Page 124 of Things Left Unsaid

Zee: That’s some imagery

Tee: Look, it’s only sisterly love that’s stopping me from asking if I can have a go when you’re done with him

Zee: This is you restraining yourself, huh?

Tee: Yes.

Tee: So, do me proud, cowgirl.

Colton

Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want - The Smiths

What with selling a third of our herd and distributing the rest onto Bar 9 land, speaking with engineers to have the Seven Cs tap into the Bar 9 water sources, and getting a team of men to break ground on a new bunkhouse for Dove Bay, you’d reckon I wouldn’t have time to think about my new wife…

You’d be wrong.

It’s been four weeks since we married and if we’re still in the ‘gentling’ phase of our relationship, I’m nowhere close to getting near Zee. Not even after that kiss.

One kiss—is that enough to sustain a man for a lifetime?

She didn’t rush off after it, but ever since, she’s been jumpy around me.

As far as I know, she leaves her room for food and to play games with Callan.

And it’s driving me crazy.

More than that, Calder’s belief that she’ll pick up and run is messing with my head.

Fear of loss is what I’m writing it off as. But it’s insane because I have nothing to fear when I never had her in the first place.

Leaning on the gate that looks onto one of our larger pastures, I watch a ranch hand we’re interviewing prove his mettle on horseback.

Theo’s putting the guy through his paces so I’m only monitoring the process while also keeping the interviewees' skill sets in mind for other projects—the Bar 9 and the chicken farm I haven’t gotten started on yet.

“Shoveling out chicken shit’s all these morons look capable of,” I grumble to myself as I preside over job interview number twenty.

“First sign of madness is talking to yourself.”

I squint at Callan. “What are you doing out here?”

“Just finished walking Harriet around the paddock. How did her vet appointment go?”

Harriet’s one of his favorite stock horses—and she’s on the brink of ‘too old’ to be carrying her foal. It’s only because of Callan’s security system that we realized how Fen, my stallion, even got to her—I love him but he’s no gentleman like his sire.

“She’s doing fine. Took her booster vaccinations like a pro.”

“She shouldn’t have had to.”

There’s no arguing with that. “We fixed the issue in the pens.” His harrumph tells me it’s not good enough. “What do you want me to do, Callan? Put a chastity belt on her? She went into heat early and we weren’t prepared for it. We will be from now on.”

His sniff is loaded with disdain. “I should have been here for the vet’s visit.”

“School’s important and I made sure I was with her.”

He grunts. “You got a clue who to hire?”

“So far, they’re useless.”

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