Page 20 of Last Chance for Her Rancher Boss

Will climbed out of the truck along with his wife, Lucy. They spent a minute getting their baby girl, Sammy, out of her car seat before greeting Nash, who took his time ambling up to them.

“What’s up?” Will asked, aggressively casual as always. He was a skinnier, quicker version of Nash and usually reminded people of a jackrabbit. Lucy, meanwhile, was all soft edges and pale skin. People didn’t tend to give her a lot of credit at first glance, but she could more than take care of herself.

“You guys must be bored to drive out all this way.”

“Heaven forbid we actually like you,” Lucy said with a grin, wrangling Sammy onto her hip.

“Thought we better pop in and see how everything was going with the evaluation,” Will said. He sounded kind of serious, which was so out of character that it took Nash by surprise.

Oh, yeah… the evaluation. He’d been so focused on Meg being the one to arrive that the whole concept of the ranch being looked over had taken a back burner.

“Uh…” Oh, God. He hadn’t even told Will that it was Meg that had turned up on his doorstep. Will waspainfullyaware of how badly things had ended between the two of them; he’d watched Nash descend into a pit of dread over the whole fiasco. So how was Nash even supposed to start explaining how the evaluation was going? His tongue froze, not knowing what to say.

“Aw, man. That bad, huh?” Will said, rubbing the back of his neck in just the same way that Nash did. While Lucy got distracted with Sammy, who was fussing over nothing in particular, Will grabbed Nash’s arm and pulled him a little way away.

“Come on, tell me. What’s happened? Is it going awful?”

“Well… no. Not awful. It’s going good. I think. Uh, it’s Meg.”

Will blinked a couple of times before he responded. “Who’s Meg? What are you talking about?”

“The person who’s staying here, the one the corporate folks said they were going to send out to look over the place…”

“Yeah?”

“It’s Meg. Meg Whitmore. From school.”

Will looked like he was short-circuiting as he absorbed what Nash had just said. It took a full ten seconds and felt remarkably similar to when Nash had looked up to find Meg standing right in front of him. The whole thing was too much to compute all at once.

“Wait,” Will said, waving his hands about as if it would help to clear his thoughts better. “Like,Meg,Meg? Meg who you were head over heels for to the point it had you acting stupid? That Meg?”

“Shutup,” Nash hissed, because he still didn’t know where Meg was right this second, and if she happened to walk in on this conversation, he might actually self-combust.

Will gave him a dry look.

“What?” he said. “Don’t want everyone knowing about the torch you carried for her? Even though it was visible from space?”

“No. I don’t. Because it was forever ago.”

Yeah, hedefinitelydidn’t feel anything towards her now. God, he couldn’t even lie to himself. Will, unsurprisingly, saw right through him.

“Ah-huh. So she still doesn’t know how bad the puppy love really was?”

“No. And she’s notgoingto know, because you are going to keep it to yourself.”

Will rolled his eyes. “Seriously? Isn’t that going to make things awkward while she’s here, you know,working.”

If only he knew. But their truce was so fragile right now that a mild wind could blow it all to pieces. There was no way on earth Nash was going to risk it by digging up the past.

“Things are fine,” Nash insisted. “We’ve been civil, getting to know each other again. It’s all good.”

“Ah-huh.”

“But like I said, you’re not going to breathe a word about it and then things will continue to be good.”

Will looked supremely unconvinced. “So you’re going for the whole ‘burying your feelings and hoping for the best’ strategy, are you? Because it’s worked out so well before.”

“There are nofeelings,” Nash insisted, and they both knew it was a bald-faced lie. “Feelings are non-existent. She’s here for work, like you said. She’s a big fancy vet for a mega corporation. This is an entirely professional relationship. Anyfeelingsare in the distant past. Very distant.”

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