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Julie was annoying when she was right.
Especially when she was right about a horse and he wasn’t.
Like the morning Lily didn’t want her breakfast.
Luke tossed her a thirteen-pound net of hay that morning for breakfast and by noon, she hadn’t touched it.
“I think she wants her concentrate feed right now, Luke,” Julie said from the aisle as she swept straw toward the barn door.
“She gets that at dinner time, and she knows that.” He shot Lily a narrow scowl, then scratched her behind her ears. “Your baby’s hungry, Lily. You need to eat your hay.”
The chestnut mare huffed in Luke’s direction, then nudged the hay with her nose, but that was it.
Luke sagged against her stall door. “Please eat, Lily? For me?” Somewhere behind him, he heard Julie sigh, but he ignored her. “Pretty please?”
Nothing.
A minute later, Julie pushed past him, stepped into Lily’s stall, and set a bucket in front of the mare. Lily’s ears visibly perked forward, and she immediately tucked right into the bucket of concentrate feed.
Julie patted Lily’s side and shot Luke a triumphant grin as she stepped out of the stall. “See? The pregnant lady knew exactly what she wanted. Even mixed in that prenatal herbal thing you put in it.”
See? Annoying.
“You sure you put in the right amount of everything?”
“A pound of raspberry leaf, a pound of nettle leaf, and a quarter-pound each of dandelion leaf and lemon balm, just like you showed me.”
Dang.
He didn’t want to tell her she’d done everything right (he’d never hear the end of it), but far be it from him to ignore a job well done. “Fine. You were right about Lily being picky this morning. Congratulations on picking up on my horse’s brattiness.” He smirked. “Guess it takes one to know one.”
Julie stuck her tongue out at him but didn’t seem otherwise offended that he’d just called her a brat. Which just annoyed him more: she wasn’t supposed to be so easy to be around. She was supposed to be this dramatic diva and make it easy for him to dislike her. But instead…
Nope.
Nope, Alex was wrong.
He did not have a crush on her.
At all.
No, siree.
So why was he still thinking about this?
He pushed off of the mare’s stall door. “Alright, come on.”
“Where are we going?”
Luke nodded toward the tack room. “Time for horse lesson number fifteen: polishing tack.”
“That sounds…” She paused, searching for the word.
Bless her for trying to be so tactful. Luke decided to be honest. “Boring? Tedious? Mind-numbingly dull?” he finished for her as he tossed her a cloth.
“I was going to say ‘so much fun ’ very sarcastically, but those work too.” She shrugged and took the Horseman’s One Step saddle cream jar he handed her.
Oh. Not tactful. Just irritating. As usual.
“So,” she went on, “how does this work?”
“You’re awfully enthusiastic about polishing leather.”
“Well, I’ve already shown you up in everything else, so I need something new.”
That was it. “You know what, Julie…”
Oh crap.
He couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
Because she was right.
She raised her eyebrows in anticipation. “Yes?”
He sighed in defeat and shot her a glare. “You talk too much. So do me a favor and shut up so I can show you how to clean a saddle.” He felt like an idiot, so he grabbed a spray bottle full of water and reached for a saddle.
“Why don’t you make me?”
A heat, low and simmering, spiked through every muscle in his body at those words.
And he did mean every muscle.
Slowly he turned around and faced her. He wasn’t sure what he expected he’d see, maybe shock or embarrassment or something else that said Julie regretted her words.
Nope.
No, she stood with her hip cocked, eyebrow up, and lips curved in a smile that sent his heart pounding.
“What did you say?” He’d heard her just fine. He just couldn’t believe she’d said it.
Julie put her cloth and the jar of cream down on the table and stepped toward him, crossing her arms across her chest.
Oh, for the love of God, don’t think about her chest.
“You say I’m talking too much,” she practically purred, sidling toward him until her chest almost touched his (crap crap crap! ). “Give my lips something else to do.”
Stay where you are, his resolve whispered firmly.
Another rush of heat–desire, Luke realized with a sinking stomach–pulsed through his body, and without his permission, his feet took one, two, three steps toward Julie. She didn’t move, and he wound up looming over her like a storm.
“What did you have in mind?” he asked, his mouth asking for his brain’s input about as much as his legs just did.
