Christ almighty. He was in a bad way. And it didn’t help matters that, for the last three hours, he’d been soundly chastising himself for the way he handled things after she flat-out asked him why he didn’t like her.

Didn’t like her? Was she crazy? Of course he liked her. What wasn’t to like?

But, in true guy form, when he tried to convey that it wasn’t her, that it was him, it’d somehow come out sounding all wrong. Accusatory, almost. And offensive, certainly.

“Holy shit fire, man,” he muttered to himself. “You gotta get it together.”

And while he was at it, he’d also do well to yank his head out of his ass. Because too much more of that kind of thinking, of obsessing about Delilah, about what he should or should not have said, about how gorgeous and sexy and flat-out provocative she was, and he might be tempted to say fuck it to all his hard-earned life lessons, fuck it to everything, and just give in. Give in to the needs of his body. Give in to her desire to see where things between them might lead…

But while he was damn sure he could pull off the first of those two things, he was also just as certain the second would be asking too much. He may like Delilah immensely, respect her grit and her spunk, but…God’s honest truth, he didn’t…well, he didn’t trust her. Or, more accurately, he didn’t trust himself around her.

Think of Jolene, he told himself. Think of that god-awful morning when the bank came to take the ranch…

And, yessir. That helped to instantly cool his ardor. Because, not counting the day his father died, the day he lost the Lazy M was the worst of his entire, sorry life.

It’d been gone. Just like that. The land his ancestors had worked for three generations. The big, rambling house that had seen the births and deaths of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. The cattle herd he’d helped breed, brand, and build. All of it was taken from him in the blink of an eye. And all because the blessedly few extra pennies that had been in the ranch’s coffers had gone to finding Jolene…

Lawyers, private eyes…hell, even a former police detective had milked the estate dry. And then the inheritance taxes had come due, followed by a balloon mortgage payment, and that was that. Game over.

Aimless, set adrift when his entire world, his entire future, was snatched from him, he’d enrolled in the criminal justice program at Texas A&M. Four years later, he was accepted into the FBI Training Academy. And a handful of years after that—thank you, U.S. government, for your zealous record keeping—he was the one to finally locate Jolene.

Living in California with some big shot movie executive, she was as lovely as he remembered. And even knowing what kind of woman she was—the kind to run out on her husband, her home, and…everything with only a simple Dear John letter reading I’m unhappy. I’m leaving—he’d still been amazed at how uncaring she’d been to learn he lost the ranch after his father’s death.

“Good riddance,” she’d told him. “That place was like a prison. I never hid how much I hated it.”

And that was true. If she’d expressed her loathing for the Lazy M once, she’d done it a thousand times.

“It was awful there. Endless days of housework, of staring out at boring ol’ fields and fat, smelly cattle,” she went on, tossing her long black hair over her shoulder. “I was the Belle of Lee County before the marriage. Did you know that?” Of course he knew that. It’s all she’d ever talked about. “I was respected and admired and invited to all the best parties.” Her blue eyes took on a dreamy, faraway expression before suddenly sharpening. “And then I moved out to the Lazy M.” Her top lip curled. “Where there were no parties. No people to respect or admire me. No excitement. No fun.” She shuddered dramatically, then turned her beautiful, vivacious smile on him. “So I did what was best for everyone and left.”

And although he found it impossible to believe, he could see she actually thought that was true.

“And just look at me here.” She motioned around the massive house. “I’m the belle again! Oh, Bry-Bear,” she cooed, reaching forward to smooth a hand over his cheek. The old nickname, once so cherished, sounded like an obscenity, and her touch repulsed him. “Now you’re free of the ranch, too. Everything worked out! Isn’t it wonderful?”

Wonderful? No. Nothing about what she’d done was wonderful. He’d never wanted to be free of the ranch. Being free of the ranch felt second only to death.

He left rubber on the movie executive’s immaculate driveway on his way out. And sitting on Redondo Beach later that day, staring out over the seemingly infinite expanse of the Pacific Ocean, he promised himself two things. The first was that he would never allow history to repeat itself. And the second was that, someday, he was going to make enough money to buy back the Lazy M.

