The last time I saw Declan St. James was at our rehearsal dinner. That was shortly before he jilted me at the altar. To avoid the swarm of whispers and finger pointing every time I dared to show my face in public, I fled two hours south to Atlanta and never looked back. Over the last decade, I’d planned hundreds of scenarios about how our next meeting would go down. The expletives I’d hurl at him. Which knee I might use to annihilate his balls. Which dimpled cheek on his ridiculously handsome face I would send a stinging slap across. 

But being elbow deep in a cow’s ass was not one of them. 

Normally, I didn’t get up close and personal to a bovine’s rectum. At least not since veterinarian school. But desperate times found me back home to attend my grandfather’s funeral, who happened to be the town’s large animal vet. Those two facts had left me wading through manure in Roy Wallace’s pasture to care for a distressed heifer. 

While time and maturity seemed to have changed him from the boy I knew, I still wasn’t falling for his charm. Or his hard, chiseled body. Or ass you could eat dinner off of. 

No, I wasn’t going back down that street again. Unfortunately, Declan didn’t seem to get the message. Instead, he seemed as stubborn as he ever was and ready for a fight. It’ll be the fight of his life for me to let him back in my heart.