Page 16 of Bucked By Love

Ransom yanks my braid back so I lose balance. I’m forced to settle onto my back with my head in his lap. I blink up and I see those brown eyes staring down at me.

“That’s all well and good,” he says. “But what do you say?”

I open my mouth, but I don’t have words.

No one’s ever asked me for my opinion before.

I wouldn’t know where to start.

Then I notice the length of the shadows in the trees.

“Oh…crap. What time is it?”

Ransom checks his watch. “Quarter to six.”

“I’ve got to get home.”

I scramble up to my feet. I pull my shorts up. My clothes are still damp and they stick uncomfortably.

I hop on Calypso. “Hey,” Ransom says. “See you tomorrow?”

Those brown eyes look so hopeful, it makes my chest go tight.

I shrug. “If you’re lucky.”

A grin inches up his mouth as I nudge my heel into Calypso’s hind legs, pushing her forward. I coax her into a gallop and her hooves thud against the hardened earth.

By time Daddy exists his study for the night, I’ve washed the river off of my body, re-dressed into a white sundress, and I’m sitting in the library with Pride and Prejudice in my hands.

I can feel him staring at me. Watching me. Suspicious.

“Dinner’s on in ten,” he says.

“Yes, Daddy.”

He walks out of the room and I turn a page, not reading a single word.

12

CLAIRE

The subterfuge works until it doesn’t.

The house phone rings. When I pick it up, Bonnie is sobbing on the other end. I can barely make out enough words to convince her to meet up at the river.

Mary-Kate meets us there. The three of us sit side by side on our old, flat rock. The river trickles and the birds twitter while Bonnie blubbers and sniffles, her eyes swollen.

“They found out about Rafe,” she says. “My parents. They went out for a movie and I told him he could come over and I…we…lost track of time…”

Mary-Kate sighs. “Amateur,” she says, even though I know full well she’s never snuck a boy in or out of her house.

Bonnie dissolves into another pile of sobs. I rub small circles over her back as she shakes under my palm. “It’s going to be okay,” I tell her. “We’ll figure it out.”

But then I see it. A sight that cuts through me like ice.

Her ring finger is empty; nothing but a pale band of bare skin where her Promise Ring was.

“Bonnie,” I ask, trying to quell the alarm in my voice, “your Promise Ring…”

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