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“Of course,” Cat replied.

“You’re not the first person to look at me like that,” Ruthie said. Carefully, Dallas thought.

Cat made a neutral sort of sound. “How am I looking at you?”

“This is going to sound ridiculous.” Now Ruthie sounded self-deprecating. Though Dallas was sure there was a current of something else there beneath it. “But I swear you’re looking at me like you recognize me.”

And Dallas couldn’t take it anymore. He came out from the back room, and saw Ruthie’s eyes widen in surprise.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you. That’s so funny, because I was just—”

“Dallas is my brother,” Cat told her, still sitting on a stool behind the counter like this was all very casual.

Dallas preferred to be on this side of the door. He could see how calm Cat was, and wondered if it cost her something. He could also see the color on Ruthie’s cheeks, bright from the cold, though he thought it was more than just the temperature.

She looked back and forth between the two of them, as if she was trying to do some kind of equation in her head.

“The Lisles have owned and run this General Store since Cowboy Point was just a place for miners to stop and throw their gear around.” Cat shrugged. “There’s another family in town who disputes that story and claims there was some cheating in a card game, but I married into it. So as Cat Lisle Carey, I can tell you, nobody cheated. Careys are sore losers.”

And the way she grinned made Ruthie laugh.

“You would never dare say that in front of your husband,” Dallas said with his own laugh, and he realized that it was the first time he’d felt anything even close to normal since Ruthie had turned up in his lobby last night. Maybe because teasing his little sister came so naturally, he didn’t need to think twice about it.

He looked away from Cat to catch Ruthie’s expression, and he felt something like a lightning strike spear straight through him.

Because Ruthie was looking at him like she felt that same strike of lightning too. Her lips were slightly parted. Those eyes of hers looked nearly gold. And her cheeks were definitely redder than they were a moment ago.

He just couldn’t tell if that was recognition, or if that same chemistry that had always locked them into each other was at play again.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I… don’t know,” she replied.

She swiped the Army stocking cap off her head, as if she thought maybe that was the reason she was overheating. Then he watched as she performed one of the simplest, most familiar gestures, one he’d seen her do a million times. She raked her hand back through her hair and then let it fall back into place, sending the scent of her shampoo dancing around between them. Coconut and something tart.

His body responded immediately. The way it always had.

The way it had the first night he’d laid eyes on her in that bar in Columbus. The way it had even when everything else had gone straight to shit.

There was no version of Dallas who didn’t want Ruthie Mathis. If that time ever came, he would know he was dead. It was as simple as that.

“You just came into town last night,” Cat was saying. “Didn’t you? Was it a hard trip in? These mountain passes can be brutal.”

“Here’s the thing.” Ruthie leaned a hip against the counter, her gaze something like shrewd. Or assessing at the very least. She looked back and forth between the two of them, and Dallas couldn’t read her at all. “While I was going through my grandmother’s things, I found a box of stuff I’d never seen before. And a lot of it seemed to be mementos from this place. Cowboy Point.” She shrugged. “I’ve never heard of Cowboy Point. I would say my grandmother certainly never did either. She didn’t even like to cross the state line into Alabama, which basically runs through her backyard, unless forced. And yet somehow, she had all these keepsakes from Montana. So I felt like I had to come here and try to figure out why.”

Everything inside Dallas had gone still. “What do you mean, you were going through her things?”

“After the funeral,” Ruthie said in that same voice. Not happy, but not wrecked, either. Just like it was normal. “I was cleaning out the house, as much as possible anyway, before my aunts and cousins took possession of it.”

Dallas wasn’t processing this in real time. Not because he didn’t understand what she was saying, but because he didn’t want what she was saying to be real.

“Your grandmother’s dead?” He felt it like a punch in the gut, because he remembered Deanna Rae Mathis in full, vibrant color. She had thought that he was far too good-looking for his own good, and certainly too handsome to do right by her granddaughter. Turned out she’d been right about that—and hadn’t spared him her thoughts on that, either. He’d adored her. “And what do you mean, your aunts and your cousins? Why are you talking to them?”

Ruthie’s head cocked slightly to the side. “Why are you talking about my family like you know…?” But she trailed off. “I don’t know…”

She cut herself off again. Ruthie was frowning now, looking from Dallas to Cat and back again.

Dallas had too many things at once cascading around and around inside him. But how could he explain how he felt about the death of Ruthie’s grandmother when he was standing in front of a Ruthie who didn’t know who the hell he was? When she couldn’t remember why he would care?