woman who knew he couldn’t be trusted. One who knew exactly how dangerous he could be to her heart and to the defenses she’d built around it.
She was insane to be here, knowing he would be as well. He’d hurt her once already, and she was tempting fate, giving him a second chance to do what he’d done to her the first time around.
And she couldn’t help herself.
For three years she’d managed to stay away from him, no matter the temptation or her need. She hadn’t even meant enough to him to remember her. But she’d never been able to forget him.
His face drew the eye, commanded attention, and warned a woman she was dealing with a true alpha male.
Sun-bronzed and savagely hewn, that face didn’t betray any emotion that he didn’t willingly allow it to show, nor did the whisky brown of his gaze. Thick brown hair framed his face carelessly, falling just a little long and tempting a woman to run her fingers through it. It was warm, slightly coarse, and she’d once loved the feel and weight of it against her fingers, her breasts, between her thighs …
Broad shoulders and obviously tight abs were covered with a black cotton shirt that did nothing to hide the fact that he was truly built. Long, powerful legs were encased in denim, a wide belt cinching hips a woman would love to wrap her legs around. She’d definitely loved wrapping her legs around them.
And he wore cowboy boots.
What was it about cowboy boots that made a man look so damned sexy?
And he was sexy as hell.
The fact that he was the most desirable male in the bar wasn’t debatable.
Why didn’t he recognize her?
It had been more than a few years, and her looks had changed. In ways, everything about her, who and what she had been and was now, was completely different. She wasn’t the eighteen-year-old he’d charmed on a cold winter’s night in a foreign land. But he wasn’t the twenty-five-year-old man she’d so been fascinated with anymore either. He’d known her as Kyra, not Sallie. The man who had bound a part of her with his kiss, his touch, and three days and nights of the most incredible passion a woman could ever know, and he’d forgotten all about her when he’d left her.
Sallie drew in a long, slow breath and forced her attention from the man leaning relaxed against the bar as he talked to another rancher.
His friend was an irritant. Pride Culpepper had done everything but offer her his brothers’ ranch if she’d just go to dinner with him. The oldest brother, Justice, had actually offered the ranch, then grinned and took it back.
Lifting her beer, she took another sip of the warming drink and barely held back a grimace.
She wasn’t particularly fond of beer, or of bars. So why the hell had she allowed herself to be convinced to come to this one again? She could have just hung around the house, washed clothes, painted her nails. Or something. Instead, she was hiding in the corner of a rowdy, country music bar filled with men on the make and women pretending they weren’t there for the same thing.
Even her friends, as much as she liked them and enjoyed their company, were consumed with the search for that perfect man. And what made them think this was the place to find him, she wasn’t certain.
She had known Jacob would be there, though. He was often there with his friends. He rarely danced, never brought in a lover or chose a lover from the bar. He drank a few beers, chatted with friends, sometimes flirted with the women who came up to him, then left alone. Just as Sallie did.
She should have left when she realized he lived in the area. She should have definitely left when it was apparent he didn’t recognize her. Sallie Hamblen was nothing to the rancher who lived in Deer Haven, California, all his life. But for a moment in time, long, long ago, she’d believed she could mean something him.
She’d been introduced to him as Kyra Bannon, he’d been introduced to her as Jake Rossiter. And for one incredible weekend, she’d lived a young woman’s most passionate dream.
Her lips quirked at that thought. And like most dreams, it had been over far too quickly. He’d disappeared with a promise to return in a few hours. A promise he’d broken. He’d never returned. No one had known who he was when she