He stared at his reflection, thinking about Rachel and their last time together, until the mirror steamed over. Then he stepped into the shower, adjusted the heat, and, bracing a hand on the tile wall, ducked his head under the stream of hot water.

The meeting with Rachel hadn’t been planned. Never was, even though he put himself in her path as often as opportunity allowed, which was easy enough in a town as small as Catcher Creek. The diner, Parrish Feed & Grain, the vet’s office. They knew each other’s trucks, and knew what it meant when one approached the other. When Rachel wanted him, she let him know it loud and clear, and he took the reins from there.

The last time she wanted him, last month, she found him at Smithy’s Bar. She’d sat across the room and never once looked his way, but he paid the tab for her single beer on the sly, then followed her out and helped her into the passenger seat of her truck. He’d pulled her truck into his garage. No need to set tongues wagging with her truck parked out front.

He fisted his erection, remembering the way she’d undone his pants right there in the truck the minute the garage door closed. The wet heat of her mouth on him, the dragging friction of her tongue and lips.

Every tug of his hand on his flesh brought the memory into sharper focus. The silky soft feel of her hair in his hand when he’d brushed it away from her face. The way the back of her throat felt on the head of his cock, the hint of teeth. Her hands working his balls.

They’d spilled out of his truck, a tangle of clothes and skin. In his head, he heard the mewling cry she gave when he bound her wrists with his tie and looped it over the hook on the wall. They didn’t always play that game, but she seemed to need it rough that night.

He drizzled soap over his hand and worked his fingers over the ridges of his shaft in long, pumping strokes. His teeth gritted, he relived the taste of her wetness when he’d dropped to his knees and buried his head between her thighs. Her exquisite pussy, pink and swollen, opening for him. He’d rolled her flesh between his lips, then suckled her clit as he worked his fingers inside her wet, hot body. She’d whimpered his name.

Damn, he loved the sound of his name in her husky, desperate tone of arousal. Knowing it wasn’t just sex for her—it was him. It was all the things he could do to her that no other man could. He replayed the sound. The breathy whimper of his name on her lips that signaled her surrender to pleasure.

Build up came too swiftly at that particular memory. Panting, he backed off, sliding his hand to the base of his erection. He fluttered his fingers over his balls, taking a break to fast-forward the vision to the moment he’d wrapped her legs around his waist and entered her, pushing inside until her tits hit his chest and his balls smacked her ass. He slid his fist along the length of his shaft, squeezing hard, mimicking the feel of entering her body.

Bracing her back against the wall, he’d removed the tie from the hook so she could drop her bound hands around his neck. They’d kissed openmouthed, violently. She’d bit his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, then licked it away. His eyes shut tight, he rubbed the sensitive flesh behind the head of his cock, recalling the wicked look in her eyes as her tongue had darted over her lip to lap the blood. She’d used the tie binding her wrists to pull his face to hers for a second taste.

Fuck, he couldn’t hold back anymore. He pumped hard and fast, Rachel’s voice echoing through his head, whispering his name when she came. Release swept through him, buckling his knees, summoning a grunt from his throat, as it had that night. Only this time, instead of spilling himself into a condom buried deep inside Rachel, his seed fell to the shower floor.

Instead of collapsing into the warm, soft body of the sexiest woman he’d ever been with, all he had to lean into was the cold tile wall.

* * *

Parrish Feed & Grain sat smack in the middle of Main Street, straight across from First Methodist Church and two buildings down from Smithy’s Bar. A square, single-story building with a two story façade of wood shingles done in a Wild West, frontier style, the store had probably looked sharp and fresh thirty years ago, but now looked old and tired.

Rachel admired the family’s ability to keep their doors open despite years of a downward spiraling economy, family deaths and squabbles, and the opening of a new feed supply superstore in Tucumcari the previous year.

At nine-thirty, Rachel pulled into their parking lot, which sat empty save for the company’s old beater of a forklift and one other truck Rachel recognized as belonging to Kate Parrish. This time of day, most farmers and ranchers were still busy mucking stalls and tending to livestock. Thanks to the hiring of Ben Torrey, Rachel was at liberty to make this trip to town for supplies without worrying about falling behind on her work.

She came armed with a long list she and Ben had written out that morning, supplies to prep the fields for the first alfalfa crop, as well as a credit card she hoped carried a high enough limit to pay for it all. Ben had all kinds of good ideas on getting the farm up to snuff as a competitive alfalfa grower, and neither he nor Rachel could wait to dig in and get started.

Growing up, Rachel and Kate had been a few years apart in school, with Kate being Amy’s age, and so hadn’t really had a good reason to be friendly until Kate took over as the feed store manager five years earlier, leaving her dad more time to make deliveries to bigger farms and ranches. The two sometimes walked across the street to the Catcher Creek Café for lunch or a slice of pie if the store was slow, and Kate regaled her with stories from her time in Washington, D.C., where she’d gone to college and briefly tried to make a living in politics. Sometimes she talked about her sister, Chelsea, who was a rancher’s wife in Clovis, or her younger brother, Carson, a deployed marine.

Rachel wasn’t sure what had brought Kate home to Catcher Creek, and Kate never got specific. Maybe she’d grown tired of politics, or maybe something happened in the Parrish family that Rachel wasn’t aware of.

The front entrance of Parrish Feed & Grain chimed when Rachel entered. Kate smiled at her from behind the counter, on which a thick ledger book was open. A fancy calculator held one side of the book open. Her curly, reddish-blond hair had been wrangled into a braid that had fallen forward over the shoulder of her denim shirt.

