The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(9)

She put on some nonsense high-heeled sandals that were practical for nothing but making her feel sexy and walked out the door of the hotel, deciding that she would walk to the nearest coffee shop, which she found easily, using her smartphone. The sun was already shining, and she knew that later it would be unbearably hot. That had been a little bit of a shock. Discovering just how warm it could be in Oregon, which she’d assumed was continually rainy. But no, it turned out. Not so. And it was often much warmer than the little pocket she lived in in the Bay Area.

In the summer, it was downright hot. You could take a drive about an hour out to the coast and find it a good twenty degrees cooler, but inland... Scorching was often the order of the day in summertime. But the mornings and evenings were beautiful. At least, this morning was. She sighed, drinking in deeply of the air and not caring that her internal phraseology was a bit dramatic.

She was renewed. Confident.

She had left her old skin behind and had made something new between the sheets with her mystery man. The thought of him made her feel somewhat melancholy, but that was good. It was to be expected. A woman needed something she could look back on with melancholy, and not just humiliation.

She walked into the coffee shop, pushing heavily against the black door, marveling at the cuteness of the place. Griffin had taken her here a couple of times when she’d been to visit. And the coffee was fantastic. The woman behind the register smiled as she took her order, a large ring sparkling on her finger as bright as her smile. She made her order and looked back behind the counter.

There was a guy on the shift that worked in the back who seemed really grumpy, but he was sexy in that sort of growly Viking way.

And she decided to go ahead and appreciate him.

Because while she might have had the perfect specimen of masculinity in her bed not twenty-four hours ago, that didn’t mean she couldn’t still appreciate men out and about.

She was single, after all.

That made her start whistling, and she only stopped when she became keenly aware that the man next to her was staring. She sidled over to the place where people picked their drinks up, moving around the corner of the counter and fading into the woodwork slightly. And that was when the door opened, and her heart hit the floor.

It was him.

It was him.

The man she was never supposed to see again unless she went to the bar. The man she really wasn’t ever supposed to see. The one she’d tasted and clawed and kissed and licked. That one. That man. He was right there in the coffee shop, which was so mundane it was nearly laughable. A man like him shouldn’t just be in a coffee shop in the broad light of day.

Hell, it wasn’t even the broad light of day. It was the morning.

The early morning.

Sex gods of that proportion should not be up at six in the morning.

He is a cowboy...

She had somewhat convinced herself that he was a fake cowboy. Not the kind that rose early and worked the land and rode ranges. Because the real ones were never that pretty, were they?

It hadn’t mattered. In the moment, he’d simply been a decorative cowboy. A sort of monument to the absurdity of all that she was doing. Staking her claim in a small town and doing so with an emblem of redneck debauchery.

Completely counter to anything she would normally do. Completely counter to anything she normally was.

But now he was there. Actually in front of her. Not just a fantasy. Not that human version of the late-night pint of ice cream that you ate under the cover of darkness, while pretending it never happened in the bright light of day. No. Unlike the empty container of ice cream, he was now in front of her.

And she hid. She hid behind the post right next to the counter, praying that her coffee would come up soon and she could beat a hasty retreat, because she couldn’t even fathom the idea of having to face him, speak to him, anything. He had seen her naked. More than that, he had pinned her against the wall and licked her... Down there.

And that had seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.

So many things seemed perfectly reasonable when you were turned on. At least, she had discovered that. Because she had done a whole lot of things with him that had seemed absolutely and completely fine. In the moment. Aroused beneath his touch spreading her legs and begging for more seemed as unremarkable as ordering a coffee.

But when fully clothed and not ready to beg for his touch, it seemed... A little extra.

And he’d seen that. He couldn’t unsee it. She was sure that he couldn’t, because she couldn’t unsee him. She mentally undressed him. With every peek that she sneaked past the pillar, she saw his skin. Not the black T-shirt he was wearing. Not the black jeans. She cast a beseeching glance behind the counter, which did no good. She could hear him ordering. And she looked around again to see those masculine hands set on the countertop as he leaned in. There was a different girl at the register, with swinging butterfly earrings that looked young and silly, and no ring on her finger.

She looked up at him and grinned.

Mallory felt churned up inside.

He chuckled, and she felt it down between her thighs.

Was he flirting with Madame Butterfly Earrings?

She darted back behind the pole again. It didn’t matter. He could flirt with whoever he wanted. He wasn’t her boyfriend—he was her fantasy. Her dirty secret. Yes. And dirty secrets could only be dirty if they were secret. And they can only be secret if they were secret. And she needed to get out of here right now.