The Rancher's Rules

“Sure.”

She sat down on the couch. He popped in the DVD, then turned around to sit down and hesitated. What was the matter with him?

She patted the seat beside her. “The popcorn is over here.”

After another short hesitation, and an unreadable look, he sat down, leaving a few inches between them. She scooted over to sit up against his side and rest her head against his shoulder. It was how they always watched DVDs. Grant sighed and put his arm around her shoulders.

The image of Lucy trying to stuff chocolate candies into her already full cheeks faded as Zoe became intensely aware of Grant’s arm where it touched her.

This kind of thing had been happening with increasing regularity over the past year, and Zoe had always forced herself to ignore it. She’d thought The Night had well and truly cured her of any lingering romantic feelings toward Grant, much less any lust for his hard-muscled body. She’d been wrong, as the past year had too frequently shown…at least about the lust part.

She couldn’t believe that she still wanted him after the painful rejection he’d dealt her when she was nineteen.

She’d been home from college for the summer, and they’d spent tons of time together, like always. Only there had been something different about that summer. It had been as if Grant had finally woken up to the fact she was a woman. He’d taken her places he’d previously only taken dates, and she’d caught him looking at her, his blue eyes darkened with what she’d been sure was desire, on more than one occasion.

She’d realized he was the embodiment of every romantic fantasy she’d ever had or would have when she was sixteen. Only he’d been engaged and living the majority of the year on the east coast then.

He’d gone to college near his real mother, so he could get to know that side of his family. It hadn’t worked out the way either he or his dad had hoped. Grant’s grandfather had died his sophomore year of college and he’d left his grandson the majority of his wealth, making Grant’s mother angry and driving another wedge between mother and son.

Grant had started dating “the witch” that same year, and they’d been engaged ten months later. The engagement had ended when Grant had agreed to return to Oregon to run the ranch, after his dad had told him he intended to move with Lottie to Portland and oversee his business interests there.

To give Roy Cortez credit, he had offered Grant three options: hire a foreman with full decision-making authority, sell the ranch that had been in their family for four generations, or come home and run it himself.

Considering the fact that Grant had planned to live and work on the east coast, it had come as quite a shock to most everyone when he had agreed to move home. Everyone except Zoe. She’d known he wouldn’t leave the ranch’s running to a foreman, and that he would never sell it. He was a business tycoon through and through, but he was also connected to the land in the same way his great-grandfather had been.

His fiancée hadn’t liked it, and had given Grant back his ring. He’d started dating lots of different sophisticated women then. There were always plenty to choose from, both in the winter, when ski bunnies showed up, and the summer, when supermodels lazed by their swimming pools in barely-there bikinis.

Zoe had been sure he would never look at her that way. She was too smalltown, and not exactly centerfold material, with her petite frame and mousy brown hair. But she’d been wrong, at least for a little while, and it had all come to a head one night that summer, when one of their many playful arguments had turned into a wrestling match.

She’d found herself pinned beneath his hard body and his even harder erection. She could still remember the shock she’d felt as his hips had settled into hers, making her intimately aware for the first time of the effect she had on a male body. And not just any male body. That hardness had belonged to Grant.

He’d kissed her and it had been incredible. So incredible that she hadn’t noticed him removing clothes until they’d both been naked from the waist up and his mouth had settled on one of her nipples. The pleasure had been so intense it had shocked her right out of her passionate haze and she’d panicked.

She’d never even been French kissed before. She hadn’t wanted to experiment with anyone but Grant, and he hadn’t been available. She had pleaded with him to let her go. She’d thrown her shirt on and run from the barn and from the feelings he’d evoked in her. Later, she’d wanted to kick herself for being such an idiot. She could have trusted Grant not to hurt her.

She’d loved him all her life, and if it wasn’t him it would never be anyone. So she’d decided to give him her virginity. He’d been supposed to escort her to a town dance, and she’d planned to offer him both her love and her innocence that night. Her plans had ended in her private humiliation when a model from New York had convinced Grant to drop Zoe off at home before taking her for a nighttime flight in his private plane.