In Copper Ridge, Oregon, a cowboy’s best friend might turn out to be the woman of his dreams...

If Finn Donnelly makes a plan, he sticks to it. After his brothers left Copper Ridge, Finn stayed behind, determined to keep their ranch going by himself. And when he realized his feelings for Lane Jensen were more than platonic, he shoved that inconvenient desire away. It was easy...until it wasn’t. Suddenly his brothers are coming home to claim their share of the property. And Lane is no longer just in his fantasies. She’s in his arms, and their friendship is on the line...

He’s been her buddy, her handyman, her rock. But until that one breathtaking kiss, Lane somehow overlooked the most important thing about Finn Donnelly—he’s all man. They’re right together, no matter how much his volatile past has bruised him. Finn wants to hold Lane’s body, but he doesn’t want to hold her heart. But Lane is falling fast and now she’s got a plan of her own...to show Finn there’s nothing hotter than friendship turned to slow-burning love.

Also includes a bonus Copper Ridge novel, Take Me, Cowboy!

Praise for New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates

“Fans of Robyn Carr and RaeAnne Thayne will enjoy [Yates’s] small-town romance.”

—Booklist on Part Time Cowboy

“Passionate, energetic and jam-packed with personality.”

—USATODAY.com’s Happy Ever After blog on Part Time Cowboy

“Yates writes a story with emotional depth, intense heartache and love that is hard fought for and eventually won in the second Copper Ridge installment... This is a book readers will be telling their friends about.”

—RT Book Reviews on Brokedown Cowboy

“Wraps up nicely, leaving readers with a desire to read more about the feisty duo.”

—Publishers Weekly on Bad News Cowboy

“The setting is vivid, the secondary characters charming, and the plot has depth and interesting twists. But it is the hero and heroine who truly drive this story.”

—BookPage on Bad News Cowboy

“Yates’s characters are masterfully written with a keen eye for establishing emotional depth...each book [is] like a mini vacation.”

—RT Book Reviews on Last Chance Rebel

Slow Burn Cowboy

Take Me Cowboy

Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Slow Burn Cowboy

Maisey Yates

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Slow Burn Cowboy

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

EPILOGUE

Extract

Take Me Cowboy

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

“ANOTHER CASSEROLE?”

“You’re welcome,” Lane said, crossing the threshold into Finn Donnelly’s house carrying a disposable tin pan that looked like it was full of enough food to feed a small army.

“I can’t eat all of this, Lane,” he said, watching his best friend’s petite form disappear as she made her way from the expansive entry into the kitchen.

“But your brothers can,” she shot back.

He followed her path, his footsteps echoing on the stone floor as he entered the kitchen behind her.

“I don’t know how long they’ll be staying.”

His brothers. The entire Donnelly clan was theoretically showing up any day now. To collect an inheritance none of them deserved. Who knew that his grandfather—possibly the most difficult old bastard on the planet—possessed such a sense of fairness from the great beyond?

Finn had dedicated the last twenty years to working on the Laughing Irish Ranch while his brothers had gone off and made their own way. Which was fine by him. At least, it always had been. It was much less fine now that the old man was dead and his three brothers had been left with equal share in a property they had no blood, sweat or tears invested in.

But Finn figured they would come to pay their respects, and then he could offer them monetary compensation and send them on their way.

They’d never been interested in the ranch before. He didn’t see why they were acting like they wanted to be involved now.

“I imagine they’ll be staying long enough to eat a meal,” Lane said, her tone dry. She flipped her dark hair over her shoulder as she opened the fridge and bent down, examining the available space. “I have brought you a lot of food,” she said, looking back over her shoulder.

“Yes. A lot.”

“Well, most of these dishes you shouldn’t have to cook while you’re dealing with all of this. But some of them are also the result of my testing various sauces and spices that get sent to me. So I can figure out what I want to stock in the Mercantile.”

“Lane of Copper Ridge,” he said drily, “the patron saint of self-serving charity.”

She made a scoffing sound as she straightened and closed the fridge, then set the pan on the counter before turning away from him again. “No one else is cooking for you, Finn. Because you’re a cranky asshole. So maybe you should show a little more appreciation.”

She jerked the fridge open again, bending back down and starting to rearrange the contents. She made a little humming sound, her back arching as she reached deeper inside.

He looked at her ass. He didn’t even bother to try and stop himself. He had accepted the fact that he was attracted to Lane a long time ago. And around the same time he had accepted that he was never going to do anything about it.

He had a host of reasons for that, all of which he’d spent the past several years reinforcing. She was younger. Her older brother would kill him. But more than that, it just wasn’t worth messing with their friendship, no matter how fine her ass was.

Lane was special to him. Important. There was also something fragile about her that he’d sensed from the first, when she’d turned up in Copper Ridge to live with her brother. Finn was the wrong man for fragile.

The first time he’d ever felt attracted to her had come as a shock. Like getting hit in the chest with a bolt of lightning. She’d been eighteen to his twenty-four and he’d been at her and her brother Mark’s house for dinner. Mark had gone to bed, citing an early morning, and he and Lane had ended up staying up to watch a movie.

It was a comedy, and Finn could barely remember what it was. But he remembered Lane laughing. It had been the sweetest sound, and it had done something to him. Then she’d leaned up against him and placed her hand on his thigh to brace herself, and that something had become abundantly clear.

He’d been so disgusted with himself he’d made a thousand excuses and gone straight home. It had never gone away. Not after that. Not once he’d seen her as a woman.

But it had dulled to a vague ache now, instead of that sharp shock of heat. And that was how it had to stay. Repressed. Controlled.

Given that he’d made his decision early on, normally, he made a show of controlling his desire to check her out. Right now, he didn’t see the point. Right now, his grandfather was dead and he was going to be invaded by family that he hadn’t seen in longer than he cared to admit.

Right now, his focus was dedicated to dealing with that.

Amid a host of unenjoyable things, he was going to go ahead and enjoy the sight of Lane’s ass in those jeans.

“I’m sorry, Lane,” he said. “I will try to be more appreciative of the fact that I’m going to die buried beneath a pile of bereavement foods.”

“At least you won’t die of starvation,” she said, straightening and turning to face him, her smile brilliant, her brown eyes glittering. She picked up the casserole pan and put it in the newly cleared space in the fridge, then closed the door.

“Well, that’s a small comfort.” He crossed the kitchen, making his way over to the sink, pressing his palms flat on the countertop and gazing out the window. The house—which was a giant monstrosity that Finn had never understood, given the fact that for as long as he’d known his grandfather the old man had lived here alone—was nestled into a hillside, overlooking interlocking mountains covered in pine trees that stretched on into the distance until they faded from deep green to a misted blue.

The back of the house faced the ranching operation. The fields, containing herds of dairy cows, and the barns.

His blood, sweat and tears were there. Soaked into the ground, the wood and basically every other damn surface in the place. Like the rest of his brothers he had spent summers here as a kid. Unlike them, when he was sixteen he had decided that he was here to stay.

Finn had never felt anything quite like the peace that came from working his body boneless out in the field. And after a life spent with his volatile mother and completely unreliable father, he had liked finding something that he could control.

If he did the work, he got a result. If he spent the day fixing a fence, at the end of the day he had a functioning fence. It was tangible. It was real.

It completely boggled his mind that his grandfather had decided to give any of the property to the grandsons who had never showed an interest. But there was no arguing with a dead man. Hell, there had been no point arguing with the old man when he was alive.

“Do you want to stay and eat?” Finn asked, now that Lane had put the food away.

“Don’t mind if I do,” she said. “Of course, I spent most of the day tasting different products that came into the store. I got some pistachio cream from Italy. You have no idea. It was amazing.”

He frowned. “What do you do with pistachio cream?”

“Eat it with a spoon? Bathe in it?”

“As long as the food you made me is normal.”

She waved a hand. “Normal. Dull. Your palate needs work.”

“If loving chicken nuggets is wrong I don’t want to be right.”

“You’ll be pleased to know that the casserole I brought tonight is mostly pasta-based, and is in no way in violation of your steak and potatoes philosophy on food.”

“Pasta-based and steak and potatoes? That sounds weird.”

“I meant that in the metaphorical sense. The metaphor being that you like boring food and it grieves me.”

“I think you’re adventurous enough for the both of us, Lane.”

“Well, tonight I think we’re going to have a combination of potpie and pot roast. There’s a theme.” She took two containers out of the fridge and set them on the counter. “I shall commence warming them.”

“Why don’t you let me take care of that?” he asked.

Lane arched a brow. “Oooh. You mean I don’t have to microwave my own dinner? And they say chivalry is dead.”

“I am a chivalrous bastard, Lane Jensen.” Something about the way the corner of her mouth turned up just then caused a tug low and deep in his stomach.

“You’re a study in contradictions, Finn Donnelly,” Lane said as she continued to assemble the dinner as though he hadn’t offered to be the one to do so.

But this was how things went. He took care of everything in her house that she considered to be man’s work. Any kind of plumbing or wiring issue, arachnid-related concerns and the extermination of the odd errant vole in her yard.

In return, she often took care of things like feeding him, or buying him clothes when she went into Portland or Eugene. He never even had to ask. She just appeared with things. Usually after noticing that he had worn a hole through his boots or something like that.

Basically, Lane was his wife. But with virtually none of the perks a man actually wanted from a marriage.

But, considering he didn’t ever want a wife, that was fine by him.

A blow job. Sometimes he would like a blow job. But a friendship was hardly worth detonating over that.

“That’s me, a walking contradiction. Complicated and shit,” he returned, his voice a little harder than he’d intended it to be.

Due in large part to the fact that he had just been thinking about Lane’s lips on his body. Always a mistake. One he didn’t usually make.

“Yes, a man of deep complexity. And steak and potatoes,” she said, a laugh hovering on the edges of her words.

The sounds of domesticity settled around them, and he let them wash over him just for a moment. There was something nice about watching her bustle around the kitchen.

Probably because he had never really experienced that growing up. His father had taken off when he’d been little, making a new life with another woman, and for a while with the two kids that had come from that union—Liam and Alex.

After his father had left, his mother had been more concerned with the drama in her love life than dealing with her son.

Finn had learned early on to make peanut butter sandwiches and hot dogs.

Cain, the oldest Donnelly, was from their father’s first serious relationship, Finn from his second. His brother Alex had been part of an affair that had occurred around the same time as the marriage to Finn’s mother, which put the two of them close in age.

Then Finn’s father had left and married Alex’s mother and produced one more child, Liam. Making the youngest two the only full-blood brothers in the crew.

Which left Finn with his mother. Until she’d left him too.

Family fun with the Donnelly’s was rarely all that fun, for all of those reasons.

He had never really been close to his brothers, for very obvious reasons. And now, they were all going to descend.

“How long has it been since you’ve seen your brothers?”

“Well, Alex was deployed for eighteen months, and then he went back to base rather than Copper Ridge when he got out. So it’s been a couple of years. Probably about the same for the rest of them.” He was pretty sure. He didn’t keep track. “Hell, I think I talk to your brother more than I talk to any of mine. And I don’t even talk to him that much.”

She let out a short, one-note laugh. “When you do, can you get more than a one-word conversation out of him?”

“Not really,” Finn said, not seeing the issue.

Lane laughed. “He’s so cranky.”

“That’s probably why the two of us get along.”

Mark Jensen was one of his oldest friends, and even though he’d moved down to California a few years ago he and Finn still kept in touch.

The two of them had gotten acquainted after high school, both of them young and away from their parents. Mark had moved to Copper Ridge at a young age and taken work on a fishing boat. And Finn had been working the ranch.

Eventually, Mark had moved away and gone to college for a while, but then he had come back and taken on engineering work on the same fishing boats he had started on as a grunt laborer. Finn was still a laborer. In fact, that was what he intended to be for the rest of his life. That was what he liked. There was honesty in it, working the land.

You couldn’t bullshit the earth. He liked that. You had to work, and the rewards were merit-based. Sometimes the weather swept in and messed things up, but living on the coast in the relatively temperate Oregon climate and with modern conveniences, that was not the biggest concern for a dairy farmer.

He had good contracts with one of the major dairies in the state, and additionally had been working on developing some other avenues for selling their products. Yeah, he was a laborer, but he had always been proud of it. Better to be like that than like his father. Running around the country screwing anything that moved and trying to get out of having to work for a damn thing. He had never understood how his grandfather’s only son had managed to turn out that way.

The old man was a hard-ass. Possibly because he was compensating for what had happened with Finn’s father. But either way, he had taught Finn the value of an honest day’s work. And he was grateful.

It had also shown him the value of staying. Investing. Which neither of his parents had managed to do.

And it had given him a way to have some control in his life. After spending his childhood being jerked around by the whims of adults, figuring out he could actively affect the world around him had been a revelation. That he could work at something, cultivate the land. Build up something that no one could take from him.

Except, apparently, when his grandfather died and left the land to his brothers. That felt much closer to losing his foundation than he would have liked.

“I don’t know about that,” Lane was saying, pulling their food out of the microwave. “I don’t actually think you’re as grumpy as Mark is.”

Lane turned around and nearly ran into him. Finn reached out to steady her, gripping her shoulders and holding her there. Her shirt was soft, and so was she, and it made it hard to pull away as quickly as he should.

He cleared his throat, releasing his hold on her. “Maybe I’m just not as grumpy with you.”

The moment extended, her blue eyes locked with his, then slowly, a tight smile curved her lips, slackening as the air between them seem to clear. Some of the tension loosening. Then her expression turned amused.

“If that’s the case, I really would hate to see you with other people. You might not be as cranky as Mark, but you’re not exactly rainbows and sunshine.”

“If I were rainbows and sunshine you wouldn’t like me. Anyway, without a thunderstorm you wouldn’t have a rainbow.”

“You are my very favorite thunderstorm, Finn.”

He ground his teeth together, still feeling the effects of his earlier lapse in self-control. Still feeling the impression of her warmth beneath his fingers. She did not seem similarly affected. “Happy to be the dark cloud in your life.”

“Stop scowling at me. I’m making you dinner.”

He did his best to relax the muscles in his face and to give her something that looked a little bit less surly. He would only ever do that for Lane.

Right when Lane took his plate out of the microwave, there was a knock on the door. He let out a heavy sigh. “If it’s another casserole...”

“Who else is bringing you casserole?” Lane asked, her tone full of mock offense. “I’m just kidding,” she said, smiling. “I know that no one else is bringing you casserole. At least, no one under the age of eighty.”

“Maybe I like older women,” he said, lifting a shoulder.

She arched her brow. “To each his own, I guess.”

His scowl returned and he walked out of the kitchen, heading toward the front door. He jerked it open without bothering to look and see who was on the other side. And when he saw, he froze.

“Hi, little brother. It’s been a while.”

As Finn stared at his older brother, Cain, he had to concede that it had probably been more than a couple of years since they had seen each other. Cain’s dark hair was longer than the last time he’d seen him, his face a little more lined. Around his eyes. Around his mouth.

When a girl who could only be Cain’s daughter started to make her way toward the door from the car, her expression sulky in that way that only teenage girls could accomplish, Finn amended that timeline to way more than a couple of years.

The last time he’d seen Violet, she had been a little girl. This half-grown young woman in front of him was definitely not the child he remembered.

Her hands were stuffed into her sweatshirt pockets, the hood pulled up over her head, her shoulders hunched forward. She came to stand beside her dad, looking incensed.

“It was a long drive,” Cain said.

Finn looked past his two relatives to the beat-up truck with the Texas license plates that was parked in the driveway. He hadn’t realized Cain was going to drive. The very thought of driving halfway across the country with only a teen girl for company made Finn want to crawl out of his own skin.

Though, actually, the idea of driving halfway across the country with his brother made him feel that way too.

But more concerning than any of that was the trailer hitched to the back of the old truck. Suspicion lodged itself in Finn’s chest.

“Why didn’t you fly?” he asked.

“Wanted to have the truck.” Which didn’t answer the unspoken question about the trailer. Cain looked past him. “Aren’t you going to invite us in?”

As if it were an option to leave him out there on the porch. A large part of Finn wished it were.

Finn fought against the desire to say something confrontational, and focused on the reality of the situation. No matter how he felt, Cain had a right to be here.

But that didn’t mean he had to like it.

“You own exactly as much of this house as I do, Cain,” Finn said, the words sticking in his throat on the way out. “You don’t really have to ask my permission.”

“That’s how it is then,” Cain said, walking past Finn and into the house.

Violet remained stubbornly rooted to the porch.

“Violet,” Cain said, his tone full of warning. “I thought you were going to like, freeze to death. Maybe you should come inside so you don’t die of exposure.”

Violet rolled her eyes and crossed the threshold into the house. She pulled the phone out of her pocket and immediately busied herself by tapping her thumbs on the touch screen.

“Say hi to your uncle Finn.”

Finn had never gotten fully used to the idea that he was somebody’s uncle. But then, it was difficult for him to believe that his brother was a father. Actually, it was even stranger now that Violet wasn’t in diapers.

The last time Finn had seen her she had been maybe seven or eight, looking at Cain and at all of her uncles like they were gods. And Cain had still been married. Maybe that was another reason this was so strange. Seeing Violet as something other than the bright-eyed imp who worshipped the ground her dad walked on.

And being treated to her total and complete ambivalence when before his very existence had made him as unto a god.

He supposed he didn’t really have a right to feel much about that either way. It wasn’t like he had been very involved in her life.

Though in fairness to Finn, Cain hadn’t made much of an effort to involve him.

“Hi, Uncle Finn,” Violet said, not looking up from her phone. “My, how you’ve grown.”

Her response stopped him short. “I wasn’t going to say that,” he said.

“Sure.”

“I wasn’t,” he returned.

Finally, Violet looked up, a long-suffering expression on her face. “They all do.”

Not him. He was thirty-four years old. He wasn’t somebody’s elderly relative.

“Do I have a room or something?” Violet asked, directing the question at her dad.

Finn could tell that Cain was about to lecture her for being rude, but as far as Finn was concerned getting rid of the teenager as quickly as possible was optimal. “Up the stairs. First room on the left,” he said.

It had always struck Finn as odd that his grandfather had designed the house to hold so many people, when the old man had few friends and little contact with his family in the broad sense. But the place was big enough to house a small army.

Most of the bedrooms had gone unused since the house had been built five years ago. And when Finn had gotten a look at the will after the old man had died, he’d wondered if they’d been put there for this purpose.

Which had made him feel like a damned idiot. Thinking any of this was for him. Was for a job well done. Hell no.

He’d busted his ass, worked his fingers to the bone—literally in some cases—and they would reap the rewards.

“Thanks.” She shoved her phone back in her pocket and tried to force something that looked vaguely like a smile before walking up the stairs. It was strange to see somebody come into the house for the first time and not be completely awed by the sheer scope of it.

The custom-built cabin, with its high beam-crossed ceilings and breathtaking views of the misty green wilderness, was usually enough to stop people in their tracks.

Apparently, that reaction did not extend to surly teenagers.

After Violet disappeared, Finn turned to his brother. “Well,” he said, “she’s gotten—”

“Impossible?”

“Not what I was going to say. But, you’re the expert.”

Cain pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not an expert on anything, just ask Violet. But that’s not really relevant to why we’re here.”

“Okay,” Finn said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “You’re here because?”

“Why do you think? It’s not like this is some random appearance you weren’t expecting. Our grandfather died.”

“And per his wishes there was no service. He wanted his money to go back into the ranch, and his body to go back to the mountains. I spread his ashes and didn’t make a deal out of it, just like he said to do.”

Cain set his jaw. “Grandpa left part of the ranch to me, and I’m here because I want it.”

Tension crept up Finn’s spine. He’d known his brothers would come for their inheritance. Hell, who wouldn’t? But he’d imagined they would be discussing money. Finn had been prepared to issue payouts—or make arrangements for them anyway.

What he hadn’t thought was that anyone might want their share of the ranch itself.

“In what capacity, Cain? Because you’ve never paid much attention to the ranch or what goes on here before. In fact, you never even came to visit in the past eight years. It has to have been that long. The last time I saw Violet she was a kid, now she’s...that.”

