She could remember the point, when Matthew and Remy had been sophomores in high school, that her parents had finally decided they were going to have to ask if Remy could move in.
He was often dirty, his clothing ill fitting, and he was terribly, obviously neglected.
His parents hadn’t minded where he lived; in fact, they had seemed relieved by the Clays’ offer. Her parents had taken him in, and they had helped him get on the path to college.
Lydia had died many deaths because it was both exhilarating and debilitating to have the boy she had a crush on living in her house.
The chance of running into him in the hall in the morning or at night had been a fearsome thing.
She was two years younger than Remy, and during the time they’d lived together—starting when she was fourteen and he was sixteen—she would come to know she would never have a chance with him. She was just his friend’s kid sister.
That realization hadn’t stopped her fervent fantasies about him, sadly.
Yet he’d never looked at her that way, not even one time.
She’d thought maybe he would need her family forever, but no.
Remy was good with computers. He had created something she still could hardly understand, some interface that was used on a whole bunch of popular social media sites, and he had cashed out when he was twenty-five, bought himself a ranch, and she wasn’t even sure if he did anything other than run it now.
It was rumored that the deal had been worth multiple millions of dollars, not that you would know it by the way he lived.
He definitely had a nice truck, and a nice pair of boots. His house was modest in size, though beautifully designed.
It was a funny thing, that Remy had gotten into ranching. At least, she had always thought so. Because his dad had been a rancher, and Remy had never seemed to have much of anything but disdain for his dad.
He approached ranching very differently, though. Maybe in part because he had ample funds. But . . .
This was why she thought he would actually be great for Hank.
“Can Hank and I come in?” she asked.
He treated her to a cold blue side eye that made her heart race.
This was her problem. She always liked the difficult ones.
If somebody said that a horse was untrained, she wanted to train it. If somebody said that a dog was so traumatized it could never be a pet, she wanted to teach that dog that it could trust humans after all.
Yet another connection with Remy.
“Come on in,” he said, relenting. She gently pulled Hank’s leash, and the two of them entered Remy’s domain.
She had been around Remy for the greater part of her life, and still, sometimes she forgot how tall he was. She barely came to the middle of his chest.
He looked down at the dog, an expression of pain on his handsome face. “Does he have vermin?”
“He does not have vermin. He’s a very respectable gentleman.”
“Says the woman who lives with a rodent.”
“I live withseveralrodents, Remington. I think you know that.”
“I didn’t, actually. Thank you for confirming.”
“Well, once I nurse the vole back to health . . .”
He threw his hands up. “What the hell are you doing that for? I have never heard of such a thing.”
“I rehabilitate animals. It’s what I do.”
