Untouched by Maisey Yates Page B

happened more than a decade ago.”
    She bit her lip like she was trying to keep words from punching their way out of her mouth. Then she relaxed a little. “Well, great. Good for you. Good for you . . . I’m going to . . . build the Great Firewall.”
    “Of course.”
    She disappeared into the building and he shook his head, turning and heading back toward the house. He had some paperwork to deal with. Having Longhorn turned into a nonprofit meant there were a lot of
I
s to dot and
T
s to cross.
    And if his brain was occupied with all of that, then he couldn’t obsess about Lark and her buttons. He had way more important things to obsess about. Paperwork, for starters.
    And what Sam would be reporting from Elk Haven Stables.
    ***
    Jill looked around the cabin she would be staying in with her husband for the next week. Courtesy of his dickhead boss. She let out a breath and walked to the far wall of the cabin, then back again. It was a very small space to be sharing with Sam, all things considered.
    Like rooming with a stranger. And after twenty-three years, she had no damn idea how that had happened. But she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a conversation with him. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at her like he even saw her. It always seemed like he was looking right through her.
    The front door opened and Sam walked in, his expression grim. “All checked in.”
    “Great,” she said.
    “Yep.”
    She looked at him and wondered when he’d gotten old. He had new lines around his eyes and gray at his temples. And then she just wondered if she didn’t look at him anymore either.
    “So, what are your plans for the day besides playing spy games?”
    “Nothing. They have horses available. I might go out for a ride. Been a while since I did that.”
    “You do that for your job.”
    “Not up in the hills.”
    “True. Fine.”
    “Why, what are your plans?”
    She shrugged. “Nothing. I don’t really have them. I might work.”
    “Of course.”
    She let out a long sigh. “Yeah, whatever the hell that means, Sam. We’re here doing crazy work for your boss, but I get attitude when I say I’m working?”
    “You could ride with me.”
    “I don’t want to,” she said. She regretted how shrewish that sounded almost the minute the words came out, but she couldn’t back down. She didn’t want to back down.
    He sighed. “That’s fine, Jill. I’ll be back around later.”
    He turned and walked back out of the cabin, and Jill let out a long breath. She’d screwed up, again. She felt like she only said the wrong thing with him now. Maybe it was just a testament to how difficult it was to talk to a stranger.
    She sat down at her computer and logged in. Her throat dried when she saw she had an email from Jake. She clicked it open and skimmed it. It was mainly about work. About the sales threshold for the month and how everything was going so far.
    And then she got to the last line.
    I’m going to miss the sexiest woman in the office this week.
    She squeezed her eyes shut and closed the email program. That was overt, even for Jake. He was a flirt, that was for sure. And she truly, truly had no intention of ever taking him up on any of his subtle offers.
    But she couldn’t remember the last time anyone had called her sexy. She was a forty-three-year-old woman who’d been with one man. She’d given him her beautiful years and had given birth to two children, with the stretch marks to prove it.
    So yeah, she was hardly beating admirers off with a stick. Including her husband, who seemed bored by her at most.
    She opened up the email again.
    Sexiest woman in the office.
    Dammit. What was she doing? She closed it again and shut her laptop, pushing up off the desk. Forget work. She would just got for a walk. Try to forget her fight with Sam. And try to forget the email from Jake.
    ***
    “Take a lunch break, Mitchell.”
    “Busy,” Lark responded before turning around, and then when she