“I’d apologize to you about that, Finn, but I was kind of in the middle of dealing with my life, which hasn’t been easy for the past few years.”

Finn knew that his brother had been going through a hard time. With the divorce and all of that, but he’d also figured if Cain was having trouble handling it, he would have said something.

He wasn’t sure why he’d figured that, since he would rather die than go to one of his half brothers for help.

Which made him feel like a jackass. He resented that something fierce. Feeling like a jackass in his own damn living room when he was the one being invaded.

“Right,” Finn said, unable to make his tone anything other than hard.

It wasn’t that he didn’t care about Cain’s issues. It wasn’t that he didn’t have some sympathy. It was just that it was all buried beneath the mountain of resentment he felt over this situation.

Cain shrugged. “Now I figure I’m going to deal with it here.”

The sound of a feminine throat clearing caused both men to turn. “Hi,” Lane said, a sheepish smile on her face. She was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, her hands clasped behind her back.

“Cain,” Finn said, doing his best to school his voice into an even tone, “this is Lane.”

“Is she your...”

“Oh, no,” Lane said, a note of incredulity running through the denial. “I’m just his friend. I came to bring casserole, because I knew that you would be coming. At least, I assume you’re the person that I thought would be coming. You’re his brother, right? You do look like him,” she said, rambling now at that full-tilt pace that he had only ever seen Lane accomplish.

Cain looked slightly surprised by the avalanche of words he had just been subjected to, but then he seemed to recover quickly enough. “Hi,” he said, “I’m Cain.”

Lane looked at Finn as if she was waiting for additional information. Well, Finn didn’t have any. At least any he felt like giving. The silence stretched on, and he could sense Lane getting increasingly twitchy, since silence was an enemy she typically made it her mission to defeat.

“Cain and Lane,” she burst out. “That’s funny. And you probably won’t forget my name.”

She stood there, looking no less uncomfortable. As uncomfortable as Finn was starting to feel.

“How long are you staying for?” Finn asked.

Cain glanced around the room, studying the surroundings intently. And then his blue eyes fell back to Finn, looking far too serious for Finn’s liking.

“Well,” he said slowly, “I figured we would be staying for good.”

CHAPTER TWO

MAYBE SHE HAD demonstrated a little bit of cowardice in leaving Finn alone with his invading family. But Lane hadn’t really seen what she could contribute to the scene. She loved Finn to pieces, and he was her best friend in the world. But he was gruff and he didn’t share his feelings easily. He was the kind of guy who led with angry, then made up for it with grand gestures, like the time he’d come to her house and built a deerproof fence for her new garden. Or the time he’d spent an entire day clearing away all the thick brush around the cabin, and forging a path for her that led into the woods so she could more easily access the berry bushes that grew around her property. Or when he’d rebuilt the dock at the lake by her home so that it was larger and didn’t have any soft, damaged boards.

Yeah, Finn was more hammer and nails than hearts and flowers. He had a soul of gold beneath his general cranky exterior.

That didn’t mean she wanted to hang out and witness the ensuing crankiness, though.

And anyway, she had standing plans to meet up with her friends Rebecca Bear and Alison Davis.

She was just going a little earlier than necessary. And if they could make it at the new time, all the better. If not, she would just sit there and eat French fries while she waited. Since she hadn’t stayed for dinner at Finn’s, she was officially starving to death.

And here she had given him a hard time about his palate. But she, Lane Jensen, known foodie, also had a soft spot for really greasy food. And when she wanted that, Ace’s bar was the place to go.

“Hi, Lane,” Ace Thompson said from his position behind the bar. “French fries?”

Ace had made women swoon across town for years. And he still did, but the wedding ring on his left hand put a damper on things. He was lumbersexual hot. But he was also a one-woman man since marrying Sierra West and starting a family with her.

“You’re like my dealer. And yes. Regular, not sweet potato. I’m not in the market to pretend that there’s any nutritional value involved in this.”

She breezed through the dining room and took her place at the counter-height table that she and her friends typically occupied on their nights at the bar.

She sighed, picking up a menu and examining the dinner column, even though she knew exactly what was served at Ace’s. Just in case he’d added something new.

Ultimately, she decided that she was going to order a hamburger. And when the server came with her basket of fries, she did just that.

“I was able to get one of the girls to close up for me.” Lane looked up and saw her friend Alison approaching the table. Her red hair was disheveled, dark shadows beneath her eyes. “I think I might need a vacation.”

“You definitely do. I think you’ve been working more than overtime getting the bakery stable over the past couple of years.”

Alison took her seat across from Lane and immediately stuck her hand in the basket of fries. “True. And I also lost two of my long-term employees last week, so I’ve been scrambling to try and fill holes in the schedule. I haven’t had anybody approach me for a while about a job. Which is good, I guess. Since I have a reputation of hiring people in dire circumstances, I can only suppose that there isn’t anybody hanging out in a dire circumstance. But I’d be more grateful if I wasn’t working my fingers to the bone.”

“That’s not a very appealing visual. Considering that your fingers touch baked goods.”

Alison made a scoffing sound. “Why did you order those pale, anemic fries?” she asked, as she took another one.

“Oh, you mean real fries instead of your imposter sweet potato nonsense?”

“They’re better. That’s just a fact,” Alison said, reaching into her purse and pulling out her phone, checking it quickly.

“What? Who are you? What is our friendship?”

“Rebecca said she’s almost here.”

As if on cue, Rebecca walked into the bar and crossed the room, heading straight for the table. “Sorry. I tried to get here sooner but Gage was at the store helping me close.”

“I imagine that’s relationship code for doing something that is absolutely not helping you close your store,” Alison said.

Rebecca turned bright red. “Possibly.”

Lane tried to ignore the stab of jealousy in her stomach. She had been single going on way too long now. It was getting old.

It was incredibly petty to have any sort of jealousy regarding Rebecca’s relationship with Gage West. It had been hard-won, the obstacles between them seemingly impossible to overcome given the fact that Gage had been at fault for an accident that had caused Rebecca serious scarring—inside and out. If anyone deserved happiness, it was Rebecca.

However, her friend’s happiness certainly highlighted Lane’s own aloneness. Granted, to a degree it was a choice. She didn’t exactly have the time or energy to devote to a relationship right now.

Too bad her discontentment had nothing to do with rationality. She knew that she didn’t want a man in her life at the moment—not in a romantic capacity—it was just that her bed felt very empty sometimes.

And looking at Rebecca, who fairly glowed with satisfaction, it felt very, very empty indeed.

“Gross,” Lane said, not thinking it was gross at all. In fact, she thought it was downright enviable. “Do you need to order? Because Alison and I didn’t wait for you.”

“I called it in,” Rebecca said, “mostly because I knew neither of you would wait.”

Rebecca’s hamburger ended up arriving before Alison’s or Lane’s, which seemed unfair on top of everything else. Not only had she very recently had some sex, she was also indulging in a hamburger a full five minutes before her friends. Her single, celibate friends.

When Lane’s food did show up, she attacked it with gusto. She had the vague thought that she was very likely using her hamburger to help soothe some of the unsettled feelings that were left behind after witnessing Finn’s confrontation with his brother. But it was no big news to her that she used food to deal with her feelings.

There was a reason that she had opened a specialty food store, and it was only partly because the old business had been established but needed to change hands right around the time she had been financially able to make that step.

She had always loved the Mercantile on Copper Ridge’s Main Street, ever since she had moved to the small town on the Oregon coast when she was seventeen. She loved the exposed brick on the walls, the warm, homey feeling and the easily accessible samples of bread and different types of infused olive oils.

The fact that she got to work there all day almost every day was one of her favorite things about her life. So what if she had a serious emotional crutch in the form of food? She had managed to find a way to continually keep herself surrounded by said crutch.

“I thought you were eating dinner with Finn?” Alison asked, eyeing Lane as she continued to feast on her burger.

She swallowed her bite, and then took a slow drink of her Diet Coke. For some reason, she was hesitant to bring discussions of Finn into the group. But then, that wasn’t unusual. Her friendship with Finn was specific. Its own thing.

It wasn’t easy or completely open the way her relationships with Alison and Rebecca were. But how could it be? He was a man, and she wasn’t blind to that fact. Not only that, he was older than her. And he’d been friends with her brother, Mark, before he was her friend. But as the years had progressed, and Mark moved away, the gap had seemed to close between the two of them.

He was kind of like an older brother. Except a little more equal. She supposed the exact definition didn’t really matter. But she still often felt the need to put up a wall between that relationship and her relationship with her girlfriends. She told them everything, but telling them everything about Finn bordered on being a violation of him, and that was what she tried to avoid.

“Well, I was. But... He had a visitor?”

“Please don’t tell me he forgot that you were coming over and hooked up with some girl,” Alison said, her nose wrinkling. Alison was always prepared to think the worst of men. She tried to keep the negativity to a minimum, and Lane knew that. But she also knew that the other woman had ample reason to have a low opinion of the species.

Lane hesitated. “No. He didn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that. You know Finn, he’s... Well, he’s a little bit nicer than that. It’s just he has kind of an infusion of family right now. Because of his grandfather.”

Alison looked contrite. “Right. I forgot about that. How is he?”

Lane shrugged. “As good as can be expected. He knew that Callum was going to go soon. I just think even when you expect it there’s nothing easy about it. Plus, he has to deal with his brothers now. And that’s just a whole thing.”

“Family invariably is,” Rebecca said.

“Speaking of family,” Alison said. “How is Jonathan warming up to Gage?”

Lane’s attention was momentarily pulled away from the conversation by something flickering on the TV screen above the bar. And then everything faded into the background.

Because there he was.

Cord McCaffrey, newly a senator, darling of the media, instant internet sensation and Lane’s personal trial by fire. How was any of this fair? Here he was, in her bar, disturbing her French fry time.

The man was like an incredibly charismatic cockroach. He could not be killed. Not that she wanted him killed; it was just she wanted him a little less successful and a little less in her face. Also, a little less beloved by all.

Seeing him on the screen, in a power suit with a power tie, giving a speech so well constructed it could make angels weep, she felt tiny. Tiny and insignificant. She hated that. She had achieved a lot in her life. Without help from her family.

And mostly, she didn’t miss them. Mostly, she didn’t ever think about the big house she had once lived in in Massachusetts with her old money blue blood parents. Mostly, she was very happy living in a tiny, seaside town on the Oregon coast, as far away from them and their judgment as it was possible to get without crossing the ocean.

But seeing Cord dredged up memories. And God knew she had been seeing him way more often than usual lately.

“Lane?”

She blinked, looking across the table at Rebecca, whose expression was one of concern. Suddenly, she remembered where she was. She had been outside of herself for a moment. Outside of her body, possibly outside of Oregon. Somewhere else entirely.

Twelve years in the past maybe.

“What? Sorry, I spaced out.”

“You seemed distracted by Senator Good Hair.”

“Oh,” she said, trying to figure out how she was going to spin that. Because she didn’t exactly want to have a conversation about the fact that she knew Cord McCaffrey. She was never going to have a discussion with anyone about the particulars of that knowledge—that was for sure. But she was trying to decide on the most believable and innocuous lie.

“I get it,” Alison said. “He’s compelling. I mean, I think being a politician’s wife would be horrible. All I can picture is how controlled it would be. How owned you would feel. But I get why some women go for it.”

Lane had a feeling that Alison would find a long-term relationship with any man stifling at this point. Her ex-husband was to blame for that.

“It’s just weird,” Lane said, going for the closest version of the truth that she could manage. “He lived in my parents’ neighborhood. We grew up next to each other. It’s always kind of strange to see somebody that you knew in a different context becoming famous.”

Saying something so innocuous about him nearly killed her. The fact that she had occasion to talk about him at all—with people who had no idea of their connection—just made her angrier.

At the same time, if Cord had never achieved his political ambition she might have been even angrier. Because then what would the point have been of any of the pain that he put her through?

“I can see that being weird,” Rebecca said. “I really can’t imagine any of the jackasses I went to school with ascending to political office. It’s a terrifying prospect, actually.”

Rebecca truly had no idea. “Yeah. Weird.” She shoved another fry in her mouth to keep from making further comment.

She felt weird the whole rest of the evening, which she hated. Because Cord wasn’t rattling around his giant-ass mansion feeling weird right now. No, he was likely sitting in a wingback chair with a snifter of brandy, letting his Stepford wife rub his feet while his two perfect children slept upstairs. When she walked back to her car later, Rebecca intercepted her. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Lane said, breaking away quickly, tromping across the parking lot with more forceful steps than necessary, loose rocks and gravel crunching under her feet.

“You were very quiet tonight. You’re never quiet.”

She let out an exasperated sigh that bloomed in the cold night air, joining the low-hanging fog that was creeping in off the sea. “Just tired. I stayed up late making dinners for Finn last night, and then had to work most of the day. And then I had to deliver the food, so...”

“You do a lot for him.”

Lane bristled. Mostly because whenever anyone made comments about her relationship with Finn, those comments contained undercurrents. Undercurrents she didn’t like. “He’s done a lot for me. Plus, his grandfather just died, and he might have been a surly old coot, but he was pretty much all Finn had to call family.”

“Except all those brothers,” Rebecca pointed out.

“Half brothers. And he didn’t grow up with them.”

She didn’t know why she was being defensive. About Finn, about anything in his life. She was crossing the velvet Finn rope she tended to put up around her conversations with other people, and hell if she knew how she’d gotten dragged over it.

“Sorry,” Rebecca said, letting out a long sigh. “I’m just worried about you and I’m trying to drag out a reason why you might have been upset and I tend to come back to him.”

“Well, Finn is not ever part of my upset. Finn is one of the only truly good men on planet Earth.”

Rebecca looked at her, long and hard, her dark eyes glittering in the lamplight. “Okay.”

Damn her. She still wasn’t taking Lane’s placating lies at face value. But she was also wrong about the source of her issues. And if her Finn stuff was cordoned off by a velvet rope, her Cord issues were kept in a very difficult to access attic, beneath a really heavy box with a blanket over it, so no one would ever look and she’d have a hard time ever pulling it out herself.

“I’m fine,” she said, singsong now, walking to her car with a small bounce in her step. “Fine, fine, fine.”

“Keep saying it,” Rebecca said, her tone dry. “That will make it seem more believable.”

Lane cheerfully flung her middle finger into the air, directing it at Rebecca along with a smile. Rebecca lifted her own hand and made a catching motion, as though Lane had blown her a kiss. Then she put the imagined item in her pocket. “In case I need a good Screw You later.”

“I think you had a good screw earlier,” Lane shot back.

“Don’t hate the player,” Rebecca said, her tone completely serious.

Lane rolled her eyes and got into her car. Sometimes she thought it would be more practical to get a big truck. For garden soil, wood chips and anything else she might need for her garden. But she liked the fuel economy of her little car. Plus, Finn had a truck and he could always do that stuff for her.

Her house was a quick trip from Ace’s, which sat on the edge of town. In about five minutes, she was at the dirt driveway that led back into the hills to where her little homestead was. Four potholes and three curves later, she was pulling into her driveway.

The house was modest, but it was cozy and perfect for one person. Nestled in the pine trees, the little cabin looked like it might be growing straight out of the earth. But the value of this place wasn’t in the house, it was in the property.

She had spent the past couple of years taming it, getting herself a decent-sized garden plot prepared and revamping an old outbuilding set way back in the trees that was designed to store things like jam and root vegetables.

Well, Finn had helped with a lot of that.

But, like she had told Rebecca earlier, Finn did a lot for her. It was one reason she happily did a lot for him. Anything. She would do anything for Finn.

She walked across the soft ground, bark and pine needles muting her footsteps until she reached the wooden porch steps. She shoved her key into the lock—even out here she kept her doors locked out of an abundance of caution. She wasn’t particularly concerned with anyone stealing her things, not in Copper Ridge. Really, she wasn’t legitimately concerned with much considering that Copper Ridge was a very safe place to live, but she was a woman who lived alone in the middle of nowhere, so her anxieties tended to center on some deranged drifter lying in wait in her living room when she returned from town after a long day.

That she could live without.

She sighed heavily, dumping her purse and her keys over the back of the armchair that sat adjacent to the entryway. She felt unsettled and restless, which wasn’t how she usually felt when she walked into her snug little house.

It was so different to that expansive stone monstrosity her parents had lived in, heaving with dashed expectations and the scent of disappointment. It had always felt so cold. So vast and empty.

Because there was nothing even close to love in the hallowed walls of the Jensen family home. And no matter what her parents said, she could feel it. And it made that massive manor feel claustrophobic.

She surrounded herself with warmth here. And in this tiny place with its rough-hewn furniture, with the lake on one side and the endless woods on the other, she felt free.

Usually, she felt a sense of relief as the rustic wood walls offered sanctuary from the day.

Not today. Today required more eating.

She flicked on the light and walked into the kitchen. Except those actions blended into one, and it took a moment for her to realize that the light had not turned on. She stopped, letting out a hard breath. She tested the light switch again. Nothing. The kitchen remained resolutely dark. Then she looked and noticed that the lights were off on the microwave and the coffeemaker.

She let out a short curse. Then she raced to the fridge.

When she opened the door the light was off, but cool air emanated from the appliance. She let out a sigh of relief. At least the power outage was recent.

That was all she needed. For everything in her fridge to go rancid. Which it would do if she didn’t get this fixed.

There was a lamp on in the living room, so clearly the lights were fine there. It was probably some weird fuse situation because everything in the cabin was old, including the wiring. She wandered over to the fuse box and flipped a few switches. Nothing. She lifted her cell phone up in the darkness and shined it onto the box, attacking the suspect switch with even more intensity, and still, she was bathed in darkness.

She growled. And before she was fully conscious of what she was doing, she turned her phone back toward herself and dialed Finn.

CHAPTER THREE

IT HAD BEEN a long ass day. And it was fixing to be an even longer ass night. Mostly because Finn was so very aware of the fact that his brother and his niece were asleep in his house. And that the rest of them would be coming tomorrow.

Alex, with his easy grin and smart-ass comments. Liam and the chip on his shoulder that he seemed so committed to.

Cain said he wanted to stay. That he wanted to work the ranch. Give Violet a fresh start. And Finn had no legal recourse to stop him. His grandfather had left equal shares of the ranch to all of them, and that meant that Finn was up a creek.

He jerked the fridge open, grabbing a bottle of beer, then changing direction. He put the beer back and closed the fridge, making his way over to the bar on the other side of the room. His grandfather had been a good Irishman who believed in keeping his liquor supply healthy.

Finn reached out, closing his hand around a bottle of whiskey. “God bless you, old man.”

Then his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He bit back a curse, lifting the device to his ear. “Hello.”

“It’s me,” came the sound of Lane’s familiar voice.

“Hi,” he said, barely managing more than a grunt.

“I need you,” Lane said, her voice breathy.

Those words were like a slug straight to his gut. And it didn’t matter that he knew full well this was in regards to something that had absolutely nothing to do with his body—his body reacted strongly.

“Do you?” he asked, keeping his eyes pinned on the bottle of liquid salvation in his hand.

“Yes,” she said, the word coming out in a long whine.

“It can’t wait till morning?”

“No,” she said, her voice emphatic. “The power is out in my kitchen. I flipped the switches and they won’t work.”

“Which switches did you flip?”

“All the switches. They won’t work! All of my food is going to go bad. I don’t have cheap food, Finn. My cheese. Think of my cheese. Donnelly cheese.”

He closed his eyes, letting out a long slow breath as he released his hold on the liquor bottle. “I’ll be right over.”

If nothing else, it gave him a chance to get out of the house. This house that was a constant reminder of his grandfather, the old bastard. An old bastard he missed, about as much as he wanted to punch him.

He was going to take the chance to get out of this house that now contained two members of his family who seemed determined to stay.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, then reached out, grabbing hold of his truck keys. The metal scraped against the granite countertop, the noise loud in the relative silence of the expansive room.

By the time he pulled up to Lane’s house he wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten there. The entire drive over was a blank space. He had been too busy having imaginary, angry conversations in his head. With his brother. With a dead man.

Good thing he knew the road and the route better than he knew just about any other.