Julie slowly bit down on her bottom lip, drawing Luke’s attention to that tiny gap between her teeth. “I don’t know,” she said, hooking her index finger through his and stepping back, drawing him with her. “Why don’t you use your imagination?” she asked, pulling his hand toward her.
Do not touch her waist.
His self-control felt thin and taught, like an over-stretched rubber band.
Lucas Mitchell Patterson, do not put your hand on her waist.
Luke’s fingers fell gently into the curve between her ribcage and her hips, like it was molded to fit only his hand.
Why was his body not listening to him???
He took a few more steps, crowding her backward until she was pressed against the tack room wall. Her long, perfect black curls splayed around her shoulders like a shadow and made his mouth practically water. One of her hands slid up the side of his arm and across his shoulder, sending tiny shockwaves rippling across his skin that only increased in intensity when her fingers tangled into the hair curling at the nape of his neck.
Luke’s other hand slotted into place on the other side of her waist and drew her to him, pressing every curve and dip on the front of her body against his, every brush and touch stretching the last bits of his resolve to their breaking point.
Back up, Patterson.
She snaked her other arm around his neck and guided his head down, only stopping when his lips were barely a breath away from hers. “Aren’t you supposed to be shutting me up?” she whispered.
Snap.
He didn’t decide to kiss her.
It just happened.
And oh, where had she been all his life?
Her nails scraped lightly through his hair, and tremors so powerful they almost forced him to stop rocketed through his body. Luke couldn’t remember the last time he’d…
Oh, who was he kidding? He’d never kissed a woman the way he was kissing Julie.
He trailed his hand up her right side, suddenly desperate to remember what that tattoo of hers felt like under his fingertips.
Julie gasped against his mouth, and he let his tongue stray briefly against hers, testing the waters and asking for her full permission. The way she deepened the kiss on her own said she had no objections.
Her shirt rose just enough under his ministrations to allow him access to the barest bit of flesh above the waistline of her jeans, and he traced his pinky over the soft, smooth skin, exploring only what was given and never more. He’d never take more than she was willing to give.
Julie broke the kiss with a gasp and pressed her thumb a little firmer into the back of his head, asking for his attention.
“Luke…” she breathed into his ear.
“Julie,” he whispered back, leaning his forehead against hers as he tried to catch his breath.
When he finally opened his eyes he almost shut them again immediately because the look on Julie’s face, from her wide eyes to her slightly puckered lips, was nearly enough to send him falling right back into her, her, her.
Julie must have seen how he felt because she tightened her arm around his neck and pulled him closer, his hungry lips slipping softly against hers again as she snuck her fingers under his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders. The movement knocked the whole stack of five-gallon buckets over, but Luke didn’t care. The cool October morning air raised goosebumps over his now-bare arms. Or maybe it was her fingers dancing across his skin, he wasn’t sure which.
It was so strange, but Julie kissed like… Well, like Julie. Every movement of her body, from her hands to her lips, was full of that confident playfulness that drove him freaking wild and made him positively desperate to dive deeper, learn more, and understand just who this incredible woman was at her core. He wanted to know what her favorite dessert was, how she liked to spend her evenings when she finally had a moment to herself, what movies made her cry and how tightly she liked to be held until she felt better…
Julie knocked his hat off his head, and her laugh brought him back to the present. “Sorry,” she mumbled against his lips, running her fingers through his hair again like she wasn’t sorry at all.
“S’okay,” he panted, trailing his lips to the corner of her mouth and down her cheek, pausing to give some attention to a spot just behind the hinge of her jaw. “It was clearly in your way.”
Julie giggled, scrunched her nose, and hooked her booted foot around the back of his knee, pulling him even closer and pressing her that much harder into the wall.
Oh no.
Oh, crap, was she trying to kill him?
His hand hooked under her knee, keeping her in place as he showered her throat with long, slow kisses that had her shivering in his arms.
“Luke,” she hissed, wrapping both arms around his neck.
Oh, how he liked the sound of that.
“Luke,” she said again, gripping his shoulder and squeezing to the same rhythm as his lips against her skin.
“Julie,” he whispered back.
“Luke…”
“Luke!”
Luke drew in a shaky breath, dazed and disoriented as he opened his eyes to Julie standing in front of him, shaking his shoulder. “Julie?” he asked, still confused.
