st a tailbone or a skull on a hidden rock in the pool. A broken bone would simply add insult to the injury of January’s inevitable exit, right when the ranch needed him the most. Light and spontaneous required some boundaries.
They swam for a time, the intermittent movement of water the only conversation between them. Distant strains of a fiddle circled the canyon-like alcove. A truce—even temporary—felt as good as the water working against his skin. Nat had done nothing but take his frustration out on the land since the day she came back. The punishing pace was good for business, an endurance marathon on his muscles.
“You’re thinking about the ranch, aren’t you?” Her voice skipped across the water’s surface like smooth stones.
“Hard not to, with the auction coming.”
“All that worrying is going to put you in an early grave.”
“Means I’m invested. Sticking around long enough to see the outcome.”
She skimmed her arms on the surface, mimicking movement only to stay in the same spot. Moonlight bathed her shoulders. Darkness pooled in the hollows of her collarbone. It took every ounce of willpower he had to fight his internal tide to move closer, to gather her lips against his and drink her optimism, to slide against her, nothing more than carelessness between them.
Water-logged cotton around his erection had him rethinking his no-skinny-dipping policy.
“I worry, Nat. I just don’t allow it to consume me.”
“What do you worry about?”
“Sometimes I don’t know where I’ll sleep from one day to the next. I worry that all men aren’t you—that they’ll think nothing of treating a woman like an entitlement. I worry sometimes that the things I eat or drink or do have the power to change my life in an instant, because I don’t always have control. And until Mona moved onto your land? I worried about her being alone. Thank you for all you do for her.”
“Timing was good. My mom is gone more and more. Mona picked up the slack.”
“Where does your mom go?”
“To places where she can ‘find herself.’ Whatever the hell that means. I swear I don’t know her anymore. One minute she’s at a commune in Arizona, embracing a clean life, stringing prayer beads and teaching yoga, and the next she’s working as a bartender in some dive in Ireland.”
“You’re angry with her for leaving.”
January slipped beneath the surface, a deep dive that showed off the most perfect moon on the water he had ever seen. If her insight hadn’t rendered him speechless, the uninhibited sight of her ass on display would have left him full-on mute.
His heart squirmed in his chest. He breathed through it, focused on the faint music, spied their boots on the rocks—anything, anything at all to keep from swimming over to where she surfaced and wrapping her legs around his hips.
“She had her role here for a long time” said January. “Trying to fit into a family legacy that stretches hundreds of miles. She raised three amazing sons and did everything asked of her for thirty years. If that isn’t the definition of paying her dues, I don’t know what is.”
Nat had never thought of his mother’s life here as a burden.
“Is it possible you’re transferring your anger at me onto your mom?”
He didn’t want to talk about his mother now—not while he ached to feel January around him in every way possible—but the subject kept them safe.
“Her leaving forced me to abandon school.”
January drifted closer, beyond arm’s reach. Her hair was slick to her head, dripping in ripples close enough to mesmerize him.
“You never needed school. Your grandfather was already the best professor of cattle ranching in the state.”
“I wanted the choice.”
“So did she. All any of us want, really.”
In his reach now, facing the moonlight, her wide-eyed gaze danced around his face. Droplets strung her lashes like spider webs after a rain shower. He kept his hands close. One contact with her bare flesh, and he would be gone.
“Says the girl who rode into town on a plastic shrimp.”
January let loose a chuckle. Her body surfaced, back to the water. Breasts bobbed like painted white buoys.
“Dear Agnes…”