Tammy hadn’t lit anything on fire when she found out about McKenna, so there was that. But he supposed that you could only be so angry about a mistake that was obviously twenty-seven years in the past.

It wasn’t as if Hank’s philandering was news at that point, anyway.

He truly did believe that ever since his mom had made her ultimatum, Hank had been as faithful as promised. Mostly because Tammy was a bloodhound, especially after years of being betrayed, and at this point, she would have not only found out, she would have made sure the entire town of Gold Valley knew about it, too. So there was no way anything had happened that Gabe and his brothers didn’t know about.

Still, with all of that, McKenna, her appearance and her existence, shouldn’t be a negative to Gabe in any way, and mostly it wasn’t.

But she did remind him. Of what his father was, what he’d always been.

“Yeah, she seems pretty scrappy to me,” Gabe said, taking a swig of his beer.

“What is your plan with the ranch?” Caleb asked, the sudden subject change throwing Gabe for a loop.

“To take on the rodeo horses. Get them rehomed. There’s no reason not to. And anyway, it’s something that... Dad used to talk about it. All the horses that ended up without a place. I figured... It’s as good a time as any to get that up and running. But I want someone else to manage it. I’ve still got some years left in me on the circuit.”

“And you still like it?”

That was an interesting question.

He was good at it.

That was kind of the bottom line. He had known what he didn’t want. He hadn’t wanted to do what Hank had asked him to do. He hadn’t wanted to knuckle down and study more and go to school. Hadn’t wanted to make better of himself in the way that his father thought he should.

He wanted to be a rancher. A cowboy.

And when his dad had made it very clear he wasn’t going to support that, Gabe had refused to let his dad manipulate him in that way. It had come together perfectly in many ways. He’d gotten a petty kind of revenge on his dad and he’d made a real living out there riding saddle bronc. Had bought himself some independence.

He was damn good at it, too. A champion.

He’d done better than most men had, and even without his father paying him to run the ranch stuff these days, he was well able to afford a venture like that.

Plus, the house that he lived in away from his father’s property. His own, much smaller parcel of land.

He wasn’t sure what he wanted mattered so much as what worked. And right now the rodeo worked. So he might as well chase that.

“I’m going to want the money later,” he said, lifting a shoulder. “And don’t lecture me about safety, or my body breaking down, or any of that shit. You jump out of helicopters into infernos.”