“Heather?” I called as she started to ride away. “About Angelo...”
“Don’t,” she warned.
“I’m just saying, he’s a good guy. Loyal. Kind. And he clearly thinks you hung the moon.”
“I said don’t,” she repeated, but there was less heat in it this time. “Besides, even if I was interested—which I’m not—it would never work. There’s no way he’d actually want to stay here. He just came to help Dante get set up. That’s all.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that…”
“Oh please,” she groaned. “As if some east coast mobster wants to play Little House on the Prairie with me. Get real.”
I watched her ride off, her back straight and stubborn as always. She was wrong about Angelo. I’d seen the way he talked about Montana, about the ranch, about the life out here. He wasn’t just marking time until he could go back to Jersey. He was putting down roots, whether he’d admitted it to himself yet or not.
But that was their problem to figure out. I had enough on my plate with my own complicated situation.
I turned my horse back toward the tiny house, suddenly eager to see Dante. The day stretched ahead of us—paperwork to finish, cattle to check, a hundred small tasks that made up ranch life. But underneath all of it was the knowledge that tonight we’d fall into bed together, that his hands would find me in the darkness, that I’d wake up with him beside me.
It was becoming routine. Normal. And maybe that was what scared me most, how easily I’d adapted to this new life, how natural it felt to call him my husband.
When I reached the house, I found Dante exactly where I’d left him, hunched over the desk with papers spread out in front of him. His reading glasses were perched on his nose, and he was frowning at something on the computer screen.
“You know,” I said, leaning against the doorframe, “you’re sexy when you’re being all business-like.”
He looked up, and the smile that spread across his face made my chest warm. “Yeah? You think spreadsheets are sexy?”
“I thinkyou’resexy,” I corrected, moving into the room. “The spreadsheets are just a bonus.”
He pushed back from the desk, reaching for me as I got close enough. I let him pull me down into his lap, careful of his ribs even though they weren’t giving him much trouble anymore.
“How’d it go out there?” he asked, his hands settling on my hips.
“Good. Heather showed up.”
His body tensed immediately. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, actually. She apologized. For the dinner thing.”
“Really?” He sounded genuinely surprised. “That’s... unexpected.”
“I know.” I traced the collar of his shirt with one finger. “I think she’s starting to come around. Slowly. Very slowly.”
“I’ll take it.” He pressed a kiss to my jaw. “What else?”
“Angelo’s got it bad for her.”
Dante laughed, the sound rumbling through his chest. “Oh, I’ve noticed. The poor bastard’s been mooning over her since week one. I tried to warn him that she’d eat him alive, but he wouldn’t listen.”
“She likes him too,” I said. “Even if she won’t admit it.”
“Those two are gonna be a disaster,” Dante said, but he was smiling. “A beautiful, chaotic disaster.”
I settled more comfortably in his lap, and his arms wrapped around me, holding me close. Through the window, I could see the ranch stretching out in every direction—the land my family had worked for generations, the land we’d nearly lost forever.
“Thank you,” I said quietly.
“For what?”
“For last night. For this.” I gestured vaguely at everything around us. “For making this feel like it could actually work.”
