“No, you won’t,” he said cheerfully. “You’re too busy here to run things at the ranch, too.”
“Fuck off.”
“Cowboy Daddy,” he sang.
I closed my eyes and considered every poor decision that had led me to this moment. It wouldn’t kill me. But it might shut him up.
“Why are you here anyway? I pay you to be at the ranch, not here.” Pushing open the door to my office, I flopped into the chair and waited for him to talk.
Holt stepped inside and shut the door with his boot heel. The grin he’d been wearing died fast, replaced by something weightier. He hooked his thumbs into his back pockets, eyes cutting toward me in a way that told me I wasn’t going to like what came next.
“Stopped at the feed store on my way in. Ran into Katherine Miller.”
My jaw tightened. “From the county office.”
“Yeah.” He nodded once. “She pulled me aside. Didn’t say much, she can’t, but she said just enough. The bank’s pushing Ray’s file up the chain. ‘Expedited review,’ her words.”
A slow, cold pressure tightened under my ribs. “Meaning?”
“Meaning they’re looking at foreclosure timelines,” he said quietly. “Soon. Sooner than Tessa’s ready for.”
The room went still around us. The hum of the walk-in fridge. The muffled clatter from the bar. All of it felt too far away.
“Katherine said a notice is probably being printed thisweek,” Holt added. “Thought you’d want the heads up before it hits her mailbox.”
I blew out a breath that tasted like metal. Ray had run out of time. Tessa didn’t have the luxury of any.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “Thanks.”
Twenty-One
Tessa
The day was flying by, Brooke had gone out to a ranch east of town to help with a cow that was having foot issues, and that left me here to man the clinic alone. Mostly, it was phone calls to rebook patients.
“Hey, roomie,” Dani said as she waltzed into the clinic with two coffees in hand. “Do you know you’ve got a tab running at that coffee shop?”
“Yeah, Colin did that,” I said flatly, and Dani stopped mid-sip. I was half expecting her to spit the coffee out, but she just shrugged. I couldn’t blame her; it was good coffee. “I should refuse to use it, but I’m broke, and it’s good coffee.” I was a little too exhausted to worry about it at the moment.
“So. How’s Cowboy Daddy?”
I choked hard. “How’s who?”
Her grin widened. “Oh, good. He hasn’t told you yet.”
My stomach dropped. “What did you do?”
“I introduced myself properly.”
“Dani.”
She waved me off. “Relax. I told him to keep his distance.Told him to behave. Told him if he hurt you, I’d burn his entire ranch to the ground, and ruin all his delicious beer.”
“Dani,” I said again, a little more exasperated.
“And,” she added, clearly enjoying herself, “I gave him a nickname.”
I dropped my forehead to the table. “I can’t survive this.”