He walked up the porch steps, noticing that one of them wiggled beneath his boot. He would have to fix that for her. Then he looked at the porch light, at the excess of cobwebs hanging around it, made much more obvious with the direct glow of the porch light and the darkness behind it.

She hated messing with things like that too, so he should probably clear them when he came to do the step. He sighed, lifting his hand and knocking firmly on the wooden door.

It jerked open half a second later, revealing a nervous-looking Lane. “I hope it’s easy to fix,” she said, moving out of the way and allowing him entry. “I have deep concerns about my food.” She lifted her hand to her mouth, chewing idly on the side of her thumbnail.

“I can take some back with me if we can’t get it fixed—assuming there’s room in my fridge after all that casserole. Also, you can put some of it out in your cold room. Not perfect, but overnight it’s not going to be any warmer than your fridge out there.”

“There you go being all measured and logical.” She waved her hands, looking anything but measured and logical.

He hadn’t felt like either of those things earlier today. No, dealing with Cain he had felt decidedly un-calm and illogical. He could almost see himself standing in his house, being an ass to the brother who had driven halfway across the country to be there, the brother who had been through a whole hell of a lot in his adult life, and who was trying to do something good for his kid.

But he hadn’t been able to be any nicer. He just hadn’t had it in him. The ranch felt like his. He’d invested blood and sweat in that land. Probably even a few bone chips from the time he had busted his shin in a dirt bike accident when he’d been thirteen.

Yes, they had all spent summers there up to a point. But Finn was the one who had stayed. He was the one who worked it. The one who had gotten it into the state it was in, and now Cain just wanted to move in and use it as therapy.

“It’s a gift,” he said, rather than dumping any of those dark thoughts on Lane. “It’s probably just a fuse, and it’s probably just going to take me a minute.”

“I told you I flipped the switches,” she said, sounding grumpy.

“I know you did,” he said.

“You think I flipped the switches wrong,” she said, accusatory.

“I’m sure you’re a great switch flipper,” he responded, deadpan, as he continued to the fuse box.

He knew that the old cabin was a bit of a mess when it came to wiring. He had a rudimentary knowledge of those things, but he wasn’t an electrician. So while he was tempted to offer to sort everything out for her, it would probably be better if she got a professional. Which he’d told her before, but she never hired anyone to help out.

He had fiddled with her fuse box a couple of times before, so he already knew that the labels next to each switch were wrong. The one that claimed to be linked to the bathroom, in fact wasn’t. If he remembered right that one went to a back bedroom.

He knew for certain the one that was labeled living room went to the bathroom. But he wasn’t exactly certain which one went to the kitchen, since there had never been a fuse issue with it before. He turned off one that claimed to be the master bedroom, and heard Lane shout from down the hall.

“Now it’s just completely dark in here!”

He flipped it back on. “Sorry,” he said.

His hand hovered over the switch for the outdoor power, and then he decided to test it. Off, and then on.

“Nothing!”

“Nothing?” he asked.

“Nothing!” she shouted back.

He walked back to where she was, frowning. “Wasn’t the original part of this place built in the twenties?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, looking confused.

“I need to get up in your crawl space.”

“Wow, Finn. Buy a girl dinner first.”

He sighed wearily. “Lane...”

“Fine. But I don’t know what you’re going to find up there.”

“Knob and tube wiring, I hope.”

He went back out to the truck and grabbed his toolbox, then opened up the attic access in her hallway, lowering the built-in ladder down and climbing into the tight space. It didn’t take long after that to find a wire that had been chewed until it had lost its connection.

He fused it back together with his soldering iron and heard a triumphant hoot from down below.

“I take it that did it?” he called.

“Success,” she called up. “Now get down here before you get eaten by spiders.”

“I don’t think you have man-eating spiders,” he said, making his way back down the ladder. “I think you had wire-chewing raccoons.”

“Raccoons?” she called back.

“Possibly possums.” He made his way from the hall into the kitchen.

Lane was standing in the middle of the room and both of them were all lit up. A wide smile stretched across her face and when she spun around in a circle, he couldn’t help but notice the way the light caught her dark hair. For some reason, it put him in mind of what it might feel like if he reached out and let those glossy curls sift through his fingers.

“Possibly possums,” she said. “Great. Attic possums.”

“Better than man-eating spiders, all in all.”

“Sure. Thank you,” she said, sighing happily. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

He shoved his hand in his pocket. “You’re welcome. Anyway, now your food won’t go bad, and I won’t have to listen to you cry about it for the next two weeks.”

She scowled. “Is that an implication that I am dramatic? That I perhaps don’t let go of things as quickly as I should?”

“Take it however you want to take it, Lane. I’m just saying.”

“I take it with umbrage.”

“Well, that’s a quick change of heart. Turning on your food savior already.”

“Hey, buddy. It doesn’t benefit you to have my food go bad either. Who would feed you?”

“Damn straight. And I’m going to need more food than usual, apparently.”

“Why is that?” she asked, looking concerned now.

Without waiting for an invitation—because he didn’t need it, not in her house—he moved to the fridge and took out a beer. If he was going to stay and talk, he would allow himself one beer.

He popped the top off using the edge of the counter, then made his way across the small space and into the living room, where he sat down on the couch. “Cain is staying.”

“I kind of heard some of that,” Lane said, grabbing her own beer before joining him in the living room.

She didn’t sit next to him, and that didn’t really surprise him. They were friends. Platonic friends, and always had been. But there was a definite line of reserve when it came to physical contact.

She settled into the armchair, lifting her beer to her lips. He looked down at his. “Well, that’s basically it. He wants to stay. He wants Violet to go to school here. He wants to get involved with ranching. Basically, I think my brother is having a midlife crisis at the age of thirty-seven.”

“He’s divorced?”

“Yeah. It’s been a couple of years, but it was ugly. I mean, from what I understand.”

“I see why he’d want a change, then.”

He frowned. “Don’t you dare take his side.”

“I’m not taking sides. I’m saying it’s understandable. When you go through something like that... You just want a clean slate sometimes. And it sounds to me like he muddled through where he was for as long as he could. But eventually, it gets obvious that the problems aren’t going to be fixed if you stay where you are.”

“I will turn your lights off again.” He wouldn’t. “I will leave you in the darkness.”

“The ranch is big. The house is big.” She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Will it kill you to have them living there?”

He set the beer bottle down on the table by his couch without any delicacy. “The ranch is mine. That’s the point.”

“I get that you feel that way, but you sound like a jackass.”

“What the hell kind of friendship is this? You’re supposed to tell me what I want to hear.”

Lane rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry. If that’s the kind of conversation you want, you need to tell me before we actually start talking. Otherwise, I’ll assume you want some honesty. And if you want honesty, then this is what you get.”

“I don’t want honesty. I want you to tell me that it’s egregious that somebody who never gave a damn about the ranch before now considers himself entitled to it.”

“But he is entitled to it,” Lane said, her tone gentle, which was more annoying than her previous harshness. “It’s his ranch. Legally. Your grandfather wanted him to have part of it, and it isn’t really up to you to say that he can’t.”

He shook his head. “It never occurred to me that he would want it. He has a life in Texas.”

“Apparently, a life he doesn’t like.”

That made him pause. The whole situation with his brothers was difficult. It always had been. They had a bond—that was undeniable. When he looked at them, it was like looking at himself, with features and coloring rearranged and slightly different. There was no denying they were brothers. Same dark hair, all over six feet tall. Though the youngest brothers had green eyes instead of blue. Still, there was no mistaking they were related. Because that damn Donnelly blood was just so strong.

Finn looked like his grandfather. They all did. They also looked like their terrible jackass of a father who’d had children he didn’t particularly care about with women he cared even less about.

That was the bond, though. And that was it. Other than Liam and Alex, they had only spent snatches of time together growing up. Cain had mostly been raised in Texas and had a little bit of a drawl as a result, while the rest of them had grown up on the West Coast.

They were as much different as they were alike, and while there was no denying they had a connection, Finn liked it best when the connection was distant.

“And that sucks for him,” Finn said, knowing he just sounded petulant now.

“You don’t have to like it,” Lane said. “I mean, you might want to get over yourself eventually. But I understand why it makes you mad.”

“Why is that, Dr. Jensen?” he said, his tone dry.

“You don’t like anyone else to have control. You like to have all of it. And if you actually have to share space with your brothers, you’re going to have to give up some of your control.”

He shrugged. “Well, who doesn’t want control?”

“Hell if I know.” She took another drink of her beer, and his gaze dropped to her lips. To where her mouth wrapped around the bottle.

Dammit.

He might want control, but he was beginning to wonder if he had it.

Silence stretched between them, long and tense. He felt it creeping up his spine, up his shoulders, his muscles growing tight. He was very aware just then of the fact that they were all alone. Of the fact that it was late, and that he was a man and she was very much a woman.

This kind of thing was always worse when his life was thrown off. That awareness. Those moments when he would look at her and instead of seeing her very familiar face, he would be jarred by some new angle of her beauty.

It was more than just features, though on their own they were pretty enough. It was the glitter in her eyes when she was about to say something she thought was hilarious. The way she struggled to hold back a laugh at her own jokes. The insane things that came out of her mouth when she was rambling because she was nervous or excited, or just hopped up on caffeine.

Those moments when she was more than a pretty face or a damned fine figure. The moments when he saw a woman who was beautiful all the way down. The kind of beauty years couldn’t fade.

Those moments were a big damn problem. Normally, he had a better handle on this.

But then, normally, he had a better handle on his life.

“You know,” she said, breaking him out of his thoughts, “with the extra help from Cain you could afford to do more of your own product. I would really, really like to offer some milk that isn’t ultra pasteurized in my store. We could sell it in a glass bottle. People would love it.”

He groaned. “We’ve been through this already. I don’t have the time. My grandfather wasn’t interested and that was for a reason. We’re better off just taking the contracts from bigger dairies.”

“Not necessarily. The demand for this kind of thing is huge, and I love carrying local products in the store. I want more cheese. More of your cheese.”

He snorted. “Now there’s a sentence you don’t hear every day.”

“Maybe if you didn’t make cheese.” She let out an exasperated breath. “Just think about it. Think about the opportunity that having extra help would present you with. Instead of being a stubborn ass.”

With her poking and prodding him he forgot why just a moment ago he had been feeling tense and like he was a little too big for his skin. Why he had been so captivated with her. Because now, he was less captivated by her beauty and more irritated by that stubborn set of her chin that let him know she wasn’t going to back down.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, mostly to get her off his back. He took another sip of beer, then decided to leave the rest. “I need to go.”

“Fine,” she said.

He stood, and so did she. Then he moved away from the couch, heading toward the door and she reached out, breaking that unspoken wall between them as her fingertips touched his shoulder.

He jerked back as though he’d been burned. There was something strange in her expression then, like she was a baby deer that had been startled. Then the air changed, and it all just felt weird.

“Thank you,” she said, the words coming out of her mouth in a hurry.

“You’re welcome,” he returned, his voice sounding rough even to his own ears.

For a moment, he just stood there. And so did she. It all settled around them, the weirdness, the tension, and he had a feeling that if he didn’t hurry up and get out the door it might wrap itself around them, and then they might find themselves being inexplicably drawn toward each other.

It was either that, or she felt nothing at all while he was standing there gasping for breath. And he did not need to make a move to try and confirm which it was.

So he did exactly what was expected, exactly what was needed. And he moved his ass toward the door.

Once he got outside, the cool night air did a lot to break up the leaden feeling that had settled in his lungs. It had been a day of weird stuff. And tonight had just been the cherry on that terrible sundae.

Tomorrow morning would come, sure and constant as anything. And he would see to his routine. He would get the cows set up for milking, get the milk prepared for processing. He would ride the fence line making sure that everything was shored up.

He would survey the land that had been his whole life since he was sixteen years old. And even if everything wasn’t settled, he would at least have some clarity.

He just had to make it through the night.

Good thing there was a bottle of whiskey waiting at home.

CHAPTER FOUR

HER STORE WAS TINY. It was just so tiny. Lane loved it. She really did. But for some reason when she walked in that morning and turned the closed sign, signaling to the citizens of Copper Ridge that it was time for them to come and get their specialty food items, she was incredibly aware of the fact that the empire she had built was most definitely a miniature one.

Cord was still in her head. She hated that. Him and all of his achievements.

Shaking off the mood, she crossed her arms, surveying her surroundings. If she rearranged the things in the corner, mounted some crates and baskets to the wall, she could most definitely fit in more stock. She didn’t mind the slightly crowded feeling to the place. It was quaint, if she said so herself. Particularly when combined with the red brick and the dark metal decor she had incorporated.

Yes, right over there in the corner would be where she fit the new fridge that she could keep Finn’s dairy products in if he wasn’t such a stubborn cuss.

She wondered idly how Alison would feel about making jam. She worked with fruit when she made her pies. Maybe the addition would be a welcome one. Lane would happily sell them in her store.

She already provided some of the berries for Alison’s bakery, Pie in the Sky; she could always get more intense about her berry collection and provide her with more. Blackberries, marionberries and raspberries grew wild on her property. She could always make jam, she supposed.

She was still musing about various forms of product expansion when her first customers came in. They were tourists, visiting the Oregon coast for the first time all the way from Denver. Lane chatted with them for a while, helping them select products that she considered to be quintessential Copper Ridge items.

Then she referred them to The Grind, her friend Cassie’s coffee shop across the street, for a caffeine fix before ringing up all of their items.

“It sure would be nice if there were a way to order these from home,” the woman said, examining a can of wild caught salmon that had been provided to Lane’s store by local fisherman Ryan Masters.

“Yes,” Lane said, the idea turning over in her mind. “It would be.”

She was still musing on that when the door opened again and Finn came in. “The power in your house okay?” he said, by way of greeting.

“Everything was fine when I left this morning. Nary an attic possum.” She paused. “Thank you again for coming out.”

It had occurred to her last night that she didn’t thank him enough. She just kind of assumed that he would take care of things for her. Probably because he always had.

“Sure,” he said, clearly as uncomfortable with the thanks as he’d been the previous evening.

He meandered through the narrow aisles, divided by wooden shelves. It made her even more conscious of how small the shop was to watch Finn’s broad-shouldered frame moving through the tight space. For some reason, she just stood and watched him for a second. Watched as his blunt, masculine fingers drifted over the merchandise, as he paused over a small jar of caviar. “Do you actually sell any of this?”

“Yes,” she said, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “Not a lot. But some.”

She considered it for a moment. The caviar. She really didn’t sell that much. But right now, her store seemed to be straddling the line between tourist trap and specialty store for the few people in Copper Ridge who had a lot of excess time to shop for specific ingredients and cook with them too.

“Focus,” she said. “That’s what I need.”

“To... Finish your crossword? Or...?”

“For the store,” she said, ruminating while she spoke. “I need to do something to focus its offerings.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, I kept a lot of stock simply because it’s what the old owner carried. But I’ve had the business now for going on five years, and I think it’s time I started taking it more firmly in the direction I want to see it go.”

The need, the burning sensation in her chest, was suddenly manic. Because images of her once-beloved ex parading himself all over national television, reaching levels of success that she would never, ever achieve, had made all of this feel small. It wasn’t, and she knew that. She had never had political aspirations. She wouldn’t be happy being a public figure. So it was pointless to compare herself and her level of accomplishment to Cord, or to anyone else for that matter.

But she was.

Logic had no place here. There was no logic. There was only need. The need to do more. To be more. To make everything that had happened worth it. Okay.

“Yes,” she said, growing yet more determined. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

Finn dropped his hand back down to his side. “What?”

“Focus!”

“I would, but I’m not following you.”

“No. I meant that I need to focus. My stock. The aim of the store. More and more, I’m interested in supporting specifically local products from Copper Ridge. And possibly Oregon in general, but I don’t just want to have general specialty stuff.”

“Didn’t we have a recent argument about cheese and how you felt it was essential to acquire it from Europe?”

“Yes, but that was before. There are plenty of small businesses in this state that make award-winning dairy products. There’s a place down south and off the coast that won an award for its blue cheese on a worldwide level. I should just be carrying things like that. But I would definitely want the focus to be on products that are locally sourced.”

“Is there enough of a pool for you to draw from?”

“Beef from the Garretts, seafood from Ryan Masters, microbrews from Ace, wine from Grassroots... And dairy from you.”

“Is this your way of trying to push me into changing the business?”

She sputtered. “Yes. No. I mean, it wasn’t an idea designed to manipulate you. But I am right. I am. When you don’t have to pay the shipping costs your profit margins are going to be higher. If you keep the milk local and sell it as a specialty product—local, hormone free and minimal pasteurization—it’s going to be beneficial for you.”

“I can’t imagine there’s a significant market for it.”

“Then you haven’t been paying attention. Hipsters from Portland would pay through the nose piercing for that.”

“I mean, I know that it’s a thing. I just mean... Around here...”

“Trust me,” she said. “You can keep your contracts with the bigger dairy and still do this. Just to test it out. Especially with the extra help your brothers are going to provide.”

“My brothers are only going to be here on a temporary basis. If they plan otherwise, they won’t be in Oregon long, because I’ll send them straight to hell.”

Lane rolled her eyes. “You will not.”

“I might,” he said, moving on to the next aisle.

“You’re all talk. But what do you think about my idea?”

“I’m underwhelmed. You already know that.”

She scoffed. “I don’t mean about your business. I mean about mine. Do you think the focus would be helpful?”

“Are you having financial trouble?”

“No. Not really. But I’m definitely not making the kind of profits I would like to see. And I just want... I want more. I want to make this mine. I want to make a mark. I love Copper Ridge. I want to put a Lane Jensen stamp on it.”

He regarded her for a moment. “You’re really serious about this.”

“I am. And one of my customers said something earlier about being able to order products. I’m thinking maybe I need to set up a website. Or maybe some kind of box full of all the special goodies that are new for the month. Like a subscription box. A best of Copper Ridge box. It honestly didn’t occur to me before, because I’ve been so focused on getting the place established in the town, and back then all that kind of mail-order-gifts-for-yourself stuff wasn’t so big. But now the idea of a subscription box, where you’re basically buying yourself a grown-up grab bag, is such a big thing.”

“That sounds like a lot of work,” he said.

“Says the man with a gigantic ranch that requires he never sleep in or ever take a vacation.”

“That’s different.”

“It isn’t different. I want to invest in this business, and build it, and make it mine. You of all people should understand that.” She paused, and she knew she was pushing her luck, but she did it anyway. “If you did what I’m talking about with the milk, and if you started offering more kinds of cheese... Well, you could do the same thing with the Laughing Irish. Make it yours. Finn Donnelly would be the one to make the name famous. Instead of just hiding it behind the label of the more well-known dairy.”

She knew she had laid it on a little thick, and his irritated expression reflected that. “I’m already getting badgered by my brother, plus I have two more set to show up today. I don’t really need you chiming in and pressuring me too. If you want to make your mark on the town, go right ahead. But stop trying to put your Lane stamp on me.”

She sighed, feeling exasperated. The man was the most enraging human on the planet sometimes. Stubborn, crabby and resolutely determined to keep his head up his ass. “But I’m right,” she insisted.

“My grandfather ran the ranch for forty years. He kept it going through all manner of economic hardship. Why would I act like I know better than him?”

“That isn’t what you’re doing,” she said. “You’re not acting like you know better than him. You’re just finding a new way to succeed in a new world.”

“Expand all you like, Lane, but I’ve had enough change. I won’t tell you where to stack your damned caviar if you don’t tell me what to do with my cows.”

She sat down on the stool behind the counter, crossing her arms, knowing that she looked like she was pouting, and not really caring. “Fine. Have that control you’re so fond of. What are you here for anyway?” She realized that she had bulldozed right over whatever he might have wanted to say when he’d come in.

“Coffee beans,” he said, picking up a bag. “Also, I was kind of hoping you could bring something by for dinner tonight. You know, enough for a crowd of people. But since you always have mass amounts of food in that freezer of yours that I spared last night...”

“You don’t have to do something for me to get food. Your very presence in my life merits food.” She never stayed annoyed with Finn, even when he was annoying. It was impossible.

He had too long a track record of being wonderful for her to take a disagreement seriously. Plus, when he smiled at her, and his blue eyes lit up, she couldn’t feel anything but affection for the man.

