appreciated how attractive he was. His strong, square jaw featured exactly the right amount of stubble to look manly and slightly rough, while his cleft chin added character to his face. But it was his eyes that struck Mia the most. Dark, deep set, and piercing beneath the brim of his hat, they regarded her with a startling intensity.
He scratched his stubbly jaw as those sharp eyes looked her up and down. “Well, you’re not really dressed for a hike in the country. Let me guess: you’re looking for Bowman.”
“That’s right,” she said. “Am I close?”
“You’re a couple miles off the mark. The GPS is wrong.”
“How can the GPS be wrong?”
Pushing his hat back, he wiped the sweat off his forehead. “It just is. Been that way for years. I guess they don’t care about getting it right out here, or they’d have fixed it by now.” He pointed down the road behind her. “It’s trying to direct you to the old Bowman Farm, which is on the far east side of the campus. The main entrance to the college is two more exits up the highway you came in on.”
She turned to look in the direction he’d pointed, then back toward the highway she’d come from, resting her hands on her hips. “So you’re telling me everyone just gets lost trying to find the university?”
The cowboy shrugged. “Most people going there already know where it is.”
“Right,” she said. “Of course they do.”
He started toward the goats, who were watching him with interest. “I’ll just get these fugitives out of your way so you can turn around.”
“You mean they’re not supposed to be wandering around loose?”
He let out a deep, throaty laugh. “Not so much, no. They’re escape artists. Especially Alice. She’s the mastermind. Always leading the others into trouble.” He made a kissing sound and the goats clustered around him.
“They’re cute.” And so are you, Mia thought, but fortunately refrained from saying out loud.
“Don’t think they don’t know it. They’ll charm the pants off you and then start chewing on your shoes once your guard’s down. Speaking of…” He nodded at Mia’s feet, where one of her new goat friends was nibbling at the hem of her pants leg.
“Ack! Stop that!” She jerked back, out of the goat’s reach, and it gave her an indignant look.
“Come on, Bell. Back where you belong.” The man made another kissy noise and Bell trotted over to him, joining the others.
“Do they all have names?” Mia asked as she watched him lead the goats to a gap in the wire fence running alongside the road. She hadn’t noticed it before, but it must have been where the goats had slipped out.
“Yep.” He stooped to widen the hole in the fence and gestured the goats through. “That’s Agatha,” he pointed to each of the goats as he named them, “Zora, and Charlotte.”
“Agatha Christie, Zora Neale Hurston, and Charlotte Brontë are all novelists.” Mia read mostly nonfiction these days, but as a child she’d read a lot of classic literature because her father had told her it would make her smart.
The man nodded as he shooed the last goat through the fence. “That’s right.”
“Some people say Jane Eyre’s erotic masochism makes it the nineteenth-century Fifty Shades of Grey. But I think its complex depiction of female agency was profoundly feminist for its time.”
The cowboy lifted his head and squinted at her.
“Charlotte Brontë is my second-favorite nineteenth-century author,” Mia added, as if that could somehow explain why she’d said the words erotic masochism out loud to a total stranger.
“Are you an English professor?” he asked, frowning slightly.
“No, my PhD is in mathematics.”
He accepted this information silently. At least he hadn’t warily backed away from her. Yet.
Mia shuffled her feet, eager to end the conversation before she blurted out anything else embarrassing. “Thanks for, um…moving your goats.”
The man’s lips twitched in what she suspected was amusement at her expense. “If you head back the way you came and get on the highway heading east, you’ll see a sign telling you where to exit for the college.”
“Got it. Thank you very much.”
Mia got back in her car, turned around, and drove back to the highway as fast as she safely could.
Chapter Two
Once she found the university, Mia’s interview went well. So well they called her a few weeks later and offered her the job.
That left her with a difficult decision to make. On the one hand, it was the only decent job offer she’d received. On the other