered at herself.
Then she set about splashing water on her face and putting her clothes back on.
She drained her coffee, then took the time to wash out the mug and place it on his drying board.
Then she went outside into the cool morning and realized that however uncertain she might have been about the steps that they’d taken last night, she wasn’t afraid to drive down the hill and see him again.
Afraid was the last word she’d use to describe it.
She got down to the barn and ran up to the apartment to change from her shoes into boots.
Also to throw on the t-shirt she’d made with the new dairy logo on front.
Then she went back down and set about doing her job.
If she didn’t act weird, it wouldn’t be weird.
Right? Besides, they had actual work to do.
There was no time to moon around, thinking about the magic the man could work with his mouth—
“Stop it,” she muttered beneath her breath.
Sierra loaded up all the bottles for her milk run and she didn’t know if she was supposed to go in and tell him she was leaving or kiss him on the cheek while he milked or whatever it was people did when everything changed and yet nothing had…
But she’d never done those things before, so she decided not.
Boone looked up and caught her gaze for a moment when she walked past his milking area.
She could see that golden gleam in his eyes and she felt it, everywhere.
And look at that—she found herself grinning all the way down the ranch’s main drive.
When she got back from the milk run she settled into the office and caught up on their accounts, tracked their social media responses, and carried on working the way she always did until Boone showed up again around lunch.
“Come on,” he said, with a jerk of his head.
“We’re going out to lunch.”
“We are?”
Thos eyes of his gleamed again.
“We are.”
They didn’t talk much as they drove down into Cowboy Point, but she supposed there was no need.
It didn’t feel tense the way it had when they’d gone to get her stuff from Matty’s house in Marietta.
That had to be an upgrade.
Once they got over the hill and into the main part of town, Boone pulled the truck up outside the General Store and told her to wait.
Then she watched in astonishment as he—a Carey, and therefore a member of the family that had been in a blood feud with the Lisles since the 1800s—marched directly into the enemy’s lair.
It was true that Careys and Lisles interacted a whole lot more these days, given that they were now connected by marriage.
But as far as Sierra knew, the Careys still liked to make a point of avoiding the General Store like the plague.
But Boone came out a few minutes later carrying a paper bag, which he handed to her as he climbed back in the truck.
Sierra looked into the bag and saw two sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, two cans of soda—a Diet Coke for her and a regular Coke for him—and a bag of chips to share.
There was even a plastic wrapped brownie that she knew for a fact came from the diner next door, where Tennessee Lisle cooked pretty much everything for anyone.
This despite the fact that he liked to come across as the least nurturing and most remote citizen of Cowboy Point.
“You’re just crossing lines all over the place these days, aren’t you?” she said.
Next to her, Boone laughed.
“No point in maintaining an ancient feud when my brother married Cat. Besides, Tennessee makes a mean sandwich.”
He drove her across the creek and then kept going almost all the way to the little church that sat at the end of this particular road, nearly tucked up against the hillside.
He parked in a small clearing and they walked down to the creek, where there were a few tables set out in the shade.
They were in sight of the Copper Mine, back the way they’d come up the length of the creek toward town.
There were people there too, and Sierra remembered that someone had said that crotchety old Shane Johnson—the ancient and yet ageless bartender—had been talking about adding a food menu to his offerings.
Or possibly a food truck.
She expected Boone to start them talking immediately, but he didn’t.
They sat there with the sound of the creek gurgling beside them and birds up above.
The pines were tall and pretty, the summer sun beamed down, covering them in light.
All that and she’d kissed him and kissed him.
Him. Boone.
Maybe a different kind of angel than the one she’d imagined.
One that was significantly…
more fallen.
“What do you think?” he asked after he finished his sandwich and was sitting back with his Coke in hand.
“Is the friendship ruined?”
“Possibly,” she replied, not sure if she wanted to laugh or stay very, very serious.
“But maybe in a good way?”
He nodded.
“So here’s how I see it going. We’re going to date.”
“Date?” she echoed.
That was… Not what she thought he was going to say at all.
“You said a million times that you never actually dated,” Boone reminded her.
For a moment she wondered how he knew that she been talking about that only last night, but then realized.
He just knew. Because he knew her and she’d been talking about that lack in her life forever.
Maybe the fact he knew her so well was another one of the signs she should have been looking for all along.
“What do you mean by date?” she asked.
“We’re going to do stuff,” he told her, with all that bright laughter in his gaze.
It took her breath away.
“I’m going to pick you up and drive you somewhere. There might be an activity. There will probably be a meal. Then I’m going to take you home, where I’m probably going to want to get my mouth on you. After that, we’ll see where we end up.” She started to say something, but he lifted up his Coke as a silencer—making her remember his fingers over her mouth last night.
“I don’t mean sex.”
She frowned at him, despite the heat from her memories storming through her.
“Why not?”
“Because, Sierra,” he said, sounding both patient and sorely-tested at the same time, which was quite a feat, “I get the distinct impression after last night that you think rushing to have sex is what it’s all about.”
“It’s not… not what it’s all about, though,” she said.
“Right?”