With his hand on her lower back, Cody ushered her out to his work truck, and opened the passenger door for her. “I made sure Tex went with Mia and Jesse this morning, or else he would have pouted when he couldn’t go with us.”

“I wondered where he was.” Stevie would even miss the dog lying on the sofa between her and Cody. “Are you and Jesse going after your truck today?”

“Soon as I get back,” Cody said and nodded. “I’m sure the insurance adjustor will tell me that it’s totaled. When they’ve made their decision, I’ll go shopping for another one. If you want to go along, that could be our third date.”

“What makes you think there’ll be a third date?” Stevie asked.

“Because the third one is the charm,” he answered as he drove around the side of the ranch house and down the lane to the road. “It’s like this. You’ve been in two serious relationships, so this will be the third one. And now you don’t have to measure me by me, because you know that I’m not perfect.”

“Aha.” She finally smiled. “A cowboy who admits he’s less than perfect is rare.”

“Then I’m a rare breed,” he said with a grin. “But I do have faults. I don’t do well if I have a nightmare. I like to argue and flirt, and…”

“You love your family,” she finished for him.

“That’s a pro, not a con,” he told her.

“Not necessarily. What if after the third date, your family doesn’t like me, or doesn’t think I’m good enough for you? What if you had to choose between them and a woman that you really like?” she asked.

“I’m not crossing that bridge until I come to it.” He made a left-hand turn. “Look at all the trees that have been pushed to the side. This area will take years to recover from this storm.”

Stevie just nodded, but she was thinking of all the years it had taken her to get from the crush she had had on Cody when she was a teenager to the way she was feeling that morning. Even though they had just left the ranch behind, she already missed it and the folks living there. In a little while Cody would walk her to the door of her house, and then he’d go on about his business, and she already missed him—even more than the ranch.

Going home to her own things and her own bed would be wonderful. But she began to mentally list all the reasons why she wished she could stay at the ranch a few more days.