Page 26 of The Cattleman's Unforgettable Love

That made him smile.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing, just… I like that you’d offer to help, even though you weren’t thrilled about spending time with them.”

She gave him a guilty smile. “It’s not that I don’t want to meet them or anything. It’s just that I don’t want to disappoint them. I don’t do well with kids in general, and if they already have some hyped-up idea of who the hacker lady is, I’m sure I won’t live up to it.”

He gave her a stern look. “Sure you would. You’re awesome.”

“Thank you. That’s sweet of you.”

He groaned. “You keep saying that I’m sweet.”

“And that’s a problem?” she asked.

“Not a problem – just an indication that you don’t know me very well yet.”

She let out a short laugh. “You’re joking, right?”

He nodded slowly, hoping that he was.

~ ~ ~

Amelia stared out the window at the mountains as they passed. Paradise Valley had to be the most beautiful place she’d ever seen – and she’d done some traveling in her time. She loved the way the river carved its way between the mountains, which loomed over them on either side – close enough to feel like a protective presence, but not so close that they crowded in.

She watched the river rushing by, much darker and faster than she’d noticed on her previous visits.

“You okay over there?” Ford asked after a while.

She turned to him with a smile. “Yeah, sorry – I’m fine. I didn’t mean to be all silent on you.”

He didn’t take his eyes off the road, and she loved the way the lines around them crinkled as he smiled and said, “To tell you the truth, I’m probably more comfortable with silence than conversation most of the time. But I didn’t know…”

“I’m the same,” she told him. “So don’t feel like you need to chatter away and entertain me. I don’t think either of us would be comfortable with that. I think there’s such a thing as companionable silence, don’t you?”

He glanced over at her before turning his attention back to the road. “I guess there is. I can’t say I’m all that familiar with it, but if I had to describe the last few minutes, that’s what I’d call it.”

“Me too,” she told him with a smile – but she glanced out the window again when she realized they weren’t headed down toward the park like she’d expected.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “This isn’t the way to the park, is it?”

He frowned. “No – but I can turn around if that’s where you want to go.”

“I don’t particularly. I’m just curious. I assumed that’s where we were going.”

He glanced over at her again. “I know it was one of the suggestions I came up with the other day when we talked about doing this, but we didn’t nail anything down.”

“It’s okay, I’m not saying that I want to go there,” she assured him. “It’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”

“That’s what I thought. You spent quite a bit of time down there when you first came to visit Sierra, didn’t you? I know you arrived here before Mateo and Maya did, but you kept your distance to give Sierra and Wade their time together, didn’t you?”

She smiled, surprised that he remembered. “That’s right. I did a lot of exploring before I finally came to the ranch.”

“So, since you’re not a newbie to Yellowstone – and since it’s Saturday, and that means the tourists will be out in full force – I figured we could go somewhere else. Help you get to know the valley better.”

“Thanks. Where are we going?”

“Up into the foothills. If you’re up for a hike, there’s a trail I can show you that leads to a small lake. We could have our picnic there. But if you’d rather go on a driving tour, there’s still plenty of places I can show you – and we can take the picnic down to Dailey Lake.”

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