She laughed then. Actually laughed.

  And it was a tremendous relief.

  “You? J.P. McCall, the most sought-after bachelor in Wild Horse County, now that Eli and Cord are off the market?”

  Instead of the cocky grin Sara might have expected, J.P. responded with a frown. “That’s what you think? That I have to fight women off with a stick?”

  It was what she thought, as a matter of fact.

  J.P. was not only handsome, he was unabashedly masculine, smart, physically active, suave when he wanted to be. He didn’t smoke, drink to excess or get into bar brawls. He’d turned a minor government settlement into a fortune, and he ran his family’s cattle ranch like the pro he was.

  And if all that wasn’t enough, he liked to read.

  In a day when so many men—and not a few women—seemed to prefer living virtually, through social media, that was saying something.

  There was nothing virtual about J.P. McCall.

  He was real, fully present and engaged with life, be it good, bad or indifferent.

  “Yes,” Sara answered belatedly. “I do think you have to fight women off with a stick. I’ve known you for a very long time, J.P. My brother is one of your closest friends. You were a girl magnet as a kid, and you’re a woman magnet now.”

  J.P. sat back in his chair, let out a whoosh of breath in exclamation, but there was a twinkle in his eyes for all that.

  “A woman magnet?” he repeated. “I should be flattered.”

  “But?”

  “But I’m not. Flattered, that is.”

  “Sorry,” Sara said, somewhat meekly, wishing she’d confined the conversation to other topics.

  Though what those topics might have been, she couldn’t have said.

  “Are you finished?” he asked after several moments of awkward silence.

  Sara blinked, confused. Embarrassed. Was he peeved by the things she’d said?

  “Eating,” he clarified, having read her mind, it would seem.

  “Yes,” she managed.

  “Me, too,” J.P. said. “Let’s settle up the bill and get out of here.”

  “And go where?” Sara asked. Taking no chances that J.P. might grab the check, she’d called the restaurant earlier, given Brynne her payment details, along with instructions to tack on a 20 percent tip.

  “You’re sure you don’t want dessert?” Sara pressed when J.P. didn’t answer her last question.

  That made him grin, and the message was so clear that Sara blushed again.

  Inwardly, where all her organs seemed to be colliding with each other like bumper cars at the state fair, she relished the implication.

  “It’s too soon for that,” she said, and then wished she hadn’t commented at all. She wasn’t the type to jump into bed with a man after one horseback ride and supper at Bailey’s, but she’d probably sounded prim as an old-time schoolmarm just now.

  His next words confounded her further.

  “I’ll wait,” he said. And then he pushed back his chair and stood up.

  Sara scanned the room, found Brynne and summoned up a smile of farewell.

  Brynne made the call-me gesture with one hand, and then J.P. was drawing back Sara’s chair.

  The moment they were outside, in the cool night air, Sara snapped out of whatever spell she’d been under.

  “I’d better get home,” she said, starting toward her car. “The kids—”

  J.P. took her arm, his grasp both gentle and firm.

  He turned her around to face him there in the shadowy gravel parking lot beside the restaurant, curved his right index finger under her chin and lifted.

  She felt the hard, healthy heat of his body close to hers and very nearly melted on the spot.

  So much for snapping out of it, whatever it was.

  “Fair warning,” he said quietly. “I’m about to kiss you, Sara. If you’ve got any objections, you’d better say so right now.”

  She blinked.

  Swallowed.

  And said not a word.

  Slowly, J.P. lowered his head, touched his lips to hers, just a light brush of skin to skin at first.

  Despite herself, Sara gave a little whimper. Stiffened her melting knees.

  And then he was kissing her for real, deeply and with just the right amount of pressure. Their tongues touched, then tangled, and Sara slipped her arms around J.P.’s neck, partly to keep herself from sliding to the ground in a puddle and partly because she wanted to pull him closer, make him part of her.

  When the kiss ended, Sara was breathless and, she noted with both relief and womanly triumph, so was J.P.

  “Holy shit,” he said, almost gasping.

  “Very romantic,” Sara teased, though she was thinking pretty much the same thing.

  “I felt like that once before,” J.P. said presently, his arms around Sara, hers still circling his neck.

  “Really?” Sara asked mischievously.

  “Yeah,” J.P. replied. “I was eight. Eli and Cord dared me to—” He hesitated.

  “Go on,” Sara urged.

  He gave a short raspy laugh. “They dared me to piss on a fence. It was electric.”

  “And you did it?”

  “Of course I did it. I had to prove I was a manly man.”

  She laughed. “Those little devils!” she said.

  “I fell for it,” J.P. said. “I accept my share of the blame.”

  It felt so good, standing there in the warm darkness, pressed against J.P.

  He smelled of sun-dried cotton, starched and ironed the old-fashioned way, a hint of some leathery cologne and clean skin.

  “Did you succeed? Prove you were a manly man?”

  “No,” he said. “I screamed like a banshee, and after I got up off the ground, I chased those two halfway across the county, yelling some pretty colorful threats. They got away—they had a head start, after all, since they didn’t have to button up their jeans—and I went home and snitched on them to my dad.”

