*
Nate texted Alywhile Sam checked her security footage, just to make sure no one had been poking around.Nate warmed up his truck and waited for her, studying the snowy landscape around them.
Maybe she wasn’ttotallyoff, that him by her side all day might have dissuaded someone following her from doing so.But he also thought if Hayes didn’t know the guy, hadn’t yet been able to ID him, it was more than a little likely the guy wasn’t from around here.Didn’t know how to navigate a Montana winter.
And Nate wasn’t about to let her find out if her theory was correct, because as long as someone who was mixed up with his dad’s lawyer was trying to break into Sam’s placeandfollowing her around, he wasn’t letting her out of his sight.
She wouldn’t like it.Maybe sheshouldn’tlike it.But he didn’t know how to… not.And as much as last night might have changed things, that wasn’t one of them.He’d have made that determination lines crossed or not.
Sam opened the passenger door and climbed up into the seat.A reminder that maybe she could wield that gun on her hip, but shewassmall.He’d never seen it, but he had no doubt she could fight or punch.He had no doubt that she had a myriad of ways to protect herself.
But life was cruel, and was it so bad to protect each other?
“Anything?”he asked.
Her hesitation had some of the tension he’d finally shaken creep back into his shoulders.
“Not really,” she hedged, fastening her seat belt while he pulled out of his spot.“Bo came by.He didn’t try to get in.Just looked in the windows.”
Bo Lake.Continual problem.Still no answers.“Doesn’t he have the office phone number?”
“Yeah.I checked the messages.He didn’t leave one.I think sometimes he just… he doesn’t want to be pushy.So he walks by hoping we’re in, and if we’re not he moves on.”
Nate didn’t have anything to say to that.Not anything Sam wanted to hear.He supposed he understood why she defended Bo.He was some lost puppy who’d come to her door looking for answers, for the truth.And yeah, the truth was her calling—bone deep, he had no doubt.But it wasn’t that simple, that straightforward, thatcallous.Her determination to find the truth wasn’t some… flaw.
He knew she thought it was—probably because her asshole dad and aunt had done a number on her—but it wasn’t just the truth.
She wanted to help people, save people.He wasn’t sure she fully realized that.How much of it had becomeher, not just a random consequence of trying to prove her father’s innocence for fifteen years.
Her pursuit of the truth was tohelp, because she believed the truth was better.Even when it wasn’t.
So he drove and didn’t harp on Bo Lake.She leaned her head on his shoulder, like she knew it and appreciated it.He couldn’t put an arm around her with the roads up the ranch the way they were, but it was nice nonetheless.This casually intimate moment, instigated by Sam herself.
It was Nate’s first winter home or anywhere with serious winter weather in fifteen years, and he was surprised to find he’d missed it.That his determination to choose Tennessee after his discharge hadn’t been about theweatherlike he’d convinced himself but had simply been to stay far away from this.
This thing he’d missed.The people he’d missed.
He navigated his truck up to the ridge where the Bennet Ranch started.It hadn’t been plowed here, but clearly someone had dug out a little.
There was a spot cleared for his truck, but wind had clearly done a number on it, and they’d have to tromp through some snow to get to a dug-out path that led up to the house.
The house looked almost cozy in the snow with the windows glowing.The ranch had almost started to feel like… well, nothishome, butahome.Landon and Aly’s home.Like they’d exorcised the ghost of Bennet past by excising Dad from the place.
He hoped they had.Hoped that there’d been some goodness before Dad here on this generational ranch, and that there could be again.
Nate parked and they both got out into a frigid, quickly falling evening.Nate skirted the hood of the truck, easy with his long legs to navigate the drifts.He grabbed Sam before she could try.
“That snow’s going to come up to your ears, sweetheart.”
She held him off with a hand, fixed him with a narrow-eyed glare.“You get one warning and one warning only.Don’t ever, and I meanever, call me sweetheart,everagain.”She was trying so hard to keep a straight face, but humor was dancing in her eyes.
“Or what?”Nate returned, curious.“Something hot?”
“I could probably get some tips from your brother on castration.Is that hot?”
He laughed.He couldn’t remember laughing as much in his whole life as he did with her.Even as a kid.Even before he understood what a mess his family was.There hadn’t been a lot oflaughter.
And she grinned back at him.
