He’s come back to Copper Ridge, Oregon, to keep a promise—even if it means losing his heart...

Putting down roots in Copper Ridge was never Alex Donnelly’s intention. But if there’s one thing the ex-military man knows, it’s that life rarely unfolds as expected. If it did, his best friend and brother-in-arms would still be alive. And Alex wouldn’t have inherited a ranch or responsibility for his late comrade’s sister—a woman who, despite her inexperience, can bring tough-as-iron Alex to his knees.

Clara Campbell didn’t ask for a hero to ride in and fix her ranch and her life. All she wants is the one thing stubborn, honorable Alex is reluctant to give: a chance to explore their intense chemistry. But Clara has a few lessons to teach him, too...about trusting his heart and his instincts, and letting love take him on the wildest adventure of all.

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 thrilling seventh Copper Ridge contemporary proves that friendship can evolve into scintillating romance... This is a surefire winner not to be missed.”

—Publishers Weekly on Slow Burn Cowboy (starred review)

Wild Ride Cowboy

Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Family Tree

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

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

HE WAS PERFECT in every way.

Clara Campbell didn’t even bother to hide the look of longing she knew was currently etched on her face. Asher was facing away from her anyway, working on making a cappuccino behind the bar—for her—so he wouldn’t notice if she spent a little while admiring the elegant way he moved while he steamed the milk.

Okay, maybe most people wouldn’t be applying words like elegant to the process of steaming milk. But in her mind, Asher could do no wrong, and everything he did was poetry. Including his work as a barista at Copper Ridge’s newest artisan coffeehouse, Stim. Which was little more than a hole in the wall in the building down near the sea that used to house Rona’s diner.

The diner had closed a few months back and had since been bought, gutted and remodeled to fit several new businesses that were geared toward the influx of tourists that had been passing through Copper Ridge, Oregon, in increasing numbers over the past few years.

It was perfect for Clara since Stim sat along the coastal highway, right at the turnoff she took to head inland to Grassroots Winery, where she was working part-time—and it gave her an excuse to see Asher every morning.

Too bad she didn’t like coffee.

But sacrifices had to be made for love.

And she did love him. Well, as much as you could love a guy you hadn’t so much as gone on a date with.

She’d met Asher at an open-house event the winery had hosted as something of a relaunch of the brand, when Lindy, the owner, had officially gained full ownership after her divorce.

He’d walked into the converted barn, where Clara was serving drinks, and it had been like a light shone down on him. Even in the crowd of people he stood out to her.

From there she’d found out where he worked and developed a fake coffee habit. Which made her sound a little like a weirdo as things stood now, but would be a charming story to tell later if things worked out.

“Here’s your cappuccino, Clara.” Asher turned and passed the coffee across the counter. There was no lid on the white paper travel cup yet, which gave her a moment to admire the heart he’d traced into the foam. Okay, it was kind of a fern. But like...a heart-shaped fern. And either way it made her own heart skip a few beats.

“Thank you,” she said, doing her best not to blush when she looked directly at him in all of his man-bunned glory.

He was lean and rangy, wearing a T-shirt for a band she’d never heard of and would probably hate if she did. But she liked the look of the shirt, so she didn’t really care about the band. Plus, it was nice to listen to him talk about music and how every popular song had the same three chords. Sure, afterward she got into her truck and put on the popular country music station, but he was passionate. She liked that.

Even if her tastes were regrettably mainstream.

She loitered at the edge of the counter for a moment. She was running early for work. She’d built in extra time for this stop, so she could afford to linger a little.

He lifted his brows, his dark eyes questioning. She would answer any question he wanted. “Did you need anything else?”

You.

“No.”

“Okay.” Then he turned around and began cleaning up the drink station. She let out a long, slow sigh. She really didn’t have a reason to linger.

Slowly, very slowly, she added one sugar packet to her coffee. Then another one. Then a third. All while watching Asher. She wasn’t going to drink the coffee so it didn’t really matter what it tasted like. And since she wasn’t going to drink it, she wasn’t going to stir the design away either.

Reluctantly, she covered the coffee with a white to-go lid then turned to walk out the door. She didn’t make it very far, though, because she ran right into a brick wall.

Well, it wasn’t really a brick wall. It just felt like one. Large, hard and uncompromising. But breathing. Which brick walls definitely didn’t do.

“Clara Campbell. Fancy meeting you here.”

Clara blinked and stared up into Alex Donnelly’s forest-green eyes and felt a strange response that seemed to originate in her stomach and travel upward to her chest, where it twisted, hard and sharp.

After looking at Asher, his understated physique and much softer brown gaze, the sight of Alex was jarring. Too intense. Too masculine. Too a lot of things.

His dark hair wasn’t military short anymore. It was long enough to hang into his face. He pushed it back off his forehead and again, something twisted, low and deep inside of her.

And then it wasn’t only his features that seemed too sharp. It was seeing him at all. She had been studiously avoiding him ever since he had moved back to Copper Ridge. If ever she’d caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye, she’d gone the other way.

The last time she’d seen him up close had been at Jason’s funeral.

Pain washed through her, canceling out all of the good Asher feelings from only a moment before.

No wonder she’d had such a strong, immediate response to the sight of Alex. The man was dragging a bunch of her baggage in with him. Another thing she liked about Asher. He was separate from her life. From her pain.

Alex was all wound up in it.

“Hi, Alex,” she said, clutching her coffee cup tight, the warmth bleeding through to her palms. Which she was grateful for at the moment since her stomach had gone ice-cold at the sight of him.

“I’ve been meaning to stop by,” he said.

“That’s really okay,” she said, and she meant it. More than okay. Jason’s death meant that she was alone. Both of her parents were already gone. They’d had children later in life, and when her mother had gotten sick, her father had done everything he could to make his wife comfortable as her health declined. She’d died when Clara was twelve. And there had been no amount of preparation that could soften the blow. No amount of expectedness that could have made it feel less like a giant, ugly hand had reached into their life and wrenched the beauty out of it, leaving nothing but a dark abyss.

Their father had thrown himself into work. Into the ranch and into drinking. He’d tried to be there for his kids, but it had been too hard for him to look at them sometimes. And Clara could understand. It had been hard to look at him too. Hard to look at him and see the grief, stark and horrible on his face.

And then he’d died of a heart attack when Clara was seventeen, the stress of caregiving and loss too much for his body.

And now Jason.

A black sense of humor honed out of necessity—since a good portion of her life had been very dark indeed, and she’d had to find ways to laugh—forced her to wonder if she should look out for stray lightning bolts.

Whatever the reason—hex, divine intervention or plain bad luck—the Campbell family hadn’t been very long-lived.

So now Clara was alone. And really, she wanted to get to the business of being alone. She did not want to deal with Alex’s dutiful presence. Because that’s all it would be. He and Jason had been in the military together, they’d been friends and brothers in arms.

She had a suspicion Alex had even been there when her brother was killed. So of course the guy felt some sense of... Something. A desire to make sure she was okay. The need to check on her and the ranch, and whatever else.

But she didn’t need that. She didn’t need anybody coming into her life and carrying a portion of the weight for a limited time. She wanted to get on with that permanent, hard stretch that was the rest of her life.

She didn’t want a false sense of ease. That would only make it all the harder when she was alone again.

“It’s not okay, actually. We have some things we need to discuss.”

Clara looked down at the top of her coffee cup and wished that she hadn’t put the lid on, so she could make a show out of studying the milk-froth fern. “Oh. Do we?”

“Yes.”

She looked at the clock on the wall and regrettably she had time.

Time she had built in so she could make conversation with Asher if he’d been in the mood to make conversation. Not so she could hassle with Alex and the myriad emotions just looking at him made her feel.

“Well, I’m on my way to work,” she said, edging around his masculine frame and backing toward the door.

“You have a job other than working at the ranch?”

She should have known the big, muscly soldier wouldn’t take hints well. “Yes,” she said. She didn’t elaborate.

“Where at?”

She made an impatient sound she didn’t even try to cover up. “Grassroots Winery.”

“I haven’t been out there yet. Maybe I should check it out.”

Rather than answering, Clara lifted her cup to her lips and absently took a drink. She grimaced, barely stopping herself from spitting out the hot liquid. It was still bitter, with a kind of sickly sweet flavor running over the top of it. Compliments of that extra sugar she had dumped into the cup to linger over Asher a little longer.

She really, really didn’t like coffee.

Alex treated her to a strange look.

“It’s strong,” she said, gesturing with the cup. “Just the way I like it.”

“Glad to hear that.”

“Well—” she waved her fingers “—bye.” She continued walking past him, heading out the door.

Much to her chagrin, he followed.

She paused, turning slightly in the gravel parking lot. “You didn’t get your coffee.”

“I actually wasn’t there for coffee. I don’t like places like that.”

“Why not?”

“You can only get one size. What the hell is up with that? I don’t need some hipster giving me prescriptive coffee. I don’t need to be told the way they think coffee must be served to be better. I need it the way I want it.”

He stopped walking, crossing his arms over his broad chest. He was wearing a plain, tan-colored T-shirt and a pair of dark jeans. Somehow, even out of uniform, he still looked like he was in one.

“Why did you stop in then?”

“I saw your truck outside.”

She frowned. “You acted surprised to see me.”

“No,” he said, “I believe what I said was ‘Fancy meeting you here.’”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, you knew how I would take it.” A strange sense of disquiet stole over her, a feeling of creeping tension.

“I tried to call your cell phone,” he said.

She blinked. “How did you get my number?”

“It was on some paperwork I got from the attorney’s office. It looked like something we both should have had copies of.”

Right. Paperwork that was probably sitting unopened in a pile on her table. To go nicely with the messages from the lawyer she’d been avoiding. He’d tried to talk to her at the funeral too. But she hadn’t been able to handle it. Because then they’d be talking about her brother’s estate. Which was what your possessions turned into when you were dead.

An Estate.

She’d had to discuss her mother’s. Then her father’s. She’d had the feeling she’d crawl out of her skin talking to anyone about her brother’s. It was stupid, and she knew it. Ignoring bills didn’t mean they didn’t need to be paid. Ignoring a lawyer wouldn’t make Jason not dead.

But once she talked to him, it would all feel final. And she couldn’t handle that. She was barely keeping her head above water. She was dependent on her routine. These quiet mornings where she got coffee she didn’t want to drink from a man whose whole being made her feel...happy. If only for a few moments. Then she would go and work at the winery showroom until closing time, enjoying being surrounded by people. Then she’d head home. Home to her empty house, where she would do any chores that needed doing before she fell into bed, passed out, didn’t dream—if she was lucky—and repeated the whole thing the next day.

Maybe it was denial. But she deserved a little denial.

Alex was interrupting her carefully orchestrated coping mechanism. She didn’t like it. “You took my phone number from a piece of paper?”

“I told you, I need to talk to you about a few things. I assumed you knew some of this—I thought an effort had been made to contact you.”