  Sara couldn’t stop smiling, though she was mildly horrified to think of the foolish, dangerous pranks little boys pull on each other.

  She waited.

  “I thought he’d call Cord’s granddad and your folks and get them in big trouble.”

  “He didn’t do that?”

  “No. He was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. After I told my story, he lowered the paper, looked at me and said, Well, I guess you won’t be doing a dumbass thing like that again, now will you?”

  “That was it?” Sara stifled a giggle, trying to recall J.P. as an eight-year-old, skinny and sporting a summer buzz cut.

  “Mostly.”

  “Mostly?”

  “He told me not to tell my mother.”

  “Good advice, most likely,” Sara agreed.

  “Definitely good advice. She would have freaked out. Rushed me to the ER for a fresh round of humiliation—not intentionally, of course, but because she was expecting my heart to stop beating or something—and then grounded me for half the summer.”

  “A narrow escape,” Sara said. She paused, thoughtful. “So, let me see if I’ve got this right. You just kissed me, and it reminded you of urinating on an electric fence.”

  He laughed. “I’m a smooth talker. You said so yourself.”

  Somewhere nearby, a car door opened.

  J.P. and Sara separated automatically, though with some reluctance.

  They were back in the real world.

  “You really have to go home?” J.P. asked eventually.

  Sara nodded. “The kids,” she reminded him, and her tone sounded a little wistful, at least to her.

  “Okay,” J.P. said, pleasantly resigned. “Then I want to see you again, Sara.”

  “That’s good,” Sara answered, “because I want to see you again, too, J.P. McCall. What do you suggest?”

  “Another horseback ride,” he said. “A longer one this time. Maybe a picnic. In the meantime, you could email me your manuscript. I’m eager to read it.”

  All of it sounded good, though Sara wondered if she could trust herself, picnicking alone with this man, out there in the wide-open spaces.

  “I’ll send you the book when I’ve finished the revisions,” she said. “As for another horseback ride, well, I’m pretty sore from this morning. It’s been a long time.”

  “Only one way to get past that,” J.P. reminded her. “Get back in the saddle.”

  Back in the saddle.

  Maybe that was the best thing to do, both literally and figuratively. Take a few chances. Give romance a try.

  Lord, she was so tired of being lonely.

  Sara’s cheeks burned anew, and she was glad of the relative darkness. She was also tongue-tied, painfully so.

  J.P. seemed to sense that. He kissed her forehead, stepped around her and waited to open the car door for her.

  She got out her keys and pressed the proper button on the fob.

  The lock snapped in response, and J.P. reached for the handle.

  While she eased into the seat—the ibuprofen she’d taken earlier in the day had long since worn off, and now her thighs, knees and backside were aching again—J.P. got out his phone and texted her his email address.

  “I’ll call tomorrow,” he said as she fastened her seat belt.

  She nodded. “I had fun tonight,” she told him, rather shyly.

  He grinned. “Really? I could have sworn you were scared to death the whole time. I half expected you to leap out of your chair and bolt at any second.”

  “I’m not used to—this.”

  “We’ll take it slow,” he promised and, for some reason, his words, and the way he said them, made her throat tighten and her eyes sting.

  So this was what it was like to spend time with a man, another grown-up?

  Oh, she’d been on a few dates over the years. Even tried a dating app or two.

  But every experience had been either deadly boring or flat-out disastrous.

  “Okay,” she said.

  Lame.

  J.P. smiled again, shut the car door and waited until she’d started the engine.

  Then he turned and walked away toward his truck.

  Sara was still holding her phone—she’d checked to make sure J.P.’s text had come through—when a new message landed with a beep.

  The sender was Hayley, and the text was alarming.

  Mom, come home quick. This guy is here—and I think he’s our dad!

  CHAPTER THREE

  J.P. PAUSED, ABOUT to get into his truck, when Sara’s car sped past him, spitting gravel. Her tires squealed when she hit the paved street and ran the only traffic light in town to head for home.

  He frowned. The kiss they’d shared was still reverberating through his system, and Sara had seemed to enjoy it as much as he had.

  Sure, Sara had been extra nervous throughout the evening, but they’d had a good time together—hadn’t they? And they’d made plans—horseback riding and a picnic at his place.

  Had he said or done—or not said or done—something to upset her?

  He hauled open the door of his truck and hoisted himself behind the wheel. Should he follow her? Ask her if everything was all right?

  That was his inclination, but after a little more thought, he decided against the idea. Sara might be out of practice when it came to first dates, but she wasn’t the type to fly off the handle at some imagined slight.

  She was a strong, independent woman—he liked that about her, liked it a lot—and she didn’t need some yahoo checking up on her. If Sara needed help, she’d call Eli, her brother—and only if she couldn’t handle whatever was going on herself.

  Going against his considerable pride, and masculine tendency to butt in whenever he saw a woman facing any kind of struggle, J.P. started his truck and headed out of town, toward his ranch.

  It seemed an especially lonely place, that rambling house, empty except for good ole Trooper, who would be awaiting his return with the kind of eagerness only dogs can manage.