He treated her to that smile she could never stay mad at. Then he brought the bag of coffee up to the counter.

She set about ringing it up. “You know, you probably have enough food that you don’t need anything new. Wasn’t it just yesterday that you were trying to turn down the casserole I slaved over?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t really want to piece leftovers together. And if I remember right, Liam and Alex are bottomless pits. Of course, my memory of them might be firmly centered on their teens and early twenties. So maybe now that they’re both in their thirties they’ve started eating reasonable portions.”

“I’ll make something. Pasta, probably. That will be easy to make in the little store kitchen in the back. Don’t worry. I won’t let you starve.”

“Perfect,” Finn said, sounding weary. “Could you also figure out a way to handle my brothers for me?”

“Sorry, buddy. Maybe I can sing the ‘Song That Never Ends’ all night and annoy them out of town. Then again, once they eat my pasta they’re going to end up wanting to stay forever. I could put strychnine in it,” she offered.

“Maybe don’t poison my brothers, Lane.”

“Then I guess you’re stuck with them.”

“Hopefully not for too long,” he said, his smile turning rueful.

“How do you plan to get rid of them if not poison?” she asked.

“The way you normally get people to do what you want. Money. Of course...until then, they’ll be staying in my house. On second thought...” He looked down at the pound of coffee in his hand. “I better get two of these.”

“Just grab the second one on the way out,” she told him. “It’s on the house.”

“Pity caffeine,” he said. “But, at this point, I don’t have too much pride to take it.”

He picked up the bag and lifted it. “See you later?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll bring the food by after I close up here. So it should be around about five thirty.”

He grunted.

“Actual human beings with people skills just say thank you, Finn,” Lane said.

“Thank you,” he said before turning and walking out of the store. She watched him through the window as he adjusted his black Stetson and looked up and down the street.

She caught sight of a table of women sitting out in front of The Grind drinking coffee and admiring the view that was Finn Donnelly.

She turned away, a rush of heat filling her cheeks, and her stomach. She felt weird. Weird that she had been looking at Finn, and that she had been borderline sharing a moment with the women across the street, who were clearly not just looking at him but checking him out.

But she had not been checking him out. Not really. She looked up again, and he was gone. She ignored the slight kick in her stomach.

If she noticed the fact that his jaw was square, and that the muscles of his forearms were well-defined, that didn’t really mean anything. Not a thing except the fact that she wasn’t blind. He was a man. He was a good-looking man.

And she wasn’t immune to it. She had just been thinking that his smile and eyes always got him out of trouble with her. It was just—just in a friend way.

She gritted her teeth. That fact had been driven home in kind of a strange way a few months ago when he and Rebecca had nearly hooked up at Ace’s one night. Though Rebecca had been adamant that nothing at all had happened, and that really, nothing would have, since she’d only been using him to try and forget about Gage, the man she was determined to stay away from at the time.

But it had all worked out in the end.

Rebecca and Gage had resolved their differences and Lane didn’t have to deal with the weirdness of two of her friends dating each other. Which would have been the worst part of Rebecca and Finn hooking up.

Just the thought made her shudder a little bit. Because weird. It would just be weird. Just like it was weird that someone she knew really well, and had taste she respected, had seen Finn as bangable.

Yes, Finn was an attractive man. She knew that. But all the fantasies about his hands that she’d had centered on things he could fix in her house.

The door opened again and she jumped when the women who had just been ogling Finn walked in off the street.

“What can I help you find today?” She put on her brightest smile. And she did her very best to cast all thoughts of Cord, the eventual expansion, Finn and Finn’s stubbornness out of her mind.

* * *

HIS BROTHER ALEX showed up looking like a military cliché. He was wearing dog tags and a tan shirt, covered mostly by a dark jacket. What looked to be all of his earthly possessions were shoved in a giant bag he had slung over one shoulder, held like a backpack.

The only indicator he hadn’t been in the military for the past few months was that his dark hair was no longer high and tight, but was hanging down into his eyes.

He walked through the entryway and into the kitchen, slamming the pack down on the countertop. “Is Liam here yet?”

“No. And good to see you too.”

Alex smiled in that easy way the rest of them could never seem to manage. “You didn’t seem particularly thrilled to see me, Finn. Don’t try to act like I’m the cranky ass in the group.”

“There,” Finn said, forcing a smile. “I’m glad to see you.” He realized, as soon as he said it, that it was strangely true.

“You’re only saying that because if I wasn’t here it would be because I was dead or incapacitated in some way.”

“No, I’m glad to see you because you’re about the only one of us that knows how to defuse tension rather than adding to it.”

Alex shrugged. “We all have our gifts.” He looked around the room, the slow and thorough evaluation offering a slight glimpse of the intensity that lurked beneath Alex’s easygoing surface.

For all that he was the laid-back brother in the Donnelly clan, he was still a soldier.

“Is Cain around?” Alex asked.

“Somewhere. Look for the storm cloud and you’ll find him somewhere underneath it. Unless of course you find Violet underneath it.”

He’d had limited interaction with his teenage niece since her arrival, since her face had mostly been glued to her phone. But the better part of it had consisted of single-word sentences. Mostly, she’d been holed up in her room.

“What does she have to be stormy about? She’s just a kid.”

“A teenager.”

Alex swore. “I have been out of touch for too long. So, what’s happening? Are you having a lawyer read us the will, or...?”

“Not necessary. You all have a copy of the will. We just need to discuss what’s going to happen. We all inherited an equal share of the ranch. But I’m willing to offer a monetary payout.” He stared at his brother with purpose behind his gaze. “You don’t have to stay here.”

“I don’t have anywhere else to be,” Alex said.

There was something slightly haunted in his eyes then, but Finn wasn’t going to ask about it. That just wasn’t the Donnelly way.

There was another knock on the door and Finn knew exactly who that would be. “I guess the gang’s all here,” he said drily.

He walked back to the entry, jerking it open. Sure enough, there stood Liam, looking a whole lot like Alex. But where Alex smiled easily, Liam did not. His bags were down at his feet, his tattooed forearms crossed over his chest, his mouth pressed into a grim line. “Hey,” he said.

“Come in,” Finn returned.

Liam picked up his bags and walked inside before dumping them on the floor again. Alex came out of the kitchen and the two brothers acknowledged each other with a single head nod.

“Well,” came a gruff voice from the top of the stairs, “this is a helluva reunion.”

Cain chose that moment to walk in, his footsteps heavy.

“We’re all here,” Liam said, “I guess we can get down to business.”

Finn was never more conscious of the dysfunction of the Donnelly clan than when they were all standing in one room. There was—at any given moment—both a disconnect and a connection between all of them.

Brothers. Strangers. Both of those descriptions were true.

By the time the brothers had settled in the expansive seating area it was dark outside, the interior lights reflecting off of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Liam and Alex were sitting on the couch, at opposite ends. Cain was seated in a chair, one leg flung out in front of him and his hands in his lap.

Finn remained standing, taking the folded-up will out of his pocket and holding it out. “Was anybody confused about these terms?”

“Seems straightforward to me,” Liam said.

“We’re all beneficiaries. And I’m the executor. That means it’s my job to make sure that everybody gets what they’re supposed to. And of course, if you have any objections to the way I’m handling it, you’re welcome to talk to Grandpa’s lawyer.”

“Does Copper Ridge have a lawyer?” Cain asked.

“Sure, but I’m pretty sure he works at the local general store and also does weddings, funerals and burials,” Finn said.

“I can’t tell if you’re joking,” Liam said.

Finn just shrugged. “I’ll give you his number if you have a problem. That’s all you need to know. Anyway. After I received the will I got the property evaluated. I’m willing to buy all of you out. With projected appreciation up to five years. It’s a good offer.”

“You have that kind of money?” Alex asked. “I have my doubts about that.”

“I’ll have to get a loan for some of it, but that’s not really your problem. I can’t imagine you guys want to be here. I give you the money and you can go do whatever you want.”

“We’re all here,” Cain said, looking around the room. “Do you think the issue is I don’t have my own money? I do. I don’t get why you think you get to pull rank here.”

“Really?” Finn asked. “You don’t get it at all?”

“We’re all blood, Finn,” Cain responded. “We want what’s ours. So what is it you want?”

“I want control of the ranch. The Laughing Irish is mine. I’ve spent the past eighteen years working my knuckles bloody on this place. And where were you?”

“Serving my country,” Alex said, crossing his arms.

“Raising a kid,” Cain said, shifting his position.

“Pissing into the wind,” Liam added, because he was never going to give a sincere answer.

Finn gripped his elbows, then realized they were all glaring and crossing their arms. He lowered them quickly to his sides. “Well, you’re all welcome to keep doing that.”

“I’m out,” Alex said. “Of the military. And I’m not planning on reenlisting. I don’t have anything else, anywhere else.”

“You aren’t reenlisting? Is there a reason for that?” Finn asked. His brother had been in the army for more than a decade. Finn could hardly imagine him doing anything else.

“Nothing I want to talk about right now. Right now, we’re talking about the ranch. I don’t want money. I don’t need money. I’ve got pay from the army for my service as a veteran of a foreign war. But I need something to do. And this ranch is something to do.”

Something to do? His life’s work was something for Alex to do.

He had honestly never considered his brothers would want to stay in Oregon and work on a dairy farm when there was money on offer. This wasn’t a glamorous life. And as far as Finn was concerned, teamwork wasn’t the road to happiness. Space was. Control.

How the hell they could think any different was beyond him.

“I don’t see the point of dragging me into your career crisis,” Finn said, not particularly caring if he sounded insensitive. “If you want to try your hand at something new, by all means, take what I give you and invest in something new.”

“Maybe I want to get back to my roots, Finn,” Alex said. “Did you think of that?”

“No,” Finn returned. “I didn’t. I honestly thought that between a stack of cash and a life spent getting up at the ass crack of dawn, you’d choose cash.”

“I’m ex-military, Finn. This doesn’t feel like a hardship to me. And anyway...we’re family.”

“Bull. That’s not why you’re here.”

“My reasons don’t matter,” Alex said. “Not even a little bit. What matters is the will and Grandpa’s express wishes. We all have equal share of the ranch if we want it. And I, for one, want it.”

Finn looked around the room, daring the others to turn down his offer. “And the rest of you?”

“I already told you,” Cain responded. “I’m staying. We’re staying. I’ve been working my ass off trying to give Violet a normal life in Texas. But everybody there knows that her mom walked out. As if it wasn’t enough for her to have to deal with Kathleen abandoning her.”

“You mean she doesn’t see her own daughter?” Alex asked.

“No,” Cain said. “She walked out the door one day and neither of us have seen her since.”

An uneasy silence fell over the room. Probably because none of them knew whether they were supposed to express sympathy or not. Another thing they had in common, aside from physical mannerisms. They were deeply uncomfortable with emotions.

“I’m staying too,” Liam said.

Finn looked at Liam. “Because you love this place so damn much?” He could remember Liam coming to work on the ranch when he’d been a teenager. A surly, jackass teenager who had never seemed particularly interested in the goings-on at the Laughing Irish. No, he was much more interested in the goings-on of Jennifer Hassellbeck’s panties.

“Maybe I’ve grown an interest in animal husbandry.” Liam shrugged.

His brother, who Finn knew was actually something of an entrepreneurial genius, most definitely did not have a sudden interest in animal husbandry.

“Right. And I just started a vegan diet,” Finn said. “What does this place mean to you? Why do you want it? I know why I want it. I’ve bled for it, and that’s not a metaphor. So you tell me what reasoning you have for thinking you all having equal ownership with me is fair.”

“Our reasons are irrelevant, as Alex already pointed out. Grandpa left a quarter of the ranch to each of us. Sorry if that puts a burr under your saddle, Finn,” Liam said, “but that’s kind of the least of my concerns.”

“I just want to know what you bastards think you’re getting out of this.”

This time, it was Cain who spoke. “Come on now, little brother. Liam and Alex are legitimate. Only you and I are bastards.”

“Legitimate or not, once they were adults they never came back here. And neither did you,” Finn said. “You can see why I don’t much feel like I owe any of you anything. I’m not sure why Grandpa did.”

“Maybe the old codger was sentimental,” Alex said.

“No,” Finn said, “that is definitely not it.”

He had been hard, but loyal. Protective. Of the land. Of his grandson. Finn had never felt much like anyone loved him. Until the day he’d gotten into a mishap with a barbed wire fence and sliced through his thigh. He’d come back home pale and bleeding, and the old man had nearly lost his mind. Worried, he’d said, that it was serious. That he’d need his damned leg cut off.

That was the only love Finn knew. And it had been everything to him.

“This is all speculation,” Liam said, “and speculation doesn’t mean a damn thing. The fact is we are each entitled to our share of the ranch, no matter how much that pisses you off. But here’s the deal for you. If you can’t handle it why don’t you let me buy you out. You don’t have to stay here. Go start something that belongs to you.”

“This place does belong to me, asshole.”

“Not legally. It belongs to all of us. I guess you could say it’s a Donnelly operation now.”

Finn was pretty sure his head was going to blow clean off, right there in his grandpa’s living room. Then these three jackasses would get the place all to themselves.

“If I walked,” Finn said through gritted teeth, “you couldn’t run this place. I am the only one of us here who could do it. You’re all dependent on me. I do not need any of you. Remember that.”

There was a knock on the door and Alex raised a brow, then his finger, pretending to count all of the people in the room.

“It’s dinner,” Finn growled.

“Hello.” Lane’s voice floated in from the entry.

“In the living room,” Finn called.

“Great,” came the response. “I’m bringing the food into the kitchen because there is a metric ton of this nonsense.”

All of his brothers were looking at him now. “My friend said she would bring dinner,” he said. “Though why I’m feeding you is beyond me.” He wished he hadn’t thought to feed them now, although, rage aside, there was nothing he could do about any of this.

It wasn’t like he could withhold food and walk around the house ignoring them. Well, he supposed he could. But if he knew anything about Donnellys, that would only make them dig their heels in deeper.

Alex arched a brow. “Your friend?”

“Yes,” he said, nearly snarling. “My friend. Because women have brains and personalities, not just breasts, you jackass.”

“I usually just consider the brains and personalities obstacles to navigate on my way to the breasts,” Liam said.

Cain nearly growled. “Watch your mouth. Boys talk like that, not men. As I’ve often told my teenage daughter. Who lives in this house now. And I won’t have you saying shit like that around her.”

“It’s just talk,” Liam said.

“It’s never just talk, little brother. Man up.”

“Dinner,” Finn barked, turning out of the living area and making his way into the kitchen. Lane was already setting up, a giant bowl of green salad with tongs sticking out the top sitting on the counter. Next to it was a silver pan covered in foil.

Lane was nowhere to be seen.

She appeared a minute later with two more tin pans. One that was filled with meatballs and sauce, another that had pasta.

“Did I go overboard?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, trying to correct his tone.

Lane didn’t deserve his mood.

She clapped. “Good. I would rather have you overfed than underfed.”

“Judging by how good that smells, I don’t think you have to worry about us not eating,” Alex said, walking into the room. Liam and Cain weren’t far behind.

“Lane,” Finn said, noticing that his tone was more than a little bit surly, but not able to correct it, “this is my brother Alex, and my brother Liam. You met Cain yesterday. Kind of.”

Lane waved. “Hi. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to eat with you. Because this really is enough to feed a small army.”

“You cook,” Cain said with a crooked smile, “you make the rules. And based on the meal I ate last night, let me just add that you can cook for us anytime.”

“I am fairly amazing,” she said, putting her hand on her chest, her expression turning overly sincere. “Just don’t fall in love with me.” She threw a stack of paper plates next to the food. “And dig in.”

“I’m going to go see if Violet wants dinner,” Cain said. “Though I’d probably have better luck if I texted her.” But he turned and walked out of the room anyway.

They began to fill their plates in silence, and a few minutes later Cain reappeared with Violet, who hung back against the wall. Finn studied her for a moment. She was petite. Short and narrow. But her face was pure Donnelly. From the brown hair that hung into her blue eyes, to the firm set of her jaw and mouth. It almost made Finn feel sorry for his brother. Because Donnellys were not easy people to deal with.

“You remember your uncle Alex,” Cain said, gesturing. “And your uncle Liam.” He said Liam’s name with a slight edge.

“Hey,” Violet said, barely nodding her head.

“That’s teenager for I love you and miss you and thought about you every day since I last saw you,” Cain supplied.

That earned a snort from Alex. Neither of them moved to hug Violet, and Finn had a feeling the teenager was only relieved by the lack of forced contact.

Suddenly, Finn was feeling a little bit embarrassed. That Lane was witnessing all of this. The strange, brittle family dynamic. He felt like he was walking across a lake that had frozen over. The ground cracking beneath his feet, and he was never sure which footstep would send him straight through and down to his freezing watery death.

The rest of them were at least all living the same hell. But Lane... Well, to her they must look like a bunch of dysfunctional idiots.

“So,” Lane said, her tone a little too bright, which confirmed Finn’s suspicions, “Violet, what grade are you going to be in?”

“A junior,” she said. “Unless I end up having to repeat a grade because I’m not prepared for advanced tractor mechanics and cow-tipping.”

“I doubt you’ll have to take those classes. They probably fill up early,” Lane said, keeping her tone chipper. “Then again, I can’t speak from experience. I didn’t actually go to school at Copper Ridge High.”

“How much has the town changed in the past ten years?” Alex asked. “I figure that’s relevant since we are going to be living here now.”

Finn knew that Alex was just poking him now. It didn’t make the sinking in his gut any less real.

“Oh,” Lane said, shooting Finn a look of surprise.

“He was our grandfather too,” Liam said. “And this matters. It means something. God knows we’ll never get anything from our father. But we got this, and not him. For that reason alone, I want to stay.”

That hit Finn somewhere vulnerable. Somewhere he didn’t want to examine too closely. It made Liam’s reasoning seem almost justified. And that wasn’t what Finn wanted at all.

“Well, things actually have changed quite a bit here,” Lane began. “Just in the past few years we’ve been really revitalizing Old Town. For my part, I bought the old Mercantile, and I sell specialty foods.”

“Oh, that boutique food stuff is doing well right now,” Liam said. “If I was still doing start-ups, that would be something I’d look to invest in.”

Lane sent Finn a triumphant look. “Interesting.” She turned her focus to his brothers, and he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what she had to say next, “I’ve been trying to talk Finn into expanding the ranch’s dairy products so that I can sell them in my store.”

“Lane,” Finn said, his tone full of warning.

“Sorry,” she said, licking some sauce off of her thumb, which momentarily distracted him from his irritation. And that was even more irritating. “The business is just on my mind and it slipped out. Especially because I’m going to be starting those subscription boxes soon.”

“Smart,” Liam said. “I think it’s always a good idea to branch out beyond the local economy if you can.”

“See?” Finn asked. “Beyond the local economy. That’s why I have contracts with a larger dairy.”

“I didn’t mean it’s not good to be part of the local economy,” Liam said. “In fact, there’s such a big movement for local food, it’s a great area to invest in.”

“You don’t want to work on a ranch,” Finn said, pointing at his brother.

“Maybe I want to bring what I already do to the ranch. Did you ever think of that? I’m good at building businesses, Finn.”

No, he had not thought of that. Because that would mean giving Liam some credit, which he realized in that moment he never really did. Stupid, since he knew that Liam was successful in his own right, and that he wasn’t the sullen teenage boy that Finn had always known him best as.

“I think you should see how things actually run before you start trying to make changes,” Finn said, looking at his brother hard. Then he looked at the rest of them. There was no point arguing this out, he knew it. But, truth be told, he thought—no, he believed deep in his gut that a few weeks, maybe months, of the ranch life grind, and they’d be gone.

“All of you. My offer to buy you out is going to stand from here on out. This isn’t fun work. I know that you all spent some summers here, and I know you have a vague idea of how it all goes. But to do it year in year out, day in day out, spending your life up to your elbows in literal bullshit is not something any of you know about. So, if at any point it proves to be too much for you, I’ll buy you out. But, hell. Don’t let your pride stop you if after a couple of weeks your bones ache and you just want to sleep in and it proves to be too much for you. But don’t think you can stay then either.”