Her cheeks got hot, and she went prickly all over. Efforts probably had been made, but she just hadn’t been able to cope. Which made her feel small and humiliated. She hated it.

Alex continued. “Your brother had a will.”

She didn’t want to do this. Not here. Not now. She couldn’t talk about Jason. She couldn’t talk about his will. She couldn’t deal with this. “I have to go to work,” she said.

She was going to deal with all of this—Alex, Jason’s will—someday. But not today. She just didn’t want to do it today.

“What time do you get off?”

“Six. But I’m going to be really tired and I...”

“Why is your phone turned off, Clara?”

She blinked hard, and yet, no matter how much she wanted him to disappear, no amount of blinking accomplished it. “It’s not a big deal. I don’t use my phone.” She wasn’t paying her bills. That was the truth. There was some money, it wasn’t like she was destitute. But there was something about dealing with the mail right now that felt overwhelming. Envelope after envelope, cards, condolences, bills addressed to Jason like he wasn’t dead. Like he could come back and open them.

He couldn’t. He couldn’t do anything.

“I’ve been busy,” she said. “I forgot to pay the bill. That’s all.”

She wasn’t going to admit her mail gave her anxiety. What kind of twit had mail anxiety?

Well. She did.

“And if I come to your house at six tonight are you going to be there? Or am I going to have to stalk you at your favorite coffee place again?”

She frowned. “Come to think of it, it’s a little bit weird that you were able to find me here.”

“Not really. I saw you here yesterday when I drove into town. I took an educated guess this morning and decided I would stop in. It’s pretty lazy stalking, all in all.”

“Lazy stalking isn’t really less disturbing than energetic stalking.”

“You can avoid all future stalking if we could just talk now,” he said, his expression suddenly turning serious.

“No,” she said, the denial coming out quickly.

She really couldn’t deal with this now. She couldn’t deal with discussing Jason in the past tense. Couldn’t deal with talking about his will in a parking lot. Couldn’t face looking at all the things her brother had left behind, his worldly possessions, which no longer belonged to him because he wasn’t part of the world anymore.

Hell, she couldn’t open a damn phone bill. She wasn’t going to do any of the rest of this.

“Then we’ll talk later. If I have to camp out in your yard, we’ll talk later.”

Then he turned and walked back toward his truck, leaving her standing there with her cappuccino.

She took another sip. “Dammit!”

She forced herself to swallow it, rather than spitting it out into the gravel, on the off chance Asher was watching.

She had to get to work now, she couldn’t worry about Alex. Whatever he had to say to her, she would take care of it then. Her life had already been rocked beyond recognition in the past couple of months. There was nothing Alex Donnelly could say that would bring it crumbling down now.

* * *

VERY FEW PEOPLE would call Alex Donnelly a coward. He had dodged gunfire, survived a rain of mortar shells—more than once—and worn full tactical gear in arid heat that could practically bake a loaf of bread, or a man’s brains for that matter.

But he had been a little bit of a coward when he’d allowed Clara Campbell to put off their conversation about her deceased brother’s will.

The fact of the matter was he had been a coward for the past couple of months that he’d been back in Copper Ridge, and had avoided having the conversation with her at all. He’d had his excuses, that was for sure.

Some of them were actually valid. Like the time he’d put into investigating the legality of what her brother had asked him to do. And then the time spent going over the letter Jason had left. The one that clarified just why he wanted things this way and made it impossible to deny him.

Still, Alex had waited to talk to Clara, even after that.

At first, it had been out of deference to her grief. And after that, because he was trying to get his feet underneath him at the Laughing Irish ranch, which he worked at with his brothers.

Frankly, after losing his best friend and his grandfather, he’d had enough to deal with without adding Clara to the mix. But it couldn’t be avoided anymore. And when he had discovered her cell phone was turned off, he’d felt guilty for avoiding it as long as he had.

Clara must be hurting for money. Enough that she had taken a job at Grassroots Winery, and was letting bills go unpaid.

He’d expected her to call if things were that bad. Hell, he’d expected her to call period. But the way she’d acted at the coffee shop, it didn’t seem like she’d spoken to anyone about the details of Jason’s will.

Now that he thought about it, if she had, she probably would have come at him hissing and spitting.

She might still. But she was late.

Alex pushed his cowboy hat back on his head and looked at the scenery around him. The ranch was small, and so was the ranch house. Rustic. From his position on the front porch—which was squeaking beneath his cowboy boots—he couldn’t see the highway.

Couldn’t see anything but the pine trees that grew thick and strong around the property, standing tall like sentries, there to protect the ranch and all who lived there.

“Well, you’re doing a pretty piss poor job,” he commented.

Because damned if the Campbells hadn’t been through enough. But he was here to make things easier. He knew—was one hundred percent certain—that Clara wouldn’t see it that way initially. But this was what Jason had wanted, and he knew that Jason had nothing but his sister’s best interests in mind when he’d made out his will.

Alex owed it to his friend to see his last wishes carried out. No question about it.

He took a deep breath, putting his hands on his narrow hips as he turned a half circle to take in more of the property. The driveway needed to be graveled. It was slick and muddy right now, even though it had been a few days since it had rained.

There was a truck and a tractor that Alex would lay odds didn’t run, parked off in the weeds, looking like metal corpses left to rust into the earth.

The place needed a lot of work. It was too much for him to do by himself, let alone one woman. One grieving woman who was having to work part-time on top of doing the general ranch work.

He figured at this point the place wasn’t really functional. But he was forming some ideas on how to get it working again. On how to make sure Clara hadn’t just been saddled with a millstone.

Or, more accurately, that he hadn’t been.

The center of the sky was dimming to a purplish blue, the edges around the trees a kind of dusty pink by the time Clara’s truck pulled up the long driveway into the house. She stopped, turning off the engine, staying in the vehicle. She was looking at him like she was shocked to see him, even though he had told her he would be there.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, leaning against the support for the porch, not moving until Clara got out of the truck.

She was such a petite little thing. And she had definitely lost weight since he’d seen her a few weeks ago. He couldn’t imagine her taking on a place like this, and suddenly he felt like the biggest ass on the planet. That he had stayed away because she was going to be angry, when she had clearly been here working her knuckles to the bone.

Jason had been clear on what he wanted. The fact that Alex had screwed it up so far seemed just about right, as far as things went.

“Big wine-tasting day?” he asked.

Clara frowned. “No. Why?”

“You’re home late.”

She raised a brow, then walked around to the back of the truck and pulled out a bag of groceries. “I had to stop and get stuff for dinner.”

“Good. You do eat.”

She frowned. “What does that mean?”

“You’re too skinny.” He felt like a dick for saying it, but it was true. She was on the sadness diet, something he was a little too familiar with. But he’d learned not to give in to that in the military. Learned to eat even when his ears were ringing from an explosion, or the heat was so intense the idea of eating something hot was next to torture. Or when you’d just seen a body, bent and twisted under rubble.

Because food wasn’t about enjoyment. It was about survival.

A lot like life in general.

Clara Campbell needed help surviving. That was clear to him.

Clara scowled even deeper as she walked toward him. “Great. Thanks, Alex. Just what every woman wants to hear.”

“Actually, in my experience, a lot of women would like to hear that.” He snagged the paper grocery bag out of her arms as she tried to walk past him. “SpaghettiOs? What the hell is this?”

“I call it dinner.”

“Sure, for a four-year-old.”

“I’m sorry they don’t live up to your five-star military rations. But I like them.”

She reached out and grabbed hold of the bag, trying to take it out of his arms.

“Stop it,” he said. “You’ve been working all day. I’m going to carry your groceries.”

She bristled. “You’re insulting my groceries. I feel like you don’t deserve to carry them.”

He snorted, then turned away from her, jerking the bag easily from her hold. “Open the door for me.”

“I thought military men were good at taking orders,” she said. “All you seem to do is give them.”

“Yeah, well I’m not in the army now, baby.” He smiled, and he knew it would infuriate her. “Open the damn door.”

Her face turned a very particular shade of scarlet but she did comply, pulling out her keys and undoing the lock, then pushing the door open. He walked over the threshold, and a board squeaked beneath his feet. He made a mental note to fix that.

“The dining room is just through there, set the bag on the table.” She walked in behind him. “See? I can give orders too.”

“While eating SpaghettiOs.” He set the bag on the table she’d indicated, then took a look around the room. It was sparse—the floor, walls and ceiling all made with rustic wood paneling. There was a red rug on the floor with a geometric design that provided the only bit of color to the room, other than a big, cheery yellow cabinet that was shoved in the back of the kitchen, packed full to the brim with white plates. It seemed a little incongruous with the rest of the place. And at odds with the rickety dining table and its mismatched chairs.

He had never been to Jason’s house before. They had met when they were in high school, and consequently, had spent their time hanging out away from the watchful eyes of parents and guardians. After that, they’d wound up serving together in the military.

The place was...well, cozy was a nice word for it. Eclectic badger den possibly less nice but more accurate.

“I’m hungry,” Clara said, fishing one of the cans out of the bag. “Don’t taint my SpaghettiOs with your judgment.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

He watched as she moved around the efficient little kitchen, making small economical movements, getting out a blue-and-white speckled tin bowl and a little pan, then opening the SpaghettiOs and dumping them in it. She put the pan on the front burner, turning it to high, then whirled around to face him.

“Okay. What are we talking about?”

“Do you want to wait until you’ve eaten your dinner?”

“No.” She turned around and opened the fridge, pulling out a can of Coke before popping it open and taking a long drink. She didn’t offer him one, he noticed.

“I was contacted by your family lawyer shortly after Jason’s death.”

Clara crossed her arms, her lips going tight. “Okay, why did he call you?”

“Why didn’t he call you, Clara? I expected you would have talked to him.”

She bit her lip. “Well. He did. But we didn’t talk.” Alex stared her down and her cheeks turned increasingly red as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. “I’ve been busy,” she added defensively.

“Well, if you hadn’t been too busy for the lawyer, he might have talked to you about the fact your brother’s will concerns me.”

“Excuse me?” This was the part he had been avoiding. The thing he had not been looking forward to. Because his friend had left him with property, had left him with his earthly possessions and a letter explaining his feelings, which ultimately were only that: the feelings of a dead man. Alex had to try to fill in blanks he wasn’t sure could be filled. He’d tried to reason it all out to decide if he could justify defying Jason’s wishes. He hadn’t been able to. So here he was.

“He left me in charge of the estate,” he continued. “The ranch, everything on it, everything in it, the house—until things are stable or until one year has passed.”

Clara didn’t move. The only indication she was reacting to his words at all was that her face had gone completely waxen.

“Do you understand what I’m saying, Clara? I have a stake in this house now. And in this ranch. Your brother left me in charge.”

CHAPTER TWO

“CLARA?”

Clara knew she was supposed to respond. She was supposed to say something. Yell, maybe. Or cry? Something. Alex was standing there telling her he was now linked—legally—to this place that she had poured her whole self into.

