The airport in Laramie smells like diesel and disappointment. A vast, empty sky presses down on the single runway, and the wind doesn’t whisper—it whines. My suitcase, a vintage floral monstrosity, looks like a rejected prop from a Tennessee Williams play dumped on the tarmac. Amelia’s driver, a man in a stiff black cap who introduced himself as “Carl” and nothing else, took my bag with the solemnity of a pallbearer and hasn’t spoken since. The text from my sister blinked on my phone during the descent: ‘Emergency at the spa. Client reaction to a peptide booster. Car will meet you. Make yourself at home.’ Of course. A dermatological crisis ranks above a sisterly welcome. The California wildfires painting the horizon orange felt less like a disaster and more like a fitting backdrop for my exile.

The car glides through gates that swing open silently, revealing Amelia’s domain. It’s not a house; it’s a statement in sandstone and glass, all sharp angles and reflective surfaces, squatting on the Wyoming prairie like a spaceship that forgot to leave. It’s been a year. Nothing has changed. The pool is a perfect, chemical blue rectangle, and beside it, my sanctuary: the low-slung guest house. Carl deposits my suitcase inside the main house’s foyer with a grunt and vanishes. I don’t go in. I beeline for the guest house, the familiar crunch of the gravel path under my sandals. Home. Or the closest thing I’ve had to one since I left.

Inside, the air is thick and still, saturated with the scent of chlorine and sun-warmed concrete. It’s quiet, just the low hum of the pool filter. It smells like every summer I spent here trying to write a novel and mostly just perfecting my tan. I don’t turn on lights. The fading afternoon sun slants through the blinds, cutting the living room into bars of gold and shadow. I peel off the clothes that smell like airplane and anxiety, leaving a trail of silk and denim on the terracotta tile, and head straight for the shower.

The water is a baptism. I wash the journey off my skin, the grit of travel and the phantom smoke from a state away. I use the jasmine soap I left here last time, lathering until the steam smells like a garden. For a few minutes, under the spray, I am just a body. Not a runaway, not a disappointment, not a trust-fund dilettante fleeing an act of God. I hum something aimless, off-key, a shield against the quiet.

Wrapped in nothing but steam and my own poor singing, I pad back into the living room, the damp tile cool under my feet. The scent of jasmine and damp tile fills my lungs. I’m reaching for the towel I’d left slung over the leather sofa when the front door clicks open.

The air changes. It charges, crackling with the intrusion of clean sweat, dry grass, and outdoors. My breath snags in my throat. I freeze.

A man stands in the doorway, silhouetted against the blinding late-day sun. He’s shirtless, skin gleaming like he’s been dipped in gold, dark hair damp at the temples. He’s just stopped mid-motion, one hand still on the door handle, his chest rising and falling with a runner’s rhythm. Then his eyes find me. Blue. Piercingly, shockingly blue. They widen, but they don’t dart away. The shock in them is a mirror, reflecting the sudden, hot flush that ignits from my chest to my hairline. My skin is screamingly, utterly bare. Every nerve ending is a live wire.

His gaze doesn’t waver. It moves. A slow, deliberate journey from my face, down the length of my body, and back up. It isn't leering. It's assessing. Like I'm a puzzling equation he's been set to solve. The air between us hums, charged with the intensity of his look.

Defiance arrives before shame, a hot bolt of pride that stiffens my spine, that squares my shoulders. It's primal. My skin prickles, not from chill, but from a sudden, acute consciousness. Everywhere his eyes land, a line of heat is left behind. My nipples tighten into hard, sensitive peaks. A deep, quiet pulse begins low in my abdomen, a rhythm that answers itself between my thighs.

I don't hide. I stand there, bare in a shaft of sun, and let him look. I let the warmth of it, the total vulnerability, flood me until my breath hitches. I am completely exposed. And for one reckless, suspended second, I want him to see everything.

The silence stretches, taut enough to snap. He breaks it, his voice a low, clipped baritone that wraps around the vowels in a way that is unmistakably, infuriatingly British. “You,” he states, the word precise as a scalpel, “are in my shower.”

My brain short-circuits. His shower? The arrogance of it, the sheer, unflappable certainty, is a match to my gasoline. “Your shower?” I hear myself say, my own voice sounding too high, too dramatic in the thick air. “I’ve been showering here since you were probably learning to properly iron your little school uniform. Who the hell are you?”

