she took a drink.
“The Pattons have been after the farm for generations. You really think Chase hasn’t been brainwashed by his father?”
“Does it matter? I’m not going to sell to him.”
“Are you gonna sleep with him?”
Olivia laid a hard look on me. “That is none of your business, Jake.”
“My business partner sleeping with our enemy is absolutely my business.”
Her chin lifted in defiance. “No, I’m not going to sleep with him. I know it’s hard enough for you all to see me with him just as friends. I can’t imagine what it’d do to poor Kit if I dated him.”
“Chase doesn’t date. Just so we’re clear.”
Her face tightened.
“He doesn’t do honest, either. Chances are, he’s sleeping with Amanda.”
“Doesn’t Amanda have a boyfriend in San Francisco?”
All I had to do was look at her.
She crumpled a little. “How do you even know that?”
“Nothing is a secret here. You know that.”
But she shook the information off, straightening up. “It doesn’t matter. We’re friends.”
“But why him? You have Presley. You have me—”
Again, one brow rose. “Because you’ve been so accommodating.”
“You know what I mean. You have the girls you’ve been hanging out at Joe’s with.”
“Seriously, how do you know this?”
“Because she told Kendall, and Kendall is the biggest gossip in the tri-county area. She might as well have a bullhorn in her hand at all times, and she’s been on every inch of this farm over the last couple of weeks. So why—of all the potential friends you have to choose from—why Chase?”
“So I can only be friends with women? Granted, you’ve got your fair share of toxic masculinity to overcome, but I didn’t think it went that far.”
A frustrated sound reverberated in my throat at her needling. “Chase isn’t just any guy, and you know it.”
“Okay, okay,” she said gently, her hand resting on my bicep. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I grumbled. “But you still haven’t answered me.”
For a second, she was quiet, her attention sliding over to the pastures on either side of the drive where the people wandered.
“He’s easy to be around, and he’s … well, he’s not as bad as you’ve made him up to be in your head.” She seemed to want to add to the thought but let it go. “Plus, it’s nice to be wanted. That’s all.”
A mixture of anticipation and a rush of bravery wrested my heart, my lungs. “You don’t want to be wanted by him. He’ll only ruin you.”
“It’s nice all the same.”
“He’s not the only one who wants you.”
Her face turned to mine. “He’s the only one I know of.”
“Well, I think we can agree there’s a lot you don’t know.”
“You’ve been teaching me everything else. Why stop here?”
The air between us was charged, flecks of hay dancing in the air around us. “Olivia …”
“Do you have something you want to tell me?” she asked quietly, closer to me than before. I didn’t know if she’d moved or if I had.
“I …” My gaze caught on her lips, then my thumb as it tested the cushion. Her jaw was in my hand, I noticed.
“Yes?” It was a whisper.
The tension between us was unbearable, the fight in my chest at an impasse, a pair of locked horns. My mind was a void. Time was a vacuum. I stared at her lips.
“Oh, fuck it,” she breathed, and then she was in my arms.
Our lips met with almost a bounce—hard from surprise, then soft in desire—as I gathered her up, felt the shape of her in my arms. Held her like a delicate thing, a precious thing, a thing to be treasured, this woman who could stop a thunderhead with a word.
I noted every detail of her with the obsession of an artist who’d seen a thing that would disappear. Her lips, soft and sweet—she tasted of sugar, did she taste like this everywhere? I needed to know. I needed to feel the press of our bodies, to mark how she fit against me with a familiarity I shouldn’t possess. I traced her neck with my fingertips as our lips parted, a soft seam. I knew every line of her, knew without knowing the way the curve of her waist would fit my hand. I knew her mouth, not from the clumsy kiss so long ago. I knew it because she was mine.
Mine. The word was a rush of thunder, a roar in my ribs, the knowledge pure. I couldn’t fathom how I hadn’t known. How I’d missed something so plain, so clear.
With a shift, I