She’d grown up here. All twenty-one years of her life. Jason had joined the army when she was just eight years old, coming back intermittently when her parents hadn’t been able to care for her. But since she’d turned eighteen it had all been on her.

There had been no college. No dates. There had been this ranch. It was hers. And now he was just...taking that?

She didn’t scream, though. Instead, she just stood there, numbness spreading from her mouth to the rest of her face. She was way too familiar with this feeling. With the moment the earth fell away and the world shifted. With innocuous moments rolling over and becoming something significant.

With her life changing completely between one breath and the next.

That was the worst part about this moment. Not that it was singular in its awfulness, but that it wasn’t.

Of course there was more. Of course there would be no putting her head down and simply getting over this. Moving on to the next thing. Getting used to her new, incredibly crappy normal.

Alex had just redefined normal. Again.

Asshole.

That little internal invective seemed to wake up something inside of her and her gaze snapped to his. “He left everything to you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” She was shaking now, a strange, deep trembling that started at the center of her chest and began to work its way out her limbs. “Why would he leave everything to you? I’m the one who’s been living here. I’m the one who’s been taking care of this place while he was deployed.”

“He wanted to make sure you were taken care of,” Alex said, his tone maddeningly flat.

“Then he shouldn’t have died!” The words exploded from her, and it didn’t matter if they were fair or not. It was how she felt. And Jason was dead anyway, so he couldn’t hear them. Couldn’t get a sense for how upset she was that he had died.

“But he did,” Alex said, his bluntness offensive to her wounded heart. “And he made it pretty clear to me what was supposed to happen if he did.”

“I am a grown woman, why did he think he needed to send you here? I’ve been here without him all this time.” She didn’t feel like a grown woman right now. She felt like the floor was shifting under her feet and she didn’t have the strength to stay standing.

“You’re not a grown woman to him, Clara,” Alex said, slipping up and talking about Jason as if he still thought anything. As if he might be about to walk in the door from a long fishing trip. “The way he talked about you...you were his kid sister. He worried about you constantly, and he worried especially about what would happen to you if he couldn’t come home to you.”

Clara’s eyes felt scratchy with the effort of holding back all the emotion that was swamping her.

Jason had been her hero. He’d taught her to ride a horse. He’d taught her to fish—which she’d hated, but she would go with him anyway. Every weekend he was home, he would pack a picnic with the sandwiches he knew she liked and they would drive to the river.

He’d park his truck on the side of the road and they’d hike down the sandy trail together and sit on the rocks for hours. Talking while they sat there mostly not landing any fish.

And when she’d complain, Jason had always said, “This is why they call it fishing, not catching.”

The image of her brother standing out by the river with that carefree grin on his face felt like a stab to the chest.

Alex shifted, rapping his knuckles on her table. “He wrote me a letter.”

“What are you talking about? He wrote you a letter that was like... Open in case of my eventual death?”

“Something like that.”

“Wow.”

She didn’t know what else to say. Somehow, the fact that there was a letter almost made it worse. Of course, Jason had known that his death was a possibility. Every soldier knew that. But Clara had never allowed herself to think about it.

Somehow, it was less disturbing to imagine he hadn’t really given it much consideration. Envisioning him sitting down and writing a letter about what Alex should do if he died... It... It enraged her. Even if it was unfair. The fact that he had thought it through that deeply, but had still been in the military, had still put himself in that kind of danger...

He had fully imagined a future in which he might be gone and she might need help. Where she would be left alone and he might have to assign somebody the responsibility of taking care of her.

He had known he could die. Known enough to prepare for it. It made her furious. Absolutely furious.

“He loved you, Clara,” Alex said, his soft, apologetic tone worse than the arrogant tone he had used when commenting on her dinner.

“If he loved me so much, he shouldn’t have reenlisted in the military after our father died,” she said, finally giving voice to the small, useless, mean thoughts she’d been having ever since she’d gotten the news of his death. “If he loved me so much, he would have stayed here. He would be here helping me with the ranch. Rather than sending a surrogate in his place. Did you all love the military so much that you couldn’t stay away? Is it better than this ranch, this town?”

“He believed in the military,” Alex said, his voice rough. “He believed in the ideal of serving something bigger than himself. No matter whether it was perfect or not, he believed in doing something. He died for that belief, and he knew that was the risk.”

He had died across the world, away from her. He had left her alone. Had truly left her without any family at all. And whatever ideals Alex spoke about, she couldn’t share them.

Somewhere beneath the grief and anger, she was proud of her brother. Of his service. Of his selflessness.

But mostly... She just wished that he had applied that selflessness to her. If he was going to sacrifice his life, why couldn’t he have done it in Copper Ridge, near the only family he had left?

Then she wouldn’t be alone.

Those thoughts swirled around in her head, caused tension to mount in her chest, a hard little ball of anger and meanness that she couldn’t quite shake. Didn’t really want to.

“What exactly do you think you’re going to do with the ranch that I can’t do?” She crossed her arms and cocked her hip to the side, treating him to her hardest and meanest stare.

“What exactly have you done with it?” He looked around. “As near as I can tell, you have a bunch of old, rusted-out equipment that isn’t going to do you any good.”

“I’ve been living here and I’ve been running this place ever since Jason reenlisted. And yeah, maybe I haven’t managed to keep up on everything. But I’ve been shifting my focus. We did beef for a long time, but an operation this size... It isn’t sustainable. Especially not with so much local competition. The beef thing... That was my dad’s. And Jason kept it up from a distance. But a couple of years ago we decided to sell.”

“Great. What do you do now?”

“We invested the money back into the house. And also in bees.”

“Bees?”

She sighed. “Yes. The goal was to start producing our own honey. It’s something that I could easily handle on my own. I don’t need to hire workers to help with that, and I can also maintain a job away from the ranch while the hive is getting established. For the first year, you can’t actually take their honey, you know.”

Alex rocked back on his heels. “No. I don’t know that. Because I don’t know anything about bees.”

“Bees are fascinating creatures, Alex,” she said.

Alex just stared at her. Her eyes clashed with his, and her stomach lurched unexpectedly. She looked away from him, counting the mugs on the shelf behind him.

“Bees,” he repeated finally.

“Yes.”

“What else?” he asked.

“What do you mean what else? What do you expect me to do?”

“Your brother was pretty clear in the instructions he left. He wanted the ranch to be an asset to you, not a liability. He wanted me to help you out until this place is solvent. Or until it’s sold.”

Those words made her heart slam against her breastbone, made abject terror race down her spine, flooding her veins with a spiky kind of horror. “I don’t want to sell,” she said, the words sure and certain.

The house was small, and it was definitely in rough shape in some ways. But this house contained the story of her entire life. This was the only place that had memories of her family all together. And, yes, there were memories of losing those family members here too. But she’d gotten pretty good at living with those.

This house contained every feeling she’d ever experienced. Good and bad. Her mother had scrubbed this place until it was spotless. Until she had been too ill to clean anymore. Her father had worked the land until his body gave out on him.

Jason had joined the military to help support the place financially, and then when their father had died he had come back and worked until Clara had been old enough to handle herself and keep the house on her own. Even then, all his money had gone right back into this place.

The Campbells were dead, by and large. This ranch, this land, was all that was left.

She would be damned if she walked away from it. She had already given up a lot to be here. And she owed it to her family to keep the ranch going. So that the legacy could live on, even if the rest of them didn’t.

“If you don’t want to sell, then what do you want?”

“I could... I can keep working at Grassroots. It’s not hard. And I’ve been managing. There’s a small garden here and it produces well. I basically have all the resources to get a good farmers’ market booth together. In between the two things, I should be able to make it all work.”

“And what about having a life? Working a farm, doing a booth at markets, working at a winery... When do you expect to take a breath, Clara?”

“I don’t want to take a breath, Alex,” she said, the words harder, more brittle and honest than she intended them to be. “Because breathing hurts.”

Silence fell between them, no sound beyond the persistent ticking of the kitchen clock. The one that Clara never looked at, that was never right. It had just always been there, so she had never moved it.

“Then that’s what I’m here for,” he said, his voice rough. “To help out until it quits hurting.”

Something about those words made her want to strike out at him. Made her want to push him away. Mostly because she didn’t know how to do this. Didn’t know how to be taken care of. Not that her father hadn’t been there for her—not that Jason hadn’t been. But always, always, they’d had their own grief, equal to her own. This was different. Not that Alex wasn’t sorry his friend was dead, but Jason wasn’t his brother. The grief was hers. And Alex was offering to take care of her until it passed.

Alex was giving her permission to collapse.

She wasn’t going to take it. She couldn’t.

“What do you propose?” she asked, gritting her teeth and doing her best to recover from that little moment of honesty.

“Clara, you’re not handling this. You as much as admitted that you’re not paying your bills. You don’t want to sell, but if you don’t pay for stuff, you’re going to get it taken from you. And whatever you feel about being busy right now... It would be for the best if we can get the ranch to the point where it’s self-sustaining. I know that you’re going to get some money from the military, and until then I’m willing to put my own money into this place.”

Suddenly she felt drained. Felt defeated. Because while part of her wanted to stand here all evening and wage war with Alex, the fact of the matter was she’d already lost.

She let out a long, slow breath, then walked back to the stove, dumping the contents of her pan into a small bowl. “I’m going to eat,” she said. “Do you want to join me?”

“No thanks. I don’t order off the kids’ menu anymore.”

She shoved a bite of canned pasta into her mouth. “Your loss.”

“I’ll take a Coke.”

“Go right ahead,” she said, talking around her bite. “You probably have dominion over the Coke too.”

“The fridge, maybe. The contents, probably not.”

“Help yourself, anyway,” she said, tugging her bowl toward her and hunching over it ferally.

He took a soda out of the fridge and popped the top on it, and for some reason, she watched as he brought the can to his lips, watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down while he took a long swallow of the beverage.

She looked back into her bowl of SpaghettiOs. “So what’s your brilliant plan for fixing my life? What are you going to invest in? I mean, this is your ranch now. I guess you can make it whatever you want. Buy a bunch of big-ass cows.”

“Like you said, there’s a lot of competition for beef. And frankly, this operation just isn’t big enough to play in that arena. But I do have an idea. And it kind of goes with your...bees.”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “What?”

“Bison. There’s a market for lean beef, organic stuff. We can get away with having a smaller scale operation. We would need to get better fencing, but most everything that you used for the cattle would work. And frankly, the farmers’ market idea is a good one.”

“Are you suggesting I sell honey, tomatoes and bison?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. I have the money to invest in this. I want to do it. And I think it’s the best thing for you.”

Clara bristled. “You think it’s the best thing for me. Based on speaking to me all of five times in my entire life? Based on the fact that you knew my brother? You don’t know what I want, Alex.”

“Okay. What do you want?”

His green eyes were intense on hers, and she didn’t know what to do with that. Didn’t know how to answer the question, mostly because she hadn’t expected him to pose it.

