Page 66 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

“I’m being accurate.”

“No,” I snap. “You’re being emotional.”

Her eyes flash. “And you’re drunk.”

The silence after that is immediate and absolute.

I laugh once, low and without amusement. “That’s your assessment.”

“That’s my observation.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“It is when I can smell bourbon from where I’m standing.”

I should leave.

The conversation has tilted too far. I know that.

Whatever clean intention I might’ve claimed at the door has already collapsed into something much messier, and the fact that she can see that almost as clearly as I can isn’t helping.

But she’s standing there, looking at me, halfway angry and halfway waiting to see whether I’ll finally say the thing under the thing, and the alcohol has reduced my ability to stay at a safe analytical distance from any of it.

“You came in here to tell me who sees me and why that should matter to me.” She throws her hands in the air in frustration. “I don’t get it.”

“Because it should.”

“Why?” she asks, and now there’s heat under it—not fear but frustration, the kind that takes up space without apologizing. “Why does it matter so much to you?”

I stop.

Because that’s the question, isn’t it?

And there are answers available. Sensible ones. Answers about the investigation, about perception, about how easy it would be for someone already tampering with the system to redirect attention toward the most visible outsider in the house.

All of those are true. All of them matter.

None of them are sufficient.

She takes a step closer.

“Well?” she asks.

I shouldn’t want this.

The thought arrives whole, uninvited, and so exact it’s a line item in my bloodstream.

I shouldn’t want the defiance in her voice, or the intelligence in her eyes, or the way she meets pressure by becoming more herself instead of less.

I shouldn’t want the woman who sees patterns the way I do and resents being managed the way I instinctively manage everything. I shouldn’t want someone who’s already too embedded in the exact situation I’m trying to contain.

Which is precisely why I do.

“Because I can’t account for you,” I say.

Her brows pull together. “What?”

I move before I’ve decided to.