Sleeping Beside Daddy

My father's best friend was supposed to be off-limits. One summer changed that.

I graduated and had no idea what came next. So I called the one man who's always made me feel steady: Quentin, my late father's business partner, now a rancher in the Montana countryside. He said yes before I even finished asking.

I didn't expect the grey in his dark hair. I didn't expect the way he still calls me "kid" and means anything but. I definitely didn't expect to fall for a man twenty-seven years older than me, six foot one of quiet command and steady hands, in the space of one endless summer.

Quentin doesn't ask twice. He doesn't share. And once he decides I'm his to take care of, in the kitchen, on the trail, in his bed, there's no version of this summer where I walk away unchanged.

I came to Montana to find myself. I found him instead.