She had the fleeting image of Asher. Of him living in this little house with her. Enjoying a simple existence. Keeping bees, making honey. He could make artisan coffee and maybe they could have goats. She could make room in her garden for kale. She didn’t like tomatoes either, and she grew those.

She wasn’t going to tell Alex any of that.

“I’m not really sure,” she said. “I would settle for not being further traumatized by life at this point.”

Those eyes softened a little. “Unfortunately, none of us gets that guarantee.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Think about it.”

She shoved another bite of food into her mouth. “What’s the point in me thinking about it, Alex? You own this place. Your word is law.”

“It was never my goal to come in here and take over everything.”

She snorted. “That is completely not true. Of course it was your goal. That’s why you’re here. To claim ownership. To take control.”

“Maybe it is. Why would that be a problem for you? You can continue to do what you’re doing. I’m just going to help get things more established, that’s all.”

“Excuse me for not exactly buying into this idea that you’re being a philanthropist here on my ranch. This benefits you financially. Or, it will.”

Alex’s jaw tightened, his face so still it had the look of granite. “I don’t need your money, Clara. But you need my help. And whether or not you believe it, I’m here because Jason asked me to be. Because I fought alongside him and that means something to me, Clara. Whether you can understand it or not, it does.”

She swallowed hard, feeling unsettled, feeling uncertain. First off, she didn’t know why she cared that he was here. Except that he was so large, broad and confrontational. Except that he made it feel so real that Jason was gone. Really gone. He knew things she didn’t know about her brother’s final moments, she was certain. She was also certain she didn’t want to know them. At least, not now.

But if Alex wanted to pour his money into the ranch, if he wanted to add another stream of revenue, there was nothing really to fight about.

She closed her eyes for a moment and had the oddest sensation that she was adrift on a river she didn’t want to be on. Drifting toward God knew where. On a raft she had never consented to get onto in the first place.

No control. None at all. But then, what else was new?

“Fine. Get your bison. Fix stuff. Whatever you need to do to feel like you’ve seen to Jason’s final wishes.” The word final stuck in her throat, snagged on a notch of emotion, making it feel as if she couldn’t breathe.

“I will.” He stood, gripping the brim of his hat and tipping it forward slightly. “I’ll be at the ranch bright and early tomorrow morning.”

“And I’ll be at work.”

His lips twitched. “But first, getting coffee again? Since you like it so much.”

Her face heated, and she fought against the blush she knew was intensifying. She was not a thirteen-year-old girl with a crush. She resented him for making her feel like one.

“Yes,” she responded. “Getting coffee again. My favorite.”

He lifted a brow but said nothing. “I’m sure I’ll see you tomorrow at some point.”

She nodded, and then Alex turned and walked out.

For some reason, as soon as the door closed behind him, a tear rolled down Clara’s cheek. And then another one. Maybe having Alex here should have felt like the answer to something. A wake-up call at the very least. That somebody had come in and seen just how unprepared she was to deal with all of this.

To move into a life that had to function without Jason in it. Forever.

And whether or not he intended to be, Alex Donnelly was a symbol of that.

CHAPTER THREE

ALEX WAS IN a mean mood by the time he got back home. It was late, and he was starving, and he was still replaying the scene with Clara over in his mind. He really should have gone to see her sooner. He had noticed the stacks of mail sitting on the counter. Had noticed the general state of disrepair of the place.

But he had a plan now, one that had been affirmed when he’d gotten there and spoken to her.

Bees.

Of all the hipster bullshit.

“Where have you been?”

Alex’s older half brother Cain was walking toward the main house, probably heading down from the little converted barn he lived in with his fiancée, Alison, and his teen daughter, Violet.

“Busy,” Alex responded.

“Well, considering you didn’t just follow that up with sexual innuendo, I’m going to go ahead and guess that you were actually taking care of that property you’ve been needing to see to.”

“Not that it’s your business, but yes.” There was no reason for him to be short with Cain. But since his older brother was an extreme hard-ass and didn’t seem to care, Alex didn’t see a reason not to be.

“Good,” Cain said. “About time for you to man up.”

“Thanks. Next time I need your opinion on my masculinity, I’ll ask. Right after I finish polishing my dog tags and disassembling my AR.”

“We could save time and you could just whip it out and measure, Alex. I’m not threatened by that.”

“What are we measuring?” Finn, Alex’s other older half brother, chose that moment to walk out the front door.

“What do you think?” Alex asked.

“Wow. Okay. I think I’ll pass on this brotherly bonding experience,” Finn responded, clearly picking up on the tone of the conversation without further hints.

“You weren’t invited,” Alex said cheerfully. “And I’m starving.”

“You’re in luck. Lane cooked.”

Finn’s fiancée usually did cook. She owned the specialty food mercantile on the main street in town, and had a passion for not only spreading good food around, but for elevating the eating experience of the Donnelly brothers—or at least trying to.

If she had seen what Clara was eating tonight, she probably would have force-fed her some kind of specialty cheese.

Alex walked up the steps with Cain behind him. Then the three of them filed into the house. Whatever Lane was cooking, Alex could smell it already. Something warm and comforting. Something that smelled like home. Not Alex’s childhood home, but the way he had imagined other people’s homes had smelled.

Or maybe, it smelled like this home. This was the longest he’d been in one place for a long damn time.

It was strange just how easy it had been to get used to it. Living here with so many people. When he walked into the kitchen, Liam was there already, the only brother he’d been raised with. He was sitting at the counter, making conversation with their niece, Violet. Or rather, he had a feeling Liam was doing his best to harass Violet, since she was looking mildly perturbed and more than a little amused.

Cain’s fiancée, Alison, was busy cooking with Lane, both women wearing aprons as they dashed around the kitchen. It was like Alex had fallen into some kind of manic 1950s dream.

Violet, who was sixteen and more than a little surly, grabbed a potato chip out of the bowl that was sitting on the island and crunched it noisily.

“This is bad for feminism,” she announced, talking around a mouthful of chip.

“How so, Violet?” Lane asked, turning and putting one hand on her hip.

“Cooking for the men,” she returned.

“Maybe if we were doing it out of obligation, but Lane and I like to cook,” Alison said. “In fact, our chosen careers center around food.”

“Mmm,” Violet made a musing sound.

“I cook,” Lane said, lifting a brow, “your uncle Finn does the dishes, which I don’t like to do, and it works for everyone. But most importantly...”

“We choose to do it,” Alison finished.

“I choose to sit and eat potato chips,” Violet said, clearly also choosing to remain unmoved on her position. And unmoved in general.

“I’ll help,” Liam offered, standing up and slapping the countertop.

“You absolutely will not,” Lane said, turning around and pointing her spatula at him. “I haven’t forgotten the great over-salting incident that happened last time you helped.”

“I’ll help by sitting here,” he said, grabbing a chip out of the bowl.

“Smells good,” Alex said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Thanks,” Lane returned.

“Where have you been?” This time, it was Liam who asked the question.

“It’s really touching how concerned you all are about my whereabouts,” Alex responded.

“I wasn’t concerned, jackass. I was mad because you got out of doing your evening chores.”

“Wow, Liam. Maybe you should tell me about your childhood.” Alex leaned in and stole a chip. “You seem to have some issues.”

“You were there for my childhood. That’s possibly why I have issues.”

Alex snorted. “I’m pretty sure our dad is the reason we both have issues.”

Finn snorted. “I think he’s the reason we all have issues.”

Their father had done one thing well—made children he wasn’t particularly interested in raising. Cain and Finn had different mothers, with Cain being raised in Texas and Finn in Washington. Though Finn had come to live on the Laughing Irish ranch with their grandfather when he was only sixteen.

Liam and Alex had grown up with their mother in a different part of Washington than Finn, and had spent sporadic summers in Copper Ridge.

Until recently, the half brothers had all spent a limited amount of time together. Though, truth be told Alex and Liam hadn’t spent all that much time together either, since Liam had left home at eighteen.

As soon as he could, Liam had gone off to school. And he didn’t return home. Two years later, Alex had enlisted in the military, and he’d done the same—left it all behind.

Liam had gotten a scholarship that had paid his way through, and as far as Alex knew, was the only one of them to get any kind of higher education. Liam didn’t talk about it much though. He never had. And whatever work he had gotten into afterward, he wasn’t doing it now.

Damn. They really were dysfunctional.

“So, what were you doing?” Liam asked, clearly not content to let the subject drop.

“I had to go and handle that property I’m responsible for,” he said, “like I told you guys a month or so ago.”

“What’s the situation with that?” Finn was the one who posed that question, and Alex wasn’t particularly surprised. His brother would need to know how it would impact the work that was happening around the ranch. They were all part owners of the Laughing Irish now, but Finn had bled for this place since he was a teenager.

They all loved it in their own way, but nobody loved it like Finn. That was another thing Alex paused to marvel at for a moment. The fact that they were all getting along as well as they were. Claiming their part of the inheritance, rather than taking a payoff. Finn had been less than amused when they’d first showed up, but gradually it had all started to work, and he’d come to see them as more of an asset than a burden.

Mostly.

“I’m going to be doing some work on it,” he said. “For up to a year, I have decision-making power on the place and then it will pass to Clara’s possession. Right now, it’s part of Jason’s estate, and I’m the executor. And if I end up dropping the ball here, I swear I’ll hire somebody to pick up the slack. And I’ll pay for it out of my own pocket. But this is something that I have to do.”

“I’m not sure I know this story,” Alison said, opening the oven and taking out a pie.

“It’s not a feel-good one,” Alex said. “An army buddy of mine was killed in action about six months ago. He left me his ranch.”

Alison’s eyes went wide. She set the pie down on a trivet on the counter. “Really? I’m so sorry.”

“Yes. His sister isn’t very happy about it, but he did it to help her.”

“You’re talking about Jason Campbell and his sister Clara,” Alison said, “aren’t you?”

“Did you know them?”

Alison shook her head. “Not Clara. I kind of knew Jason in school. Not well. But I saw him there, and around town over the years. I was sad to hear about his death. I met Clara when I started doing some work with Grassroots Winery.”

Alex cleared his throat. “Jason kind of...left her to me. She doesn’t have anyone.”

“And you’re supposed to drop everything and help her?” That question came from Liam, his voice surprisingly hard. “You have your own life. Didn’t your friend consider that?”

“As he was considering his death at the time, I suppose he figured I could take the inconvenience. You know, since I’m above ground.” Clara was mad at Jason for his decision. His brothers clearly thought it was crazy too. It made Alex feel defensive of his friend. The fact that Jason was willing to do anything—even inconvenience Alex—to protect his sister, to make sure that she was taken care of, was a mark of what made him such a good man as far as Alex was concerned.

He and his brothers had been self-sufficient from the beginning. There had been no alternative. They also hadn’t been raised to be close. He and Liam were close enough, but it wasn’t that same caregiver relationship Jason had had to Clara. He had been ten years older, and they’d lost both of their parents. He’d felt responsible for her in a way Alex had never felt responsible for anyone.

