“Super sneaky,” Iris said, rolling her eyes.

“Well,” Rose said. “Go take it.”

“You seem very keen to get the answer,” Iris said.

“Well, aren’t you?”

But Sammy knew why Rose was so keen. It was because she knew who the father was. Or at least suspected.

“I’ll go,” Sammy said.

Rose followed for a moment, and Sammy turned to her. “Don’t say anything. Not yet.”

Rose shook her head. “I won’t. Would it be... I mean... Is it his?”

“It would be,” she said.

“I didn’t think you were going to do the baby thing.”

“I wasn’t,” Sammy said. “And I need to know before I say anything to him. I need to know for sure.”

“We’re here for you,” Rose whispered, squeezing her arm.

She had never known her friend to be quite so mature, and she really appreciated it. Because she was going to need all the support she could get.

And by the time she opened up the pregnancy test and took it, and got the results, she really knew she was going to need all the support she could get.

Because she was going to have a baby. Ryder’s baby. And everything should have seemed all right, but instead she felt like the world had been turned upside down, and she didn’t have any idea what she was going to do.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

HE WAS IN a good place today. Both physically and mentally. Spiritually, Sammy would probably say. Not that he gave much thought to that kind of thing. But she made him consider it, because there was something to the connection the two of them had, and it was deeper than anything he could see. So maybe she was on to something after all.

It was his favorite kind of day. Out in the middle of the field, having just moved the cows from one pasture to another. The kind of day that reminded him why being a rancher might have chosen him, and it might not have been where he imagined his life going, but he was happy with it.

Yeah, maybe he would have gone to school. And he would’ve played football longer. His coach had been upset about his quitting. About his not going on to college to play. But by now he would be done with football anyway. He had worked this land since he was eighteen years old. Had cultivated this herd. The animals changing as the years rolled on, the landscape staying much the same, but there were slow changes that he could see. Changes that he had forged with his own hands, and changes that had been the result of nature pushing right back at him.

He loved those losses as much as he loved the victories.

Because in the end they were what reminded him that he was alive.

He heard the sound of a truck engine and turned around, shocked to see Sammy driving across the field toward him in his sister’s truck.

That was unusual. To say the least.