Ivy tugged up her split skirt over her drawers. Her wet skin made the process of dressing painfully slow. And her frozen fingers and limbs were sluggish to obey the commands her mind was giving them.

The thrill of seeing Jericho in the river and knowing he’d followed her back from Elkhorn Ranch had vanished the second he called her a young girl and told her she was childish. She’d wanted to throw a bucket of icy water in his face and wake him up to the fact that she wasn’t a girl anymore and hadn’t been even when he’d left Colorado.

Maybe he was right about her threat to stand up in her unmentionables—it had been a tad wanton. But Jericho was about as dense as a brick. He’d always talked down to her like she was stupid, had always seen her as more of nuisance than anything else. Even those last couple of years before he left, he’d viewed her as a little girl.

Her face flushed just thinking about what she’d almost done in standing up in the river so brazenly, and her fingers fumbled at the skirt button at her hip. Of course, leave it to Jericho to be too noble to look at her. She shoulda known he wouldn’t.

Even now, he remained unmoving in the stream, facing the opposite way, waiting and giving her plenty of time to cover herself. Part of her respected him for treating her so carefully. But another part of her wished he’d finally recognize how grown-up she was.

She shook her head. It didn’t matter. She swiped up her blouse, stuffing in first one arm and then the other, the thin material sticking to her skin.

“Why’re you here, Jericho?” The question had burned within her during the ride to the ranch.

“After almost killing yourself in that race, what do you expect?”

She wasn’t asking about why he was standing there right now. She wanted to know why he’d come back to Colorado—if he was here to stay or just passing through. But asking him those kinds of questions would make it seem like she cared too much and had been thinking about him often. And she didn’t anymore—care or think about him. She’d put her infatuation with Jericho Bliss far from her mind a long time ago. “I didn’t almost kill myself.”

He snuck a glance at her over his shoulder. At seeing her fully clothed, the tension seemed to ease from his stiff spine, and he began to wade out of the water toward her.

“I had a hiccup near the end but caught myself just fine.”

“That wasn’t a hiccup. That was more like a gut-splitting cough.”

“Aw, c’mon. You’ve seen me ride enough to know I rarely meet my shadow on the ground.”