“Sorry,” Liam said. “You’re supposed to hire someone to cover for you here? Why not just hire someone to work at the Campbell Ranch?”

“It’s not just about working on the ranch,” Alex said. “Clara isn’t functioning on her own. She’s not paying her bills. And I think Jason was afraid that might happen. He wanted to make sure she had... Another older brother around to look after her.”

Something inside of him—deep inside of him—rebelled at the thought of being Clara’s older brother. It didn’t sit right.

She was just so damn pretty. That was a fact, and one he’d never been blind to. Of course, there was a difference between realizing a woman was pretty and wanting to actually touch that beauty. Clara was off limits. She always had been. But now more than ever before.

He thought of her extreme, ridiculous and unintentional double entendre earlier. About him getting too close to her hive.

Yeah, she was beautiful. Blond hair, full, pink lips. Skin that looked so soft any man could be forgiven for thinking about brushing his fingertips against it.

But that... That crazy bee thing. And the fact that she seemed to think it wasn’t completely transparent she had a crush as deep as the Pacific Ocean on that ridiculous barista in that equally ridiculous coffee shop, all spoke of not only their decade-wide age gap, but the gap they had in life experience.

He shook his head, banished any thoughts of her skin or her lips from his mind, and focused on the brother thing. Or, if not brother, then at least the fact that he had been entrusted with protecting her.

There were any number of women with soft skin in Copper Ridge—he assumed—and if he was starting to think in that way, he was going to have to find one of them.

He had really enjoyed harassing Cain and Finn about their celibacy before they’d found their respective fiancées, and implying that he himself was getting a lot of play. But the truth of the matter was all he’d done was a little flirting over at Ace’s bar.

He enjoyed that. Spending a few hours blowing smoke and telling tall tales. Having a group of women look at him like he was interesting, funny and not... Well, what he was.

He preferred the joke, every time. Because the fact of the matter was when he was alone, there wasn’t much to joke about. There were just endless images of the kind of carnage he had witnessed during war. The darkness serving as a reminder for what it was like to hunker down for hours in a bunker and wait out threatened attacks.

To watch your best friend bleed out in front of you. A guy who had someone depending on him.

Unlike Alex.

Well, now he did. Now Clara was his responsibility. And dammit all, he was going to take care of her. He didn’t have time to sit around and feel sorry for himself. Didn’t have the luxury of feeling like it had been the wrong man’s blood that soaked into the desert sand that day.

Jason was gone. Alex was here.

End of story.

“Whatever you need to do,” Cain said. “Do it. We can cover it here. Unless Liam can’t pull his weight.”

Liam shot their older brother a look. “Maybe some of us like having a life off the ranch.”

“You don’t have one, though. No matter how much you try to make me believe it. Anyway, some of us like our lives right here on the ranch. Don’t ask me to feel bad about that, because I don’t.”

“Glad to have your support, Cain,” Alex said, cutting off the bickering between the two of them. “Of course, I was going to do it either way.”

“I figured as much,” his brother said. “I also thought that this was a great way to come out looking benevolent.”

Finn laughed. “Yeah. That’s what they say about you, Cain. That you’re extremely benevolent.”

“As dictators go, he’s not that bad,” Violet offered as she jumped down from the stool and grabbed a handful of chips before wandering out of the room, looking at her cell phone.

Alison made a squeaking sound. “I don’t mind taking orders from him,” she added, the words coming out quickly. “That was difficult to hold back, but I was not going to say it in front of his daughter.”

Cain grinned, and Alex wanted to punch him. He imagined this was exactly what Cain had felt like for the past few months while he and Liam gave him endless hell over his lack of success with women. Now he was smug. And Alex and Liam were celibate.

“You could also not say it in front of his brothers,” Alex said.

“You’re adults,” Alison remarked. “You can deal.”

“Some of us have already dealt with enough trauma,” he returned. “I’m a soldier. I fought for this country. I’ve been through enough without being exposed to insinuations about my oldest brother’s sex life.”

He didn’t actually care. But he did like a joke. Especially one that worked to make his past less serious somehow. That made him feel like maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal. Like maybe it was a movie or something that happened to somebody else.

“Thank you for your service,” Alison said drily. “But it does not exclude you from being treated like I would treat any of my brothers.”

He couldn’t even be irritated at her. Because he knew that Alison had had a difficult life. He also knew that she didn’t have any siblings at all. Family. That’s what they were. That’s what they were becoming anyway. More seamlessly than he had imagined was possible.

“Okay,” Lane said, turning away from the stove. “Everybody quit bickering. It’s dinnertime.”

* * *

CLARA FOUND HERSELF dragging at work the next day. She’d had a near impossible time sleeping, and that was making it difficult for her to keep a smile pasted on her face in the tasting room. Summer was drawing to a close, the wind whipping down from the mountains taking on a sharp edge that spoke of the coming fall.

But that didn’t mean tourism in Copper Ridge had abated any. The weather was mild on the coast when the rest of the state was dry and hot or buried beneath snow, which made it ideal pretty much all year round. Though, once it got into October, the fog would start to linger longer and longer, stretching into the afternoon then rolling back in as the sun went down. That would last all through the winter, though there were still people who came to visit during those months.

Especially those who found the low, gray sky atmospheric. Or who just liked getting away from other people.

Even inland, at the winery, it was much cooler than it was down in the southernmost part of the state, and people had migrated upward en masse to escape the last gasps of summer heat.

The sky was bright and blue today, and customers were out in force. Locals who had a day off, coming in to order a flight of wine and a tray of cheese, mixing in with the tourists.

The large, converted barn was full today, the tall tables made from wine barrels all taken up.

And Clara was doing a pretty poor job serving everyone, and she knew it. She slunk behind the counter, hoping she could extricate herself from customer service, that Sabrina or Olivia might take a hint and leave any kind of straightening up to Clara while they handled the guests.

She could only hope that Lindy, the owner of Grassroots, didn’t come in. Lindy had been extraordinarily gracious to Clara, both in offering her the job, and in training her. Lindy had gone through a nasty divorce a year or so ago and she was very sensitive to the fact that Clara was grieving a loss. Much more so than most bosses would be. Much more so than any boss had to be.

But it had been six months. And a sleepless night wasn’t the best excuse for shoddy work. Not only that, it wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair to her coworkers. And it certainly wasn’t fair to Lindy.

Clara sighed and put her head down, then squatted behind the counter, hunting for a bar towel so that she could wipe down surfaces and look busy.

“Are you okay?”

Clara looked up and saw Sabrina leaning over the countertop, staring down at her. She and Sabrina had forged a pretty strong work friendship in the months since Clara had started at Grassroots. She had a feeling it could be more than just a work friendship if Clara ever took Sabrina up on her offers to go out after work.

She should, really.

Sabrina Leighton was Lindy’s sister-in-law. And Clara had never really felt comfortable prying into the particulars of all of that. Or asking why Sabrina and Beatrix—Lindy’s ex’s sisters—still hung around the winery instead of siding with their brother. She was curious. But if she asked, then Sabrina would have the right to ask how Clara was doing. To want real details. And Clara...didn’t want to get into real details.

“I’m fine,” she said, lying.

“You seem distracted.”

Darn Sabrina. Couldn’t she be more tunnel-visioned like their other coworker, Olivia?

“I didn’t sleep well last night,” she said, going with honesty. “Actually, I think I’m kind of an ogre today. Would you mind handling the customers? I’ll do any and all grunt work.”

Sabrina smiled. “That’s fine.”

She was too nice. It made Clara feel like a jerk.

“Thank you.” She retrieved a towel and stood up.

“Is anything going on... Or...”

Clara sighed. “It’s complicated. And I’m sure you have things to do.”

It wasn’t really complicated. And she didn’t have a reason not to tell Sabrina about the situation with Alex.

“Everybody seems settled right now. Tell me about complicated.”

“It’s not interesting.”

“Is it a guy?”

“Well, yes.” If Sabrina were an antennaed creature, said antennae would’ve been pointing straight upward. “Not in that way,” Clara added, her cheeks starting to feel hot.

“In what way?”

“I’ve been avoiding dealing with Jason’s lawyer,” she said, keeping her voice quiet.

“I understand that,” Sabrina said. “I get it. Legal stuff is terrible and my only experience with it is as an observer. Lindy and Damien’s divorce was just...so toxic. And the fight over the winery and whether or not the prenup meant Lindy got it... My parents were horrible to her. Damien was horrible. I never want to talk to a lawyer again. Anyway... This isn’t about our drama. It’s just to say I understand why that must be completely overwhelming on top of everything else.”

“Except it turned out the lawyer was calling me for good reason. My brother didn’t leave the ranch to me.”

Sabrina’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Apparently, he left it to Alex Donnelly. Well, I mean, not for...forever. But he’s in control of it for a year, before it passes to me.”

She had entertained the idea of contesting it...for about a minute. She could hardly manage to open her mail. And anyway, it was only for a year. A year of Alex. But there was an end point. She could handle anything for a year.

Sabrina’s entire demeanor changed. Her usually cheerful mouth went flat, her blue eyes turning cool. “Alex Donnelly?”

“Yes,” she said. “Is that...significant in some way?”

For some reason, she imagined Sabrina and Alex together. Together, together. It made her throat feel tight.

“I’m not a fan of the Donnelly brothers,” Sabrina said, her tone stiff. “I don’t know Alex that well. I just can’t imagine him being less of an asshole than Liam.”

Her lips looked pale all of a sudden, her expression strained.

“Well. I’m kind of stuck with this one. Unfortunately.”

Clara had a feeling there was a lot more to the story about Liam Donnelly. And she also had a feeling it absolutely was in that way. Clara didn’t have any heartbreak like that in her past. She’d experienced too much heartache in the form of death, loss and grief. Putting herself out there romantically hadn’t seemed worth the effort.

Until Asher. He was...well, it was difficult to explain, even to herself. But he was just so fascinating. So unlike her. So unlike everything in her life. He felt like hope. Like the possibility of something new.

She didn’t like to think that Asher could end up replicating in her the strange heartbreak-induced facial expression that things with Liam had clearly provoked in Sabrina.

Clara had been through enough.

She needed something good. She deserved something good.

“Alex isn’t going to come up here, is he?” Sabrina asked. “I mean, the Donnellys aren’t going to start hanging out here?”

“He’s not my guardian,” she said. “It’s not like we’re close or anything. Or like he’s taking care of me. Although, I think that is maybe what Jason was thinking.”

Her stomach clenched tight. It was so easy to feel mad at Jason, but the anger made her feel guilty too. And she knew that regardless of how she felt about him going back into the military after their father died, no matter how much she wanted to second-guess all of it, she couldn’t demand answers of a dead man. But why couldn’t he simply have stayed with her? Why had he felt compelled to test fate like that? If he didn’t care about himself, the least he could have done was care enough about her.