Violet made a face and glared at her father. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not doing any of that. Just because you’ve gone country and dragged me along with you doesn’t mean I’m getting involved in this.”

Cain looked at his daughter. “I’m sorry. I missed the memo that you were calling the shots now. If I give you chores, you’re going to damn well do them.”

“There are child labor laws, you know,” she said, taking a bite of pasta and shooting her dad an evil glare.

“Do you think anyone cares much about that out here in the country?”

“You’re the literal worst,” she said, putting her plate down on the counter and stalking out of the room.

Cain took another bite of his dinner. And he made no move to follow her.

“Should you talk to her?” Of course, it was Lane who questioned him, because the woman never could leave well enough alone.

Cain shrugged. “Maybe. But, trust me, my talking to her doesn’t ever smooth anything over.” Then Cain looked at Finn. “You think you’re going to scare me off with tales of early mornings? I’m already elbows deep in bullshit. At least here, it will be for a reason.”

CHAPTER FIVE

LANE KNEW THAT Finn was mad at her. The rest of dinner was tense—not that it had been extraordinarily calm in the beginning, but it certainly didn’t get better.

There was no easy conversation between the brothers either. Finn had told her that things were difficult between them, but until she had witnessed it, she hadn’t fully understood. She should have believed him. After all, she knew all about difficult families. She hadn’t spoken to her parents in years.

By the time she was finished eating and ready to head out the door, her sense of unease had only grown. She hated feeling like he was angry at her. It happened. They had known each other for a long time, and initially in the capacity of her being Mark’s irritating younger sister. Who lingered around in the shadows when they were trying to watch an action movie in peace, or who forced them to be guinea pigs for her latest cooking experiment.

But as they’d eased into adulthood, and into a real friendship in their own right, rarely had Finn ever looked at her like he wanted to drown her in the ocean. About now, he was looking vaguely murderous.

When she said her goodbyes to everyone and headed for the door, she wasn’t surprised when Finn followed her outside. He closed the door hard behind them, crossing his arms over his chest, then dropping them almost immediately. He let out a long, slow breath. “Are you going to apologize for that?”

“Me?” she all but squeaked. “You were being a jerk.”

“I’m sorry if you don’t understand my family dynamic, which consists mainly of us calling each other names while we try not to punch each other in the face. But that has nothing to do with you, and it’s definitely not for you to lecture me about. What was that stunt you pulled?”

She threw her arms wide, the cool night air washing over her bare limbs. “Oh, do you mean cooking you a delicious dinner? How dare I?”

“I mean bringing up the dairy stuff. I know it’s what you want me to do, but if you think you’re going to railroad me by going through my brothers—”

“Are you serious right now?” Anger spiked inside of her. “You honestly think that I was trying to manipulate you?”

“Can you honestly say on any level that you weren’t?”

She almost exploded with denial, then stopped herself, chewing on the words for a moment. Being honest with herself—really honest—she supposed there was part of her that maybe brought it up in front of other people to get a more positive consensus. Because she knew it was a good idea, and she figured that if someone besides stubborn Finn heard it, she would find an ally.

“I thought so,” he said, rocking back on his heels.

“You know me,” she said, instead of denying it outright. “I was just carried away by my own enthusiasm. That’s all it was—I promise.”

“The situation with them... I cannot believe that they think they’re going to stay here and take ownership of this ranch. It’s mine.”

She wanted to reach out and touch him, but she remembered what had happened when she’d done that the night before. It had been strange. It had left her fingertips feeling tingly. And she didn’t want to do it again.

Instead, she did her best to make her face sympathetic. “I don’t know what to tell you. Except that life changes and people suck.”

“Thank you,” he said, his tone deadpan.

“Hey, I don’t make the rules. If I did, unicorns would be real and we would definitely have figured out teleportation by now.”

“I’d vote for you.”

Something about that made her stomach curdle. Mostly because it made her think of Cord again. She had been thinking of him way too much over the past few days. She felt wrung out. And watching Finn go through this too... She wanted to curl into a ball and lick her own wounds, not deal with his.

Typically, he was the steady rock of the two of them. He was a cowboy, for heaven’s sake. Riding around his property on a horse with a big hat. Doing all the work, day in day out. Finn was like the tide. Dependable. And always where he was supposed to be when he was supposed to be there.

But right now, he seemed on the verge of cracking, and when she had looked at someone and seen a stalwart for so long it was a little bit jarring.

And completely unfair. She was having a thing. She needed him to not have a thing right now.

“Thanks,” she said, feeling like a jerk, because of course he was having a hard time. He’d lost his grandfather, and now he was expected to share the ranch he’d invested his entire life in. Finn didn’t share well. And he didn’t unclench easily.

She had a feeling his real resistance to considering her plan had to do with the fact that he didn’t like being told what to do, even if he was being told to do the right thing.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally, because she probably did owe him an apology. Maybe she hadn’t meant to be manipulative, but she couldn’t argue that there was a little of that underneath the surface. Even if it was well-intentioned and deeply buried manipulation. “I meant to bring pasta, not an agenda. And you know that I would never ask you to do something I thought was a bad idea. I’m not going to tell you to do something that benefits me but not you.”

“I know that. But too many things are changing, and I can’t consider another one right now.” He took a deep breath and moved to the edge of the porch, grabbing hold of the railing and wrapping his fingers around the top. “I was twelve the first time I came here. My father was consumed with Liam and Alex, who were younger, so they needed him more. My mom was involved in her own stuff. When I came here... I felt like my days had a purpose. I could change the earth with my hands. That’s pretty intense for a kid whose entire life was made hell by selfish adults. Who didn’t have control over one damn thing up until that point.”

He turned to look at her, his expression deadly serious. There was something in his face just then, the intensity and the glint of his dark eyes, the set of his square jaw and the firm press of his lips that made something respond inside her. An answering tension that began in the pit of her stomach and worked its way down her limbs, leaving something restless and edgy in its wake.

He continued, “I know that the rest of them all spent some time here. But nobody connected with the place like I did. And when I was sixteen I left my mom’s house for good. I came here, and my grandfather treated me like a man. He gave me work to do. He gave me a purpose. This place is my purpose.”

Her throat was dry, and so was her mouth. She wanted to do something. To close the distance between them.

Put her arms around him, maybe.

She could only imagine how he would react if she tried to hug him after he shared his feelings. He would probably have a straight-up allergic reaction.

So she just stayed where she was, curling her fingers into fists, trying to do something to stem that flow of restless energy that was coursing through her. This was where their friendship was strange. Because if it were Rebecca, Alison or Cassie, she wouldn’t hesitate to offer them some kind of physical comfort.

Here she was. Made of hesitation.

“I understand that,” she said, her voice sounding scratchy. “I mean, I know what it’s like to find hope in a place.” She bit her lip. She really didn’t like talking about the circumstances that had brought her to Copper Ridge. She was good at dancing around them. But Finn had been there from the beginning. So while he didn’t know the details—her brother didn’t even know—he had a sense of what it had been like in her childhood home.

“When I came here,” she said, “I felt lost. And scared. And yes, I had Mark, but leaving my parents like I did was... Terrifying. You don’t even know. Louise and Philip Jensen do not allow for dissent in the ranks. And I...dissented. Leaving like I did made it very clear, and I could never go back. As soon as I got to town it was like finding a safe haven. A harbor that sheltered me from the storm. I know that’s total hyperbole, but it’s the truth. My heart is here. So when you say that this ranch gave you focus, when you say that it matters—bone deep—I get it. I do. I’m not your enemy. But I might just play devil’s advocate. Maybe your brothers need this place right now too.”

He let out a long, heavy sigh. “I mean, I guess it could be worse.”

“How? Sneaker waves? An anvil falling from the sky?”

“No,” he said, his tone sounding impatient.

“Oh! Plague of locusts.”

“Lane,” he said, his tone a warning. “No. It could be worse because I could be the one stuck with a teenager.”

Lane wrinkled her nose. “Poor Cain.”

Though, in some ways, her heart went out to that girl. At sixteen, Lane’s life had changed forever. She’d been forced to grow up too quickly. She had a feeling that Violet had been too, though in a different way.

It was clear her mother wasn’t around, and Lane knew that no matter how messy your relationship with your parents was, it hurt when you finally pulled the plug on it.

“They won’t stay,” Finn said, and she had a feeling he was saying it more for his benefit than for hers.

“Maybe they won’t.”

“You don’t believe that.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, let the sounds of the night sink into her skin, all the way down to her bones. There was a faint dampness to the air, a tinge of salt and pine on the breeze. It was a cold night, but it was getting to be summer and she could hear the chirp of a few crickets. The faint croak of tiny tree frogs, likely hiding in the dampness beneath the porch.

“No,” she said eventually. “I don’t. Mostly because I don’t see why anybody would ever want to leave this place.”

“The ranch, or town in general?”

“I meant Copper Ridge in general. But I have to admit that this house has a leg up on my rather rustic little cabin. You’d better be careful, or I’m going to want to move in too.”

“I’m much more likely to move in with you,” he said after a pause. “I mean, if my house gets any more crowded.”

She laughed, and for some reason it sounded a little more nervous than she felt. “There may be fewer people in my house, but it’s small. Tiny. We would have to share a bed.”

For some reason, that comment seemed to land in an odd spot. It just kind of hit heavy between them, like a sad, popped balloon that had fallen back down to earth.

And they both just stood there, staring at it. “I mean,” she said, making a last-ditch effort to redeem it. “You would sleep on the floor. In my room. Like a slumber party. But don’t laugh at my headgear.” He still wasn’t saying anything. “We could braid each other’s hair, talk about boys...” Why wasn’t he saying anything? She really needed him to stop her. She was making it weird, and there was nothing to make weird. And yet, frequently over the past few days things had felt exactly that.

Something hard was in his gaze now, and she didn’t like it.

“Eat cookie dough,” she said finally. And then she was done. She really was done. “Okay.” She took a deep breath and started to step away from him. “I have to go. I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe. I mean, you don’t have to see me tomorrow. But, actually at least call me, because I want to know what’s going on with everybody. Your brothers. That’s what I mean. Okay.”

She took a step away and he surprised her by reaching out, grabbing hold of her arm and stopping her from taking another step. She froze, her gaze meeting his. Her heart kicked into a higher gear, and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what was going on. But breathing was suddenly very difficult.

It was related to the awkwardness. To this whole strange path she had started to walk down earlier in the day, and had continued on into that never-ending ramble. And now it had led to this. Except, her mouth had stopped so her heart was now moving at a near-impossible pace.

“When I spend the night with a woman I don’t do any of those things.” His voice was rough, and it skimmed over her frazzled nerves in a way that sent a strange electric current through her. “Just so you know.”

Then he released his hold on her and she stumbled back, her skin burning where his fingers had just been.

He was holding on to the porch rail again, looking out into the darkness. “See you tomorrow.”

Lane got in her car and started to drive, and it wasn’t until she saw the lights on Main Street that her heart rate returned to normal.

CHAPTER SIX

THERE WERE FEW things more satisfying than looking across the breakfast table at his brothers at five in the morning and seeing just how miserable they were.

Cain was leaning back in his chair, his arm slung over the back like it was a brace that was keeping him from sliding right to the floor. Liam was scowling, one hand curved around a travel mug full of coffee, the other pushed into his dark hair, his elbow resting on the table, like it was propping his head up.

Alex was the only one who was upright, his cup held tightly in both hands, and placed down in his lap. Finn imagined the military ran on ranching time.

But the other two—they thought they wanted to be ranchers? They thought they wanted to live this life, this punishing, rewarding life that made you both master of and slave to the land around you? Yeah, he had a feeling that about now they were questioning that decision.

Their misery was balm for his soul.

And a much-needed distraction from all the tension that had wrapped itself around his spine and tied him up in knots over the past few days.

His grandfather. His family.

Lane.

Damned if he knew why he’d said what he had to her last night. Why he’d given in to that snarling, hot beast that was ravaging his gut and demanding he make her as uncomfortable as he was.

She had looked at him like—well, like he’d grown another head. Which should be all the reminder he needed as to why he didn’t go there with her. Ever.

He blamed his grandfather for dying. Blamed his brothers for being here. His whole damn life for being out of whack.

He needed to find his control again.

The ranch.

Once he got his brothers out there working, they would see how in over their heads they were. And how on top of things he was.

He took a sip of his coffee. “I get up this early every morning,” he commented. “Rain or shine. Can’t skip a day. Animals are needy like that.”

“You sound like Grandpa,” Liam said, his tone gravelly and terse.

“You hated it when you were sixteen, Liam. I don’t know what made you think you might like it now. Five o’clock is still very early in the morning.”

“Things change,” Liam returned.

“Not getting up before sunrise,” Finn said.

He turned and headed back toward the coffeepot, frowning when he saw that it was empty. That was going to take some adjusting. He was going to need to get an industrial-sized coffeemaker. He might be an early rising convert, but he didn’t do it without caffeine.

“Let’s go,” he said, turning back to face his brothers.

He led the way through the house, grabbing his Stetson off the shelf on his way out and positioning it firmly on his head. He didn’t bother with the jacket, though mornings were cold, even at the end of June.

It would warm up soon enough and he didn’t need to be encumbered.

The rest of them—he noticed—were wearing coats and sweatshirts. Only Alex had a hat on.

“You think it’s cold?” he asked, smiling. An evil smile filled with more than a little enjoyment for their suffering.

“I’ve been living in Texas for almost twenty years,” Cain responded. “This coastal air is mean.”

“Are you admitting that Texas made you soft? Because I think I hear the sound of an entire state challenging you to a duel.”

Cain grumbled something about Texans preferring a bar brawl to a duel while zipping his jacket up all the way as they made their way down the stairs and headed toward the barn.

Finn made quick introductions to the facility, and set to getting the cows into their positions. He made quick work of explaining prep and milking—since none of them were completely unfamiliar with it—and then he put every single one of them to work.

He had to admit, it was nice to have extra hands.

Morning milking went quick, and from there it was time to deal with the other animals. Then they had to move the cows from one pasture to another.

“Saddle up,” Finn said, smiling as he presented his brothers with the horses they would be riding today.

“I didn’t know you still went in for this cowboy bullshit,” Liam said.

“Without the cowboy bullshit I wouldn’t bother,” Finn said, swinging himself up easily onto his horse. “Besides, at the end of the day, it’s much easier to do it this way. At least by my way of thinking. Don’t need half as many access roads.”

“I don’t remember Grandpa moving the cows around. From pasture to pasture I mean,” Cain said. “We had to bring them in to eat.”

“Well, that’s something else that’s changing,” Finn said. “Mostly we’re not doing grain anymore. Or corn. We’ve been working to get them on a primarily grass diet. A lot of people think it improves the flavor of the milk. Of course, now everything needs to be hormone free. And the more asterisks you can put on the label the better. Hormone free, antibiotic free, grass fed, vegetarian fed... Whatever. It doesn’t necessarily make a huge difference with the bigger dairies, but we were transitioning in order to keep our options open.”

While he made his grand explanation, the others had finished with their tack and had gotten on their horses.

“Does that mean you’re considering that thing your friend was talking about?” Liam asked.

“No,” he said, “it doesn’t. Just hedging our bets is all. Because you never know when some health guru is going to get pulled off the internet and onto a morning show, telling people about the supposed dangers of something everyone has eaten forever. It’s nice to be ahead.” He was being stubborn. Maybe he was even lying a little bit. “What I do,” he continued, urging his horse to go a little bit faster, “I do because I want to do it. And I’ll do it in my own time.”

“Yeah,” Alex said, and without even turning to look, Finn could tell his younger brother had a smart-ass grin on his face, “you have definitely turned into Grandpa.”

There were worse things, Finn thought privately as he maneuvered the horse closer to the cows that were happily grazing in the field. Callum Donnelly might’ve been a cranky son of a gun, but he had been constant. Steady. Nothing like that worthless son of his that had fathered four sons with three different women and hadn’t stuck around to raise a blessed one of them.

Their father had died because of hard living. And he’d left them absolutely nothing.

Yeah, he would much rather turn into his grandfather than his father. No doubt about that.

“Follow my lead,” Finn said. “You may remember something about this from your time here. Cain, Liam, I want you on the sides. Alex, bring up the rear. I’ll be with you.”

They brought the horses into formation, and after that, Finn turned everything else off. All he did was focus on the mountains that surrounded them, covered with evergreen trees and reaching toward the sky. The clouds were burning away, the summer sun pouring out onto the field, spilling drops of gold on the grass, making it look like the ends of each and every blade were glowing.

Yellow flowers mixed in with the green, joining in with the sunlight to make it look like a bit of that warm magic had touched the earth right here.

Finn wasn’t a man given to poetry, but out here, it was easy to veer that way.

Easier still when his brothers were quiet.

This place was his sanity. His soul. And he let that sunshine burn away as much of the tension inside of him as it possibly could.

He could think more clearly out here, on the back of his horse. The world was reduced to the hoofbeats all around him, to the mountains, to the trees.

And he didn’t think about what might happen to the ranch if all four Donnellys ended up living here and fighting over their piece of it. Didn’t think about that dumbass stuff he’d pulled with Lane last night.

If there was a perfect moment in his life, he knew it was going to happen on horseback, riding on his own property.

So whenever he saddled up he took care to live in the moment. Took care not to miss it.

By the time they finished driving the cattle from one place to the next and rode back again it was nearly lunchtime. They were all sweaty and dirty, and he could tell that they were all regretting their choice of outerwear and their lack of a hat to keep the sun off their faces.

“I may have a farmer tan,” Finn said, unable to resist the urge to needle them, “but at least I’m comfortable.”

“Beer,” Alex grunted when they walked into the house.

Liam went to the fridge and pulled out two bottles, handing one to Alex before taking a seat at the table. A very slow seat. “Fuuuuuuuck.” The word extended through the entire motion, until he was settled in the chair. “That is not like riding a bike,” he said.

“No,” Finn said, leaning against the wall and surveying the group. “Not even a little bit. And if you think it hurts now...just wait until tomorrow. I went easy on you guys today.”

“I don’t think my daughter is even awake yet,” Cain grumbled, getting his own beer out of the fridge and popping the top violently on the counter.

“Yeah, I’m going to leave the designation of chores for the teenager to you,” Finn said. “I’m her uncle. Not her dad. And I don’t particularly want to play the part of bad guy.”

He was feeling cheerful for the first time in days.

“You got fat in the off-season, Liam,” Alex said.

Liam shot him a deadly look. “Tell you what. I invite you to start a fight with me and see just how out of shape I am. I just haven’t ridden a horse in... Well, since I was last here.”

Alex shrugged, crossing his arms and lifting his beer to his lips. “I don’t need to fight you to know that twelve years in the army gives me the advantage. I haven’t ridden a horse recently either, but I’m fine.”

Alex hadn’t looked all that fine only a few moments ago, but it seemed as though he was redirecting his stance now that he saw how miserable Cain and Liam were. It was impossible not to like Alex sometimes. Even though he was an obnoxious son of a bitch.

“Yeah,” Liam grumbled, “well, some of us haven’t lived at boot camp for the past twelve years.”

“True. But then, neither have I. Boot camp looks friendly next to Afghanistan,” Alex said. “Trust me.” He took another sip of beer. “Come to that, cows look friendly next to Afghanistan too.”

Alex was going to be the toughest one to scare off, Finn realized. He seemed like the easygoing one. Like the one who would cut and run when things got difficult. But there was an intensity that went beneath the surface, a strength that the rest of them hadn’t really been around to witness but that Finn knew was there just the same.

“We’re going to have to milk the cows again in a couple of hours. Take a break. Eat. There’s food in the fridge from last night, or you can drive down to town if you’re in the mood. Just be back by two.”

Alex and Liam looked at each other, then left the room. Either to go grab some rest or a burger, Finn didn’t know. But he didn’t really care. Unless they were going to hightail it back to where they came from.

But that left him alone in the room with Cain. And he had never really known what kind of things he was supposed to talk about with his older brother. They had a lot in common in some ways. They were the ones that stood alone, isolated. No full-blood brother, and very little in the way of attention from their father.