  For all that, he thought of Sara as he navigated the familiar roads leading the way home. And he worried about her.

  When he pulled up in front of the house ten minutes later, he spotted Trooper through the living room, keeping his clumsy watch from his favorite lookout post, the back of the couch.

  A Lab mix, Troop was too big to fit there comfortably, but that never seemed to bother him.

  The thought struck J.P. that his faithful dog was getting up there in years, and that gave him a hard pang of sorrow, square in the center of his heart.

  His throat tightened momentarily, and the backs of his eyes stung.

  He shook his head, but the emotion stuck.

  J.P. shut off his truck, got out, locked it and headed for the front door.

  Trooper barked joyfully when J.P. entered the house, enjoying an ear ruffle and then rolling over for a belly rub.

  “Missed you, too,” he said gruffly, once the dog had been thoroughly greeted.

  The interlude had provided a distraction from his thoughts about the animal getting older and the inevitable parting that lay somewhere down the road, but on another level he continued to fret about Sara.

  What had happened between the plans they’d made and her driving out of Bailey’s lot at NASCAR speed?

  Obviously, she must have received a text or a phone call, but she might simply have remembered something she’d forgotten to do, something really important.

  J.P. shoved a hand through his hair, sighed and made his way toward the old-fashioned kitchen. There, he flipped open his laptop, booted it up and went to the fridge for a beer.

  Hooking one foot around the leg of a chair, he dragged the seat back from the table and sat down.

  Instead of going online, however, as he’d intended, he pulled his phone from his shirt pocket.

  Three messages, and none of them were from Sara.

  He thumbed his way through, in order of arrival.

  His mom had invited him to supper.

  Too late for that. He’d text her back in a few, though he probably wouldn’t mention that he’d already eaten at Bailey’s, with Sara.

  His mother would be a little too pleased that he’d gone out with a local woman, for once, instead of cruising Tinder for the kind of dates she probably thought, quite correctly, were all about one-night stands, not finding a wife.

  It was early days with Sara, and he wasn’t ready to answer hopeful questions from his sweet but sometimes nosy mom.

  The second text was from his broker’s admin, reminding him of a conference call on Zoom, scheduled for the next afternoon.

  He confirmed his plan to attend by texting back the requested Y.

  Eli had sent the last message, less than ten minutes before.

  Somebody’s been messing with the mustangs again, running them with ATVs and the like. The Land Management people are up to their eyeballs in other kinds of trouble, so they’ve asked the county to step up. Any signs of trespassing on your land?

  “Shit,” J.P. rasped, scrolling to Eli’s number and hitting Call.

  “Garrett,” Eli answered. He was probably driving and hadn’t looked to see who was calling.

  “It’s J.P. What’s going on with the wild horses?”

  “I don’t know much more than I said in the text,” Eli answered. “The feds found half a dozen mustangs cowering in the back of a canyon not too far from your southern property line. They were winded and a couple of them were scratched up pretty badly from scrambling through the brush.”

  J.P. cursed. “Kids?” he asked, remembering the trouble Sara’s boy, Eric, Freddie Lansing and a handful of others had stirred up a couple of years before. They’d turned livestock loose, among other things, and some of those animals had been injured.

  Eli sighed. “Probably,” he said. “And, yeah, before you ask, I’m definitely going to question Eric. I’m on my way over to Sara’s place right now.”

  J.P. said nothing about seeing Sara earlier in the evening. It would have been out of context and, basically, none of Eli’s concern. “Is there any reason to think he’s involved? Eric, I mean?”

  Maybe, he thought, Sara had gotten word of the problem somehow, and raced home to confront her son.

  “I hope he isn’t, but I have to consider him for obvious reasons.” A pause. “Even if he’s not part of this latest cluster, he might know something.”

  “What can I do to help?”

  “Cord will be back from Florida late tonight. I was thinking the three of us and maybe a couple of my deputies could saddle up early in the morning and sweep that rangeland of yours. See if we can find anything.”

  “Sounds good,” J.P. replied. “I’m warning you, though, Eli—if we catch any thugs trying to run wild horses to death, you might have to arrest me, because I’m going to kick some ass.”

  Eli laughed, though he knew J.P. was at least 90 percent serious. “Maybe I ought to deputize you. Would that keep you from taking the law into your own hands?”

  “Probably not,” J.P. said. “How many horses will we need? I can trailer them up and meet you—where?”

  “The mouth of Shadow Canyon. We’ll fan out from there. But there’s no need to bring horses—Cord has that covered.”

  “Cord’s horses are fine, but they’re mostly misfits,” J.P. protested. “Mine are trained for roping and driving cattle out of thick brush and tight spots. They’re used to fancy maneuvers.”

  “I need six horses, saddled and ready to ride, seven tomorrow morning at the latest. I don’t care if they’re yours or Cord’s, so I’ll let the two of you work that out. He’s probably still on a plane, though, so you might not be able to reach him for a while.”

  Mentally, J.P. chose six of his best horses for the job, including Shiloh. “See you in the morning,” he told Eli. “Good luck with Eric.”