Close to Heart (25 page)

A kiss is just the beginning . . .

Pinterest Perfect. Or so Annie Carson’s life appears on her popular blog. Reality is . . . messier. Especially when it lands her back in one-cow town, Brightwater, California, and back in the path of the gorgeous six-foot-four reason she left.

“S
awyer?” All she could do was gape, wide-eyed and breathless—too breathless. Could he tell? Hard to say as he maintained his customary faraway expression, the one that made it look as if he’d stepped out of a black and white photograph.

“Annie.”

She jumped. Hearing her name on his tongue plucked something deep in her belly, a sweet aching string, the hint of a chord she only ever found in the dark with her own hand. It was impossible not to stare, and suddenly the long years disappeared, until she was that curious seventeen-year-old girl again, seeing a gorgeous boy watching her from the riverbanks, and wondering if the Earth’s magnetic poles had quietly flipped.

Stop. Just say no to unwelcome physical reactions
. Her body might turn traitor, but her mind wouldn’t let her down. She’d fallen for this guy’s good looks before, believed they mirrored a goodness inside—a mistake she wouldn’t make twice. No man would ever be allowed to stand by and watch her crash again.

Never would she cry in the shower so no one could hear.

Never would she wait for her child to fall asleep so she could fall apart.

Never would she jump and blindly fall.

Sawyer removed his worn tan Stetson and stood. Treacherous hyperawareness raced along her spine and radiated through her hips in a slow, hot electric pulse. He clocked in over six-feet, with steadfast sagebrush green eyes that gave little away. Flecks of ginger gleamed from the scruff roughing his strong jaw and lightened the dark chestnut of his short-cropped hair.

“Hey.” Her cheeks warmed as any better words scampered out of reach. The mile-long “to do” list taped to the fridge didn’t include squirming in front of the guy she’d nurtured a secret crush on during her teenage years. A guy who, at the sole party Annie attended in high school, abandoned her in a hallway closet during “Seven Minutes in Heaven” to mothballed jackets, old leather shoes, ruthless taunts, and everlasting shame.

He reset his hat. “Did I wake you?” His voice had always appealed to her, but the subtle rough deepening was something else, as if every syllable dragged over a gravel road.

She checked her robe’s tie. “Hammering at sunrise kind of has that effect on people.”

He gave her a long look. His steadfast perusal didn’t waver an inch below her neck, but still, as he lazily scanned each feature, she felt undressed to bare skin. Guess his old confidence hadn’t faded, not a cocky manufactured arrogance, but a guy completely comfortable in his own skin.

And what ruggedly handsome, sun-bronzed skin it was, covering all sorts of interesting new muscles he hadn’t sported in high school.

“Heard Grandma paid you a visit,” he said at last.

Annie doused the unwelcome glow kindling in her chest with a bucket of ice-cold realism. He wasn’t here to see her, merely deal with a mess.
Hear that, hormones? Don’t be stupid.
She set a hand on her hip, summoning as much dignity as she could muster with a serious case of bedhead. “Visit? Your grandma killed one of our chickens and baked it in a pie. Not exactly the welcome wagon. More like a medieval, craz—”

“Subtlety isn’t one of her strong points. We had words last night. It won’t happen again.” He dusted his hands on his narrow, denim-clad hips and bent down.

Unf.

The hard-working folks at Wrangler deserved a medal for their service. Nothing—NOTHING—else made a male ass look so fine. “Found this, too.” He lifted her forgotten bottle of scotch.

“Oh, weird.” She plucked it from his grasp. “Wonder how that got out here?” Crap, too saccharine a tone, sweet but clearly false.

He raised his brows as his hooded gaze dropped a fraction. Not enough to be a leer, but definitely a look.

Her threadbare terrycloth hit mid-thigh. Here stood the hottest guy west of the Mississippi and she hadn’t shaved since who-the-hell knows and sported a lop-sided bruise on her knee from yesterday’s unfortunate encounter with a gopher hole.

Maybe she failed at keeping up appearances, but God as her witness, she’d maintain her posture. “About your Grandma, I was two seconds from calling the cops on her last night.”

“That a fact?” The corner of his wide mouth twitched. “Next time, that’s exactly what you should do.”

“Next time?” She sputtered, waving the bottle for emphasis. “There sure as heck better not be a next time!”

That little burst of sass earned the full-force of his smile. Laugh lines crinkled at the corners of deep-set eyes that belonged nowhere but the bedroom. As a boy, he was a sight, as a man, he’d become a vision. “Why are you back? I mean, after all this time?”

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Excerpt from
Chasing Jillian
copyright © 2015 by Julie Revell Benjamin.

Excerpt from
Easy Target
copyright © 2015 by Kay Thomas.

Excerpt from
Dirty Thoughts
copyright © 2015 by Megan Erickson.

Excerpt from
Last First Kiss
copyright © 2015 by Lia Riley.

CLOSE TO HEART
. Copyright © 2015 by Tina Klinesmith. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780062396563

Print Edition ISBN: 9780062396570

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