Though it was a strange thing to have the common ground between yourself and your brother marked by all the things you didn’t have in common. Where you were raised. Who you were raised by.

But in his family those strange connections were all you had anyway.

“You don’t have to enjoy this so much.” Cain leaned back in his seat, resting his head on the back of the chair. “I’m thirty-seven, not seventeen. And I feel every year of it right about now.”

“You own a ranch, Cain,” Finn said, looking at his older brother. “Why are you acting like you haven’t been on the back of a horse since the dawn of time?”

“It’s probably been a couple of years,” he said. “I paid other people to manage the actual day-to-day stuff. At least, that’s how it’s been since my wife left.”

“So you just turned everything over to other people?” That was unfathomable to Finn. He liked to have his hand in every aspect of the ranch. Sure, he had people who worked at the Laughing Irish other than himself and his grandpa, but he was in charge, unquestionably. And he went out and rode the perimeter of the place almost every day. It was in his heart, in his blood. And he didn’t possess the ability to let go of even a piece of it.

“I had too much to hold on to in my personal life.” Cain swore, setting his beer down on the table. “I love being a father, but I can’t say that I ever thought I was the best one. But now I’m all Violet has. And I felt like... How could I possibly be out working on the ranch when there was more than enough money coming in if I never touched it? Someone had to make sure everything was all right at school. That all of her homework was getting done. And I could let the work go, so I did. Anyway, there was still paperwork. And I basically buried myself in that, plus doing the legal work of making sure I got sole custody. So that Kathleen could never just walk back into our lives and decide she wanted to try and take Violet from me. Not after she left the way she did.”

“Why did she leave?” They had never talked about this. But then, they had never talked about much of anything. Finn hadn’t even fully realized that Cain’s ex-wife had removed herself so completely from the picture.

“Probably for a million stupid reasons. And a couple of really good ones.” He paused, looking down at his hands. “But the worst part about somebody leaving you like that is you can’t shout it out. I mean, I know enough to know she wasn’t kidnapped or anything. Because trust me, that was my first thought. Your wife disappears on you and the first thing you want to do is call the police. Because there’s no way she’d leave her thirteen-year-old daughter, right? I mean, sure, maybe she’d leave the husband she could hardly say a civil word to. But Violet? That’s the part I don’t get.”

He stood, pacing the length of the kitchen before he paused at the window over the kitchen sink, just as Finn had done a few days ago. He looked out at the view, taking it all in, and Finn felt a strange mixture of irritation and pride as his older brother surveyed everything Finn had worked to make this ranch over the past nearly two decades.

“It’s the part I can’t forgive,” Cain said heavily. Then he turned back to Finn. “If you think a full day of work, day in day out, scares me, you don’t know what I’ve been through. I’m raising a teenage girl, Finn. I’m not scared of jack shit except all the ways I might fuck that up.” He took a weighted breath. “But I need something new. She needs something new. Otherwise, we’re just going to sit there mired in old memories and drown. I need your money even less than Alex does. My ranch was big, and when I sold it I got more than I’ll ever spend. I can invest it back into the Laughing Irish. I can invest in Violet’s future. That’s what I want. But this isn’t about needing property, or needing to earn a living. Not for me.”

Cain didn’t have to get into a deeper explanation than that. Mostly because Finn recognized exactly what Cain needed this place to be. It was the same thing Finn had needed when he’d showed up, angry and lost at sixteen.

He didn’t need money. He needed salvation.

“I’m warning you,” Finn said. “This ranch will drag a whole lot out of you before it starts putting anything back. And then, it’ll always be that way. Give and take. You and the land.”

“That’s all right,” Cain said. “I kind of want it to hurt.”

Finn didn’t want to understand Cain. Because that was perilously close to being on his brother’s side. To wanting to help him out in some way. He bristled against his growling conscience.

He should want to help his brother, he supposed. It was much easier to oppose his presence when he imagined that Cain wanted to be here for the wrong reasons. That it didn’t matter. That a payout would make things square.

This made it a whole lot more difficult. It made Finn feel a whole lot more petty.

“Violet doesn’t seem very happy to be here,” he pointed out. Which was maybe the lowest blow he’d tried to land yet.

Cain laughed, but there was no humor in it. “She’s not happy anywhere. I don’t know what to... I mean... It’s like she’s a different person now. She used to be this adorable, little bitty thing. And I can remember her with two missing front teeth and a big smile so clearly that half the time that’s still what I expect to see when I look at her. Instead she’s this sullen creature that will barely make eye contact with me. She was mad at me in Texas. I figure she can be mad at me here. But at least maybe with a little less baggage hanging around.” He shook his head. “I could never shake the feeling that she was waiting for her mother to come back. And the longer we stayed at the ranch, the more I felt like that was why. That it was why we were both still there. It had to stop.”

All of this, the emotion, the understanding, scraped against Finn like a particularly splintered board on bare skin.

“I don’t know what to say,” Finn responded finally. “Mostly because there’s nothing I can say that won’t make me sound like an ass.”

Cain lifted a shoulder. “Maybe because you are one.”

“Maybe,” Finn agreed.

“I’m not the easiest person to get along with,” Cain said. “Every woman who has ever passed through my life will attest to that. Particularly, at the moment, my daughter. I’m not one to promise that we are not going to butt heads here. But I can tell you that I’m not here to ruin your life. I’m just trying my damnedest to fix mine.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

A DAY OFF was exactly what Lane needed to get her head on straight. She was tired, that was the thing. Overtired and emotionally taxed. It was why she had acted like such a weirdo last night when Finn had touched her.

And why she had been persistently weird about it all the way home, and while she was trying to go to sleep.

What he had said had continued to play over and over in her mind.

When a woman spends the night with me, I don’t do any of that.

She was a curious creature by nature, and his saying something like that forced her to try and imagine all the things he might do. Which had ended very quickly because the images she’d conjured had been awkward and strange and had left her stomach feeling tight and flipped inside out all at the same time.

Normally, she did her best to never imagine Finn doing anything remotely sensual. He was a constant in her life. And he was a man, yes, and she wasn’t blind. But when she’d met Finn she’d been in such a terrible, vulnerable place, and he’d been the friend she’d needed. She’d spent the ensuing years resolutely keeping him in that category.

It had taken Rebecca’s almost hooking up with Finn to jolt Lane into finally acknowledging that he was, indeed, a man.

And then there was what he’d said last night. About what he did and didn’t do when a woman spent the night. It left a lot to the imagination. And her imagination was a bright and inquisitive thing.

So today, she was doing her best to keep it dampened by puttering around in the garden. She had kept herself outside, and all forms of media shut off. No internet. No radio. No TV. No chance of upsetting images infiltrating her home.

Being on the ground, up to her elbows in dirt, was much more satisfying than catching a glimpse of the Ghost of Teenage Mistakes Past on the news.

Anyway, she had plenty to do. There was enough lettuce that she was going to have to bring it to the store if she had a hope of using it all. Picking and processing that, separating it out into individual plastic bags so it was ready for people to take home as premade salad mix, had eaten up a good portion of her time.

Then she had gone to wander around in the thicker part of the woods around her property. Her knee-length lace dress kept getting snagged on sticker bushes, but she didn’t mind. She minded more when the raspberries and blackberries twined around her legs and left little teeth marks in her skin.

But there were no prizes for timidity when it came to picking blackberries. The good ones were typically on the very top of the bushes, reaching up toward the sun. She hummed as she dropped the plump fruit into milk jugs she had cut the tops off.

They made for handy berry buckets, and they were cheap and disposable so if the juice stained the inside it didn’t much matter.

She didn’t mind the typically gray weather on the Oregon coast, but she very much prized the summertime. She closed her eyes, allowing the sun to bathe her in gentle warmth as she continued her work.

The mild weather through the winter and slightly earlier warmth of the summer had ensured that the berries ripened a little bit earlier than usual. And she held out hope that even more would ripen between July and August.

Little containers of the berries would fetch a decent price in the Mercantile, and anything extra would go to Alison, for pie and pastries and maybe for that jam she was thinking of asking Alison to supply her.

She wondered if Cassie would want any for The Grind, for a kind of special scone or biscotti. The thought had Lane humming to herself, imagining all of the baked goods she could talk her friends into making for her.

She liked her own baked goods too, of course. But sometimes things just tasted better when they were made for you.

She bent, grabbing her half-full container of blackberries by the handle, then scooping up the one she’d managed to fill most of the way up with raspberries, as well. With her free hand, she held on to her dress, trying to keep it away from the sticker bushes as she picked her way back through the thick foliage until she got to the well-worn path that would take her back to her house.

She paused for a moment in a clearing, allowing a shaft of sun to fall over her bare arms. She relaxed, holding the heavy buckets down low at her sides as she closed her eyes and tilted her face up. She listened then. To the birds, and the faint sound of the breeze ruffling through the treetops.

She breathed in, that heady mixture of soil, wood and pine that was only headier in the damp forest as the temperatures rose.

Then she heard the sound of car tires crunching on the gravel driveway that led to her house. She paused, frowning. She wasn’t expecting anybody, and unless they had gone too far and needed to turn around, no one had any reason to be driving up to her place.

She mobilized, walking up to the back door of her cabin and letting herself inside, passing quickly through the small house and peeking through the front window so that she could get a glimpse at the driver, without him seeing her first.

She let out a sigh of relief when she saw that it was Finn. And then for some reason on the heels of that relief came a surge of tension that rested like a ball in her chest.

She breathed in again, just like she had done outside, but this time, it was for fortification. This time, it was to try and do something to get rid of that tightness in her lungs.

Lane waited until he got out of his truck. Until he walked up the steps and stopped in front of the door. Then she waited until he knocked.

Only then did she open the door.

“Hi,” he said.

She just stood there, staring at him for a moment, her chest feeling tighter. He looked tired. His hat was pushed back on his head, dirt on his face making the lines around his eyes and mouth look more pronounced. His tight white T-shirt was streaked with even more dirt, and she could see on his battered jeans where he had wiped his hands on his thighs all day.

It was typical for Finn to look this filthy after a day on the ranch. But it was the exhaustion that struck her.

“What’s going on?” she asked, stepping back and allowing him entry into the house.

“It’s just a little too crowded at my place. So I thought I would come out here for a while.”

“Of course,” she said, backing into the kitchen, moving behind the counter and for some reason breathing a little easier once she did.

“What do you have there?” he asked, gesturing to the milk jugs.

“Raspberries and blackberries,” she said, picking them up and turning to put them in the fridge. “I’ll deal with them later.”

“I take it this is your version of a day off.”

“Some of us don’t work outside every day. I find a little bit of time in the garden relaxing. I took a walk through the woods, spent some time picking lettuce.”

“Basically, a rabbit’s perfect day.”

She made a face at him. “And a Lane’s perfect day.”

He chuckled. “I was actually wondering if you’d mind if I took a swim in the lake.”

“Of course not,” she said. Suddenly, she felt hot and sticky, and the idea of cooling off at her own piece of Lake Carmichael was more than a little enticing.

“Great. I have all my swim stuff in the truck. I’ll strip down out there so I don’t get any of my dirty clothes on your floor. Do you want to join me?”

For a full second Lane’s brain was hung up on the words strip down and join me. She knew that they were separate. She did. But there was something about him saying them in such close succession that snagged her brain and just sort of hung there. Like the stickers against her dress.

“In the lake,” she said finally.

“Yeah,” he returned slowly.

“Sure. Yeah. I’ll just... I’ll go get ready while you... Strip down.” She cleared her throat and scampered her ass out of the room.

She forced her brain into a blank space while she undressed and pulled her bikini on. The idea of walking out in her bathing suit seemed weird somehow. Even though they were only going to swim together, which they had done a million times. She growled and grabbed her dress, tugging it over the top of her swimsuit. There.

But was he done getting dressed? That was the question.

She hemmed and hawed for a minute before finally exiting her bedroom and making her way cautiously back to the front door. She peeked out the curtain again, and saw him standing there in nothing but a pair of shorts.

Well, he was dressed. Sort of.

He had a towel hung over his arm, and that reminded her she needed to grab one. She detoured back to the bathroom and took one off the shelf, then burst outside, not hesitating this time. “I’m ready,” she said.

He looked at her, a strange light in his eyes. “Okay,” he said.

The gravel was warm beneath her feet, and she kept her eyes down, making sure she didn’t step on anything sharp as they walked down the well-worn path to the lake.

There were houses all around the perimeter of the lake, but mostly on the other side, around a slight curve that kept everything from view. Those were larger houses, more desirable.

Lane’s friend Rebecca had owned one of the more modest houses on that end of the lake, near to Gage West’s extravagant lakeside cabin.

Lane’s house wasn’t exactly lakeside. Neither was it extravagant. But still she owned a little bit of the shoreline. The first year she’d been financially solvent she had had a dock put in, and then she had commissioned Jonathan Bear, Rebecca’s brother, to build her a bench swing that hung from a tree that stretched over the water.

It was her sanctuary.

Finn bent down and picked up a rock, running his fingers over the smooth-looking edges. And she tried not to think about why that made her stomach feel hollow.

He drew his arms back, then flung the rock toward the lake. It skipped three times across the surface before sinking to the bottom. “Want to make a wish?” he asked. “I’ve got three.”

This had been their game for a long time. Skipping rocks and earning wishes. Mostly because she couldn’t do it. So he always got to portion out the wishes he earned with his superior skills.

“I will get my own,” she said, bending to choose her own rock.

“It’s not flat enough,” he said.

“It’s fine,” she countered, moving to the edge of the lake.

She repeated the same motion he’d just done, running her fingers over the cool surface of the stone, ignoring that hers wasn’t perfectly smooth.

Then she cocked her arm back and flung the rock forward.

It hit the surface of the water and crashed on through, a splash like a fountain rising up in its wake.

“One wish,” she said, holding up her finger. “I get one.”

“No,” he explained. “It has to skip.”

“You got three! If the first one doesn’t count you should only get two.”

“The first one counts if it’s a skip and not sinking,” he said.

“You’re mean. And I think this game is rigged.”

“Do you want a wish or not?”

“I wish you would jump in a lake,” she snipped.

He turned and smiled at her, that crooked grin of his making something inside her feel off balance too. “Your wish is my command.”

He took two long strides to the dock and then another long one off, diving headfirst into the still, serene water, leaving nothing but a circular ripple behind as he disappeared beneath the surface.

He reappeared a second later, whipping his head back, a stream of water flying from his dark hair. He rubbed his hand over his face, pushing water drops from his skin while he kept himself afloat.

“Come on.” He gestured broadly, slapping the surface of the lake.

She rolled her eyes and reach down, grabbing the hem of her dress and shimmying slightly as she pulled it over her head. She could feel him watching her, and for some reason it felt incredibly awkward.

Apparently stripping her dress off in front of him was more awkward than just walking out in her bikini would have been. Even though she knew she had a swimsuit on underneath, she felt somehow strange and insecure. Like maybe she was wrong, and she had forgotten something crucial and she might be getting naked in front of him without realizing it.

She flung the dress to the side, letting it land in a patch of grass. And then she checked quickly to see that she was—in fact—wearing her suit.

She wrapped her arms around herself, clinging to her own midsection as she shuffled across the dock. The wood was warm beneath her feet, but she knew the water was going to be cold.

“How is it, Donnelly?”

“Like a hot tub,” he said, smiling in a way that let her know he was lying. And not even very well.

“Somehow, I’m skeptical of that.”

“You think I would lie to you?” He swam nearer to the dock.

“Yes,” she said.

He gripped the end of the dock, looking up at her, his brows lifted, his forehead slightly wrinkled. He was the picture of boyish innocence. Except for his muscles. For some reason, she found herself drawn to the way the water droplets slid down the ridges of his shoulders, over his chest.

She blinked.

“I’m shocked,” he said, doing a very good impression of someone who might be wounded. “How could you not trust me? One of your very oldest friends?”

“That’s exactly why, Finn,” she said, leaning down slightly. “Because I’ve known you for far too long. And I think that you want me to jump in and freeze myself. Because you’ll think it’s funny. You’re a child. And I know you well enough to know that.”

“Really?”

She bent down lower, hands on her knees. “Really.”

And that was the last thing she said before Finn reached up, wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her up against him, bringing her down beneath the surface of the water with him. He brought her right back up again, still holding on to her.

She sputtered, a hank of dark hair drooping in her face, lake water streaming down into her mouth. “You brat!” She shrieked, pushing her hair up out of her face, feeling it resting there on top of her head in an inglorious mat. She reached out, holding on to the dock while kicking her legs, the cool lake water swirling around her.

“You were going to get in anyway. I saved us both a bunch of time and shrieking.”

“I’m still shrieking!”

“But not as much as you would have if you’d worked your way in slowly.”

“Oh,” she said, “okay, you saved shrieking. But who’s going to save you?”

She turned, launching herself away from the dock and at Finn, pressing down on his shoulders and pushing his head beneath the water. He went easily. Easily enough that she knew he hadn’t bothered with any real fight. In fact, he had allowed the dunking. It was a pity dunk.

When he came back up, he shook his head and doused her with water. Then he grinned, water rolling down his face, the look in his eye mischievous and maybe even a little bit predatory.

She became very aware, suddenly, of the warmth of his skin beneath her palms, in stark contrast to the chilly water. She kicked her feet, and her legs tangled with his for a moment. She gasped, moving away from him and ducking beneath the water, swimming as hard and fast as she could. Away from him.

When she resurfaced, he was still back by the dock and she had gone out quite a way. She continued to tread water there for a while, keeping an eye on him. As far as she could tell he was just looking at her. Looking at her and doing nothing. For what reason? She had no idea. But she wasn’t about to ponder it too deeply.

She shook her head and went face forward into the water again, swimming in a straight but aimless line. When she looked back at the dock, she saw that he was lying out on the wood, his arms thrown up over his head, water pooling around him.

Submerging again, Lane swam back toward where he was, gripping the edge of the dock and levering herself up beside him. She was breathing hard, the exertion of her impromptu lap swim leaving her limbs feeling wrung out and vaguely like spaghetti.

Wind whipped across the surface of the lake, rippling the dark water, and then skimming over her skin, leaving goose bumps behind. The wood was warm, so she lay down too, next to Finn but with a healthy amount of distance between them.

They had done this a thousand times—swimming, dunking each other, relaxing in the sun afterward. And never before had there been this strange undercurrent. It was her. It had to be. The non-thing with Rebecca and Finn nearly hooking up was only part of it. Normally, she would have just brushed that off. But the intensity of how unsettled she’d been recently, the almost-manic energy and drive she had felt to do something—anything—with her business so that she would be as accomplished as she needed to be—it was making her tense even around her oldest friend.

She felt like a fragile, knit creation that had gone through the past ten years with a loose thread hanging free somewhere. Unnoticed. Undisturbed.

Until the past few weeks when Cord McCaffrey had gone national with his whole handsome, charismatic politician shtick.

Now the thread had been pulled. She had been pulled. That loose string yanked and yanked until she felt threadbare and dangerously close to unraveling completely.

This edginess was just a symptom of that unraveling. All of those patchy, unprotected places suddenly more vulnerable to...whatever this was.

What she had to do was get their friendship back on typical footing. She should ask him how things were going with his brothers. Why he was so tired. If there was anything she could do.

She rolled over onto her side, and her breath caught in her throat. Anything she’d been about to say died.

Her eyes were held captive by him. By that sharp, angular curve of his jaw that was dusted with a couple days’ worth of stubble.

From there, she looked at the strong column of his throat, which was notable somehow. Maybe because it was yet another thing that signified his maleness. And then there was his chest. She had been swimming with him about a million times, give or take. She had seen him without a shirt the moment she had looked out her living room window today. They had walked down to the lake together. But still, she had somehow managed to avoid really seeing.

For years, she had managed to avoid seeing.

Now all she could do was see.

That broad expanse of chest covered with dark hair. The ridges of muscle that shifted each time he breathed, running down his abdomen like a perfect, living washboard. Down to the hard cut of muscle at his waist that pointed downward, framing the flat space of his stomach just below that final ridge of ab and drawing her eye down to the waistband of his shorts.

