The Bet (Blazing Hearts, #1) by Kennedy Kovit

Chapter One
    N ot too big. Not too little. At least as far as small towns went. That was Middlefield. The town wasn’t huge, but it was decent sized when comparing it to other small towns. Used to be so damn tiny it didn’t warrant mention on a map. When they’d finally gotten listed on one, they’d had a town celebration to mark the occasion. Truth was, they tended to have a celebration for just about everything. The next one was to race armadillos of all things. Everyone would gather to watch it. It was just the way of things in small town America. 
    The evening sun beat down on everything, scorching the earth dry and making all the lawns turn brown and wither up. Already the month was behind on rainfall and it wasn’t as if they weren’t dry enough this time of year. If they didn’t get rain soon it would be a big issue. Some farmers were planting crops with the knowledge they wouldn’t take with the lack of rainfall, but they needed to collect on the insurance money. It was hard to make a living off the land, but it could be done.
    Tyson Morrows hung his black Stetson on a branch near him and pulled his black t-shirt over his head. He discarded it behind him on the same low hanging branch that now held his hat, which one would be hard pressed to find him without. The shirt was from one of his favorite bands. He’d decided to think of the band only in terms of its glory days, not what it had become. He wasn’t sure how he felt about its frontman now being a judge on a reality TV show. He wasn’t much into television and for sure was not a fan of reality TV. Didn’t really see the point. If people wanted to see real life he thought they should just go out and live it. Not sit on their duff watching it play out on a screen.
    Tyson fit the mold of so many men in the area. He liked pickup trucks, jeans, t-shirts, cowboy boots, meat and potatoes, and classic rock with some country music thrown in for good measure. Try as he might, he found it fit him, and he wasn’t one for putting on a false front. He’d made an effort to be less country when he was on a work trip to Boston, but that had proved to be an epic failure so he stopped nearly instantly.
    Funny how the Boston women fawned all over him the minute he put his cowboy hat back on and stopped giving a rat’s ass about how much he was standing out there. The only regret he’d had about his time there was not following through on his original plan—not stopping in to pay a visit to Lexie Garnes. She’d taken off four years back to attend some fancy university there. He never could remember which. All the fancy ones seemed to run together. All he knew was she didn’t belong there. She belonged in Middlefield with him.
    His chest tightened at the thought of her. She wasn’t far away anymore. Much to his surprise earlier in the day, she was home. His blond hair fell forward into his face, partially blocking his view. The sweat from working outside all day clung to him as he unbuckled his belt and then unbuttoned his jeans. He lowered them, his gaze on the lake and the sun as it began to lower on the horizon.
    Tyson took hold of his cock and ran his hand down the length of it, his thoughts on Lexie. She always wore the tiniest bit of lip gloss, drawing attention to her full, naturally rosy lips. He pictured those lips slipping over the head of his cock as her green eyes stared up at him. Damn, he wanted her before him, on her knees, right this very second. He wanted his cock hitting the back of her throat. The very thought of it made him jerk harder on his shaft, tugging, pulling, working it with his hand.
    He closed his eyes firmly, his thoughts consumed with Lexie. Envisioning her there, before him, eager for his cock was something he did often. Too often actually. It wasn’t healthy how much he thought about her, but he couldn’t stop himself. Each swipe of his cock, each pull, each tug, he saw her eyes looking up at him, felt her mouth in place of his