Hell, no one would expect different from you. Your reputation stands on its own.

Yeah, he’d earned it. Even if not everyone knew the half of it. He’d made some dumb-ass mistakes in his life, and when he’d gone into the rodeo, even though it was on a path marked with Hank’s exact footsteps, Gabe had thought his own clear-eyed view of who he was would make it different.

But years on he’d woken up one morning, his last night out on tour, and realized as he lay in bed, with a stranger and a hangover as companions, that he was an apple flourishing right beneath the shade of a tree he had hoped to roll far away from.

At this point he had a feeling the roots were too damned deep to do any different. He’d started to wonder if the vision he’d had of becoming Hank was the wrong one, after all. If he’d just been born him.

Hank’s bringing him back now, asking for his help on the ranch like it might be some atonement or homecoming for both of them, felt too little too late.

Hank had known exactly what Gabe had wanted when he was a teenager. He’d been so invested in the horses on the ranch. He’d wanted to train horses then. Maybe breed them for the rodeo. He’d wanted to run the ranch and work it with his hands.

And Hank had put an end to it then.

He’d wanted Gabe to go to college. To make a better life for himself when Gabe hadn’t been able to imagine a better life than one spent outdoors.

But the ranch was Hank’s, and what happened on the ranch was Hank’s choice.

Hank couldn’t stop Gabe from going into the rodeo, though. That was out of his control. A big middle finger from Gabe.

And after all that his dad wanted him back here on the ranch, where Gabe had wanted to be back in another life, a life he wasn’t sure fit him anymore.

Even so, he was having a hell of a time keeping his eyes off Jamie Dodge’s ass.

He really needed to keep his eyes off her ass.

It wasn’t so much about what was said about him. He already knew full well what he was. But he didn’t want to have that particular fight with Wyatt Dodge. Or any fight.

He didn’t have a death wish.

Jamie looked over her shoulder, and even though he didn’t take her for the kind of woman intuitive enough to know when a man was looking at her ass, there was something sharp in her dark eyes.

And he had to laugh to himself.

He was thinking about Wyatt killing him if he screwed around with the man’s sister. But the honest truth was, if he messed with Jamie Dodge, she would be first in line to him.

Truth be told, he respected the hell out of that.

And he was going to keep his distance.