“We can’t?—”
“I know,” I whisper, cutting him off before he has to say it out loud.
But knowing we can’t doesn’t make the ache go away. It doesn’t stop the way my heart kicks up when he looks at me like I’m something he’d fight for if the circumstances were different.
“Come on.” He straightens and moves away from the counter. “I need to reorganize everything since Travis decided to take an unplanned vacation.”
I follow Christian down the path, and there’s Preston, who’s the living embodiment of a Christmas card grandpa. His thick white hair catches the morning sun, his mustache twitches with concentration as he works, and he’s completely unfazed by the cold. Most men his age would be planted in a recliner, nursing a coffee while flipping through the channels on TV. But not Preston. He’s out here every day, moving through the trees like he was born for this.
“Pres?”
“Yeah.” Preston straightens up, wiping his gloved hands on his jacket, and I swear he’s got more energy than half the twenty-somethings I know.
“Travis has fucked off, so I’ll be handling deliveries today.” Christian runs a hand through his hair, already working out the logistics. “I’ll get Callan for the chopping, but we’ll need to shut down at two so he can open the bar. That work?”
“Yeah, I’ll track down Billy and give him the heads-up.”
I watch Christian take control of the situation, and the contrastbetween father and son couldn’t be more obvious. Here’s a man who handles his business and steps up when things go sideways. Meanwhile, my boyfriend—and god, even thinking that word makes me cringe now—is probably halfway to his mother’s house, ready to let her coddle him like she has since he was in diapers.
And that’s the difference.
One is a man.
The other is a boy who’s clearly never figured out how to stand on his own.
“You’ll be okay here?” Christian’s hand finds my upper arm, and I nod, trying to ignore how my skin tingles where he’s touching me.
His thumb brushes against my arm once before he lets go, and I have to remind myself to breathe.
It’s just a touch.
Just concern.
It’s just Christian being Christian.
It’s been hours since Christian disappeared down the mountain, and watching Callan work isn’t helping my already scrambled hormones.
The middle Crawford brother has been chopping trees like some lumberjack calendar model, and I’m starting to wonder if I’m ovulating or if the universe is just trying to torture me.
Because sweet baby Jesus, the Crawford genes are something else.
Callan’s not exactly hard on the eyes—all broad shoulders and that same devastating Crawford smile that could talk a nun out of her panties. With a dark top knot and a beard thick enough for a woman to ride, grip, and get lost in, Callan Crawford looks like he was built for pleasure. Any sane, red-blooded female would be tempted to pin him against the nearest wall and thank him for existing.
But not me.
Because I’m not attracted to Callan. Not beyond the obvious physical beauty.
No, what I am is fucking desperate.
Climbing the walls,someone please fuck the sanity back into medesperate. The kind that makes my thighs press together every time Christian so much as breathes in my direction and has me teetering on the edge of absolute depravity, ready to throw myself at a man who could ruin me with nothing more than a look.
Callan’s fine. Hell, he’s better than fine.
But he’s nothim.
Hot daddy cowboy—that’s what my brain settled on that day, and nothing’s changed since.
The last customers pull away, leaving nothing but tire tracks in the snow. The farm settles into that familiar kind of quiet, the one that comes after a long, hard day, when the only thing left to do is lock up and let the land breathe. Callan moves through the closing procedures like he could do them in his sleep, which isn’t surprising. The Crawford brothers are a unit—Christian, Callan, and Colton—though the latter is currently off being a country music god somewhere warm, if his social media is anything to go by. And yes, I follow him religiously, much to Travis’s disgust. I’d begged to meet Colton until Travis snapped that I was being embarrassing, which… okay, may be fair.