Then again, she supposed whatever this was with Alex...it was Jason caring in his way. Through somebody else. By not being here. By sending a check. In this case, he was sending a friend.

She gritted her teeth. She wasn’t being fair. She knew that. She was just in the anger stage of grieving, wrapped somewhere around denial. Angry denial.

“I mean, of course if they come up here it’s fine,” Sabrina said, forcing a smile. The color returned to her cheeks, to her lips, and she seemed to be grappling now with feeling embarrassed. “I’m sorry. It’s really stupid. The whole thing about me not liking the Donnellys. It was a long time ago. A lot has changed.”

“Is there a meeting I don’t know about?”

Olivia Logan had walked across the dining room, and was now standing behind Sabrina looking, well, smooth and implacable and impossible to read.

It was difficult to say whether Olivia liked them or not. She wasn’t unkind at all, she was just extremely focused. On work, on her boyfriend. And there was a kind of natural aloofness to her demeanor. But then, her ancestors were quite literally the founders of Logan County, the namesakes. It was entirely possible she perceived Olivia as being slightly uppity for that reason alone.

“No,” Sabrina said. “We were just talking about family stuff.”

Olivia’s mouth tightened into a firm line. “Oh.”

“Do you need help?” Sabrina asked.

“Oh, with all the guests? Actually, no. Everything is handled.” Olivia was a funny, efficient creature. She was nice enough, but sometimes seemed like she didn’t quite understand how to make light conversation. She was intense and goal-oriented, which made her good at every job she set out to do. But made her not so great with small talk.

Not that Clara was an expert in it.

“Do you guys want to hang out tonight?” Sabrina looked so hopeful. And it made Clara feel slightly guilty.

Olivia looked surprised. “Me?”

“Yes. All three of us.”

“I can’t,” Clara said, feeling like a jerk. Because she actually could. And she maybe even should. “I mean, Alex is at the ranch. He has been all day. And I need to see what he’s thinking about doing. But once I get settled... Once everything is a little bit more settled I think maybe I can go out sometime.”

Sabrina turned her focus to Olivia, slightly less hopeful-looking now, but clearly still eager.

“I’m closing tonight,” Olivia said. “It will be really late by the time I get out of here. So I shouldn’t.”

Grassroots Winery was nestled in the trees, between the communities of Copper Ridge and Gold Valley, where Olivia lived.

“I understand,” Sabrina said, sounding slightly deflated.

“Well, Bennett dropped me off this morning and he’s getting me tonight too. I don’t want to put him out,” Olivia added.

Bennett was Olivia’s boyfriend. Clara had only seen them together a few times but she couldn’t really see them as a couple. He seemed protective of her, caring even, but in a lot of ways, more like a brother. A strange observation for someone with as little experience as Clara had, but she figured if even she got a strange vibe, something had to be off.

“Sorry,” Clara said, truly meaning it.

Sabrina lifted a shoulder. “That’s okay. Some other time.”

When the shift ended and Clara got in her car to leave, she was still thinking about Sabrina. About the offer of friendship that Clara hadn’t taken. But it felt too hard right now. Like it would intrude too much on the little bubble she’d created for herself.

Grief, she realized, was such an isolating thing.

It was just that Clara had been relishing the isolation. Accepting the social parts in small doses. In the interactions with Asher that she chose, with the job she had taken at Grassroots. The little chats that she had with Sabrina while she was working.

She wasn’t craving mass amounts of human interaction. And the potential problem with that was on the other side, she wouldn’t have a lot of connections when she was ready for them again. She wondered how long it would take her to get to that place.

Clara sighed and successfully spaced out most of the half hour drive along the tree-lined highway back to the ranch. Alex’s truck was in the driveway, and the sight of it made Clara’s heart slam against her chest. He really was here. And she really was going to have to deal with him.

She put her car in Park and killed the engine, getting out and shutting the door with gusto, hoping her completely unsubtle arrival would draw him out of hiding.

But when she saw Alex striding across the property, the very idea that he might have been hiding seemed ludicrous.

He walked out of the barn, his white hat tipped low over his face, his torso bare. He was wearing work gloves and low-slung jeans, a pair of cowboy boots. Positively nothing else.

She couldn’t look away. She was utterly transfixed.

His chest was deep and broad, well-defined with hair slightly darker than what was on his head sprinkled across it, thinning out and tapering down to a line that disappeared between the waistband of those very, very low pants. Very low.

He lifted his hand and pulled one of the work gloves off, the muscles on his torso and forearms shifting with the movement. Then he tugged off the other glove, and she could only watch the sure, strong movements of his fingers, the way his biceps jumped as he lifted his arm, then lowered it.

His ab muscles moved with each step he took, but as incredible as they were, she found herself completely taken in by another set of muscles. A line that cut in hard at his hip bone. She had never been big on science, but she had a feeling that even if she had paid attention in anatomy class she wouldn’t have known the name of that muscle, because every single one of her brain cells had been wiped out by the sight of it.

Alex was...well, she had always known that Alex was good-looking, but it had been kind of abstract in her mind. Because while she had always known he was handsome, he was also very much not the kind of man she was drawn to.

He was too hard. Too masculine. And she would have said she was definitely not the kind of woman who was into overly muscled physiques and body hair.

Apparently, part of her appreciated those things. At least, as an objective observer and admirer of...beautiful things. Though, thinking of him as beautiful in any context just seemed wrong.

Alex wasn’t beautiful. He was too hard to be beautiful.

“You’re back,” he said.

His voice sounded so casual and normal, and she realized it was because he hadn’t just experienced an entire internal episode that had caused him to question fundamental things about himself.

“Yeah. I had an earlier shift today. Are you...are you working a bachelorette party, or...”

“It’s hot,” he said, looking down at his own bare chest, which prompted her to follow his line of sight.

Good God.

There was sweat rolling down between his pectoral muscles—see, that she remembered—and it should have looked gross or unclean in some way, and instead she found it fascinating. Vital. Alive.

That made her shiver.

She wrenched her gaze away from his body, and forced herself to look at his green eyes. She found that didn’t help at all. Her mouth felt like it had been stuffed full of cotton. Her head did too, actually.

“I can honestly say I’ve never decided to work shirtless just because it was hot,” she said, immediately regretting the words, because there really was no point in continuing to talk about his state of undress. Talking about it only drew attention to the fact that she was aware of it.

She did not want to be aware of it.

She took a step back.

He lifted a shoulder and she forced herself to keep her eyes locked with his. To not look down and see exactly what that motion had caused the musculature on his chest and stomach to do in response.

Her fingertips tingled and she wiggled them.

He didn’t say anything, he was just looking at her. She wasn’t sure what he wanted her to do. What he wanted her to say. She supposed it didn’t matter either way. Because since when had she cared about his expectations or whether or not she met them? She didn’t.

“What exactly did you do today?”

His lips tipped upward into a lopsided smile. “Is that the game? Are we pretending that you’re the ranch owner and I’m the lowly ranch hand?” He shoved his hands in his pockets and yet again, it was a study in self-control to keep her eyes on his face. “Because I do like to play games sometimes, honey. As long as you understand who’s really in charge here.”

She forgot about his bare chest. “You’re an ass.”

“Maybe, but I’m a hard-working one. One who’s going to help fix your situation here. Come with me.” And just like that, she found herself trailing behind him, any illusion of home-court advantage lost as she stared at the broad expanse of his back while they walked to the barn.

His back was nearly as problematic as his chest. It filled her vision, and she found herself pondering the exact nature of what a nice-looking back was. She had never really considered it before.

She didn’t allow herself to look below his belt line. Because she was a lady. A lady who had looked at Asher’s butt this morning. It was her preferred butt. Alex’s was not. And she wasn’t going to test the theory by looking. She didn’t need to.

Not that casual perusal of the male form equated to feelings.

It was just that she wasn’t the kind of person who engaged in that kind of casual perusal. She liked Asher. Had actual, deep feelings for him, harbored hopes about a future. It didn’t matter how good-looking another guy was.

Asher, seeing him every morning, getting her daily coffee—which she summarily dumped out—from him had provided a kind of light in a long dark tunnel.

Alex’s bare chest could not compete with that.

Alex paused at the barn door. “After you.”

“Now you’re being chivalrous?”

He shrugged again, then went ahead and walked into the barn in front of her. She scowled, but followed after him.

And then she stopped dead. There were coils of fence rolled up and stacked six deep against the back wall. A pile of lumber lay on its side on the ground, fenceposts, she assumed.

And there was a tractor sitting in the middle of the barn that had been pulled apart.

“What exactly are you doing with the tractor?” she asked.

“Making sure it’s fixed.”

“You’re going to fix it? Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Kind of. I have a little bit of experience doing emergency fixes on heavy equipment. Plus I called Anna McCormack for a consult. She said she could order a couple of parts for us at a lower rate, and gave me some instructions over the phone.”

“Doesn’t she want to do it so she can get paid?”

“She was happy enough to help me out. I explained the situation to her.”

Right. So Clara was on the receiving end of pity tractor help. Well, wasn’t that what all of this was? Pity help?

“Great,” she said, knowing she didn’t actually sound like she thought it was great.

“And the fencing is for the bison.”

“Right. I forgot you were actually doing that. Bison.”

“Unless you’re planning on running this place the way your father did, then I think you’re right and beef is completely pointless. But if you want to go the direction of that more organic, specialized stuff...”

“Right. I get it.”

“You only have to put up with me for a limited time, Clara, and the sooner we get things sorted out, the sooner I can get out of your hair. I’ve actually done research on this,” he said, the expression on his face sincere and not at all pitying. She wasn’t sure what to do with that. “And I mean, I went over a lot of options. Sheep. Llamas.”

“Llamas?”

“I discounted that pretty quick. They’re mean as far as I can tell.”

“Don’t they spit?”

“That is what I hear,” he said.

“I could do without spitting livestock, to be honest. Apart from everything else, I don’t need an animal hocking a loogie on me while I’m trying to take care of it.”

“Fortunately for you, bison don’t spit. I think they’re the best option for this area, and for your property in particular. But they need damn sturdy fences.”

“Apparently,” she said, surveying the equipment.

“I saw your beehives, or whatever those are. I didn’t want to get close, you know, in case I became a target.”

“I have a suit,” she said. “A bee suit.”

He arched a brow. “Like a bee costume?”

“No,” she responded primly. “The kind you put on that keeps them from stinging you.”

“Less interesting than what I was imagining.” His smile was wicked, and she wondered exactly what he had been imagining. Probably nothing. Probably he was messing with her. Or maybe it was still just the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

“Less interesting, maybe,” she said, still not quite sure what he meant by that, “but effective.”

“Well, sometime you’ll have to show me. The bee suit. And the bees.”

“Sure,” she responded.

