She walked slowly down the hall, down the stairs. And she heard the clicking of nails on the hardwood floor, and suddenly the three farm dogs were swirling around her, silly, excited beasts barely able to contain themselves.
They didn’t bark. She had a feeling Ryder had trained them to keep quiet at night.
But she could tell that they wanted to bark, curious about why she was here when it was so late.
She patted them on their heads.
“At least you still like me,” she whispered. “But you’re dogs. So I suppose you always will.”
She wasn’t sure what their owner would think of her right now.
As he lay in bed.
He hadn’t tried to talk her into staying.
She didn’t know what that meant.
And it was good, because she didn’t want to. Because she didn’t think she should.
Because they needed to regroup and think, or at least she did.
She gave the dogs one last pat, then sneaked through the living room and out the front door. And when she saw a figure out of the corner of her eye on the front deck, she startled.
So did the figure.
He looked at her, and when she could see him more clearly, she recognized that it was Logan.
“Huh,” he said.
Oh, screw him and his speculative sounds.
“Don’t make that noise at me,” she said.
“Rose doesn’t know shit.”
Sammy rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”
“I figured you guys would eventually. And based on the way he’s been acting the past few days... I thought it might be soon.”
“I’m the one who instigated it,” she said.
“I’m not really that surprised by that, either.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Thinking.”
“What about?”
“All the shit I shouldn’t do,” he said, leveling her with a look.
Only a few months ago Iris and Rose had introduced the idea that Logan might have feelings for her, but she had been certain that he didn’t. She didn’t know why she was so certain. Only that she was.
And something about the way he was sitting out there brooding confirmed it.
“You want to talk about it?”
“Not any more than you want to talk about it.” It being her current parade of shame, she supposed.
“Fair enough. Though right now I would argue that there’s a case to be made for inevitability. Whatever your issue is.”
“I think there’s a bigger case to be made for self-control,” he said. “But then, what do I know?”
“I don’t know. But right about now I don’t know much of anything.”
“He’s a good man,” Logan said. “Better than me, that’s for sure.”
“Better than me,” Sammy said.
“They had that foundation. Losing their parents was hard. But your parents are scum. My mom was great. I don’t even know my dad.”
“You really don’t know who he is?”
He paused. And that told her everything she needed to know. “Good night, Sammy.”
“Good night.” She stood for a moment and listened to the crickets. Breathed in the warm air. “Aren’t you going to warn me not to mess this up? I mean, as the other nonblood relative, aren’t you going to warn me not to tear my square out of this crazy patchwork life of ours?”
“Don’t mess it up,” he said, but there was no heat or heart in it.
“That’s unhelpful to me.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say. Life is hard, and it’s lonely sometimes. And I’ll tell you this. I do know what it’s like, like you, to have a living parent that you still can’t see or touch or have a relationship with. They lost everyone, and that’s tragic.”
“Yeah, ours just don’t want us.”
“So all I’m saying is...well, nothing. I don’t have anything to say. Not about this.”
“Well, good night, then.” She started to walk down the steps.
“He was different before you came.”
She stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Huh?”
“Ryder. He was different. Before he met you. You taught him to smile.”
She laughed. “Not well. He still doesn’t do it often.”
“Before you he didn’t do it at all.” He stood then. “Good night.”
And she nodded, and fled across the driveway, letting her hair fly wild in the breeze, running until she thought her heart might burst from her chest.
She’d had sex with Ryder.
Everything felt changed.
But he hadn’t smiled until she’d come to the ranch seventeen years ago.
So maybe, just maybe, there was hope all this wasn’t broken after all.
And neither was she.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHEN RYDER GOT UP the next morning his whole body ached. Like it was punishing him for the pleasure that he’d found last night inside Sammy.