Swordsman's Legacy. Alex Archer

he’s not.”

      Reba felt quite positive on this subject.

      Gordie himself vacillated like waterweed in a river current, however. His attitude back in September had pushed her right into Lucas’s arms, she sometimes felt. He’d hung around the steakhouse, the way he still hung around. He’d given with one hand and taken away with the other, and he was still doing it.

      After showing Lucas around the ranch that first day, she’d worked a shift at the steakhouse the same night, venting her complicated feelings about the sale and the man by throwing her steaks roughly around the grill. It hadn’t helped. She was still feeling tense and angry and confused when Gordie had sloped into the kitchen to hang out with her, and maybe that was the real point where it had all started with Lucas…

      “Hi, Reb.” Gordie had dragged a stool in from the bar and positioned himself on it in front of the big freezer. He already had a light beer in his hand.

      “Hi, yourself,” Reba had answered. Her smile was an effort. “No food in your fridge, tonight?”

      She tried to make it into a tease, but found it irritating that he still came in here like this, so often. And she was tired, after too much tension with Lucas Halliday today, while she’d showed him over the ranch, so she had to fight to hide the irritation.

      She and Gordie had broken up two months ago, for heaven’s sake! Maybe she should be pleased that they could still be friends, as far as he was concerned. True, she did feel a certain degree of relief. She wouldn’t want to think that she’d hurt him so badly he couldn’t stand her company. In a small ranching town like Biggins, when she cooked four shifts a week at the only decent restaurant, that would be awkward for a whole lot of people.

      But it made her uncomfortable that his routine had been so little changed by her calling off their engagement. He should have started serial dating around three counties, or something. He should have brought strange blondes in here to dangle in front of her, every week. He should at least have had his hair cut different, and bought a couple of new shirts.

      Like I’ve done any of that? she scolded herself, as she watched him take a gulp of his beer.

      “I’ve been thinking, Reb,” he said, ruffling his choppy dark hair at the back with his spare hand. It stuck up after he’d finished with it, definitely getting too long.

      He was the only person who called her Reb. She didn’t mind it from him. She didn’t challenge the statement that he’d been thinking, either. He had a good brain, especially for figures. She didn’t possess one herself. He had statistics on his computer, relating to the McConnell ranch, that even her father wouldn’t have thought to tabulate. He spent a lot of time on the Internet, which apparently made money for him, she wasn’t even sure how. And he could ride as if his thighs were part of the horse.

      “Yeah?” she answered, slinging three steaks on the grill.

      “You’ve got a buyer sniffing around, right?”

      “He seems interested. But he’s a businessman. Pretty hardheaded.” Enough to bulldoze my family home. “He’s not going to make a spur-of-the-moment decision. He wants to see more tomorrow, so I’m taking him down to Steamboat, and up to the cabin.”

      “Because I’ve been thinking.”

      “You said that.” She smiled, to soften the statement, and wished once again that he wasn’t here. Or that he was somehow different. Tougher? With more emotional perception in his heart?

      “If we got married after all, your Dad might decide not to sell,” he said. “I’d be willing.”

      At this, she had to fight to stop her jaw dropping open. “We broke it off, Gordie,” she reminded him, then added more bluntly, “I broke it off.”

      “Yeah, I know, but nothing much has changed since then, has it? For either of us? Except that your Dad is selling the ranch.”

      “There’s that, yes,” she answered heavily.

      “So I wondered… I kind of was relieved when you broke it off, but now I’m thinking we were both too hasty. We had a good thing going, and I should have talked you out of it, instead of feeling—”

      “Gordon McConnell…!”

      “Not to insult you, or anything.”

      “Because you were kind of relieved?” She plated two ribeyes, and threw a glance over the grill to see if anything else needed flipping.

      “I just— You make me nervous, Reb.”

      “What do you mean by that?” Her anger rose inside her.

      “You scare me. The way you’re so— But that’s okay. If you could just—”

      “Let’s get this straight, here! Are you asking me to change, so that you could stand to marry me, so that we could keep Seven Mile in the family?”

      He blinked his light blue eyes. “Just tone down a bit. Don’t feel stuff so much. Don’t get so emotional and passionate about everything. Is all. Makes me nervous. See, you’re doing it now!”

      Damn right she was!

      Damn right she was emotional!

      And apparently it showed. The clenched teeth and the half growl, half shriek that escaped from between the clenched teeth gave a clue.

      “I don’t think we should get married, Gordie,” she said. With difficulty, she kept the lid on the passion that he regretfully, tactfully, didn’t want as part of the Rebecca Grant package.

      He flinched a little, then argued, “But you want to keep the ranch.”

      He’d always been persistent.

      “No, I don’t,” she yelled, over the hiss of cooking steak. “I spent all day today, showing that buyer over the place, and he’s ideal. Rich. Smart. Experienced.”

      Interesting. Complex. Hot.

      “If he’s serious, I couldn’t be happier,” she went on. “Mom and Dad deserve to have the best lifestyle they can, down in Florida. I’m glad I scare you, Gordie, because you’re beginning to scare me!”

      “So now you know how it feels. Just tone down. I care about you. You know that. We’re good together.”

      They were terrible together!

      They’d been terrible together for more years than she cared to count, and they’d always had more habit than passion in the mix. She hadn’t questioned this because he rode so well and he ranched so well. He had the organizational skills, number skills and money skills that she lacked. On paper, he was perfect for her, and his ranch was right across the fence.

      And she’d been holding her breath about Mom’s health for so long, she hadn’t wanted to rock any boats. Wanting to stay safe, she’d hidden her head in the sand, but safety had proved an illusion.

      She couldn’t even remember the immediate trigger that had prompted her to tell him it was over. Thinking back, she decided there wasn’t one.

      They hadn’t had a fight. She hadn’t met someone else. She’d just reached some invisible line in the sand and cracked.

      Exploded.

      And the fallout and shrapnel was still in the air. She’d realized that this wasn’t her life. Watching Gordie Mc-Connell sit on a bar stool drinking beer while she cooked, telling her to “tone down” just wasn’t her life.

      He’d said the toning down thing to her before, she remembered, but she’d never understood what he meant, never paid it the right attention. And it might be someone else’s life, but it wasn’t hers.

      So what’s mine?

      She didn’t know.

      Meanwhile, Gordie hung out in the kitchen for another