Olli stopped by the door of her perfumery and picked up a bottle of her newest scent, Seduction.
“Perfect,” she muttered, spritzing the perfume on her neck and mostly bare shoulders. “Game on, boys.”
She left the perfumery and looked to the road that ran east and west in front of her workshop. Her windows faced south, and she’d seen someone go by about a half an hour ago.
“What are you going to do? Stand on the side of the road and flag him down?” She didn’t even know who she’d get next.
She decided it didn’t matter, as long as it was one of the older Chappell brothers. She was forty-four, and she knew Cayden Chappell was her same age.
“No problem,” she said. She didn’t have Cayden’s number, but she had Spur’s. He was the oldest brother, and they’d exchanged numbers years ago when she’d first moved in next door.
“Just in case,” he’d said.
Olli hadn’t known what that had meant at the time, but she did now. Just in case his cattle got out. Just in case his horses broke through a fence. Just in case the Chappells had to turn off the water to the whole street—which was just their place and hers—for some ranch construction. Just in case he had to tell her the big rigs would be coming to get the horses they’d sold. Just in case he needed the field she owned between their places for all of his high rollers to park.
There had been a lot of instances of just in case over the years with Spur Chappell.
She’d spoken to Spur on all of those occasions. He rarely wore a smile, and though she’d known him for years, he still intimidated her.
So definitely Cayden, she told herself, still standing just outside the perfumery, which sat a hop, skip, and jump from her front door. Foolishness rushed through her, and she couldn’t get herself to take a single step.
A loud whistle rent the country silence, and Olli whipped her attention toward the sound.
She became aware of dogs barking, and the thundering of horses hooves, and another earsplitting whistle. “Ho, there,” a man yelled, and Olli watched as Spur Chappell rode right in front of her on a magnificent bay horse.
She fell backward at the sudden appearance of him, realizing that he’d put himself between her and an oncoming herd of sheep.
A scream came from her mouth as she steadied herself against the door, and then Spur rode in front of her again, yipping and yelling at someone or something else. The dogs kept barking and barking, and just like someone had put up an invisible fence, the swarm of sheep turned away from her and the perfumery and went in a wide arc toward the south.
Olli pressed her palm over her heartbeat, watching the fifty or so sheep flow away from her.
The dogs went with them, but Spur himself turned and looked at Olli, their eyes meeting and locking for what felt like forever.
A grin danced across his face, and he lifted one gloved hand and acknowledged her before pressing his cowboy hat further onto his head and galloping after the sheep.
“Oh, my…” Olli let her words hang there, all of her focus now on the handsome cowboy who would look mighty fine on her arm for just one night.