Page 46 of Whiskey Proposal

I don’t run back, only because I can’t be huffing and puffing when I confront him. Lady charges to my side and whines. Does she sense how pissed I am at her owner? She adores Lane. So that’s why I keep her out of the shop when I enter. I don’t need the cattle dog trying to herd me away from him.

When I find Lane, he’s at the sink. The pickup’s hood is open, and so are both doors. He’s got the arms of his overalls tied at his waist and he’s drying off his hands.

“Oh, hey. I was just coming in for some dinner.” He catches my expression and his pleasantness fades to calculation. “What’s going on?”

I plant my hands on my hips. “How dare you butt in between me and my brother.”

His nostrils flare, and his jaw goes rigid. He throws the towel at the sink like he’s trying to knock down bottles for a prize at the fair. “He told you about the pickup.”

“He told me that you accused him of being a dick.” Those aren’t the words Brooks used, but Lane doesn’t argue.

“I told him that if he retaliated against me because he thought I hurt you, that he’d actually be hurting you. Because he doesn’t know you.”

“And you do?” I ask incredulously. “You? Because of what, one make-out session after you wasted my time?”

He comes closer, and I sidestep around him, ending up closer to the pickup I don’t want to deal with.

“Can you tell me that you felt nothing during that kiss? That there was no connection when you first shook my hand?” He maneuvers me with nothing but a step here and there until I’m in the open doorframe of the passenger side of the pickup. Between the two of us, he’s clearly worked more cattle, just getting those mama cows where they want to go with little more than charisma.

“I didn’t feel a thing,” I lie.

His gaze goes flinty, and he crowds me into the door until my ass hits the bench seat. “I stood in my office watching you get out of your car. Watching you admire the distillery.”

“I was not⁠—”

He puts a finger to my lips. “Don’t lie to me with this sweet mouth of yours.” He drags that finger back and forth over my lips, his sparking gaze taking in my face. “I was in my office, waiting to see who this Emerson Langley is. Who is this girl that thinks Huckleberry Springs forgot her? Because I’ve been told all about her, and she’s everywhere I look.”

“You can’t be serious.” I sound sterner than I feel. My knees are trembling, and he’s so close that I want to wrap myself in his heat. Just crawl into those overalls with him and delight in his woodsy scent and engine-grease smell.

“I heard about the little girl who used to run these pastures. The girl her daddy found on the back of a bull once. The kid who used to sleep with the chickens when one of them got sick. She was a sweet kid.”

I clench my teeth together. She was a sweet girl. “Not everyone thought so.”

His expression goes hard again. So he heard those stories too? Of the girl who wasn’t the princess her mom wanted her to be? Of the kid who got forgotten? Whose parents didn’t want her?

Lane knows a lot of my stories. I’m too open to him. Too raw. Yet he’s shared himself with me too.

“I went looking for that girl,” he murmurs. “And I found the woman she turned into.”

“I’m the one who contacted you.” Technically, it was his office. Wait—how did we get on the subject of me? I came here to tear him a new one for butting into my life yet again. Now I’m riveted to a story I don’t want to hear. My body’s coming alive in a way it should not around this man.

“And I made sure you got that sweet ass and those long legs into my office.” He gets even closer, and I have nowhere to go. But also . . . I want to stay right where I’m at. “I made sure I was the one in that appointment with you. That wild, scrappy little girl gave an excellent pitch that I’m still thinking about using.”

That was a pin popping my balloon of desire. “No, you aren’t.

“Yeah, actually”—he leans over me, pushing me back slightly—“I am. Because when I want something, I go after it.”

Me? “I have nothing to offer.”

His hooded eyes are fathomless, nothing but a dark ring of blue around a blown pupil I’m getting lost in. Call me Alice; he’s my rabbit hole. “See? There you go again, thinking I don’t know you.”

“But you don’t⁠—”

His mouth is on mine, stealing the rest of my words. He’s taking what he wants. I’m giving it to him. I cup his face, feeling the light scrape of his whiskers on my palm. He pushes between my legs, but I give him little resistance.

He doesn’t know me. I should put a stop to this.

But I want it too badly. I’ve wanted to get my mouth on him again for so long.