Page 112 of Roaring Fork Wrangler

“What?” I asked.

“Your ex-girlfriends are worse.”

I held up both hands. “Hey, I blocked her.”

“Maybe you should consider blockingallof them.”

“How about if I change my phone number?”

She smiled. “That’s an even better idea.”

We were teasing each other, but what I had to say was something I’d never joke about. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, Juni. The only woman I ever will.”

Both of us jumped when my cell phone rang rather than vibrated. “Think you can get dressed in less time than it took you to get naked?”

“I’ll race you.”

I shook my head.

“What? I told you I was competitive.”

“Who do you want to tell first?” I asked on the drive from the cabin to the main house, where Decker said he was waiting.

“Do you want to tell your brothers and sister?”

“Eventually.”

Her eyes scrunched. “My parents and Grayson. Uncle Pete too, I guess.”

I chuckled. “You guess?”

“He’d be crushed if we didn’t. So, there isn’t anybody you want to tell right away?”

“There is—Sam.”

Juni leaned up and kissed my cheek. “I love that idea, Cord.”

Rather than risknot returning to the Lilacs in time, I decided not to meet with Kingston West. There was nothing I could do about the roughstocking business until the end of my year in East Aurora anyway.

The one thing I had wanted to do that I wasn’t able to was see Porter. As Buck had said when I asked where he’d disappeared to, there was no telling where he’d gone. Given the Roaring Fork’s security system was designed the same way theLilacs’ was, we knew he hadn’t returned to the ranch. And when I tried to call him, his phone went straight to voicemail.

Maybe he’d already gone to Parlin, and if that was the case, there wasn’t time for me to track him down.

“I’m gonnatrust that you can get your ass from the Buffalo Airport to the Lilacs on your own,” Decker said when he drove us to the airfield in Gunnison.

“I can ask Pete to pick us up,” Juni offered.

“Good idea. Arrange for backup too.”

I didn’t know whether he was joking or not, but I’d learned a while ago not to ask. I also knew better than to question why we were being transported in his plane and he wasn’t going with us.

Once we werein the air, I told Juni the story of what had happened the night my mother shot my father, and how, in the aftermath, she’d said she hoped that one day, when I learned about the decisions she’d made, I’d forgive her.

I also told her we’d learned the trust wasn’t our father’s, like we’d thought.

“Is it your mother’s?” she asked.

“It appears that way. It was drafted two years before she died.”

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