She refused to ponder any farther down.

He sucked in a deep breath, every well-defined line moving as he did, then again as he released the breath on a masculine sigh.

Finn Donnelly was a man. Like, a MAN. In all capital letters. With muscles and chest hair and everything beneath the waistband of his shorts.

She knew that. Of course she did. But she had spent a very long time pretending she didn’t. Pushing it to the back of her mind. What did it matter if Finn was a man? Why would she ever think of him that way specifically? He was her friend first. Above all else. Her rock, her comfort and her stalwart in times of need.

The fact that he was a man had only ever been secondary in their relationship. An incidental.

But it was full frontal now. Big and glaring and impossible to ignore.

She didn’t know why it was suddenly so obvious. Except for that damn pulled thread. It was the only thing she could think of. That everything felt like it was a little bit off balance, and this was just one of the many symptoms of that.

She felt breathless. Like she had been hollowed out from her chest to her stomach. She was about to look away when Finn turned, opening his eyes.

That electric blue hit her hard. All the way down. To where she felt hollow and for some inexplicable reason it made her feel full again. But not in a good way. In some kind of strange, restless way that made it seem as though her skin was too tight for her body.

She wasn’t an idiot. It might’ve been a while since she’d had a relationship—physical or otherwise—but she knew what attraction felt like.

It wasn’t this. It couldn’t be this. Because this was Finn. And they weren’t that way. She didn’t see him that way.

He didn’t say anything. But he shifted slightly, his tongue dragging briefly over his lower lip before he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with the motion.

And just as the strange pang hit her stomach, in response she levered herself upward, pushing herself to her feet. “I’m cold,” she said, moving quickly off the dock and over to that patch of grass where she’d flung her dress down.

He was still looking at her, and for some reason putting the dress on didn’t make her feel any more covered up than she had just a moment ago. Maybe because he had already seen her in her bathing suit, so she knew that he could still see it in his mind.

Not that there was any reason for him to want to. Just because she was having a great unraveling didn’t mean he was.

But she thought of the way he had looked when he walked up to the house today. There was a slight, unraveled edge to it, she couldn’t deny.

“Feel free to stay down here as long as you want,” she said, turning on her heel and cursing when a piece of gravel dug into her skin. “Ouch,” she muttered, lifting her foot and brushing her hand over the bottom, making sure there were no rocks lingering behind. “See you at the house,” she said, flinging her hand in an approximation of a wave.

It took a minute to realize she was literally running away from her best friend. She slowed for a moment, her heart thundering sickly in her throat.

She swept her hand over her forehead and tried to catch her breath. She turned, facing a knotty pine that was just off the side of the trail that led to the lake. She braced herself against it, pressing her hands firmly against the bark. Then she leaned forward, resting her forehead against it too.

For a moment, she just stood there, conscious of the way her heart was beating in her head. She stood there until it slowed. Until her breathing slowed. Until the quivering sensation in her stomach stilled.

“Are you okay?”

She turned and saw Finn coming up the path, dragging his towel over his damp chest. Her mouth dropped open as she watched the motion of the terry cloth over his muscles, as she watched him wick away the drops of water.

She squeezed her eyes shut tight, then opened them again, forcing herself to look away from his chest.

He was carrying her towel in his other hand, and right then she realized that she had left it sitting down there on the dock. And also, that her dress was wet and clinging to her skin because she hadn’t thought to dry herself off before she had run away.

Her mouth went dry as he continued to advance on her. And the quivering sensation was back.

“Fine,” she said.

His gaze was hot on her, and far too assessing. She didn’t know what he was seeing. How could he be seeing anything? She couldn’t untangle what was happening inside her, so there was no way he could. And yet, she felt something. Thought she might see something a lot like understanding in his eyes.

That wasn’t fair. Not at all. Because there was nothing to understand. Not only that, if there was, she deserved to understand it first. So she could deal with it. Crumple it up in a little ball and throw it away. Or at least stuff it back down deep inside of herself where she didn’t have to acknowledge it.

“Then why did you just run away from the lake like there was a rabid varmint after you?”

“I told you, I got cold,” she said, gripping her elbows with opposite hands. “It’s cold. And you dragged me into the water.”

He took a step toward her, and she didn’t move. She just kind of stayed there, rooted to the spot, watching him take another step toward her. Then another.

“That’s what happened?”

She was mad that he was asking, because she had a feeling that he knew. That he knew this terrible, strange thing that was happening inside of her that she didn’t want to put a name to. That he knew exactly why she had jumped up and run in the opposite direction like her very life depended on it.

Or, at the very least, her life as she knew it.

She didn’t know why she was still standing there. She should turn around and walk back toward the house. They looked like idiots, her standing there with her dress clinging to her damp skin, and him shirtless in wet swimming shorts, just staring at each other.

He tilted his head back, swallowing, a motion that she was somehow hyperconscious of now. This everyday thing that he did as easily as breathing. Breathing. What the hell was wrong with her that she was noticing his breathing?

He took another step forward. He was close enough that if she raised her arm and reached out, even with her elbow bent, she would be able to plant her hand on his chest. Not that she would. That would be inappropriate.

Or maybe it wouldn’t be. Maybe if she really saw him as just a friend it wouldn’t be strange or wrong at all.

She gritted her teeth, rebelling against that thought.

Of course he was a friend.

A friend who was a man. Something she knew, and always had, but was a little bit more aware of right now. That was it.

He lowered his head then, leveling his gaze with hers. He looked at her. Really looked at her. His eyes searching hers, wandering over the planes and angles of her face. She could feel him looking for the answers that she didn’t have.

She balled her hands into fists, keeping them resolutely at her sides.

Tension stretched between them, long and tight. Then, heat rose in his eyes. So blatant and obvious, making such a mockery of all the vague I don’t even know what’s happening assertions that were jumbling around inside of her that she had to turn away.

She walked in front of him, toward the house, taking a deep breath, then letting it out. Doing her best to keep it rhythmic. To keep her pace slow.

So that she didn’t look like she was running.

Even though she was. She absolutely was.

He didn’t say anything, but she could hear the weight of his footsteps behind her, crunching on the gravel. More than that, she could sense his presence, and that just weirded her out even more.

When they came up to the house, she stopped on the bottom step, flinging her arms to the side and turning to face him, grabbing hold of the railing, forming something of a human blockade. “Thanks for coming by,” she said.

He blinked. “Okay.”

“It’s late,” she said. “And I have some work to go over. Things for tomorrow.” She was lying. “Because, you know, the subscription boxes.”

“Right,” he said.

“And I’m going to go to bed early. And probably, I’m going to wash my hair. I have to do some cuticle thing, with my fingernails. And scrub the dry skin off my feet. I have a pumice stone.” She wanted to grab all those words and stuff them back into her mouth. A pumice stone? She had no idea what was wrong with her. Except, if what had just happened down by the tree was actually sexual tension she had probably killed it forever.

She had just mentioned dead foot skin. She had a feeling that was in the handbook for how to turn a man off permanently.

Not that Finn had been turned on. Absolutely not.

“Okay. Well, I guess I will leave you to your...pumice stone.”

“It’s a real thing,” she said, immediately wanting to brain herself.

“I don’t doubt you. Maybe you should put them in your subscription box.”

She took a step back, up onto the next step. “They aren’t a local thing. I mean, this is a pretty volcanic region, so I imagine you could probably... But, they aren’t specific to Copper Ridge. Which is kind of the whole idea.”

“Right,” he said. “I’ll see you later, Lane. Thanks for the swim. I needed it.”

“Sure. Anytime,” she said, taking another step away from him. “Later.”

He turned away from her and walked to the truck, and she wasted no time scampering back into the house and closing the door behind her. She leaned back against it, pressing her hand to her chest, waiting for her heart rate to go back to normal.

She made her way back toward the kitchen, the silence of the house settling around her. It didn’t feel like a refuge right now. It just felt like a big echo chamber of every stupid thing that had gone on in the past hour.

She heaved out a long, vocal breath, going to the fridge to retrieve her berries. Then she stopped and swore. She caught sight of the calendar that was hanging there, and the girl’s night she had written down on it. Unlike their casual catch-up dinner the other night, this was their official monthly let’s-never-let-life-get-too-busy-for-friends night.

They were all supposed to go to The Grind tonight for their Main Street get-together. She, Alison, Cassie and Rebecca all owned businesses on Copper Ridge’s Main Street and as female business owners they had all bonded pretty quickly.

Usually, she didn’t take a day off on girl’s night, but everything was all jumbled up in her head so her decision-making had suffered.

She could skip tonight. She could legitimately stay home with a pumice stone.

But no, that was a bad idea. If she stayed home alone there would be nothing in the house with her except the memories of today’s events, which she would undoubtedly play on an endless loop, combined with that loose thread. Which she would pull out endlessly until she had finished the damage external events had already started.

She didn’t want to sit at home alone. She didn’t want to feel sad. She didn’t want to feel regret. She didn’t want to feel at all.

So, the alternative was going out. And that was exactly what she was going to do.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SHE WAS EXCEEDINGLY grateful that she had decided to come into town. Spending time with a group of friends was precisely what she needed to lift the dark cloud that had fallen over her lately. She was being overdramatic. About everything.

Spending time listening to other people talk about their lives had given her some much-needed perspective.

Maybe the real issue was that she was working too much. Not that she needed to work harder. She needed to do something to get out of her head, most likely.

“I know he’s going to propose,” Rebecca said, talking about her boyfriend, Gage.

“That’s great!” Lane said.

“How do you know?” Alison asked, folding her arms and leaning forward on the table.

“You just do,” Cassie said pragmatically.

Cassie had been happily married to her husband, Jake, for a little over three years, and of the group, was definitely the expert on relationships.

“Well, that and he’s terrible at keeping secrets,” Rebecca said. “He left a receipt for the ring in his pants pocket, which I found...”

“When you were doing laundry?” Alison asked.

“No,” she said, “when I was going through his pants pockets.”

Lane snorted. “Well, then that wasn’t too indiscreet of him.”

Rebecca shrugged. “He had better never have an affair. He leaves too clear a paper trail.”

“You’re not actually worried about anything like that, are you?” Cassie asked.

Rebecca shook her head. “No. And I was kidding about going through his pockets. I trust Gage.”

She said it so easily, so matter-of-factly. As if there was nothing huge or concerning about a statement like that. About trusting another human being so completely.

Lane didn’t even trust herself.

But, instead of pondering that any deeper, she smiled a little wider. “Are you going to say yes?” she asked. She already knew the answer, but she was enjoying the conversation.

“I might make him suffer a little bit,” Rebecca said, a smile playing with the edges of her mouth. “But there’s no one else for me. He knows that. And I think... I think there’s no one else for him. It’s kind of an amazing feeling. To find the person that just fits with you. I didn’t think that person existed for me.”

Cassie was smiling and nodding in a knowing fashion.

Lane shared a glance with Alison. She knew their thoughts on the subject of romance were similar. Although Lane had never known Alison to date at all.

Ever since her marriage had ended in divorce, her abusive husband driven out of town, Alison had sworn off the male species.

Lane couldn’t really blame her. She had certainly suffered her own brand of pain at the hands of a man. But it wasn’t like what Alison had been through. Lane couldn’t even imagine. To love someone, to marry them and to have them betray you like that. To have them turn into this whole different monster.

It was nice that Rebecca had someone now. It was nice that Cassie had someone. But sometimes Lane wondered if she and Alison had just been wounded too deeply to ever take that kind of chance again.

Oh, Lane dated. Casually. She liked men. But she liked them in their own space, and not in hers. She liked them to fill a manageable portion of her life. To fulfill a physical need and that vague emotional craving for romance that she sometimes got, particularly around Valentine’s Day or the holidays.

Someone to go to parties with. Someone to go out to dinner with. Someone who might bring her flowers and tell her she was pretty. To kiss her and make her feel good.

She’d had boyfriends since leaving Massachusetts. Some of them had even lasted quite a while. But they had never been serious. Not in the sense of her imagining they would become anything long-term.

The very idea of a husband, of children, made her feel sick inside.

It was a future she couldn’t have.

A future she didn’t deserve.

Without permission, a vision of Cord McCaffrey and his family flitted in front of her mind’s eye. His beautiful wife, his two darling children.

Her throat tightened, bile rising in it. Why did it hurt so much? Why did it still hurt so damn much?

Or rather, why did it hurt again after so many years of lying dormant? It was his fault. For being in the public eye like this. For bringing it all up again.

“Well,” Alison said, too brightly. Lane figured she had been traveling down her own dark road just then. “Congratulations, Rebecca. I can’t wait for you to officially accept his proposal.”

“Me either,” Rebecca said. “I would never have thought... Well, I would never have thought that I would get married. Not in a million years. And I really never thought that I would marry him. For obvious reasons.”

The reasons being that Gage had been responsible for a terrible accident that Rebecca had been in when she was a child.

Lane didn’t possess that kind of capacity for forgiveness. But she had to admit that theirs was a rare case. Where both of them had been lost in the past, continually punishing themselves for something neither of them was truly at fault for. So in the end it was better they had let it go.

Lane just couldn’t quite fathom how they had let it go with each other.

More power to Rebecca, though.

Nothing had proven more clearly to Lane that she still had an iron grip on the past than Cord’s recent resurgence.

“Crap,” Alison said suddenly. “I was going to bring a couple trays of chocolate croissants that I had left over in the bakery. Can someone help me carry them?” Alison was looking meaningfully at Lane.

“Sure,” Lane said.

“Be right back,” Alison said, leading the way out of the small coffee shop.

It was dark outside, and the streetlamps—made to look like old-fashioned gas lamps—were lit, casting a bright orange glow on the sidewalk. Most of the cars were gone, and the ones that were parked up against the curb likely belonged to people who had walked down the street to Beaches, Copper Ridge’s fanciest restaurant.

Or they had all done a park and ride to Ace’s bar or brewery.

Lane tugged on her sweater, pulling it closer to her skin. Once the sun sank into the ocean, nights were cold and invariably a bit damp when the mist rolled in off the sea. “I thought you might need a little bit of reprieve from those who are one half of a happy couple,” Alison said, her tone dry.

“Is it that obvious?” Lane asked, keeping step with her friend, then pausing while Alison unlocked the door to the bakery.

“Not really. I just assumed you might feel like I did. Come on in.” Lane walked in behind Alison, the room cast in darkness, the tables and chairs inky shadows on the light wood floor. The bakery case was empty, as were all the display cases that were normally full to the brim of pastries and breads.

“I really do have a tray of croissants,” Alison said, setting her keys on the table before heading into the back. Lane lingered in the main dining area for a while, and then followed her friend.

“Admittedly I’m a little bit of a relationship Scrooge,” Lane said, leaning against the kitchen door.

“I’m a lot of one,” Alison returned. “Here,” she said, handing a wide bakery tray laden with croissants to Lane. Then she turned back into the kitchen and reappeared a moment later holding her own. “See, I’m not a liar. I just have a convenient memory.”

They both walked back out into the dining room and Alison set the tray down for a moment so that she could grab her keys.

“Do you think you’re ever going to date again?” Lane asked.

She couldn’t see Alison’s expression, but she had a feeling it was a frown. “I don’t know. I like being by myself,” she said finally. “Nobody gets to tell me what to do. Nobody makes decisions about what I’m going to wear or where I’m going to go. I lost myself in Jared. So deeply that I never thought I would find me again. I wasn’t even sure who I was. It took so long to resurface. To let go of all that fear, that baggage... I don’t know. The idea of sacrificing any of my freedom just seems crazy to me.”

Lane chewed on her bottom lip. “I totally understand that. But sex.”

Alison laughed. “Yeah, that’s a whole separate issue.”

“Have you... You know, since?”

Alison shook her head. “No. Like I said, it took a long time to sort out my own stuff. So, for the time being I’m committed to... Sorting out my own stuff. In every way that applies.”

Lane thought back to all of the tension from earlier. To what had happened with Finn. How she had felt jittery and hollow, and needy in a way that she hadn’t really associated with wanting sex before.

She grimaced. “I guess that’s why some industrious person created vibrators.”

Alison laughed uneasily. “I don’t have one of those.”

“Seriously?” Lane rocked back on her heels. “Doesn’t every woman have one? Every red-blooded single American woman with a career and not enough time for a man?”

“Not this one,” Alison returned.

“Me neither,” Lane admitted. “Which I always thought was weird. Because according to every romantic comedy I’ve seen in recent years we should all have them.”

“Vibrator hype,” Alison said. “I would rather have the real thing.” She shook her head. “Of course, I’m much more likely to get a vibrator than an actual man.”

Lane sighed heavily. It had been a long time since she had dated anybody. Which translated to it being even longer since she’d had sex. More than a year. Way more.

“I think that’s my problem,” she said finally.

“You have a problem?” Alison asked.

“Not a big one.”

But for some reason, those words forced every incident that had gotten under her skin in the past few days into the forefront of her mind. From getting a glimpse of Cord on the news to every touch, every flash of strangeness and every lingering look that had occurred between herself and Finn.

Suddenly, they felt insurmountable. Like pebbles that had been stacked on top of each other and turned into a giant mountain.

“Just enough of one?” Alison asked, wrapping her arm around Lane’s shoulders and drawing her into a quick hug.

“Yes. Just enough of one.”

“If you ever want to talk about it... I’m kind of the master of the unpleasant topic that everyone would rather ignore.”

“Is that what you feel like? Like you have something big to deal with that nobody wants to talk about?”

Alison lifted a shoulder, then went and picked up the tray of pastries. “It’s complicated. Because sometimes I feel like I can’t escape it. Like everyone looks at me and sees someone weak or damaged. Even someone that deserves contempt. Because I stayed for so long. Sometimes I want to pretend it happened to somebody else. I want to pretend that my life started when Pie in the Sky opened. That nothing else happened before then. Other times...”

Her words reached inside Lane and grabbed hold of her stomach, squeezing her tight. She related to that more deeply than Alison could possibly realize. That desire to talk about the horrible thing that defined who you were, and the desire to make it go away, fade into the distance, vanish into nothing.

That big thing that defined everything you were, that was necessary, because you wouldn’t be standing on your own two feet without it, but that you despised more than anything else.

“If you ever want to talk,” Lane offered, “you can always talk to me. Don’t feel like you can’t. I know that I don’t...that nobody wants to make you talk about something that could be painful. But if you want to you can tell me. You can tell me whatever you need to tell me about him. I don’t judge you for staying.”

Alison set the tray back down on one of the tables with a clatter, and then, she wrapped both of her arms around Lane and hugged her close in earnest. “Thank you,” she whispered finally.

Lane wrapped her arm around Alison, then set her tray down with one arm, freeing up the other. And while she hugged her friend, she felt like a fraud.

Because Alison was being raw, was being vulnerable, and Lane had nothing but mountains of secrets that she didn’t share with anybody. Her past had happened outside of this little town, and here she was insulated from her downfall, with Copper Ridge acting as salvation.

For Alison, it was both. The source of her pain and the source of her relief. Everyone had witnessed both.

For Lane, there was escape.

And even though part of her wanted to tell Alison everything, there was another small, selfish part of her that couldn’t bear to bring the past any further into Copper Ridge than it had already come in the form of Cord McCaffrey on a TV in Ace’s bar.

So, she just let Alison be vulnerable. And when she was done, the two of them picked up their trays and walked back to The Grind with smiles pasted on their faces and not an outward sign to be seen of what had just passed between them.

CHAPTER NINE

FINN HAD A strong suspicion he was hallucinating. The sun wasn’t up yet and he could hear voices and the sounds of clattering dishes coming out of the kitchen. That meant there was a strong likelihood his brothers had woken up before him. That was unacceptable.

He looked at the clock and saw that it was after five. Then he swore, grabbing his hat off the top of his dresser and heading down the stairs.

Partway down he met Cain, who had clearly also just woken up.

“What the hell is going on?” Finn muttered.

“I thought this was all normal for you,” Cain grumbled.

“Not the noise.”

Then he heard feminine laughter. And he was left in absolutely no doubt as to who it belonged to. He frowned.

