Lance casts himself down on the bed because there’s nowhere else to sit, and a distressed yowl alerts him too late to the presence of a cat. He still can’t tell them apart, and even if he could, he wouldn’t be willing to refer to them even internally by Robbie’s ridiculous names. But as he quickly rolls away from the feline, whose hair is standing on end in fervent communication of its distress, he registers that there isn’t a white hair anywhere on its body. Which is how he realizes he’s officially meeting the cat that has been hiding from him since he arrived.

“Hello, One.”

She glares at him, then streaks from the bed and out of sight beneath the horrible couch.

He makes a note to ask Robbie how he wound up with three vicious cat triplets. It’s a question that he can ask without feeling like he’s overstepping, unlike all of the others on his mind.

Lance rolls onto his back, thinking through those questions yet again.

What happened with your brothers?

It seems like more than just ordinary life events are separating the Chases. It’s always been hard to imagine them being apart, but Lance knew that Danny would go to school eventually. He’d imagined constant phone calls, though, maybe with video. He can’t be sure, but he gets the impression that all they really do is a bit of texting.

And Johnny—that Johnny has willingly been away from the ranch for so long is hard to reconcile with Lance’s memories of him. His devotion to Riverside always seemed to surpass even Robbie’s. Remembering him with his horses, Lance finds that his absence is especially hard to understand. Lance has never been a horseman, but even he was struck by the occasional, impromptu shows Johnny would put on for his brothers and Lance—riding one of his bays while the other followed like a shadow, or standing in the grass and sending them in loops and circles around him without halters or lines, like they were dancing together.

What happened with Megan?

Lance always thought Robbie and Megan would end up together. So had everyone else in Trace County and beyond who’d, over the years, dared to hope otherwise. The handsome, young, land-rich rancher and the knockout veterinarian each had long lists of admirers, but no matter how often they drifted apart, they always came back together. What finally stopped that cycle?

Lance knows what answer he’d like to hear: that all they ever were to one another was convenient. Not that either of them fell for someone else, and certainly not that Megan left Robbie and Robbie was still pining for her.

What do you want from me?

He remembers the almost tentative way Robbie touched him at first, and thinks with unexpected excitement that he might be the first man Robbie has ever been with. The idea of being any kind of first for Robbie is almost unbearable—enough to make Lance want to slide his hand past the waistband of his borrowed jeans and moan.