One of his dark brows lifts, a minute, controlled movement. He finally lets go of the door handle and takes one step inside, closing the door behind him with a soft but definitive click. The room shrinks. He’s taller up close, all muscled lines and disciplined grace. A faint sheen of sweat still glazes his collarbones. “Sebastian Fairfax,” he says, as if announcing himself at a faculty dinner. “Arthur’s brother. This,” he adds, with a slight nod encompassing the room, “is currently my residence. And you, I must assume, are the proverbial loose cannon I was warned about. Imogen, yes?”

Warned about. The phrase lands, a little dart. Of course Amelia warned him. *My sister’s a bit much, unstable, prone to grand gestures and poor life choices.* I can hear her saying it. The defiance curdles into something sharper, more dangerous. A smile I don’t feel stretches my lips. “Charmed,” I lie, sweetly. “And you’re in my light. And my way. And, unless you’re planning to hand me that towel, very much in the presence of a woman who is about to call the police on a trespassing, shirtless stranger.”

He turns away with a sharp, deliberate pivot, presenting me with the rigid line of his back—muscles taut under golden skin, a landscape of disciplined restraint. He addresses the blank white wall beside the bookshelf, his voice a study in exaggerated propriety. “The primary house rule, which I feel compelled to establish immediately, is that this is not a communal changing facility. Boundaries, Miss Crane. They exist for a reason.”

I stare at the sweat-damp path tracing his spine. The audacity is so pristine it’s almost artistic. My laughter is a short, sharp burst in the quiet. “Are you seriously giving me a lecture on boundaries while standing in my living room? You’re the one who walked in on a naked woman. That’s not a boundary, Sebastian. That’s the plot of a bad thriller.”

“I was returning from a run,” he says to the wall, each word measured. “To the residence I was explicitly given use of. A fact your sister evidently failed to communicate. The lapse in intelligence is not on my part.”

“The lapse in intelligence,” I fire back, snatching the towel from the sofa and finally wrapping it around myself with a furious twist, “is believing a man who runs shirtless in Wyoming has any right to say the word ‘propriety’ without irony.” The terrycloth is rough, a poor shield. I feel more exposed with it on, the performative modesty highlighting the absurdity. “And don’t call me Miss Crane. It makes me feel like a governess in a Brontë novel who’s about to be sent to the attic.”

He turns then, slowly, as if on a formal receiving line. His eyes are careful, fixed on a point somewhere over my left shoulder. The blue is less shocking now, more like chilled sea glass. “What would you prefer? The proverbial loose cannon?”

“Imogen is fine. Unless you’re filing a report. Which, by your demeanor, I assume you are.” I cross my arms over the towel, the damp ends of my hair dripping cold trails down my chest. The adrenaline is fading, leaving a hollow, shaky feeling in its wake. I’m standing in a towel, arguing with a statue. “So, what’s the protocol, Professor? Do I get a curfew? A list of approved shower times? Should I raise a flag when I’m decent?”

A muscle feathers in his jaw. It’s the first crack, a tiny fracture in the marble. “The protocol,” he says, his gaze finally dropping to meet mine. It’s not angry. It’s… weary. “Is that we are apparently, and unfortunately, temporary cohabitants. Amelia and Arthur are at the university until late. Therefore, we shall have to manage a détente until the domestic chain of command can be re-established.”

“Détente,” I repeat, letting the word roll out, lush and ridiculous. “Is that what we’re calling it? I was leaning towards ‘hostile takeover.’” I take a step toward the hallway that leads to the bedroom, needing space, needing to not be in this sunbeam with him. The tile is cold under my feet. “My things are in the main house. I need to get dressed.”

“By all means.” He gestures toward the door with a stiff, polite sweep of his hand. The movement makes the muscles in his forearm cord. He is, I note with a fresh spike of irritation, still shirtless. The courtesy is a costume. “I shall endeavor to make myself scarce.”

“You do that.” I clutch the towel tighter and walk past him, giving him a wide berth. The air between us vibrates with the heat he brought in from his run, the clean, salty scent of his skin. It’s infuriatingly not unpleasant. I yank the front door open, the Wyoming sun hitting me like a slap. “And for the record?” I throw over my shoulder. “Next time, knock. Even on your own ‘residence.’ It’s basic human decency. Something I’m sure they covered right after ironing.”

I don’t wait for a reply. I step out into the blinding light, the gravel biting my bare feet, and march toward the main house. I can feel his blue gaze on my back, a physical pressure between my shoulder blades, all the way across the patio.