Page 56 of A Forever Kind of Rancher

“You know why. I’ve still got some time in the rodeo left. You and Dan aren’t even divorced...”

“That sounds like a lot.”

“We don’t need to get ahead of ourselves,” he said.

“Don’t pull away from me just because of all that.”

He let out a hard breath. “I’m not. You’re the one who said you wanted to leave at the end of the month.”

“I might not leave town.”

“Great. I’d love it if you didn’t leave town.”

Except that felt like something clawing at his chest, and he couldn’t quite say why.

“Maybe we both just settle down a little bit. And I will come to the family thing, as long as you’re good with it.”

“I’m very good with it. Perfectly happy.”

“If the girls found out Tansey Martin was going to be a thing at your parents’ house and they weren’t allowed to go...”

“You’re welcome to be there. I’m sorry.”

He looked at her, and he felt... Wounded. It was the strangest thing. He had messed that up. He hadn’t handled it well, and he just had to wonder if in the end he was going to do more harm than good to her. It was the last thing he wanted.

Of all the things, he knew that. But she was just asking those questions. Why couldn’t they be together? Why not?

There weren’t simple words for why not. That was the problem. Maybe he’d been avoiding thinking about whether or not his plan was to end up by himself because he hadn’t planned on finding somebody or because that was the way it was going to be.

The fact was, the one woman he’d been able to imagine himself being with was Wendy. And it had been one thing when she was with another man. One thing when she was married. That had been destiny. She was safe from him when they’d met.

And now, everything else was due to Daniel’s shortcoming. It didn’t count.

It wasn’t a thing.

It meant he got to have her now. It didn’t mean he had anything different up ahead of him.

He had to keep clearheaded about it.

“I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah. I... I probably won’t make the girls come over and have dinner tonight.”

“Hey. Fair.”

“But they’ll enjoy the family thing on Saturday. So. And I’ll see you before then. I...”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Okay, I’ll see you.”

He didn’t move. She did, though, headed past him and out to her car. And somehow, he felt like he’d made a mistake. He just didn’t know what it was.

Chapter Ten

She had underestimated how awkward it would be to load everyone up into Boone’s truck again with the amount of tension she felt just looking at him.

She was sure even her narcissistic teenagers would feel the tension.

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