So he’d accepted the offer to come to the cabin after the event was over and stay through Christmas.
He hadn’t been back to Pyrite Falls for two years. With good reason. A reason he didn’t like to think about. A reason he sure as hell didn’t want to think about with the mystery brunette’s flavor still in his mouth.
He kept the shoe. That was dumb. He rolled out of bed, bare-ass naked, and went over to the table where he’d set it down. A sparkly, slip-on high heel that looked completely and totally impractical. And yet... She’d done things to him that no woman had done in a long damned time. His phone vibrated. He looked down at it, where it was sitting on the nightstand, and saw that he had a message from Levi.
Coffee’s on.
Damn him and his rancher hours. Of course Levi kept rancher hours. Damien might have a vineyard now, but he was still a cowboy. In his soul, he always would be. It was why he was expanding to buy a property here in Four Corners. More land, not just for wine, but for animals. And anyway, Four Corners was home. No matter how long he’d been away. He got dressed and opened the door to the house. It was dim inside, and there was a collection of shoes by the front door. He started to kick his boots off, and then Levi came through from the kitchen.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
“Did the thing go well last night?”
“Yeah,” he grunted. He walked away from the entry, and toward the kitchen. Toward the coffeepot.
“Must’ve been a late one.”
“Those things always are.” His friend poured him a cup of coffee and Damien nodded his thanks.
“You ever get tired of all the schmoozing you have to do for the wine industry?”
“Like your job doesn’t require you to schmooze. It’s not like beef isn’t the same sort of business at the end of the day.”
“Fair. But still... I prefer beef people to wine people.”
“It’s not about people. It’s about the land,” said Damien. And that much he meant.
“It’s been too long.”
“Yeah, it has.”
He took a sip of the coffee and turned away from the kitchen, facing the entry door again. And something caught his eye. One of the discarded shoes. All sparkly and impractical. A slip-on.
Holy fuck.There was no way. There was no damned way that he had run away from her. That he had run away from her and...
He heard a thump on the stairs. And he knew. Without even looking, he damn well knew.
He looked up, and there she was, a tumble of brown curls, but wearing the kind of baggy shirt he expected from her.
“Good morning, Jessie,” he said.
CHAPTER THREE
JESSIEWASSTILLHALF-ASLEEP. Jessie was half-convinced that she was dreaming. Actually, Jessie was pretty sure that she had been dreaming since about the middle of the day yesterday, because there was no way... There was no way that she had... And there was really no way...
Because there was Damien Prince. Standing in her house. Well. Her brother’s house. And he was...everything she remembered except...he had a beard. He had not had a beard when he had left two years ago.
Something like panic burst in her stomach. It couldn’t be. It could not be. Except he looked up at her, and their eyes connected. And she knew.
Last night she’d lost her virginity to Damien Prince. Oh, shit. She actually lived her teenage fantasy, and she hadn’t even realized she was doing it.
Did you not, though?
She thought of how quickly she’d come apart under his hands. How greedy she’d been for him. How... Did he know?
His eyes flicked over to the corner, and she saw her shoe. Her damn shoe. And then he looked back up at her. He knew. He knew. Lord in heaven, he knew, and her brother was standing right there.