she leaned back.
“Stop being paranoid. A picture of a rabbit eating a banana is cute. A picture of a beautiful woman feeding a rabbit is captivating.”
Reba glanced up at him. “I know I’m not beautiful or captivating, Valentine. So you don’t need to waste compliments on me. ”
He turned the cellphone to her. “I think this picture speaks for itself.”
Valentine was as good at taking photographs as he was at writing. The woman in the picture holding out the banana to the little golden-haired rabbit did look beautiful with the sun glinting off her burnished red curls and the vivid colors of the garden highlighting the paleness of her skin and the flush of her cheeks.
Reba was struck a little speechless. And even more so when Val crouched down next to her and brushed a loose curl from her cheek with his long, graceful fingers.
“See. You just need to look though a different lens.”
Chapter Ten
“If that cocky sheriff shows up here accusing my boys, I’ll fill his butt full of buckshot.” Chester spit a stream of tobacco out on the ground, barely missing Cru Cassidy’s cowboy boots.
“Would you watch it, Chess,” Cru said. “And I thought we had a talk about you quitting chewing tobacco.”
“You talked. That doesn’t mean I listened.” Chester tried to get Boomer to sit by his feet, but the puppy wasn’t about to sit when he had such a large group of ear scratchers.
“That’s because you need hearing aids, you old fart,” Lucas said. “You can’t hear a dang thing.”
“I can hear just fine, you old coot. I can also aim just fine. Somethin’ that Sheriff Willaby better think about before he comes nosing around the Double Diamond makin’ accusations.”
“Val didn’t say he was accusing anyone.” Logan pushed away from the corral railing he’d been leaning on. “And you’re not shooting the sheriff. If he shows up here, you’re going to be cordial and let Holden handle him. Holden’s a lawyer. He’ll know what to say.”
“I would be surprised if the sheriff comes out,” Holden said. “I think he was just sniffing around to see if he could get a reaction out of Val.” He grinned. “From the sounds of it, he got more of a reaction out of Miss Gertie. And here I thought she didn’t like us.”
“She don’t like us,” Lucas said. “That frigid old biddy don’t like any man.”
Neither did her niece, Val thought. But he now understood why Reba was so closed off. He could only imagine how many lusty teenage boys had wanted to get their hands on her body. He wasn’t a horny teen and he wanted to touch her in a bad way. Of course he couldn’t. Not only because he never had sex while he was working on a book—it took away his focus—but also because Reba had some major hang-ups with guys and needed the right kind of man to get her through them.
He wasn’t that man. He had enough hang-ups of his own.
“I agree with Holden that the sheriff was just throwing his weight around,” Cru said. “I think we intimidated him when he was a deputy.” He slugged Val in the arm. “And he thought this was a good opportunity to pull a power play with the weakest one in the herd.”
“Marvin wasn’t the weakest one in the herd,” Lucas snapped. The name had Val cringing.
“I wish you wouldn’t call me Marvin, Lucas.”
“That’s your name, ain’t it? Why you went and changed it to Valentine Sterling, I’ll never know. There’s nothing wrong with Marvin Valentine.”
There was plenty wrong with it. Not just because it didn’t sound like a famous writer’s name, but also because of the memories the name carried. Marvin Valentine had been a fat kid who let people bully him. He was better off forgotten.
“If he don’t want to be called Marvin, you old coot, don’t call him Marvin.” Chester looked at Val. “But I agree with him that you weren’t the weakest in the herd.”
“I don’t know about that. I couldn’t even lift a saddle onto the back of a horse when I first got here.”
“But you worked hard at it until you could. Just like you did with roping and riding and any other task me and Lucas gave you. You’ve always been a fighter.”
Val had fought hard to become a bestselling author. He would have to fight even harder to remain one. He wished he could get back to his laptop, but it would have to wait.
Chester chuckled. “I bet