Gabe nodded slowly. “We were. But I got to questioning what the point was. Anyway, it’s a little bit too sticky, what with my sister being one of her best friends. And also being engaged to Grant. It just doesn’t work. It was never going to stay quiet. And then... I’m not ashamed of it. And I would never want her to think that I was. That I was hiding her.”

Wyatt’s expression was grim. “I appreciate that. I know that Jamie isn’t looking for a forever kind of thing. I’m not going to demand that you marry my sister. Hell, I’m even going to try to be enlightened and say that I get why a person needs to...have experiences and whatever.”

Gabe laughed. “You look thrilled about that.”

“Oh, I’m horrified. Unto my soul. I don’t want to be thinking about any of this. But I want to be there for Jamie in a way that’s real. And not in a way that’s just me making myself feel better about what I didn’t do for her all those years ago.”

“I don’t think she feels deprived of anything.”

“Well, that’s nice of you to say. But I’m not looking for reassurance. Not from you. Make no mistake,” Wyatt said. “I’m not going to intervene in what’s happening between the two of you. I’m not going to make Jamie feel bad about it. But if you hurt my sister, Dalton, I will fucking end you. Cadaver dogs won’t be able to find you because the pieces will be too damned small, you got that?”

Gabe got it. And he believed it. Gabe could hold his own in a fight, but Wyatt Dodge was built like the bulls he rode, and the last thing on earth Gabe wanted was to be in a fight with him.

As much as he didn’t want to be in a fight, he appreciated that Jamie had not just one brother—but three—who would willingly beat him to a pulp to protect her.

He didn’t want to pose that kind of danger to Jamie. The last thing he wanted to do was do any damage to Jamie at all.

“I don’t want to hurt her,” Gabe said.

Wyatt nodded slowly, his cowboy hat shading his eyes. “See that you don’t. Because the Dodge brothers travel in packs.”

Wyatt clapped him on the back and headed toward the saloon. And Gabe stood for a moment, watching him go in.

He looked around outside for a moment before deciding to go back into the saloon. He looked at Jamie, sitting there with her family. Looking so unlike Jamie, and somehow very like her at the same time. Then he made his way to her. “Do you want to dance?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

JAMIE LOOKED OVER at Wyatt, and then back at Gabe. “I don’t know how to dance,” she said.

“Well, I’m bad at it. But we might as well.”

He took her hand and pulled her to him, up out of her chair, and over to the small dance floor that people occupied in front of the jukebox. There was a country song playing, a slow tune about how God must’ve spent a little more time on a certain woman, and when Gabe pulled her up close to his chest and began to sway with her, she thought she might pass out.