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I yanked my jeans back up in one frantic jerk and nearly toppled into the nightstand.

“Who the hell are you?” I demanded.

“Sterling Hayes,” he said, leaning back casually in the chair as if he hadn’t just caught me about to get naked. “And you’re the woman who totaled my town’s most sacred monument.”

I stared at him, my woozy brain needing an extra beat. “You mean the cow?”

“Steer,” he corrected.

“Right. Sorry for disrespecting your…livestock.”

His smile widened like he knew exactly how dangerous it was to flash that kind of grin at me. It wasn’t polite or safe. It was a smile that belonged to men who ruined things, like lives…or panties.

And damn it, my stomach flipped at the very thought. But I did not get this far from my past mistakes just to make them all over again.

“Why are you here?” I snapped, narrowing my eyes and crossing my arms over my sports bra in an attempt at protecting my dignity. I wasn’t about to put that rancid hoodie back on.

“You’ve got a concussion,” he said easily. “Figured someone ought to keep an eye on you so you didn’t fall asleep and forget how to breathe.”

“So naturally you watched me strip?”

“Didn’t start out that way,” he said, another grin tugging lazily at his mouth. “But I’d call it a stroke of luck.”

I groaned, dragging a hand down my face. “Of course, that’s what was next on my bucket list, anyway. Flashing a hot, cocky cowboy.” Crap. I hadn’t meant to say the hot part.

“Watch it,” he drawled as he leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. His gaze skimmed me again with a slow, appreciative heat that made my pulse stumble. “It almost sounds like you’re complimenting me.”

He didn’t even bother to hide the smug amusement glittering in his eyes. He was most certainly enjoying every second of this at my expense.

I took a breath. Then another. I needed that hot shower and my clean clothes, but I didn’t see my suitcases anywhere, and if Sterling Hottie McCowboy Hayes was intent on sitting there, I could at least get some information out of him. “Where am I?”

“The Blackwood Inn,” he said. “Babs called ahead and had the room ready by the time we got you here. You scared half the town.”

“When I hit the cow?”

“When you hit Big Hank,” he corrected.

He couldn’t be serious. Except he was. Entirely. “Okay, I’m just going to say it. Big Hank sounds like a porn star.”

That made him laugh.

Like, really laugh. His head tipped back, throat exposed, skin catching the dim light in a golden glow that made me think of sun and heat and things I hadn’t let myself want in too long. My ex had been the opposite of warm and delightful by the end of our relationship. His skin had turned pasty from fluorescent office lights, the color of printer paper with a hangover.

Though it had looked quite different the last time I saw him.

Except…why the hell was I comparing them at all? Sterling, like Blackwood, was just another roadside attraction that I would soon leave behind like I did the others. I was going to make it to California and get as far away from my past and my ex as I could get without leaving the country.

When Sterling looked at me again, his gaze carried a warmth that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

We stared at each other for a beat.

Long enough for the pull between us to spark like static, humming under my skin.

My damp jeans were sticking to my thighs, but I barely felt it. How could I manage any brain function when he was staring at me like that? Maybe this was how evolution worked—forget fight or flight, my survival instinct had decided to short-circuit and ogle.

I cleared my throat, glanced away and back again. “Well, as you can see, I’m still alive. So, I’d like to shower now.”

His smile curved wolfishly. “Need help?”