She was fine with who she was. She had accomplished everything she wanted to in life, and she was on the path to accomplishing more. She didn’t want or need to be soft and pretty, didn’t make it an aim to be.

She supposed she could wax various parts of her body, or put makeup on, or change the way that she dressed, but she didn’t want to.

She was happy the way she was.

And it suddenly occurred to her why all of this was so off-putting.

She had never been treated much differently than her brothers. Not at all growing up, and suddenly, Wyatt was treating her like she was different. Suddenly, the fact that she was female seemed to be at the forefront of his mind, and consequently of everyone’s.

She’d felt agitated by it for the past couple of months, ever since Gabe had approached her about potentially taking this job on. It had been under her skin the whole time, but she’d simply attributed it to the fact that she didn’t like to be told what to do, and Wyatt was trying to set a record for how many times he could tell her exactly what he wanted her to do in a single breath.

But it wasn’t just that.

“Let me ask you this,” Jamie said, kicking her legs out in front of her and leaning back in her chair. “Why are you suddenly so fixated on the fact that all he’s going to see is a woman when he looks at me? No one ever has. Everybody knows that I’m Quinn Dodge’s only daughter. That I’m basically another son. That I am good with horses, and good with my hands. I am another Dodge boy, as far as the entire town is concerned.”

The expression on Wyatt’s face shifted. “What?”

“Come on,” she said, slapping her knee. “No one in the history of ever has treated me like a delicate flower, and all of a sudden you’re obsessed with the fact that Gabe only sees me as a pair of pants he can get into.”

“You don’t really think that, do you, Jamie?” It was Bennett who spoke, his expression grave. “That everybody thinks of you as another Dodge brother?”

“Hell,” she said. “I know they do.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Wyatt said.

Her brothers exchanged looks that held no small amount of pity, and Jamie felt like she was missing out on something, and she hated that feeling.

She had felt it occasionally when she was younger, and the men would share a joke that went over her head. She had always done her best to act like she hadn’t even noticed, even though she did.

“Jamie, I don’t think anyone ever saw you that way in town,” Grant said gently. “People felt sad because you lived with all of us. Because there was no woman around to...”

Jamie was only vaguely conscious of making the decision to stand, shoving her chair backward with her boot heel. “Don’t you fucking tell me that people felt sorry for me.”