Dillon came up the steps. Stepped over Hamlet. Leaned against the rail beside her, close enough that she could smell iodine and soap and the faint scent of cedar. His proximity was a statement. I’m right here.
“My brother Reno is a lawyer,” he said.
“The rodeo clown?” she blurted, startled.
“They like to be called bullfighters these days,” he observed.
“I stand corrected,” she murmured.
He smiled briefly then continued, “He used to be an attorney at one of Texas’s biggest law firms. Youngest partner in the firm’s history. Hot shot litigator. Barracuda in the courtroom. Never lost a case. Stupidly high-profile client list.”
“And now he chases bulls in rodeos?” she asked blankly.
“Technically, the bulls chase him.”
They exchanged short-lived smiles.
Dillon added, “At any rate, he walked away from all of it a few years ago. Won’t talk about why. But he’s the smartest person I know and the best lawyer I’ve ever seen. If somebody forged a dead woman’s signature to steal her land, Reno’s the kind of man who will take deep offense at something so despicable.”
She wanted to laugh and cry simultaneously at the idea of her future depending on a lawyer turned bullfighter. Instead, she gazed out at June and Biscuit standing nose to tail in the shade of a big oak in the pasture, swishing flies off each other’s faces with the lazy synchrony of old partners. Captain was lying in the grass near the horses with Maple tucked against his side. The sky was so blue it didn’t look real.
A few short weeks ago, this view had been pretty but foreign. Something to appreciate from a distance, the way she appreciated art in a gallery—admiring the composition without imagining herself inside the frame.
Now it was home. The realization came to her without drama or the fanfare of a revelatory moment. It had been accumulating in small deposits—Makayla’s boots by the door, Fern’s recipe cards in the kitchen drawer, the sound of Loretta’s dawn bray becoming just her morning alarm clock, Chairman Meow’s grudging tolerance, the hat sitting comfortably on her head.
Another realization washed over her gently, but still shocking in its content.
I don’t want to sell this farm.
The thought should frighten her. A month ago, it would have. She’d inherited this place as a burden, a final complication from a difficult woman, a 365-day sentence to endure before collecting a giant check for Makayla.
And now a stranger was offering to release her from the will’s terms, take all of it off her hands, and every cell in her body had said no.
You can’t so this because of Dillon, she told herself fiercely, vividly aware of the pull she felt toward him. She had to want this farm, this life, for herself. Otherwise she was just borrowing someone else’s life again.
Thing was, she did want this life. The business with Charlotte was growing. The Fashion Bow-tique was hers. This land, these animals, were becoming part of her. Makayla was becoming herself. And for the first time in her life—she was starting to figure out who she wanted to be.
She summed it all up by saying simply, “I don’t want to lose this place.”
Dillon went very still beside her. “That’s the first time you’ve said that.”
“It’s the first time I’ve known it.”
He didn’t respond right away. She felt him choosing his words with the same deliberation he approached a frightened animal—careful, unhurried, aware that the wrong move would close a door that had just opened.
“When Lexi left—” he started.
Tessa’s breath caught because he’d never talked about his first wife before.
“—She told me I was a workaholic who was so obsessed with taking care of animals that I had nothing left inside me for taking care of a woman.”
Tessa’s flinched at the cruelty of those words. Behind the barn, Loretta brayed at something. A hawk’s shadow crossed the porch.
“I believed her,” he said heavily. “I stopped trying to be anything more than a veterinarian. I quit thinking about having a family, bought a house, and figured one person was all it was ever going to hold. I eat supper standing up because sitting down at an empty table feels worse.”
“Dillon—” she said softly.
“Let me finish. I need to say this while I still can.” The muscle in his jaw flexed and unflexed. “When I met you, I told myself you were Lexi all over again. Same polish, same money, same world I don’t fit in. I told myself that for weeks. Every time you said something sharp, I filed it under evidence. Every time you looked expensive, I reminded myself I’d been there before.”