In the years since he made that vow, he’d managed to accumulate about half the funds necessary to put in an offer on the ranch—his work for the Black Knights and the sizeable government paychecks that came with that work having helped substantially. As for history repeating itself?

Enter Delilah…

With her bold nature and fiery beauty, she was just the kind of woman he found most desirable. The kind to light up the room. The kind of woman guaran-damn-teed to—

Bzzzz. Bzzzz. The buzzing of his cell phone pulled him from his troubling thoughts. Reaching into his hip pocket, he yanked out the device to find Steady’s encrypted number blinking on the screen.

“Talk to me,” he barked. And for once, Steady did, throwing out a litany of medical terms. From the corner of Mac’s eye, he watched Ozzie approach, sub sandwich in hand. “All right, Steady,” he said when BKI’s medic wound down. “We’ll see you here in a bit.” Then he stood and motioned Ozzie over. “I need you to take over for me here while I go in and give Delilah the news on Fido.”

And considering he was seconds away from having to knock on her door and see her in those goddamned pink panties and that goddamned might-as-well-be-see-through T-shirt, it was no wonder dread was circling around in the pit of his stomach.

“Sure thing, Mac my man.” Ozzie plopped into the plastic chair. A warm, dry wind blew against the motel, tunneling fingers through Mac’s hair and wafting the smell of the mustard and salami on Ozzie’s sandwich up his nose. His stomach growled. He realized he hadn’t touched his own sandwich, too caught up in hot thoughts of Delilah and the cold grip of old memories.

“While you’re in there,” Ozzie said, pulling out a pickle and munching contentedly, his standard grin firmly in place, “don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Well, hell,” Mac told him, pulling a face as he rapped his knuckles against the baby-blue door. “That doesn’t leave much, now does it?”

* * *

“It’s open,” Delilah called. She was curled beneath the linens of the bed farthest from the door. The TV atop the dresser was tuned to The Price Is Right, the volume up in an attempt to distract her from constantly obsessing over her uncle. Or Mac. She seemed to go back and forth between the two men when she wasn’t muttering to the contestants on the game show that their bids were too high.

I mean seriously, Janelle from Wisconsin, do you really think a seven-piece dining set costs thirty thousand dollars? What do you suppose that table is made of? Antique ivory? The tears of archangels?

And not that she had anything against Drew Carey, but she really missed Bob Barker.

“Delilah,” Mac said, tipping his chin by way of acknowledging her presence in the room. And it was amazing, but she’d never found the sound of her own name more irritating. Add to that, he was wearing her second favorite expression.

“Wow, Mac,” she grumbled. “You could really start a business with that look of disapproval. You’re Mud, LLC.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. And how was it possible that even standing clear across the room he could still make her skin tingle and her heart race?

Her shirt suddenly felt two sizes too small, squeezing her breasts, brushing her nipples. Sonofa—

“I wanted to tell you…I…wanted to say,” he began hesitantly. Then, “Screw it. Look, I’m sorry for the way I handled things earlier, okay? I didn’t make myself very clear, and I—”

“Oh, you made yourself perfectly clear.”

“No.” He forced out the word. “I should have just said, it’s not you, it’s me.”

“Jesus, Mac.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s like you’re a walking cliché.”

“Maybe so,” he admitted on a sigh. Then his eyes flicked to the paper-covered sub sandwich lying beside the lamp on the bedside table. “You haven’t eaten.”

“I’m not hungry,” she assured him. And although it was true, she hated that the three words came off sounding petulant.

“Stress burns calories,” he said, crossing his arms, revealing his tattooed biceps. For the love of tequila! Why do I have to find that so sexy? “And unless, by the time we find your uncle, you want there to be nothin’ left of you between your horns and your hooves but your hide, I suggest you force yourself to eat.”

“Did you come in here just to badger me and throw out absurd cowboy-isms?” she demanded, refusing to look at him—he was just too tempting. Instead, she kept her eyes glued to the television screen.

“No. I came in here to give you something.”