She propped an elbow on the counter and smiled. “Well, hello, stranger. I heard tell you were shot, but you don’t look very shot.”

Rachel grinned. “How, exactly, does a shot person look, do you think?”

Kate got a saucy look in her eye. “Horizontal, with IV tubes and a pale complexion from all the blood loss and pain.”

Chuckling, Rachel showed her the bandage on her arm. “I was only grazed by a bullet. It’s going to leave me with an impressive scar, but that’s about it.”

“Girl, that’s the weakest story I’ve ever heard. You need to manufacture yourself a real tall tale. One about your bravery and sacrifice. How you threw yourself in front of a bullet to save a child’s life, then rose from your deathbed and endured great pain in the name of working on your farm. That’s what this town likes—a good story.”

They shared a laugh.

Rachel leaned against the counter. “I’ll work on it, but my imagination isn’t all that creative.”

“You already have the start of a good story, what with all the talk about Vaughn Cooper swooping in to save you. Word is he carried you into the hospital in his arms.”

Rachel pushed her tongue against the roof of her mouth until her shock faded enough that she could speak. “Is that the rumor going around?”

“By my word.” She arched a brow and leaned in closer. “But I know that’s not true because cowgirls like you and me, we don’t need no saving. All we need is a loaded Smith & Wesson and a direction to aim it in.”

Rachel’s mouth went dry. “Anything else people have been saying about me?”

Kate fiddled with the turquoise rings on her fingers. “There’s been talk.”

“What else is there to say? I got in a shootout in Parillas Valley and took a bullet in the arm.”

“Not about the shootout.” She stared at her hand, where her fingers were busy sliding a ring up to her first knuckle and back.

Her frustration mounted at Kate’s silence. Why the hell was she making Rachel dig the information out of her one spadeful at a time? “About what then?”

Kate stopped working her ring and pressed her palms on the counter, meeting Rachel’s gaze. “We’ve been friends a long time. I’m telling you the talk I’ve heard, woman to woman, even though you know I don’t have the stomach for hearsay and rumors.”

Seemed to Rachel that her stomach was doing just fine with hearsay and rumors at the moment. “Spit it out, Kate. What are people saying about me?”

“Not only about you, but you and Vaughn Cooper. They say you’re having a secret affair.”

Rachel wouldn’t have been more surprised if a unicorn had come trotting out of the darkness of the stock room. She gripped the counter, lightheaded.

“You know,” Kate said. “Sheriff Cooper is one of the most eligible bachelors in the county now that Kellan Reed’s off the market. You’d snuff out the dreams of a lot of girls around here if you landed him, including mine. I thought I was making headway when your name started popping up during conversations about him at the beauty salon.”

Rachel’s temper flared. She crushed the list in her hand. “Has Sheriff Cooper returned your interest?”

Smiling like a fool, Kate cocked her head. “We’ve been out a couple times.”

Goddamn it. She wrung the list in her hands until she heard the rip of paper.

Kate heard it too and pointed at Rachel’s hand. “Ah—ha, so there is something going on with you two. Linda Klauss was right.”

Whether or not Kate was being malicious on purpose, Rachel couldn’t tell. Either way, Rachel liked her a whole lot less than when she’d walked through the door. “Do I look like the kind of woman who has time to mess around with a cop? There’s barely enough time in the day for me to breathe with all the work I have around the farm.”

Drumming her fingers on the counter, Kate’s smile grew even wider. Rachel wanted to hit her. Not bad enough that she’d actually let loose with a blow, but it felt really good to visualize her fist making contact with Kate’s cheek.

“I don’t know about that, Rachel. When a fine figure of a man like Vaughn takes a liking to you, you make time for him.”

Kate was right about that, even if it didn’t bear admitting. “Kate, you’ve lived in Catcher Creek most of your life. You know better than to believe everything you hear in this town, don’t you?” Her tone had a forced quality to it. She bit her tongue, wishing she had a better poker face.

Kate shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

Rachel counted down from a hundred in her head as she worked to flatten the paper she’d crushed.

But Kate wasn’t quite done. She leaned clear over the counter and arched a brow. “That’s fine, that you don’t want to talk about it. But would you do me a favor?”

Oh, boy, this ought to be good. “What?”

“When Vaughn gets done with you, will you at least give me the courtesy of a heads-up, so I can have a try at roping him in before word gets around that he’s available again?”

As far as backhanded compliments went, that one had a whole lot of knuckle to it. Rachel ran her tongue along the inside of her teeth, working up a response. She should’ve said, He’s available now. Go ahead and take your best shot. But the words wouldn’t come out.

Instead, something lit up like a flame inside her. It wasn’t plain old jealousy, though. Kate would make a fine match for Vaughn. She was pretty and fun, smart as a whip, and from a good, solid family. There was no toxic history between them, as there was between herself and Vaughn, no deep regrets or blame for grievances suffered.

But no one could match the raw heat Rachel and Vaughn generated when the two of them came together. Everything else about their lives was incompatible, but not that. Standing there, staring at Kate through slits of eyes, Rachel’s indignation turned her spine to steel. She knew without a doubt that no experience he’d ever have with Kate Parrish or any other woman would compare to the two of them.

It was that knowledge that made her say, “Then I feel obliged to inform you, Kate—woman to woman—that when I get through with him, ifI ever get through with him, he ain’t gonna be good for much. Not after being ridden that hard for that long. A cowgirl like you should know that. But if you’ve got a thing for sloppy seconds, go ahead and get in line.”