From City Girl To Rancher's Wife. Ami Weaver

      “How long have you been here?” Josie was genuinely curious. Nikki was young and gorgeous. This didn’t seem like the optimal place for a woman like her.

      Nikki put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. The breeze blew her ponytail back over her shoulder. “Six years? Yeah, six years this winter. Yes, I came out here in the winter,” she said on a laugh.

      Luke handed the lead back to Nikki. “He’s good. Get video of him and get it up on the site in the next week or so.”

      “Sounds good.” To Josie she said, “Nice to meet you. I’m down here every day if you ever want to keep me company.”

      “Thanks,” Josie said, a feeling of warmth in her chest. Nikki could be a friend. She hadn’t expected that out here. “I’ll do that.”

      Nikki flashed her another smile before leading the horse away.

      “What kind of site?” She’d known Luke did something with horses, but her aunt hadn’t really said a whole lot. And Josie didn’t know a lot about this type of business anyway.

      “For the horses. When they’re ready, they go up on the website. People wait for them to go up.”

      “So you raise and train them?”

      “Some,” Luke said. “Some are bought at auction. And sometimes Cade will take on someone’s horse and train it for them. But that takes a lot of time. Nikki and Jim, who’s not here today, are the trainers, and my brothers and I train, too. Cade really runs this end of the operation. No thanks to our father.”

      “I see,” she said carefully.

      Luke didn’t look at her. Instead, he watched Nikki lead the horse back to the barn. His tone was almost expressionless, but she saw a muscle tick in his jaw. “When I got back here after—after everything ended in Nashville, the ranch was in bad shape financially. My father had made some risky decisions to try to save this place and then he died before he could really make them pan out—if they would have panned out at all. We almost lost the whole thing because of his carelessness. So when Cade wanted to do this it was a far more calculated risk. He’s been known for years for his way with horses. We’ve all worked together to use our strengths to make this place profitable. My dad never would have understood how something like this works. He wasn’t any kind of a team player, even when it came to his kids.”