“Ride?” I whispered, not even able to summon the breath required to make my vocal cords work.

“Yeah. Ride,” he echoed, nodding toward the barn. “When you come back in town? I’ll take you out for a ride. Think you can handle it bareback?”

Sweet merciful God.

I never really understood what it meant when I read the term “my knees buckled.” I now know. Luckily there was a cowboy to catch me. His skin burned when he wrapped his fingers around my biceps, literally holding me up in midair as I struggled to find my footing. I breathed in, his scent filling my nostrils. Sweat. Sweet hay. Heat. Could a man smell like heat? He did.

I took another hit—and sneezed. But this time at least I managed to do it a little more daintily.

 He chuckled as he set me back on my feet, turned me clockwise, and with a tiny push sent me back toward the house. “Hey, Clark,” I heard Hank say with a self-satisfied voice behind me. I floated on a puffy white cloud of dazed hormones to the back door, where Clark was now waiting for me with a frown.

“Hey, Clark,” I echoed, as he held the door open for me and I hovered inside, still a few feet off the ground.

Still in a trance, I drifted over to the kitchen table, where I finally came to rest in a chair. My brain was scrambled, everything south of my navel was clenching a phantom dick, and my ears kept repeating a word that I never knew could be so sensual, so sexual, so full of promise. I repeated it in my head, over and over again, trying it out in different ways.

Bareback.

Bareback.

Bareback.

“Horseshit.”

“What?” I asked, ripped from my fluffy sex cloud.

“Horseshit,” Clark said again, pointing toward my shoe. In my trance, I’d stepped right in it.

“Dammit.” I sighed, lifting it immediately and seeing the tracks I’d made on the clean floor. I started to hop toward the door, but on my second hop I stumbled and pitched forward. I would have gone through the screen door but for Clark, who caught me tight around the waist.

Crushed against his chest, my nose was filled with the scent of Irish Spring soap and paperback books. Immediately I was brought back to the scent of the library back home, that homey scent of sun-touched book spines and thick yellowed paper, a quiet afternoon in the stacks.

He set me down before I could think on it too long, however, and helped me back outside. Hank’s truck was thundering away in the distance, and I set to wiping my shoe off in the gravel. After dragging it around a few times I looked up to the porch where Clark was standing, studying me. I got it mostly clean, but still took my shoes off before starting back for the porch.

“Gross, huh?”

“I’ll say,” he muttered, then looked like he was going to say something else. He didn’t though, and when I came back up the stairs he just held the door open for me.

“There’s bleach under the counter,” he said, going to get a roll of paper towels from the pantry. “Let’s get this cleaned up.”

“Oh, God, Clark, you don’t have to clean this up, it’s my mess. I’ll take care of it.” I took the paper towels from his hands and grabbed the bleach. It was right where he said it was. He really had been here a lot in the last few weeks. “I got the bid from the last contractor, you want to get it? It’s on the mantel. Could we look through it together?” I asked, bending down to spray some bleach. “That way instead of sending me texts about things you don’t want done you can just tell me to my face, and then I’ll yell back at you in person. Sound good?” I wiped up the last bit of shoe mess and threw everything into a plastic bag, tying it off to go out to the trash.

When I turned around though, he was still standing there. Looking at me. With an indecipherable expression on his face.

“Cat got your tongue?”

“Hmm?”

“You look like you’ve got something to say. What’s up?” I asked, washing my hands, then turning to lean against the sink. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again.

“You look like a goldfish, Clark, out with it,” I teased, and he turned bright red.

“Just forget it,” he said, walking toward the door.

“Hey, wait, where are you going? Aren’t you going to look at the bid?” I asked, reaching out to stop him. I grabbed his arm, and he glanced down at my hand.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to ride bareback, Vivian?”

“Huh?”

“Bareback. On a horse. Ring any bells?” he asked, frowning now.

“Oh! Bareback! Right. Um, well, I’m sure we won’t actually—”

“Because it’s very dangerous. Especially for someone who hasn’t done any riding in a while. Things like that should be taken slow. And steady. And not rushed.”

I could hear the old grandfather clock ticking in the dining room. I could smell the briny ocean air. I could feel the nubby texture of the tweed in Clark’s jacket, rough yet soft under my fingertips. And I could see his eyes behind those eyeglasses, dark chocolate swirled through with gold and green. Patient. Kind. Waiting?

His hand reached up to cover mine, then lifted it from his arm. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

He picked up his briefcase and his scones, and pushed open the door.

 “Wait! Clark!” He turned around. “Don’t you want to, you know, um . . . see the bid?”

The right corner of his mouth lifted in a secretive smile. “I trust you’ll pick the right one.” He left.