Who depended on him.

“No, I knew. You are who you are,” Gabe said. “And I can’t hate you for it. If I could have, I would’ve started a long time ago.”

And I’m too damned much like you for my own peace of mind.

But he didn’t say that last part. And he wasn’t. He did have control. Gabe hadn’t gotten married. That was the bottom line. While his dad had gotten married to his mom when he’d never seemed to want to keep any of his vows.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed that it’s been different over the past couple of months.”

“I’m just finding my feet, trying to do what you asked me to do.”

“I’m not going to be around forever,” Hank said. “So whatever you think I’m doing to you, whatever you think I’m playing at...it’s not that. It’s just that this place is going to be yours someday.”

“Not Jacob or Caleb’s? Not McKenna’s?”

“They’ll get a piece of it. But you’re the one whose heart is in it, Gabe. Don’t think I don’t know that.”

“No,” Gabe said. “My heart was in it about twenty years ago, but you made sure that I learned some hard lessons about that.”

“So you don’t want to? You want me to sell?”

Anger clutched at Gabe’s chest. “No, I don’t.”

Whatever he didn’t know, he knew that. This conversation was like physical therapy for his soul and he wasn’t sure he liked it. He’d shut down that part of him that loved this place. Now his dad was exposing it, digging it up again. Offering it to him like he wasn’t the one who’d killed his dream in the first place.

Maybe in Hank’s world this was an apology.

But in Gabe’s it wasn’t enough.

“I’ll keep the ranch going,” Gabe said. “And you stay the hell away from Jamie Dodge.”

In the end, he wasn’t sure if he’d said that last part to his father, or to himself.

CHAPTER EIGHT

JAMIE WAS ANTSY to work with Gem.

Gem.

It was about the perfect name, as far as Jamie was concerned. Since this horse definitely had value to her. An unexpected gift in the middle of everything she was striving for.

In the end, she decided to skip lunch and see how Gem was faring.

The horse seemed content in the paddock, well-fed and happy. And when Jamie got her out and started to put a bridle and saddle on her, she acted like it was routine.

She paid close attention to whether or not the horse was jumpy, or nervous, and she seemed to be neither.

She let her out into the arena, and walked her in a circle, letting her familiarize herself with the area. Then she led her around the barrels that were set up, letting her get familiar with the pattern. Jamie wasn’t going to try to all-out race her immediately, but she figured she could jog the horse’s memory.

Theoretically, this was what she used to do, so there was no reason that it would bother her now. It wasn’t at the hands of her former rider that she had experienced any kind of maltreatment.