Page 37 of The Spice Is Nice

“I have a garage in the alley behind the shop. I’ll park there. No one will know I’m in the apartment but you two, and my sisters.”

Another good reasonfor staying at the little apartment I maintained above the shop was to avoid my sisters’ inquisition about Colt. Partly also so I could stay within my private thoughts about him a little longer, keep him to myself—I could still feel him everywhere.

His mouth on mine. His hands cradling my face in the dark, while the fire crackled and glowed. His body melding with mine, so in sync as we moved.

That was the part that wrecked me. Nobody was watching. No Seth to perform for, or crowd to convince. Just Colt kissing me, pleasing me like he meant every second of it.

I’d replayed everything about our night together a million times. In the shower. At the shop. Just now, in the middle of ringing up a pair of boots for a woman from Lewistown. She’d asked me twice if I was feeling all right because I kept drifting off mid-sentence with what I could only assume was a ridiculous expression on my face.

I behaved like a teenager who’d been kissed for the first time, butterflies active in my tummy, aching need constantly at the apex of my thighs.

The customer left, and I stood in front of the mirror in the shop and tried to remember why I didn’t want a relationship. The reasons had been so clear a month ago. I didn’t trust my judgment with men. I’d chosen wrong before. I was the woman who’d once fallen for a criminal and helped him commit crimes, and nearly destroyed her own life.

The safest version of Ivy Wylde for me and my sisters was the one who kept men at a distance and focused on work.

One look at Colt and he made me forget my resolve. When he kissed me, every excuse dissolved like sugar in hot water, and what was left was warmth and wanting and the terrifying, exhilarating sense that I was standing on the edge of something real for the first time in my life.

Colt was the opposite of Seth in every way that mattered. He was solid where Seth had been volatile. Honest, where Seth had been manipulative. Sweet in a way that showed up in the small things—the gentle way he had with Silver and other horses, the way he’d carried me through a storm, when we sat on the boulder and he confided in me about his past, the way he’d courageously faced the parents who lost their son because telling the truth mattered more than protecting himself at last.

I’d never been with a seriously good man. That was the reality I kept circling. Every flawed boyfriend I’d ever had was some flavor of bad, because that’s what I thought I deserved. Because I’d never stopped to ask what the alternative might feel like.

Now I knew.

It felt like waking up in a warm cabin while a storm finished itself outside. It felt like Colt’s arms around me. Like someone staying.

That terrified me in an entirely new way. Not the old fear—he’ll hurt you, he’ll use you, you’re nothing to him.This was quieter. More honest.

What if you don’t know how to keep something this good?

I pulled my hair into a ponytail, grabbed my bag, and decided that was a question for a version of me who hadn’t just been thoroughly, carefully taken apart and put back together by a man who kept his promises.

That version could wait.

Chapter 14

Lust and Longing

Ivy

“The usual?”Sage greeted me at The Copper Cup. The smell of pumpkin spice and Harper’s baked goods permeated the air, acknowledging that fall was here.

“Better make it a pumpkin spice latte.” I slid onto a stool at the counter and dropped my bag at my feet. The shop was half full, with some retirees and ranchers and a couple of women from the salon next door. Harper waved at me from the kitchen in the back, the sound of mixing bowls indicating the next round of pastries was coming soon.

Sage set my to-go cup down. She had that quiet, observant look she always had, like she could see right through me. Her hair was in a braid, and she wore the Copper Cup apron over a flannel shirt. She looked like exactly what she was: the quiet, unassuming sister who noticed everything.

“So, how was your night with Colt in that cabin?” She asked as casually as she might ask how my shop was doing.

I wrapped both hands around the cup. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you haven’t been home since, like you don’t want to tell your own sisters all the details.”

Heat climbed my neck, probably red and flushed. Our father used to get that way when flustered. “The storm hit, and we got stranded. Not a big deal.”

“Wegotstranded,is all?” Sage’s mouth twitched. “In a cozy cabin for two, during a storm? Tell me, was there only one bed? Or was he a gentleman and let you have the bed and he slept on the couch?”

The bell above the door chimed. I turned on my stool to see who entered, grateful for the interruption, and the gratitude evaporated instantly because the person walking through the door of The Copper Cup was Colt, followed by Knox, Jake, and two of the newer ranch hands whose names I kept forgetting.

Colt was in his work clothes, dirty boots with a flannel over a thermal, his cowboy hat pulled off the moment he cleared the door. His eyes found me across the room. In four unhurried strides, he reached me. He set his hat on the counter. Looked at me for one long second, close enough now that I could smell hay and pine air and him.