CHAPTER ONE
Dalton
I fucking hated Valentine’s Day.
Always had. It wasn’t about the flowers or the cards or the fake romance shoved down your throat everywhere you looked. It was about expectations. Promises people made—and broke—without thinking twice. The kind that taught a man never to make another one.
I didn’t do love. I didn’t do promises.
And I sure as hell didn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day.
I stared at the calendar on my desk. The fourteenth was circled with a bright red slash through it. Thirteen days. Thirteen days until the world lost its collective mind over hearts and chocolates and bullshit declarations that wouldn’t last past March.
Thirteen days until I had to endure the pitying looks from people who thought being alone made me somehow broken.
I wasn’t broken. I was smart. Smart enough to know that women wanted one of two things from a man like me—money or sex.
My ex had wanted both, for a while. Then just the money. She’d been a buckle bunny when I was riding the circuit and had followed me from one town to the other. Then, she’d left whenI’d stopped being on top. That had told me everything I needed to know about how conditional love really was.
She’d walked away five years ago on Valentine’s Day and took whatever faith I had left in romance with her. Since then, I’d learned to keep things simple. No attachments. No expectations. No promises I couldn’t keep.
It was easier to just be alone.
The door to my office opened without a knock. My brother Cade leaned against the doorframe, coffee mug in hand, grinning like he knew exactly what I’d been thinking about.
“Counting down the days?” he asked.
“Get out.”
“Come on, Dalton. It’s just one day. You could try not being miserable about it.”
“I could. I won’t.”
He laughed and pushed off the doorframe. “Rhett called. His forensic accountant is arriving this morning. Nine o’clock.”
I glanced at my watch. It was a quarter till. “Great.”
“You could try to sound a little more welcoming. This person’s doing you a favor.”
“This person’s getting paid to do a job. That’s not a favor.”
“Whatever you say.” Cade took a sip of his coffee. “Just try not to scare them off in the first ten minutes, okay? We actually need this fixed.”
He left before I could tell him to mind his own business.
Even though getting our books fixed was his business as much as it was mine. Cade and I had been running the ranch together for years. And we’d made it work. More than work—we’d turned it into something bigger than what we’d inherited. Better equipment. More land. Smarter deals. The ranch was solid. Thriving, even.
I turned back to the spreadsheet on my laptop. Three months of financial chaos stared back at me. Our previousaccountant had either been stealing or was catastrophically incompetent—probably both. Either way, he was gone, and we were left with a disaster that needed sorting before tax season buried us—and the ranch—alive.
Rhett Morrison was our attorney, friend, and former rodeo rider himself. I’d left it to him to find someone who could untangle this mess. I’d balked when he suggested the person live at the ranch but eventually agreed. Being able to drive back and forth from town would be hit pr miss this time of year, and we didn’t have any days to lose.
At nine o’clock sharp, I heard a car pull up outside.
I stood and moved to the window. A sedan—not new, but well-maintained—parked near the house. The door opened and a woman stepped out.
I cursed Rhett the second I saw her. A woman. He sent me a damn woman. With Valentine’s Day breathing down my neck, the last thing I needed was some female cluttering up my space, expecting me to be polite or accommodating or any of the other bullshit women always seemed to require.
As the red haze of anger subsided, I realized I’d been taking her in.