“Last time I checked, yeah.”
Wait…
Julie!
He reared back and, were it not for the firm grasp she still had on his shoulder, he would have toppled out of his chair.
What in the actual hell had just happened?
He kissed her…
And she let him!
And…
“Dude, are you okay?” she asked, her eyebrows furrowing in concern.
Was he okay? Was he okay? How could she be so nonchalant when they’d just practically mauled each other in the middle of the-
Tack…
Room…
Which was where he now sat.
In a chair.
Without a mess of buckets scattered across the floor.
And his hand dangling in a bucket of concentrate feed.
The bucket of feed he’d told Julie he was going to make for Lily because it was dinner time, not breakfast time, and she needed her prenatal herbal mix.
“Did I fall asleep?” he mumbled, still not completely with it yet.
Julie’s eyebrows shot up. “Uh, yeah. Like, snoring asleep.” She brushed a pigtail (oh, thank God for those pigtails) over her shoulder and pointed at the corner of her mouth. “You’ve even got a little drool there.”
Luke immediately wiped the back of his hand across the corner of his own mouth, and crap, he did have drool there. Huh. So he had been asleep. Which meant he hadn’t almost mauled Julie and that their friendship was still very much intact. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” he asked, trying anything to get his mind off of the bit of complete insanity he’d just lived through.
“I did as soon as I got back in here.” She held up a large, golden bottle. “I went inside to get some honey to mix in with Lily’s feed. She’s looking exhausted these days and could use the extra energy. I came back and you were out like a light.”
That was totally brilliant.
But still…
“How long were you gone?”
“Maybe three and a half minutes. Chill, man, it’s okay. We worked hard today, a little cat nap before dinner isn’t going to kill you.”
Three and a half minutes? He’d managed to have almost an entire-
Do NOT say sex dream!
-uh, dream like that in three and a half minutes? That didn’t seem possible!
Julie knelt down in front of him and eyed him carefully. “Luke, are you okay? You look like…” She scrunched her nose in thought.
Luke’s mind flashed back to when she’d done that and then lifted her leg to draw him closer.
NOT allowed!
He pushed as much defiance and sarcasm into his voice as he could as he asked, “Like?” Aw, hell, why did all his defiance and sarcasm sound like a strangled squeak??
“I don’t know. Like you just found out Reggie stole your other hat.”
He laughed, but it sounded reedy and desperate.
He needed to get it together before he gave himself away.
He cleared his throat. “Nah, just a little tired, that’s all.”
No wonder…
SHUT UP!
He was losing his mind.
Honey!
Focus on the honey!
He held out a hand for the bottle. “Honey was a great idea, by the way. She loves this stuff.”
A bright smile instantly lit up Julie’s face. “Great!” She flipped open the cap and handed it to him. “Come on, get this in! I want to see her face when she has her treat!”
Luke dumped a heaping squeeze of honey in the feed bucket and swirled it in with his hand. It was sticky, and a good amount of the herbs came out on his hand, but he just grabbed a spray bottle of water and rinsed the excess off and back into the bucket.
He handed the bucket to Julie, then, when she turned around to head over to Lily, checked himself to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be.
Thank heaven it was.
“Luke! She likes it!” Julie said from the aisle.
He blew out a long, calming sigh and joined her next to Lily’s stall. “Duh. She’s a horse, Julie. She’ll eat pretty much anything as long as it’s sugary.”
Julie shot him a playful scowl. “Oh, shut up, Patterson.”
“Why don’t you make-”
Luke stopped.
Nope.
No, it was exactly that kind of language that got him in serious trouble in the first place.
Even if it had only been in his dreams.
“Uh, why don’t you make up something a little more mature than ‘Shut up, Patterson?’”
She rolled her eyes. “Another of my many mysteries,” she said, flouncing past him and tapping her hip to his. “Anyway, Emily said it was dinner time and I’m starving. Let’s go!”
She left the barn without waiting for him, and Luke could not have been more thankful for that.
Just like he couldn’t be more thankful that that whole psychotic, horrifying, incredible experience was a dream.
Just a dream.
He moved to follow Julie out of the barn door when a paralyzing thought hit him.
That dream proved it.
Alex was right.
Luke most definitely had a crush on Julie.
Crap.
Crap, double crap, and triple crap.