After the strange intensity that had come with his childhood—the way his parents fought with each other, the drama that always seemed to surround them—he had wanted something different.

Something quiet.

Yeah, well, you’re choosing to leave it, too.

The truth of the matter was, the idea he had now wasn’t enough to sustain him. Even with as much money as he made. He would need something else. Something more.

Even as he thought it, he resisted it.

He was doing the horse rehabilitation. He cared about that. It was something.

It could be enough.

“I’m not sure you need the rodeo to tell you who you are,” he said.

She looked over at him. “It’s not so much about the rodeo telling me who I am. It’s wanting to figure out how that might be different if I’m not surrounded by...all the same things.”

“Well, apparently, you’re more than able to install a motor and a gate,” he pointed out.

“Yes,” she said, smiling slightly. “As journeys of self-discovery go, that’s a little bit of an anticlimactic one, but I suppose I’ll take it.”

She smiled at him, and he held her gaze for about thirty whole seconds before she quickly ducked her head down, a little bit of color mounting in her cheeks.

He turned his focus to his sandwich. And he was going to forget that happened. Not that they locked eyes like that, but that it had made her blush.

It was not the kind of thing he needed to think on.

Jamie Dodge had already given him a few too many things to think on today.

He was not going to add the way looking at him had affected her to the list.

* * *

JAMIE WAS OVERLY HOT, flustered and cranky by the time she was in her truck and headed back to Get Out of Dodge.

The trail ride with Gabe had been... Well, it had been nice. She had enjoyed spending time with him, and she enjoyed watching the way that he worked with horses. He was more relaxed out here in the mountains than he’d been that first day. And she could see his ease with them.

But then he’d lectured her about what she needed to do and didn’t need to do to get to know herself. And then there had been that moment when he’d looked at her.

There had been something in those blue eyes she couldn’t read.

But that hadn’t even been her first thought, trying to decode that. Oh, no. Her first thought had been...wow, his eyes are so damn blue.

And that just felt...not like her. But no matter how unlike her it was, she couldn’t seem to shake the thought, or the response.

Her little escape had turned into something sharp and edgy and she just wanted...something comfortable.

The horses weren’t it. Not now. Not thanks to Gabe.

She needed her family. The familiar.

She might be annoyed with them, but they were her constant.