Ruby nodded. That sounded very similar to what Stepfather Un had undergone back when he and her mom had first gotten married. In fact, she was starting to feel stupid for not seeing it before. She’d been so caught up in the dog training and getting the better of Spencer that she hadn’t realized Caleb’s behavior was that of a man unable to go anywhere instead of one unwilling to.

No wonder he flirted so outrageously with her whenever they were together. She was probably the only woman he’d seen in months.

“Poor Caleb,” she murmured. “It must be driving him up the walls to be stuck in one place. How much longer does he have?”

“A week.”

“Oh, that’s good!” She took note of the hard line of Spencer’s mouth and quelled her enthusiasm. “Isn’t that good?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” He ran a ragged hand through his hair. “I want him to have his freedom back, obviously, but at what cost? He’s still the same man he was when he got arrested. He always has been. Fun and charming and stuck.”

That word struck like a blow to Ruby’s heart.

“It’s eating my parents up inside, thinking he doesn’t want to see them, but what can I do? He made me promise not to tell them.” This was uttered with a note of bitterness, but Spencer followed it up with a sigh and a gesture at the boys in the opposite room. “It’s hard to believe, but we used to be a lot like that, once upon a time. We used to be friends.”

“You’re still friends.”

He shook his head. “No. Not really. Not anymore.”

She didn’t believe him. There was no denying that a rivalry existed between them, and the divided house was a strange way to go about living with a person you’d known all your life, but it made a certain kind of sense. Caleb probably didn’t have much else going on right now. One dog-training client wasn’t much to keep a person busy, and without any other outlet, he had to be mind-numbingly bored. This thing with his brother—this game of good-natured one-upmanship—was all he had to keep him sane.

As someone who didn’t have much else going on in her life, she knew. Trying to get the better of Spencer for the past month had done more to start her engines than anything else had for the past ten years. She wasn’t sure she’d managed to triumph over him yet or that she ever would, but that didn’t seem to matter.

Spencer Wilson was a man worth pursuing, a man whose respect was worth earning. Both she and Caleb knew it, even if Spencer didn’t.

“You’re too hard on yourself,” she said. “He looks up to you.”