Grady grins smugly, throwing his arm around his wife’s shoulders and squeezing her tight.

Bo sits next to the pair, silent and frowning.

Raylan glances back at her.

“You okay, sis?” he says.

“Yeah, of course,” Bo says. “I’m fine.”

Raylan nods and turns back to the road, but I can see him thinking, probably piecing together what happened.

* * *

18

Raylan

A kind of peaceable silence spreads out in the car. I can tell Shelby is getting sleepy, her head leaned up against Grady’s chest and her eyelids drooping like a child’s. Bo is looking out the window, even though the night is black as pitch and she can’t see anything in the fields and forest we pass.

I don’t know what the fuck is going on with her and Duke, but I don’t exactly feel like I’m in a position to give advice. I’m chasing after a girl who barely tolerates me, who seems determined to slam the drawbridge down on my head every time I try to wriggle my way through her castle wall.

Goddamn Riona looked so gorgeous tonight. I love her in her lawyer clothes, but I’ve never seen anything prettier than her creamy skin against that pale green dress, with her red hair all loose and wavy around her shoulders.

She looked relaxed and free in a way I’ve never seen before. Strangely, she looked more herself than she did in Chicago. She was smiling and laughing, dancing with me like she’d been doing it all her life. She tries to be so rigid and stern, but that’s not her, not really. The real Riona is adventurous, climbing on a horse when she’s never been within ten feet of one before. She’s graceful, spinning around in my arms like she was born to dance. She’s perceptive, getting to know Bo when Bo’s as prickly as a cactus and can’t get along with anybody, including her own damn best friend.

That’s what I see when I look at Riona. A woman who can be anything and do anything she wants.

But she seems determined to deny it.

I felt her pulling away from me as we danced. I saw that resentment flare up in her eyes again, that refusal to let herself enjoy something that she was obviously loving just a few minutes before.

I don’t understand her.

But goddamn do I want to.

I want it more than anything. I want to crack the code of her psyche. I want to win her over. I want to make her mine.

And it’s not just ‘cause it’s a challenge. Maybe it started out that way—Dante calls me Long Shot for a reason. If you tell me I can’t have something, I want it ten times more.

But it’s gone way past that with Riona. The more time I spend with her, the more I realize that she has a force of will inside of her stronger than a hurricane. I admire it.