He reached over toward a peg on the wall and took his T-shirt off it. It was gray and faded, and when he pulled it over his head, she was powerless against the urge to watch the way the motion affected his muscles. The way they shifted. The way they bunched. Rippled.

The material of the T-shirt was thin, and it clung to his body, and for some reason, it didn’t seem any less obscene than his near nudity had. She swallowed, and it was hot and prickly.

“Dinner should be ready,” he said.

She blinked. “Dinner?”

“Yeah, I put something in the Crock-Pot.”

“I have a Crock-Pot?” She wrinkled her nose.

“Actually, I don’t know if you have a Crock-Pot. My future sister-in-law sent one. To be clear, I didn’t cook, I just followed her instructions.” He smiled, sure and easy. She didn’t feel sure or easy. She felt clumsy, awkward. She couldn’t figure out why.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, following him out of the barn and back up the well-worn footpath that led to the house.

She didn’t really know what to expect when they got to the front porch. If he would stop at the door or assume he was joining her for dinner.

When he opened the door and held it for her, she assumed he would be taking his leave. But then he came inside behind her, his heavy footsteps making that first floorboard squeak. It made her feel conscious of how long it had been since she’d spent any meaningful time in the house with someone else. That second squeak upon entry.

It made her feel unaccountably lonely. Sad.

She didn’t know why a squeaky floorboard had the power to do that.

Alex walked across the kitchen and opened a few cabinets, his movements confident even though he clearly didn’t know where anything was. His gestures were broad, firm. When he took the bowls out of the cabinet and set them down on the counter, he didn’t do it tentatively.

It was funny because she had watched Asher make her drink this morning and yet again she had thought of his movements as elegant. There was nothing elegant about Alex’s movements. They were like the rest of him. Rough, masculine. Somehow lethal-looking.

She had imagined that when Asher put his hands on her skin, if he ever touched her hand, he would apply that same fine elegance to his actions. If Alex ever touched her, with all that hard-packed muscle, and those work-roughened hands, he might break her.

Why are you comparing them?

A good question. Probably because she had such limited interaction with men. And these particular two men were as opposite as they came.

Anyway, Alex didn’t fare well in the comparison. And she ignored the strange tightness in her lungs that accompanied that thought.

She didn’t want to be broken. She was broken enough.

He opened the Crock-Pot, and ladled a couple big scoops of stew into one of the bowls. “Come get it,” he said, pushing the bowl away from him slightly, before picking up the second one to serve himself.

Her throat tightened. Almost closed completely. She opened the silverware drawer and took out a spoon, then retrieved the bowl. “Thank you.”

“Sure.”

He got his own spoon, then took two cans of Coke out of the fridge, sliding one over to her before he popped the top on his own and took a seat.

That was two times he had served her first. It shouldn’t matter.

But she noticed.

She pressed her spoon down into the thick stew and tilted it sideways, grimacing when she unveiled an onion. She carefully shunted it off to the side and scooped a chunk of meat onto her spoon.

“I’m thinking it’ll probably take about two weeks to get the facility prepared to bring in animals,” Alex said, taking what appeared to be a very reckless bite of stew as far as she was concerned.

“Two weeks? That’s it?”

“Should be about that long.”

“That’s not much time for me to prepare for big stinky animals to be on my property,” she said, flicking another onion off to the side before she took another bite.

“Well, there are already stinging animals on your property, so why not?”

She shrugged, then took another bite of stew, grimacing when she bit into a carrot that clearly had a hidden onion welded to the back of it. She looked around and cursed the lack of napkin.

She decided she wasn’t going to try to muscle past it out of politeness. It wasn’t like Alex himself made the stew.

Clara stood and took two quick strides to the sink, leaning in deep before she spit the carrot and onion down the drain. She turned the sink on, then the disposal and tried to ignore the fact that she knew Alex was watching her.

She straightened, brushing her hair out of her face. “I don’t like onions.”

She walked stiffly back to her seat and sat down, making a point to be a little more careful with the dissection of the stew from that point on.

“And you don’t like coffee,” he noted.

She furrowed her brow. “I like coffee.”

“You don’t.”

Clara narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know my life.”

“You don’t like coffee, you don’t like onions. You do like SpaghettiOs and apparently prefer Coke to beer.”

“Beer is gross,” she countered.

“Right, but SpaghettiOs are fine dining.” He shook his head. “Okay. You don’t like beer. What else don’t you like?”

“The list of what I like is shorter and takes less time,” she said.

“Okay. What do you like? Because if I’m going to bring you food sometimes, it would be nice if you didn’t have to tiptoe through your dinner like it was full of land mines.”

She sniffed. “Nobody said you had to bring me food. But if you must know, I like pasta as long as there are no onions. Or excess greens.”

“Hamburgers?”

She nodded. “Without lettuce.”

“What are your thoughts on kale?”

She frowned. “What are your thoughts on evil?”

“Chard?”

“Satan’s preferred salad fixing.”

“Do you like any kind of lettuce?”

She scowled. Then she realized that she was doing a very good impression of a cranky child. But, oh well, she didn’t like feeling she had to give an account of the things she enjoyed eating. No one had cared if she ate her vegetables for a long damn time.

“A salad with iceberg lettuce is fine,” she explained. “As long as it has cheese. And a lot of dressing. Good dressing, though. And not blue cheese.”

“I think I’m getting the picture. Pretty sure I can work with these instructions.”

“Pizza is good,” she said.

“Obviously. But pizza without beer?” She stared back at him blankly and he sighed heavily. “I’m going to have to stock my own, aren’t I?”

“Alternately, you could let me handle feeding myself, which I have done pretty successfully for the past ten years.”

“I think you and I might have different definitions of the word successful.”

She rolled her eyes and took an ostentatious sip of her Coke. “I didn’t ask for your definition of anything.”

“I’m going to get you eating less canned pasta.”

She squinted at him. “You’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.”

A smile shifted his handsome features, the expression as affecting as it was infuriating. “Lasagna?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Acceptable.”

“As long as there are no onions.”

“Obviously.”

“Save your canned food for an emergency. I’ll bring dinner tomorrow too.”

She rolled her eyes but continued eating in silence, putting her focus on making sure she didn’t get an undesirable bite again.

“What time do you get off tomorrow?” he asked.

The question jarred her focus away from her stew. “I’m off tomorrow. I’ll be here all day.”

“Okay. Then I’ll come in the morning, and maybe you can show me around the ranch. Show me the bee suit.”

She sighed grumpily. “I have a feeling the bee suit is only going to underwhelm you at this point.”

He lifted a shoulder, pushing himself into a standing position and bringing his Coke can to his lips. He knocked it back, finishing off the drink. “I think I can deal with it. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Okay. Tomorrow.”

She stayed sitting at the table while Alex walked out the door. And she tried to ignore the inexplicable feeling of pressure in her chest.

It was nice to have somebody take care of her like this. But it wasn’t something she intended to get used to.

If there was one thing that life had taught her at this point, it was that people didn’t stay forever. And the increased attention you got after you lost someone didn’t last.

Heck, there was a stipulation in the will that made it clear it wouldn’t last.

She swallowed around the prickly feeling in her throat, then picked up her bowl of stew. She wrinkled her nose and dumped the remaining contents back into the Crock-Pot. Then she took a can of SpaghettiOs out of one of the cabinets and set about fixing herself some dinner.

CHAPTER FOUR

WHEN ALEX PULLED UP to Clara’s farmhouse—his farmhouse, technically—the next morning, he did not expect to see Clara standing on the front porch.

But there she was, blond hair fashioned into a long braid that was slung over her shoulder, a blue speckled mug in her hand. She was wearing a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans that he thought might be too tight for doing effective outdoor work in. But they did a damn fine job of showing off her long, shapely legs.

Who knew that Clara Campbell had the kind of thighs a man wanted to lick? Get his face between. Get his body between.

You can stop that right now. She’s Jason’s sister, not some woman you want to pick up at a bar.

That thought shamed him, because the real issue was he was too used to thinking of women as a collection of beautiful body parts he might want to touch. Not that he didn’t care about the woman herself, he did. It was just that he didn’t have relationships.

Which meant that the shape of a woman’s thighs and the size of her breasts became essentially the sum total of his requirements. It made it too easy to look at a body first, and think about who she was second.

Which was why he had thought of Clara’s thighs that way. Not because he was attracted to her specifically. Because he was attracted to women.

He had seen Clara a handful of times when she’d been a kid, but not much since. And that meant it was difficult to reconcile the woman he was dealing with in the present with the child he remembered from the past.

The woman she was now...

He found her way too attractive, and that was just wrong.

He gritted his teeth and put the truck in Park, killing the engine and getting out. He might have slammed the door shut with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. It rattled the whole truck, and he hoped it would rattle some damn sense into his brain.

“Good morning,” he said, finding that smile of his easily.

Never let them see you sweat. Not when they were pointing a gun at your face. Not when they were saying you should’ve never been born. Never.

It was something Liam had always told him. In fact, it was the last thing his older brother had told him before he’d left home at eighteen.

Keep your smile, Alex. Even if it’s just to say screw ’em. Keep your smile.

She made a huffing sound. “Is it?”

He looked around, looked up at the unseasonably clear sky, the brilliant green of the pine trees that closed in around them, then he took a deep breath. “The sun is shining and we’re still standing. Constitutes a good morning as far as I’m concerned.”

“Well, seeing as it’s my day off, my requirements for a good morning centered around a cozy blanket and a soft mattress.”

He was suddenly overtaken by the strangest, strongest desire. To see her sleep. Her face neutral, peaceful even. That pale blond hair spread over her face, her dark lashes fanned out over her cheeks.

He strode toward her, reached out and took the travel mug out of her hand. “For me?”

Before she could answer, he took a long sip of the hot beverage. Then he grimaced. “What the hell is that?” he asked as the sickly sweet, borderline syrupy concoction slid down his throat.

It was her turn to grin. “Hot chocolate.”

“That’s not hot chocolate. That’s a cup of hot sugar.”

“It’s four packets and a handful of marshmallows.”

He handed the mug back to her. “That’s disgusting, Clara.”

She sniffed and treated him to a very haughty look. “I assume you were hoping for coffee? Because I think that’s disgusting.”

He snapped his fingers. “I knew it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

“You like hipster boy. You don’t like coffee.”

Without deigning to answer, she stomped down the steps, heading toward the path to the barn. “Are we going to stand around talking about boys or are we going to go work? I’ve already braided my hair, Alex, so I don’t need your help there.”

He chuckled and followed her, forcing himself to find amusement in the determined set of her shoulders, and to keep his eyes off her ass.

He collected all of his tools, then opened the barn up. While Clara waited, he went back and got his truck, bringing it in so he could load it up with fencing supplies.

The whole time Clara watched, mute.

“You want to help me with this fencing?”

He knew she wouldn’t say anything about being a lady and not doing heavy lifting. Because if there was one thing he had figured out about Clara in the short time he’d been here, it was that she had that same stubborn streak her brother had.

