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Jodie frowned. Was that a look of disappointment?

“How’s your hand?” she asked.

“My hand’s fine.”

“It’s bleeding.”

Mac glanced down at his hand gripping the steering wheel, at the broken skin across his knuckles. “Barely a scratch.”

“Uh-huh.” She reached across the cab and brushed her fingertips across his hand. Instead of pain, he felt an almost electrical shock at her touch. It was one thing to carry her in his arms—which had been amazing, and something he never thought he’d get to do—and another for her to touch him purposefully.

Almost as soon as she touched him, she pulled her hand away quickly.

“Sorry, did that hurt?” Her expression filled with concern.

“Not at all.”

“But you flinched.”

“Sorry,” was all he could say when what he really wanted to tell her was to never stop touching him.

“I’m the one who should be apologizing,” she said. “I don’t want you getting in trouble because of me.” She crossed her arms. “I also should have been the one to punch him.”

“No, Jodie. His dumb face isn’t worth damaging your knuckles.”

She gave him a sideways look and grinned.

There she is. Not the embarrassed woman sitting on the side of the trail, or the furious one watching Dale drive away. Just Jodie—funny, dry, a little wicked when she wanted to be.

The woman he’d been noticing behind that front desk since the day he started at Watchdog while trying very hard not to make an idiot of himself.

She settled back into the seat and looked around the cab.

“I like your truck.”

Mac glanced at her. Of all the things he’d expected her to say, that wasn’t one of them.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s a good old ranch truck.”

That made him glance at her again to see if she was joking. He loved his truck, a white Ram 2500 with Alberta dust permanently embedded in places no car wash could reach, a ranch bumper, a dented tailgate, a headache rack, a toolbox behind the cab, and a tow hitch that had seen more work than most men. The block-heater cord still dangled from the grille even though Colorado winters rarely demanded the kind of preparation Alberta winters did. It smelled faintly of coffee and leather, and sometimes, when Mac first opened the door in the morning, he could almost convince himself he caught the ghosts of hay and saddle soap and home.

“How’d you know it was a ranch truck?” he asked her.

“Mac. I do all the paperwork, remember? I know you grew up on a ranch.” She shrugged. “Besides, I grew up with trucks like this. It’s totally a ranch truck.”

Mac smiled. Well, now. He’d known Jodie liked horses, same way Arden did. Jodie helped in Watchdog’s vet clinic, which served the dogs, but also up at the ranch when Arden’s horses or alpacas needed care. Everybody at Watchdog knew that much. But somehow he’d never put the rest of it together.

“You grew up on a ranch?”

“Sure did.”

“Where?”

“Montana. I was your obnoxious American neighbor just to the south.”

Mac chuckled. “Nothing obnoxious about you, Jodie.”