this...wonderful, ridiculous collection of people—children—who had been living without parents. It reminded her of Neverland. Like they were the lost boys. And she had wanted so desperately to fly out of her bedroom window and join them.
The chaos had appealed to her. The anarchy of children running their own lives. But above all else, the tall, strong figure of Ryder had been something of a fantasy in her life.
He was the leader. And she had recognized that immediately. From the mantle of authority that settled over his broad shoulders.
Even at eighteen, she had found him mesmerizing.
Ryder commanded respect with nothing more than a firm nod of his head. Her father, for all his red-faced yelling and bruising fists, hadn’t been able to squeeze respect out of a rock, much less beat it into a rebellious teenage girl.
But Sammy had learned at an early age that there was no amount of perfect that would ever please David Marshall. And so she might as well settle for being as imperfect as she possibly could be.
She had moved out of the house and into an old camper on the property when she had been fourteen. It had helped her keep her distance. Her mother had liked it because she felt that without Sammy’s fractious presence in the house, her father might be calmer.
Sammy suspected that might have been true. But regardless of the truth of it, the arrangement had been better for her.
And it had allowed her to sneak over to the Daniels’s ranch with much greater ease.
It was when she had put her plan into place. Operation: Befriend Ryder Daniels.
The memory made her smile even now. Then she looked at Pansy, and something turned over in her chest.
Pansy had been a little girl when Sammy had first started spending time with the family. And now she was getting married. Starting a family of her own. Pansy was one of the few who had moved out right at eighteen.
The rodeo boys came and went with the season. There was no reason for them to not bunk up on the property when they traveled so much. Keeping a permanent residence didn’t make any sense.
Logan lived in the original ranch house on the property. Rose, Iris and Ryder lived in the main house. Sammy herself had moved her camper onto the ranch when she’d been about seventeen.
Sitting there looking at Pansy, Sammy still felt about seventeen, but somehow Pansy was a grown woman, getting married and...
The way that West looked at her. West loved her.
Sammy had never been particularly drawn to romantic love. For obvious reasons. Her experience with it—with her parents’ marriage—had put her off.
She liked to have a good time; that much was true. She gravitated toward men who had a light, easy approach to life.
But it was all starting to feel a little bit...
She felt achy. She felt like she wanted more. The fight with her mother today had made it feel even more stark, and the vague longing had started to feel crystallized earlier.
You’re not a mother. You don’t understand.
You’d be a terrible mother anyway.
It was insane.
Except it kept coming up in her mind, again and again, and she kept dismissing it because it was crazy. Absolutely and completely crazy.
She came out of her deep thoughts just in time to key in to Ryder giving a toast to the newly engaged couple.
“To West and Pansy,” he said.
“Thank you,” West said, grinning.
“If you hurt my sister, I’ll rearrange that pretty face of yours into something no one would ever recognize as human. Count on it.” He said it with a smile.
“I believe you,” West said.
“Good,” Ryder responded. “You ought to.”
Ryder was teasing. Well, kind of.
Ryder was protective. He always had been.
It was one of the things that had drawn her to him in the first place.
And seeing it now, seeing it play out with Pansy made her feel... He was so sure and solid. Everything here was sure and solid. For the longest time her only goal had been to have a family.
She had made something of a family with the Daniels. More than something. They were better than the one she had been born into, that was for sure. But... Pansy had broken off and now she was making a life for herself, and it reminded Sammy that she was no closer to doing that.
And you want something to change.
She did.
She was doing really well with her handmade jewelry business. Online marketplaces and an interest in craft fairs had done very