Though, there weren’t really any other similarities between them. Jason had been bold, brash. Quick with a joke, and quick to run toward danger if he thought someone was in need of help. Alex had liked the guy on sight.

Jason had had it rough, there was no doubt about that. By the time Alex had met him, his mother had been sick for most of his life. They’d both enlisted in the military at eighteen. And when they were twenty-two Jason’s mother had passed away.

When Jason’s father died, he’d left the military for a year, returning home to take care of his sister. But once Clara had reached age, he’d enlisted again. Ultimately, Alex and Jason had found themselves on the same base over in Afghanistan. At first, he had imagined it would be a good thing to be out there with his buddy. A guy who had his back.

Of course, now he would give a hell of a lot to make sure that Jason was never there. Or to take his place if it were possible.

Jason had more than had his back. Jason had been a friend, a brother Alex had never deserved.

On summers spent in Copper Ridge Jason had been the one to bring him into a group of friends. To treat him like he belonged. His own father hadn’t had an interest in him. A group of strangers actually wanting to spend time with him had been healing in a way he hadn’t known he needed.

And it had been because of Jason.

He stopped thinking about his friend then. About the differences between him and his sister. Jason with his dark hair and gray eyes, and Clara with her pale beauty and sparkling baby blues.

He had to focus on the present. Focus on this fence.

“I suppose I could help,” Clara said, looking stubborn.

“Better get some work gloves. You don’t want to tear up your hands.”

She rolled her eyes. “I do know how to do basic ranch work, Alex. I grew up here.” She walked to a wooden box that was up against the wall and opened it, taking out a pair of leather gloves and smacking them against the edge of the box. “I do not need to put my hand in there and grab a spider,” she muttered, smacking them a few more times.

Then she put them on, curling her fingers as if to signal her readiness.

“No spider?” he asked.

“Am I fetal and weeping on the floor and threatening to amputate my own hand?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Then no.”

“Excellent,” he said.

He walked over to one end of coiled-up fence length and picked it up. She grabbed the other. Granted, she wasn’t contributing a whole lot, but there was something he enjoyed about goading her into helping out. They lifted the fencing into the back of the truck, then repeated the process with the next roll of metal. When they finished with the fencing, they began to move the posts. They worked in silence, and there was something oddly companionable about it.

He looked up, and noticed that some pale wisps of hair had escaped the braid, falling into her face. As they worked, she would stop and shake her head sometimes, trying to flick the hair out of her eyes. But she never stopped. Never stopped working. Never asked for a break. Not even to fix her hair.

Clara was soft in a great many ways, and she was hurting. That much was obvious. But she was also tough. Determined and stubborn. A whole host of big, deep things were contained in that petite, compact frame.

“Okay, that’s enough for now,” he said, when they had the bed of the truck mostly full. “We can drive out and get the lay of the place. Start replacing some of the fencing. Should go pretty quick since we don’t have to dig new post holes.”

“Right,” she echoed. Still wearing the leather work gloves, she opened the passenger-side door of the truck and got in. She grabbed hold of the handle just above the window, as if she were bracing herself for a bumpy ride. And right then she looked like some kind of ranching wet dream. Pretty and soft, but ready to work with those gloves and that very practical flannel top.

He nearly grabbed a wire cutter to cut his thumb—anything to redirect that line of thinking.

He got into the truck and started it, hoping she wouldn’t notice his momentary distraction. His moment of lecherousness.

She didn’t, and the fact that she didn’t was a testament to just how messed up it was that he would think of her in any way other than as Jason’s little sister.

“So...do you have some kind of rancher fantasy or something?” she asked after they’d been driving along the dirt road for a few moments.

Judging by the way he’d been reacting to her, he apparently did have some kind of rancher fantasy, but presumably not the kind she was asking about.

“No,” he responded. “But I made my life about the military. About brotherhood. That’s what Jason and I had. Brotherhood. You don’t leave a fallen brother, Clara. You don’t.” He kept his mind purposefully blank when he spoke the words, because he didn’t want to relive that moment. Didn’t want to see it in his mind. “And when he’s gone, when you can’t help him anymore, you do what you can for those he left behind. It’s the right thing to do.”

He heard her swallow, looked over and saw a tear slide down her cheek.

“I really do miss him,” she said, her voice soft.

“Me too,” Alex said. “He was the first friend I made here during the summers I spent with my grandpa. Do you remember that red Jeep of his?”

“Yes,” she said.

“We used to stand up in the back while he drove.”

“That was stupid,” she said.

“Yeah. We were stupid. We were sixteen.” Invincible. Damn. Why hadn’t Jason been invincible?

“It’s funny,” Clara said. “I would go so long without seeing him while he was on deployment. And I was kind of used to that. He joined the military so long ago, when I was so young. And when our parents... Well, he came back for a while. And that was nice, but I’m used to doing things on my own, and when he left again, I just got accustomed to it all over again. But knowing he won’t come back is different. It feels different. It’s so final. Sometimes I try to pretend he’s just on a really long deployment.” She took a deep, choking breath. “That he’s just still out there riding around in a Jeep, looking badass.”

He didn’t know how to do this. He didn’t know how to be there for someone. But he was the only one who was here for Clara. The only one who was left. So that meant he had to step up.

He looked out the windshield, eyes fixed on the dirt road. “The good news is,” he said, speaking slowly, “that he’s doing something better than that right now, I’m sure. Because trust me, a guy like that gets ushered right into the good part of heaven.”

Clara laughed, the sound shaky. “You think so?”

He wanted to think so.

“Oh yeah,” Alex said. “God probably showed him where all the good fishing holes are. And he’s not driving around some barren desert breathing in dust and hoping today is not the day you get mortared. No. He’s not worried about that anymore.”

Alex fought to keep his throat from closing up, to keep a wall of emotion from crushing him beneath its weight. “I think the only thing he’d worry about is you,” he continued, his voice rough. “But I’m aiming to make sure he doesn’t have to.”

Silence settled in the cab of the tuck. Then Clara cleared her throat. “You think he’s fishing up there, huh?”

“You know he is. And he doesn’t have to lie about how big the fish is anymore. They’re all monsters.” The ridiculous image made him smile. And he felt gratified when he looked over and saw that Clara was smiling too.

They got out of the truck at the old pasture where the cows had been once upon a time. The fence had certainly seen better days, and even if it were in great shape, it wasn’t going to be enough for bison. They needed good, strong materials, and the older one was sagging and falling over. So that meant refencing the entire pasture.

But he was happy enough with that. It gave him a goal. Gave him something to work toward. Something to give Clara. Something to give back to Jason.

He gritted his teeth. He owed the man more than he could ever repay.

And he sure as hell didn’t deserve any of it.

When they got out of the truck, he tossed Clara a pair of wire cutters. “Okay, what we’re going to do is go down the fence and basically cut. Should be quick enough. We’ll get to the posts afterward.”

Clara nodded, and they set to work silently. She was a fast worker, and she was a hard worker, and as he’d observed earlier, she didn’t seem to want to show the need to stop as long as he was still going strong.

So they worked until his shoulders ached, until he was hungry enough that he couldn’t keep going.

“Hey, Clara,” he called. She was several links down the fence, working her way in his direction. “Why don’t you open up the truck? I have a cool chest in the back. We can tailgate.”

“What do you have in there?” She wrinkled her nose as she peered toward the cool chest, looking skeptical and vaguely mouseish.

“I brought sandwich fixings. Nothing is on the sandwich as of yet. You can choose.”

“What kind of meat?”

“Well, I brought roast beef since I noticed when you ate the stew you seemed to like beef.”

She frowned. “I don’t like it cold.”

He looked at her and tried to figure out if she was kidding. Judging by her expression, she wasn’t. “I also brought turkey.”

She smiled at that. “Well, I do like turkey lunchmeat.”

He stared at her. “You don’t make any sense, do you know that?”

She scowled at him, her pale face streaked with dirt, her cheeks bright pink. Her nose was a little sunburned, the upturned tip as pink as her cheeks. And then his gaze dropped to her lips. They were soft, full. At least, they looked like they would be soft. But he wondered if they’d stay soft if he leaned in to kiss them. Or if she’d firm them right up and try to bite him.

He would deserve the bite. Hell, he deserved it just for thinking about her like that. But the knowledge didn’t stop him from thinking it. Also, the idea of her biting him when he pressed his lips to hers didn’t cool him off like it should. No, his body found that every bit as intriguing as the idea of a kiss.

They made their way back to the truck and Clara hoisted herself up on the tailgate, opening the cool chest and rifling through the contents. She happily retrieved a Coke, popping the top while she continued to forage for sandwich toppings. She pulled out the bread, then grabbed the turkey. She took out the bottle of mustard and some pickles and nothing else. He found himself grimacing as he watched her assemble the sandwich and take her first bite. But then a smile spread over her face, and he couldn’t even judge her for her choice of lunch because he just felt accomplished at the fact that he’d given her something she actually wanted.

After that, he set out to make his own sandwich—with roast beef, since Clara had used all the turkey, which had originally been for him, dammit—and cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and mayonnaise.

Clara narrowed her eyes and looked at him, where he was standing. “Your sandwich looks gross,” she informed him.

“So does yours,” he said, walking over to the truck and lifting himself up next to her on the tailgate. He pulled a beer out of the chest and popped the top on the edge of the truck bed, and the two of them ate in relative silence, staring out at the work they had done for the day. At the discarded fencing, broad expanse of land and all the work they had ahead of them.

Clara popped the last bite of sandwich in her mouth and brushed crumbs off her lap. Then she lifted her hand, shading her eyes, and looked out toward the horizon. Up at the mountains.

“I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve been this deep into the property,” she said. “I’ve kind of gotten into my routine. Going to Grassroots, doing the small garden, checking on the bees. It keeps me close to the house.”

“Yeah?”

“I think it feels too lonely. I mean, realizing how big this place is, and I’m here all by myself. It just feels sad.”

“You’re not alone anymore,” he said.

At least not for now. But he left that part unsaid. Still, judging by the way she breathed in deep, by the way her shoulders sagged slightly, he could tell she had heard it somehow anyway. That she felt it.

He looked over at her, gazed at her profile, at the way her lips curved down, at that fine blond hair catching in the breeze.

As if sensing his perusal, she looked over at him. The breeze kicked up just then, and he caught her scent. Irish Spring and skin, nothing extraordinarily feminine. Just her.

His stomach tightened, and he found himself fighting the urge to reach out and touch her face, to see if her skin was as soft as he thought it might be.

Instead, he lifted his beer bottle to his lips and took a long, slow drag on it.

Clara looked away sharply, and he wondered if she had somehow sensed his thoughts again.

“We better get back to work,” she said, hopping down off the truck.

He nodded, setting the bottle down. “All right, boss, whatever you say.” And he smiled that easy smile because it was better than honesty at that moment.

As far as he was concerned, it was better than honesty almost always.

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