When he got into the kitchen, he saw Lane standing there at the stove scrambling eggs. She was also talking cheerily to Alex and Liam, who were sitting on bar stools at the big marble-topped island eating pastries.

“Good morning,” Lane said, turning around toward him, a bright smile on her face.

“What are you doing in my house?”

She furrowed her brow. “I brought you chocolate croissants, Donnelly. I’m not going to take your guff.” She turned back to the pan, stirring vigorously before shutting the burner off. “And now there’s protein to go with your pastries. Coffee is ready. Have a seat.”

Cain, clearly not caring about the fact that Finn didn’t find this scene to be normal at all, took a seat beside Liam. “Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she returned, bringing a plate and the pan over to where Finn’s brothers sat. She set the plate in front of Cain then scooped him a helping of eggs. Then she added eggs to Liam’s and Alex’s plates.

Finn scowled. “I take it you had a relaxing evening at home with the pumice stone?”

She cleared her throat, shooting him a deadly glare. “I am descaled, as a matter of fact.”

“Right,” he returned, moving across the kitchen, not bothering to lighten his footsteps as he stomped over to the coffeepot.

“I do greatly appreciate this, Lane,” Alex said, his voice so smooth it sounded like it was coated with honey. “We have a long day ahead of us, and I can’t say that Finn is much of a cook.”

“If you have a problem with store-bought doughnuts you can cook your own damn food,” Finn said, grabbing the carafe and pouring himself a generous helping of black coffee.

“My friend and his brothers should never stoop to eating store-bought doughnuts,” Lane objected. “Not when I can easily get day-old treats from Alison. Or scones from Cassie.”

“I don’t need your friends’ butter-laden castoffs, Lane.” He took a sip of coffee, one that was too big, and scalded his mouth and his throat. It burned all the way down. He was being an ass, and he wasn’t even really sure why.

Except then images from the day before swirled through his mind, and he had a much better idea. Lane in her bikini, looking like too big a temptation for any man, let alone one who had been doing his best to keep his lust tamped down for a long ass time.

Lane, who had clearly been affected by him in some way and had run the opposite direction. And then had stood there, staring at him like she wasn’t sure if she was afraid he was going to bite her, or afraid she was going to bite him.

And now she was in his kitchen. In his kitchen puttering around like she had every right to be here. While his younger brother—who possessed about nine times the charm he did—flirted with her.

“Some people appreciate the gift of carbs,” she said, her tone brittle. “Sit, Donnelly.” She gestured to the stool next to Cain with her spatula.

“I don’t want eggs,” he said, knowing that he sounded slightly petulant. He took a step toward the tray that contained the croissants and lifted one up. “This will do.”

“You need protein,” she said.

“I do the hell not. If I want to carbo-load that’s nobody’s business but mine.”

She sniffed. “Fine.”

“I’ll take some more eggs,” Alex said, smiling easily as he looked over at Lane, and looked her over a little too thoroughly. Lane filled his plate. “Thank you,” he said, charm dripping from every syllable. The bastard.

Finn’s house felt too full. Too full and too different. When he and his grandfather lived here by themselves there was no noise in the morning. They drank their coffee, they went to work. That was it. None of this conversation crap.

And Lane had certainly never let herself in to make breakfast.

Everything was turned on its side, and he didn’t like it.

His home, this place that he’d made for himself, had helped his grandfather keep alive after the rest of his family had left him by his damn self, was out of his control now. And this need for Lane, the one he’d ruthlessly tamped down for the better part of a decade, was being tested. God help him, he didn’t feel like he was in a space where he could pass those tests.

Not when she looked at him like she had yesterday. With wonder and curiosity, and like she wanted to touch him as much as he wanted to touch her.

It was one thing to push it down, to steer clear, when he thought of her as vulnerable. As someone who needed protecting from his particular brand of passion and possession.

A whole lot harder when she looked at him like a woman looked at a man.

And harder still when she looked at him like a woman looked at a man and was presenting him with croissants.

“I have to say, this is about the grumpiest I have ever seen anybody who was being gifted with pastries,” Lane remarked.

“I have a morning routine, dammit,” Finn said, taking another sip of coffee and burning himself all over again.

“Yeah,” Alex said, “this is better.”

“How?”

“She’s way better looking than you, for starters.”

Lane smiled. “Thank you, Alex. It’s nice to know that I’m appreciated. At least by somebody.”

“I appreciate you,” Finn said. “But I think it’s weird that you let yourself into my house to deliver food. And now you’re cooking.”

“First of all, Alex let me in. Second of all, it’s awfully convenient that you want food from me on your terms, but when I bring it to you without being asked it’s suddenly a problem?”

Liam and Alex exchanged glances. “I don’t think you’re going to win this one,” Alex said. “I would turn back if I were you. And anyway—” he stood up off of the stool “—we have work to do.” He winked at Lane. “See you later.” He and Liam stood and made their way out of the room.

Cain finished eating, and he didn’t seem to notice the fact that Finn was mentally boring holes through the side of his head. Or maybe he did, and he just didn’t care, because raising a teenager meant that he was immune to any and all kinds of dirty looks.

“Thank you again,” Cain said, standing up and tipping his hat. All that was missing was the ma’am.

Obnoxious Texan bastard.

Then it was his turn to walk out.

“I didn’t realize you were so grouchy in the morning,” Lane said, snatching up the dirty plates that were sitting on the counter.

“Possibly because you don’t usually see me in the morning. Because you don’t usually invade my house.”

“Why is it a problem?” She dumped the plates into the sink with no finesse, the ceramic dishes clattering against each other. If they didn’t chip, he would be surprised.

“I...” He honestly didn’t know. Except that he was still wound up from yesterday, and it all centered on her. Well, and his brothers. The fact that he felt like his entire house had been commandeered. That nothing was his anymore.

Broken down like that, it made him feel a little less crazy.

“You’re mean?” She set about washing the dishes, her movements ferocious.

“Don’t wash those,” he said.

“Why not?” She threw her sponge down into the sink and it must have knocked one glass down into another, because there was a loud, dangerous-sounding noise. “I made the mess—it seems like I should clean it up.”

“First of all, I would rather you didn’t do my dishes because it sounds like you’re going to break them. Second of all, you made breakfast—you’re not cleaning up.”

“An unappreciated breakfast,” she said, sniffing loudly.

He sighed, grabbing the back of his neck and rubbing it. “I’m tired. I’m still getting used to all of them being in my house, and I did not expect to walk in and see you too.”

She frowned. “When did I become a problem? When did I become another person who was invading your space?”

He wanted badly to tell her that she wasn’t. Except the feeling persisted. That she was just another thing that felt too difficult to handle right now. But he wasn’t going to say that. Because introducing the subject was even more impossible than just having her here.

“It’s me,” he said, gritting his teeth. “It’s not you.”

She snorted. “Now it just sounds like we’re having a bad breakup.”

“We aren’t,” he said, his tone harder than he intended. “It’s not like that. Friends don’t break up.”

That was the bottom line. Friends didn’t break up. And she was a friend. It was one of the biggest reasons she had always been a friend, and nothing more. Why he had never, ever made a move on her. Not just out of his loyalty to her brother, Mark, but also because he valued the connection between them.

Yeah, he wanted her. But there were a lot of women to want. A lot of women to have for temporary moments in time.

There was only one Lane.

He repeated that over and over in his mind while he continued to look at her. She was hurt—he could see that, her dark eyes looking a little too bright in the dim morning light.

“Good,” she said. “Because you can’t.”

“I can’t what?”

“Break up with me,” she said, a thread of genuine emotion winding around the teasing note in her voice. “I mean, I know how to get into your house. You would never be able to get rid of me. It would make things really uncomfortable. You would be like, ‘Lane, I’m not speaking to you, why are you in my house?’ And I would be like, ‘you’re doing a really bad job of not speaking to me, since you’re speaking to me.’”

“That’s what it would be like?”

“Yes. So, you can see that it’s silly.”

“Definitely. You have nothing to worry about. I have no desire to break up with you.” Using those words to talk about the two of them was weird.

“Good,” she said.

She shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, looking around, the air once again thick between them. He had thought that maybe it was just him. Until yesterday. And that made him mad all over again. It was one thing to feel attracted to her knowing that she was completely oblivious.

It was another when he had a feeling she sensed the tension.

“I have to go,” he said, using the cows as a convenient excuse.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to clean.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“And I don’t care. I have a while until I have to go open the store. Just let me help.” She reached out, like she was going to put her hand on him, and he took a step back. She stared at him, and then lowered her hand back down to her side.

“See you later,” he said.

“See you.”

CHAPTER TEN

THE MORNING HAD started tense, and she was still annoyed about it. The day was not getting along any better. First, a shipment of jam that had come in from a little farm down the coast had arrived with two broken jars that had left everything a sticky mess.

The deliveryman—the son of the woman who made the jam—was apologetic. But that still saw her wiping jam off each individual jar in the boxes.

Though, things didn’t start getting really terrible until later that afternoon when a group of giggling women walked into the store holding smartphones.

Lane couldn’t make out words so much as indistinct squeals. “He’s holding baby ferrets,” one of the women said. “I can’t handle it. And then—”

Lane didn’t get to hear the rest of the and then. Mostly because it was overshadowed by more laughter.

“Hi,” Lane said, doing her best to keep her tone bright. “Are you ladies having a good day?”

“Great,” one of them said, adjusting a flimsy infinity scarf. “We’re on a wine tour.”

Well, that explained the squealing. “How fun. I hope someone else is driving.”

“Yes,” another woman, a blonde, told her. “We have a tour bus.”

“Very nice.”

“We just came from Grassroots. What a beautiful place. Set right into the woods, with a lovely private dining space by the river. The view is lovely. And there was an actual rodeo cowboy there. He was a nicer view than the ocean.”

Lane wondered if that meant that Dane Parker was back from the Pro-Rodeo circuit. He was definitely the kind of man that caused a county-wide hot flash with his mere presence. Assuming tall, cocky and cowboy was your type.

He was essentially a local celebrity, even though he was from Gold Valley. But when it came to rural areas like this, being from a neighboring town meant every other community in the vicinity claimed you as their own.

“I do like a view with my drinking,” Lane said, smiling even more broadly.

“Oh,” the woman in the scarf said, “as sexy as he was, he doesn’t have anything on that new senator.”

Lane just about gagged.

And when she found a phone being shoved in her face, a video already playing, she was pretty sure she did. Because there he was, wearing a suit and a red power tie, clutching an armful of ferrets like a little furry bouquet.

What the actual fuck was a politician doing with an armful of ferrets? More important, why did this man insist on being both across the country and in her face constantly?

“It’s at the zoo in DC,” the blonde said. “It’s a whole montage of him holding baby animals while he hears about the various breeding programs. He is just such a nice man. And handsome. Not just for a politician either.”

Suddenly, the woman lowered the phone, and Lane knew she must be registering her disgust in her facial expression. Except, she was still smiling. She realized when she tried to widen it, that her mouth was stretched as far as it could go. But she had a feeling there was a murderous light in her eye. She must look terrifying.

Yet she had no idea how to fix it.

“Are you not a fan?” the phone woman asked.

“I’m a Quaker,” she lied. “I don’t engage in politics. I conscientiously object.”

She had no idea if Quakers voted or not, or if she was remembering that wrong. However, she could see that the slightly tipsy women didn’t know either. In spite of her near apoplexy—or maybe because of it—they ended up buying several packages of crackers and a pound of Laughing Irish cheese.

But by the time they left, Lane felt spent. Wrung out.

This was her life. Until the internet picked a new golden boy. Until his fame subsided. Unless he decided to run for president.

She spent the rest of the day engaging in busywork around the store. When the steady stream of tourists abated, she went into the back and started to cook some dinner for the night. There would be no harm in cooking for Finn again. She wouldn’t have to cross the threshold of his house if he was going to be a weirdo about it. She could just hand a casserole to him and scamper off into the night.

She snorted. What was the deal with that, anyway? Him being cranky with her. She hadn’t moved into his house and taken over a quarter of his ranch.

She’d gone over this morning with the idea in mind to establish some kind of normalcy. And okay, her bringing breakfast unannounced wasn’t normal. But random gestures of kindness were normal for them, and surely croissants were a gesture of kindness?

Then he’d been cranky with her.

Sure, she was applying a little bit of pressure on him to alter his business plan, but she wasn’t wrong. And it came from a place of love. And she hadn’t even mentioned it in a couple of days.

She huffed around the back kitchen, coming out periodically to check on the store, just in case someone had managed to walk in without setting off the bell.

The afternoon passed without incident, and by the time she turned the closed sign she was more than done. She sighed, sitting down in her chair behind the counter.

She should do something. Something pertaining to the subscription boxes, probably. She hauled herself up out of the chair for a moment, leaning forward to fetch a notebook and a pen. She wrote a header on top of the page: Box Things.

Then she stood again, wandering slowly from behind the counter and through the narrow aisles of the store. She started to write down various items she thought might make good representations of Copper Ridge goodies.

Suddenly, she saw a muddy brown blur flash across the floor, and over her foot. She screamed, jumping backward and knocking into a shelf, sending a box of scone mix tumbling onto the ground.

“Rodents!” she growled. “I am beset by small mammals.”

Between the potential attic possums and this, it was getting ridiculous.

Her heart thundering hard, hands shaking, she went back to the counter and, without thinking, dialed Finn. “Where are you?”

“I was just about to head back up to the ranch,” he said. “I was in town grabbing some hardware.”

“Come over to the store,” she said, knowing that she sounded desperate, and not caring. She didn’t know how to catch a mouse. And she could not have mice chewing holes in her things and making nests in various corners. She sold food. It wasn’t hygienic.

“Is everything okay?”

“No! Just... Agh! Get here now.”

“I’m on my way.”

The mouse made another mad dash over the floor and she shrieked and hung up the phone. “Gross!” she shouted at the mouse.

She didn’t know why. The mouse didn’t care that it was gross.

She ran to the door, turning the locks so that Finn would be able to get in. Then she wrapped her arms around herself, pacing back and forth. She muttered under her breath while she waited.

Only a few minutes later Finn burst through the front door, his hat on, his expression intense. “What’s going on?”

“A mouse ran across my foot,” she said.

The features on his face seemed to lower slowly, the intensity morphing into something else. Anger? “A mouse.”

“Yes. A mouse. It was horrifying. I’m emotionally scarred.” It had startled her, enough to call him feeling vaguely hysterical, because what the hell was she going to do about a mouse? But she was feeling calmer now, her heart rate returning to normal.

“Dammit, Lane,” he said. “You said that everything wasn’t okay. I thought maybe there was a knife-wielding maniac in your store.”

“You did not. Or you would have called the police.”

“I thought the odds were you were probably okay, but it doesn’t take much to imagine the worst, Lane. I came as quickly as I could. And it’s a mouse. It is not a knife-wielding intruder.” He was actually mad at her about this. And she didn’t know what to do with that. Didn’t know what to do with how off-kilter their every interaction had been for the past few days.

“Okay, yes, but it is a razor-toothed pest. Which is also alarming.” She did her best to try and lighten the mood with humor. He didn’t take the bait.

“You aren’t in danger,” he said, clipped. “You let me think you were.”

“I did not.”

“I was worried about you, Lane. And you’re brushing that off.”

“I am not! But it wasn’t nothing, and you’re being ridiculous,” she said, some of the initial surprise from her earlier mouse shock beginning to burn away, the quivering in her stomach taking on an entirely different quality. She had to look away from him. From his blue eyes, which were burning with anger and intensity. She ground her teeth together, deciding then and there that she was going to dig in on this. He had been so surly with her lately. He had been treating her like she was one of his invading family members, and she wasn’t.

She had made him food. She was taking care of him. And he was treating her like... Like this. Well, she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

“What were you going to do?” she continued. “You burst in here with no weapon. If I was being held at knifepoint you wouldn’t have been able to help.”

The intensity in his eyes took on a dangerous glint. “Is that what you think?”

“You’re bare-handed, Donnelly. There would be no saving me.”

He took another step toward her, and for some reason, she shrank back. “Lane, trust me. If you were in any kind of danger, if there had been somebody in here trying to hurt you, I would have torn him limb from limb. I don’t need a weapon to protect you.”

She realized then that he was...not shaking, but vibrating. With unspent energy. Unused rage. And probably, she really had scared him a little bit.

“Finn,” she said, reaching out and putting her hand on his shoulder before she could stop herself.

Whatever she had been about to say burned right out of her head like water on a hot surface. Just sizzled and floated right up into the atmosphere. Away from her. She had no hope of reclaiming it. No hope of doing much of anything but just standing there, her fingertips burning against his hard body.

She knew better than to touch him. They didn’t do that. And she had done it twice in the space of just a few days. And here she was, doing it again. Persistently. She was still touching him.

She jerked her hand back down to her side.

“This has to stop,” he said, his voice rough.

“What?” Was he talking about her touching him? Because she agreed. She just wished he hadn’t said it like that. In a way that acknowledged there was something loaded in the touching. That there was something nonplatonic there. She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want it to be an acknowledged thing.

“This,” he said, gesturing around the room. “It’s seven o’clock at night. You have a crisis, you call me. From wherever I might be, I come running.”

So. Not the touching. Because that was all her, apparently.

“You’re my friend,” she said. “Of course I called you.”

“Yes. But you don’t call Cassie, do you? You didn’t call Alison, or Rebecca. You called me.”

She scoffed. “Right, it would have done me so much good to call them about a mouse. We would have all ended up standing on chairs screaming.” She frowned. “Okay. Rebecca wouldn’t have. But the rest of us would be useless.”

“So you see my point.”

“No,” she said, even though she was pretty sure it was obvious and she was missing it on purpose, just because she wanted to push back at him. Even without knowing his bottom line, she wanted to push back.

“You called me because I’m a man.”

“Well, yes. Obviously. If I have drama with my electricity, and pest issues, I kind of need a man to handle that. I’m proficient at a lot of things, but I can’t be proficient at everything. Nobody is. That’s why I cook for you. That’s what I’m good at.” He continued to glare at her, so she swallowed hard and pressed on. “I guess when you put it like that, it feels a little like I’m labeling certain jobs man jobs and woman jobs, and I get that that’s a problem for some people, but it works for us. It’s playing to our strengths. That’s all I mean.”

He still didn’t say anything, and she was starting to feel nervous, that hollowed-out feeling in her stomach returning.

“Don’t tell me you find that offensive,” she said finally, hearing herself start to sound annoyed. He was letting her twist in the wind, and he didn’t seem at all bothered by that. “But if you do, if you really want to, I can come look at your fuse box and you can cook me dinner, but I have a feeling we would both be unsatisfied by that arrangement.”

“Stop it, Lane,” he said, the words weary. “You know that’s not the problem. The problem is we do have an arrangement. Or, it’s fallen into one. I’m not your husband.”

The words hit her like a slap, and her cheeks stung. “I know. That’s a stupid thing to say. Of course I know that.”

“I’m not your boyfriend. I’m not even your dial-a-dick. But you treat me like one. In every way except for the benefits.”

His words punched straight through her chest, grabbing her heart and twisting it. “That’s not fair.” She couldn’t quite articulate why it wasn’t, just that it wasn’t.

“Isn’t it? You don’t treat me like you treat your other friends.”

“I know. Because you are a man. Do you honestly think I’m blind to that?” It was poorly phrased, because in many ways, until recently, she had been blind to it. She had known, in an abstract sense, but she hadn’t spent a lot of time dwelling on it. On purpose.

That time he and Rebecca had almost hooked up, it had forced her mind to go there and she had found it completely unsettling. She’d been angry, nearly sick over it, and she hated herself for it. To want to keep her single friends—who had no obligation to her—from being with each other if they wanted to be seemed churlish and petty.

But she hadn’t wanted Finn’s time occupied by another woman.

That realization made her mouth drop open. She didn’t want him occupied by another woman, because she wanted him on hand for her. And that made what he was saying sound a lot like their whole arrangement wasn’t fair. A lot like she was, in fact, using him as a boyfriend without giving him any of the benefits of being one.

It was uncomfortable, and she didn’t like it. It made her feel like she was the one being hunted, not the mouse. Like she had been backed into a corner and had no other choice but to fight back.

So, she did.