“They did, honey,” Kaylee said softly. “Not to be mean, but because you lost your mother...”

“I don’t even remember her.” Jamie cut her off. “They should’ve felt sorrier for them.” She gestured toward her brothers. “I’m just fine. I had everything in life that I ever needed. And I... Now you’re telling me that everyone sees me as a charity case?”

“Not a charity case,” Wyatt said, his tone maddeningly placating.

“When did I ever act like I needed someone to feel sorry for me?”

She hated this conversation; it was awful. It made her feel stupid, and small, and she couldn’t even bear it. How dare anyone feel sorry for her. She had Quinn Dodge, the best father anyone could ever ask for. He was gruff, and he was a little rough around the edges, sure.

He had taught her how to be tough. He had taught her how to work with horses, how to work with the land. He loved the land and he’d taught her to love it, too.

And he’d had a couple of girlfriends when Jamie was younger, before he married his current wife, but Jamie had never had any use for them.

She hadn’t needed them.

She had her father, and she had her brothers. As annoying as her brothers were, they were everything she needed.

And what Jamie hated most of all was that hearing people thought...those things about her...forced her to imagine a small, lonely little girl, sitting by herself, aching for the soft, loving arms of a mother. And that wasn’t Jamie. She never wasted a moment crying over what she lost. Crying over what she didn’t deserve to feel the loss of.

“Well, you all should know me better than that,” she said, her tone fierce. “He hired me because I am the best horsewoman around. I can sure as hell put my boot in his crotch if the occasion calls for it. I don’t need you to act like a posturing ape about it, Wyatt Dodge. I don’t need anyone to sit around talking about me, worrying about me. I know what I’m about. Just because you don’t...that’s not my problem.”

She turned on her heel and walked away, shaking with barely repressed energy.

How dare they?

All of them.

Her brothers and the whole town.

She felt angry and tangled up.

It was dark now, the sky a handful of diamond dust surrounded by black velvet. The moon was yellow and swollen, appropriate, since Jamie felt round with indignation. Absolutely full of it.

She wasn’t even fully conscious of where she was going or what she was doing, but as soon as she opened up the barn, and the familiar smell of damp shavings, dust and hay hit her nose, she felt home in a way that she hadn’t sitting around that table with her family.

She loved her family.

But all of that just underlined the fact that what she was doing was the right thing. That not telling them she was doing it was the right thing, too.