Slow Burn Cowboy. Maisey Yates

wrong reasons. That it didn’t matter. That a payout would make things square.

      This made it a whole lot more difficult. It made Finn feel a whole lot more petty.

      “Violet doesn’t seem very happy to be here,” he pointed out. Which was maybe the lowest blow he’d tried to land yet.

      Cain laughed, but there was no humor in it. “She’s not happy anywhere. I don’t know what to... I mean... It’s like she’s a different person now. She used to be this adorable, little bitty thing. And I can remember her with two missing front teeth and a big smile so clearly that half the time that’s still what I expect to see when I look at her. Instead she’s this sullen creature that will barely make eye contact with me. She was mad at me in Texas. I figure she can be mad at me here. But at least maybe with a little less baggage hanging around.” He shook his head. “I could never shake the feeling that she was waiting for her mother to come back. And the longer we stayed at the ranch, the more I felt like that was why. That it was why we were both still there. It had to stop.”

      All of this, the emotion, the understanding, scraped against Finn like a particularly splintered board on bare skin.

      “I don’t know what to say,” Finn responded finally. “Mostly because there’s nothing I can say that won’t make me sound like an ass.”

      Cain lifted a shoulder. “Maybe because you are one.”

      “Maybe,” Finn agreed.

      “I’m not the easiest person to get along with,” Cain said. “Every woman who has ever passed through my life will attest to that. Particularly, at the moment, my daughter. I’m not one to promise that we are not going to butt heads here. But I can tell you that I’m not here to ruin your life. I’m just trying my damnedest to fix mine.”

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      A DAY OFF was exactly what Lane needed to get her head on straight. She was tired, that was the thing. Overtired and emotionally taxed. It was why she had acted like such a weirdo last night when Finn had touched her.

      And why she had been persistently weird about it all the way home, and while she was trying to go to sleep.

      What he had said had continued to play over and over in her mind.

      When a woman spends the night with me, I don’t do any of that.

      She was a curious creature by nature, and his saying something like that forced her to try and imagine all the things he might do. Which had ended very quickly because the images she’d conjured had been awkward and strange and had left her stomach feeling tight and flipped inside out all at the same time.

      Normally, she did her best to never imagine Finn doing anything remotely sensual. He was a constant in her life. And he was a man, yes, and she wasn’t blind. But when she’d met Finn she’d been in such a terrible, vulnerable place, and he’d been the friend she’d needed. She’d spent the ensuing years resolutely keeping him in that category.

      It had taken Rebecca’s almost hooking up with Finn to jolt Lane into finally acknowledging that he was, indeed, a man.

      And then there was what he’d said last night. About what he did and didn’t do when a woman spent the night. It left a lot to the imagination. And her imagination was a bright and inquisitive thing.

      So today, she was doing her best to keep it dampened by puttering around in the garden. She had kept herself outside, and all forms of media shut off. No internet. No radio. No TV. No chance of upsetting images infiltrating her home.

      Being on the ground, up to her elbows in dirt, was much more satisfying than catching a glimpse of the Ghost of Teenage Mistakes Past on the news.

      Anyway, she had plenty to do. There was enough lettuce that she was going to have to bring it to the store if she had a hope of using it all. Picking and processing that, separating it out into individual plastic bags so it was ready for people to take home as premade salad mix, had eaten up a good portion of her time.

      Then she had gone to wander around in the thicker part of the woods around her property. Her knee-length lace dress kept getting snagged on sticker bushes, but she didn’t mind. She minded more when the raspberries and blackberries twined around her legs and left little teeth marks in her skin.

      But there were no prizes for timidity when it came to picking blackberries. The good ones were typically on the very top of the bushes, reaching up toward the sun. She hummed as she dropped the plump fruit into milk jugs she had cut the tops off.

      They made for handy berry buckets, and they were cheap and disposable so if the juice stained the inside it didn’t much matter.

      She didn’t mind the typically gray weather on the Oregon coast, but she very much prized the summertime. She closed her eyes, allowing the sun to bathe her in gentle warmth as she continued her work.

      The mild weather through the winter and slightly earlier warmth of the summer had ensured that the berries ripened a little bit earlier than usual. And she held out hope that even more would ripen between July and August.

      Little containers of the berries would fetch a decent price in the Mercantile, and anything extra would go to Alison, for pie and pastries and maybe for that jam she was thinking of asking Alison to supply her.

      She wondered if Cassie would want any for The Grind, for a kind of special scone or biscotti. The thought had Lane humming to herself, imagining all of the baked goods she could talk her friends into making for her.

      She liked her own baked goods too, of course. But sometimes things just tasted better when they were made for you.

      She bent, grabbing her half-full container of blackberries by the handle, then scooping up the one she’d managed to fill most of the way up with raspberries, as well. With her free hand, she held on to her dress, trying to keep it away from the sticker bushes as she picked her way back through the thick foliage until she got to the well-worn path that would take her back to her house.

      She paused for a moment in a clearing, allowing a shaft of sun to fall over her bare arms. She relaxed, holding the heavy buckets down low at her sides as she closed her eyes and tilted her face up. She listened then. To the birds, and the faint sound of the breeze ruffling through the treetops.

      She breathed in, that heady mixture of soil, wood and pine that was only headier in the damp forest as the temperatures rose.

      Then she heard the sound of car tires crunching on the gravel driveway that led to her house. She paused, frowning. She wasn’t expecting anybody, and unless they had gone too far and needed to turn around, no one had any reason to be driving up to her place.

      She mobilized, walking up to the back door of her cabin and letting herself inside, passing quickly through the small house and peeking through the front window so that she could get a glimpse at the driver, without him seeing her first.

      She let out a sigh of relief when she saw that it was Finn. And then for some reason on the heels of that relief came a surge of tension that rested like a ball in her chest.

      She breathed in again, just like she had done outside, but this time, it was for fortification. This time, it was to try and do something to get rid of that tightness in her lungs.

      Lane waited until he got out of his truck. Until he walked up the steps and stopped in front of the door. Then she waited until he knocked.

      Only then did she open the door.

      “Hi,” he said.

      She just stood there, staring at him for a moment, her chest feeling tighter. He looked tired. His hat was pushed back on his head, dirt on his face making the lines around his eyes and mouth look more pronounced. His tight white T-shirt was streaked with even more dirt, and she could see on his battered jeans where he had wiped his hands on his thighs all day.

      It was typical for Finn to look this filthy after