But again, there were no bells and whistles, no weak knees or even a desire to snake her arms up around his neck and press her body close to his. It was a good kiss, but it did nothing for Jill.

“I’ll see you at the bar tomorrow night, darlin’,” he said softly. “I’ll be the one on the bar stool, drooling on my shirt at your beauty.”

“Good night, Tyrell. Thank you for the evening and the rose.” She ducked under his arm and opened the door.

“Invite me in for a cup of coffee,” he said.

“Not tonight. I have to get up early to run the store.” She waved and eased the door shut before he could say another word.

Sawyer looked up over the back of the sofa the same way he’d done earlier. “So was this one any better?” he asked.

She removed her coat and hung it on one of the huge nails on the wall inside the entryway. “The whiskey was better. I had a double shot of Jameson.”

“Don’t go teasing me about good Irish whiskey. That happens to be my favorite.” He sat up and motioned her to the sofa.

“Where’s my rose? Did you put it in water?”

He pointed to the kitchen table. “Yes, ma’am. I aim to please.”

She gasped. “Sawyer O’Donnell!”

“You said to put it in water. I did that, didn’t I?”

There it sat, crammed down into a Mason jar, blossom on the bottom, the stem sticking up in the air with the paper still around it. “You got to admit, it looks fine for a rose. If it had been a daisy, it would be right-side up. Now it will be drowned by morning, and you can toss it over the pasture fence without feeling guilty.”

“Tell me about the Brennan date,” she said. “Did Kinsey come on to you?”

“She was worse than Betsy. She walked me to the truck and tried to climb my frame. Had my belt buckle undone and was working on my zipper before I could…”

“No more,” she cut him off. “Don’t tell me any more. Why? I mean you are a damn fine-looking cowboy, but that’s acting like a hussy.”

“I imagine that they expect me to have sex with them one time, then they’ll shout that they are pregnant. The family of whichever one gets the sex first will make me marry her, and that will get me off Fiddle Creek. It’s all a game, and I’m not playin’ with either of them or getting myself shoved into a corner with them either. You are going to protect me.”

“Only if you make good on your word and do the same for me.” She plopped down on the sofa and stretched her legs out.

He picked up her feet and put them in his lap, removed her boots, and massaged her feet. “Poor little doggies have had too much party put on them today.”

“That is wonderful,” she moaned.

He removed her socks and dug his fingers into all the pressure points. His touch made every nerve tingle, from the top of her head all the way down to her little toes. If either one of those cowboys she’d seen that day had caused a reaction like that, she might have consented to go out with them again.

“Now, princess, it is eleven o’clock, and you need a long, hot bath to get all that feudin’ stink off you. How was the last cowboy’s kisses? Any better? As good?”

She shrugged.

“That bad, huh.” He shoved her feet down to the floor, slid down the sofa, and cupped her face in his hands.

She barely had time to moisten her lips and shut her eyes before his mouth closed in to claim hers in a fiery-hot kiss. She felt as if her whole body was floating off the sofa toward the ceiling. His hands on her cheeks were the only thing that kept her grounded. Her arms went around his neck. Both hands twisted into his hair for better leverage as his tongue found its way past her lips to do a beautiful two-step with hers.

Sweet Jesus! A kiss had never done that to her before. She wanted more, to see if it would be the same the next time, but he pulled away and stood up.

“They say the third is the charm, darlin’. When you decide to kiss and tell, you let me know if they’re right.”

He swaggered off to his room, shut the door almost all the way, and left her sitting on the sofa with weak knees, a racing pulse, and a jittery feeling down deep in her gut.

She made it to her bedroom, but her head was still reeling when she flopped down on top of the covers and touched her lips to see if they were as hot as they still felt.

Chapter 8

“Hey, Aunt Gladys, where are you?” Jill yelled from the front of the store.

There was no answer, but she could hear the meat grinder going, so she hung her coat and hat on the rack and went to work. Most of the suppliers arrived on Monday morning, so the bread shelves had been restocked. But the aisles were full of boxes to be unpacked onto the shelves.

“Thank goodness,” she said.

The noise stopped. “That you, Jill?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Give me a minute to take off this apron and wash my hands, and I’ll tell you about Polly. She gets to come home tomorrow morning, as long as she has help, so I’m putting her in my spare bedroom.” She raised her voice a notch over the sound of running water. “I’ve got the meat counter filled all the way up to capacity, and I’m going to Salt Holler for a whole hog this afternoon so we’ll be well stocked. I might need you to come in for a few days earlier than we’d planned, since she’ll require more help here at first. I was goin’ anyway, but Wallace called and said they’d had a big butcherin’ day yesterday. His whole family came for it, and he’s got a lot of meat on hand. I’m getting a whole hog and half of another one. Since Mavis ain’t got her own hogs to butcher, she’ll be needin’ some decent meat. At least these hogs haven’t been raised in a factory. Wallace has good pigs.”

“Will we sell that much pork in a week?” Jill asked.

Rubbing sweet-smelling lotion into her hands, Gladys came out into the store and smiled. “Honey, feudin’ brings in the business. It’s going to be wild around here, and then you toss in the fact that both parties are out after your undying love, why, people will be comin’ here in droves.”

“But I’m not going out with either one of them again,” she said.

“You think either one of them is going to lay down and roll over like a defeated puppy? By saying no, you’ll fire the whole thing up hotter and hotter, so the job description has changed. Besides, if I dropped dead tomorrow, you’d have to run the whole place by yourself with no one but Sawyer to help you.”

“I can come in whenever you need me, but once Aunt Polly is settled, I want to drop by and see her once a day too,” she said.

“Don’t go feelin’ guilty because you didn’t get down to the hospital. She’s been sleepin’ a lot anyway, and she told me to tell you that you were needed here more than there.”

“Good mornin’.” Sawyer’s deep voice filled the whole store. “I’m only five minutes late. Hope I didn’t miss anything, but I got the alfalfa field disked this morning after feeding chores. And then I started workin’ out in the tack room, organizing it, and time got away from me.”

He hung his coat and hat on the rack beside hers. They looked so personal hanging there beside each other, as if they belonged together. She touched her lips as a vision came to mind of him walking away from her the night before. He’d worn flannel lounging pants and a chocolate-brown T-shirt then. Now he had on jeans, a blue-and-brown-plaid shirt, and his work boots, but the swagger was still the same. The jittery feeling from simply remembering the kiss told her that yes, sir, the third was the charm.

You’re not a teenager with raging hormones. You are a grown woman. You can work with this cowboy from noon until eleven o’clock every night, she reminded herself sternly.

Gladys picked up her coat off the back of a chair behind the meat counter and shoved her arms into it. “I’m glad you are going to be here with Jill, Sawyer. This is the hottest I’ve seen the feud in my lifetime. They’ve done some crazy things, but they’ve never done something so stupid as to steal hogs. We’ll be hiring some extra help in the spring, and then hire some more in the summer for the store, so this won’t be forever.”