Billionaire's Second Chance (Billionaires #16) - Jennifer Hartley Page 0,2

didn’t think of myself as beautiful at all—pretty, maybe, but not beautiful. My mother used to tell me that I got my brooding hazel eyes from my father and my curvy hips from her. I didn’t mind either one. But my favorite features about myself were the ones that the farm had given me. The daily manual labor of the land kept my curves from having any excess, and my skin was always sun-kissed from the long hours outdoors. I looked a little bit like my brother, with the exception that he had our mother’s brown eyes and the lanky body of someone who didn’t work on a farm. But even so, he was still defined and strong.

“I used to tell my friends in high school that I was sneaking over here to Wiley Ranch to go cow tipping,” DeShawn said as he buttoned-up the top of his pants that I couldn’t stop staring at. “But really, I was just sneaking over here all the time to see if I could catch a glimpse of you.”

“Seriously?” I asked. “And cow tipping was the best excuse that you could come up with?” His words threatened to mean something to me, and I had to keep it from getting too deep. “DeShawn Groves, if you ever tipped one of my cows, you would have me to deal with,” I teased.

He threw an arm abruptly behind my waist and pulled me against him, and I sucked in a breath out of surprise.

“Clara, I would deal with you every single day if I could,” he said.

We kissed again, and then before things ended up heading right back into the bed, I urged him to leave before Scott got home.

When he took off, I felt as if something had changed, but I wasn’t sure what. I guess that’s what happens when you finally sleep with the guy that you’ve wanted for years but know you can’t have. I watched him get into his fancy car and drive down the long, winding dirt road away from the farm. I even opened the front door and stood outside until I couldn’t see his vehicle anymore. It didn’t matter now anyway. DeShawn was headed back to his lavish, billionaire lifestyle, and I was headed over to the chicken coops behind the barn to feed the hens before the sun went down. When my brother came home, I’d let him know that his best friend had stopped by while he was in town to say hi and that he didn’t stay long.

I grabbed the bag of chicken feed, tucked my shirt into the front of my jeans, and thought about the way DeShawn’s body had felt inside me as I walked to the coop.

2

Deshawn

I was pretty sure that no one had ever been as excited as I was to get back to Amarillo, Texas, before. Most people didn’t even know where Amarillo was on the map, but it wasn’t the town that had me chomping at the bit to hop in my car and drive. It was the fact that I was heading back to Wiley Ranch.

It had been a month since the last time I was there, and all I had thought about during the past thirty days was Clara. I hadn’t even expected our chance encounter to happen when I dropped in to visit and found that Scott was gone and that it was only Clara home. I also hadn’t expected her to kiss me back when I lost control for a minute and couldn’t keep myself from stealing a peck from her lips. All these years…all the years that I have lusted over her. And all it took was a few minutes of standing too close together and an afternoon in an empty farmhouse. I had to admit that I half-expected to get slapped when I leaned in to kiss her. I was shocked, in all the best possible ways, when I felt her tongue slide into my mouth and return the gesture.

The last month had been busy enough with work that I barely had a moment to think about anything that didn’t have to do with my chain of cybersecurity companies. But somehow, my thoughts still drifted off to Clara every single fucking day. I couldn’t get her out of my head. I had thought I had it bad for her before I had made love to her last month. Little did I know how much more I would end up longing for her now.