Page 135 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she says.

I lift one hand and tuck a loose strand of blue hair gently behind her ear before I can overthink it. “You don’t have to know yet.”

Her breath catches.

Mine threatens to do something similarly embarrassing.

“What if I hurt one of you?” she asks.

I let my hand drift to the side of her neck, thumb resting light just below her ear. “Then we deal with it honestly.”

“And if this blows up everything?”

“It might.”

She stares at me.

I shrug one shoulder. “Doesn’t change the truth.”

“You make everything sound so simple.”

“No,” I say. “I just know complicated things don’t get less true because they’re inconvenient.”

I wrap my arms around her carefully, leaving room for her to change her mind and I hold her. Just like that.

Under the trees. Beside the creek. The paper bag of pastries abandoned on the bench because for now, we’ve both forgotten sugar exists.

“You know what’s funny?” she murmurs into my shirt.

“I suspect I’m about to.”

“I trust you the most with this.”

I blink down at the top of her head. “That’s because I’m delightful.”

She snorts. “It’s because you don’t make everything feel like a test.”

I kiss the top of her head because if I aim any lower I’m going to get distracted, and right now she needs steadiness more than hunger.

Eventually we start back toward the truck.

She steals half my cinnamon roll. I let her because I’m generous in victory. She says that isn’t what happened. I say history will remember me kindly.

By the time we get back to Ironwood, the knot between her shoulders has eased enough that I count the whole thing a success.

Then I see the barn, and everything in me goes hard.

The side service light is on, yellow against the dark. The office annex sits quiet. Too quiet.

But it’s the tack room door that catches my eye.

Or rather the lock.

I stop walking so fast Annie nearly bumps into me.

“What?” she says.

I’m already moving.