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He blew out a breath and promised himself that no matter what, he would keep his cool. He hadn’t had much call to worry about his temper since he’d moved back to Cowboy Point. After being the worst possible version of himself, it had been easy to settle into the rhythm of his family. To work his shifts in the General Store that had been the Lisle family business since the gold rush, work on the lighthouse, and keep himself to himself. He thought that he’d learned a lot in these years, but now he got to find out if that was true.

He heard a slight noise behind him, and turned.

Ruthie was standing in the doorway to the lobby. She’d lost the parka, and was wearing a brightly patterned sweater that he was sure she’d knit herself. He could see her handiwork, all those perfect stitches that she always claimed weren’t complicated at all before brandishing those patterns at him that looked as if they were written in hieroglyphics.

“I’m going to take the highest one,” she said. “Is that okay?”

“Of course,” he said gruffly.

She nodded, and he had to order himself to get it together. Dallas swallowed, hard.

Then he picked up her bags, and nodded for her to precede him up the stairs.

Ruthie looked as if she wanted to argue about that, maybe. Or something, but instead, she turned around and moved down that hallway in front of him.

He didn’t think it really did him much good to follow her like this, he decided in the next ten seconds. Because he was a weak man, and she had always been his greatest weakness, and he particularly enjoyed this view of her. She was built compact, but tough. He could see that she still had her addiction to working out, because it was evident in the muscles he could see, and that ass that he had no business noticing.

Not to mention the way she jogged up the stairs to the top of the lighthouse like it was nothing.

The room she’d chosen sat just beneath the lantern room itself. Like all the rooms in the tower, hers was built in a semicircle. This top one had bright colors, a cozy bed that was built into the wall, a charming little seating area, and her own little bathroom.

There was even a little balcony outside with a glass door to reach it. As they stood there, the lighthouse’s sweeping light dragged itself around them, illuminating bursts of Cowboy Point in the distance.

“The light doesn’t go all night,” he said, abruptly. “But if you don’t like it, or want darkness before the cutoff, there are blackout shades you can pull down.”

“That’s terrific,” she said, brightly.

He backed up to the door. Ruthie, his Ruthie, was standing in the middle of this room that he’d created with his own hands—and he couldn’t really claim that he hadn’t thought about her while he was doing it. In some ways, this entire project had been him proving to himself that he really could build something, that he wasn’t just the kind of man who tore everything he encountered down and ripped it into pieces. In a way, this was him proving something to the ghost of her that he’d never expected to see.

And once again, he had no idea what was on his face. He only knew that she started to look at him a little strangely.

“You’re the owner, right?” she asked.

Dallas rolled his head on his neck, because everything was too tense. “Yes. I mean, my family… We all own it. But I’m the one who runs the lighthouse. This was my project.”

It was like he didn’t know how to speak.

But she nodded as if what he was saying made sense. He watched her square her shoulders and then step across the room, and he had no idea what she was going to do. Punch him in the face? Start enumerating the top ten hits of their marriage, each and every one of them starring him at his worst? He braced himself.

And then stared, because what she did was extend her hand.

“Well,” she said, once again in that bright and earnest voice of hers, every part of her looking completely sincere, “it’s very nice to meet you. I’m Ruthie Mathis. I’m looking forward to spending time here in your lighthouse.”

Dallas was shaking her hand before he knew what else to do, searching her face for the joke, but he didn’t see anything that looked like laughter.

And it wasn’t until after he’d muttered out his name, like an idiot, and then taken himself—in a complete fucking daze—all the way down the stairs to the lobby and across to his own home attached on the other side, that he asked himself how it was possible that Ruthie Mathis…didn’t know who he was.

Chapter Two

Ruthie Mathis had driven all the way up into Montana from Georgia over the course of two illuminating weeks out there on highways and back roads in places where weather could take charge at any moment. Weather that she had never experienced before, and had not been adequately prepared for. She had been absolutely certain that she was going to die by sliding off the side of the seemingly pretty mountain that rose up over adorable Marietta, Montana, this very same night—possibly by accidentally skidding to her death, possibly by the heart attack that she was sure had to be coming given her pulse rate on that drive.

And yet none of that was as disconcerting as the incredibly surly, gruff innkeeper who she could hear storming down the stairs after he left her in her lighthouse room.

She stayed where she was in the middle of the floor, frowning at the door that he’d shut behind him while looking like he was absolutely desperate to get the hell away from her. As quickly as humanly possible.

Ruthie sighed a little, then turned around in a circle, her hands on her hips. The room itself, which he’d apparently been responsible for making look this cute despite what seemed like a terminal case of grumpiness, surpassed her wildest expectations. And she’d had some daydreams about Lisle Lighthouse Inn, she could admit that.

The outside had been perfect. The lighthouse really did stand there in the middle of nowhere, high in the mountains, with a beaming sweep of light that had felt like a blessing when she’d made it up that steep, icy mountain in the dark. Like it was guiding her home.