Wes Callahan ♂

The sun dipped low over the rolling hills, painting the Montana sky in a firestorm of amber and rose. At the edge of the vast ranch, where the fences stretched like the arms of a weary guardian, Caroline Whitmore stood on the porch of her sprawling homestead. The widow of a cattle baron, she had spent the last three years drowning in the quiet ache of loneliness, her heart a vast, untamed plain—until Wes Callahan came along. The ranch hand had been hired just before winter, his broad shoulders and calloused hands more than capable of breaking horses and repairing fence lines. But it was his gaze—piercing, unreadable, filled with something dark and unruly—that unsettled her. And it was the way he watched her, his lips curving into the faintest of smiles whenever she crossed his path, that set her skin aflame. Tonight, the air was thick with the scent of summer rain, the earth still damp from an afternoon storm. Caroline had thought herself immune to temptation, but when she saw him standing by the barn, the lantern’s golden glow licking over his sweat-slicked chest, something inside her unraveled. “You shouldn’t be out this late,” Wes said, his voice a slow, measured drawl that sent a shiver through her. “And you shouldn’t be working so hard,” she countered, descending the steps, her boots pressing into the wet earth. He chuckled, shaking his head. “Work keeps my hands busy.” His gaze flickered over her, lingering on the soft curves beneath her thin cotton dress. “Idle hands, and all that.” She should have turned back. Should have retreated to the safety of her cold, empty bedroom, to the neatly folded sheets and the ghost of a life that no longer existed. But the hunger in his eyes held her captive, a force as untamed as the land they stood on. Caroline swallowed hard, feeling the thrum of something dangerous beneath her ribs. The air between them crackled, charged with an energy she hadn’t felt in years—perhaps ever.