Hayloft

Ten years ago she climbed the hayloft ladder and kissed him. He kissed her back, and then he sent her down.Jolene Carraway is thirty-two, a sensible woman with a good job in Denver and a fern for company, and she has come home to Sweetwater Ranch for exactly one weekend: her little brother's wedding. She has a bridesmaid dress in deep emerald satin that was never meant for curves like hers, long honey-blonde waves falling down her back, and one firm rule for the night. Do not look at the foreman.Wes Garrity has worked her family's cattle for sixteen years. He is thirty-eight now, the biggest man in any room, sun-browned and heavy with muscle, his dark beard new and his black hat tipped back, and he is still the one man in Wyoming she has never been able to forget. He is also her brother's best friend, the steady, careful, decent kind of man who does the right thing even when it costs him everything.But tonight the barn is strung with a thousand lights, the fiddles are playing, a huge white moon is rising over the prairie, and somebody has left the hayloft door open.He says he stopped once and it nearly killed him. He says he doesn't have it in him to stop twice. And with a hundred and forty wedding guests dancing on the boards right below them, and her whole family one staircase away, Jo is about to find out exactly what a patient man has been saving up for a decade.One wedding night. One cowboy who never stopped waiting. One hayloft where nobody is supposed to be.