Not that he would have reacted a whole lot more visibly even if it was.

The whole rest of the table had been fractured by noise the minute that she had made her announcement. But the Daniels family, and extended members, had never been accused of being quiet. No, in fact, they were loud and they were boisterous, and that was one of the things that had drawn Sammy to them in the first place.

Her world had been silence, walking on eggshells punctuated by explosions of violence.

And then next door had been this...wonderful, ridiculous collection of people—children—who had been living without parents. It reminded her of Neverland. Like they were the lost boys. And she had wanted so desperately to fly out of her bedroom window and join them.

The chaos had appealed to her. The anarchy of children running their own lives. But above all else, the tall, strong figure of Ryder had been something of a fantasy in her life.

He was the leader. And she had recognized that immediately. From the mantle of authority that settled over his broad shoulders.

Even at eighteen, she had found him mesmerizing.

Ryder commanded respect with nothing more than a firm nod of his head. Her father, for all his red-faced yelling and bruising fists, hadn’t been able to squeeze respect out of a rock, much less beat it into a rebellious teenage girl.

But Sammy had learned at an early age that there was no amount of perfect that would ever please David Marshall. And so she might as well settle for being as imperfect as she possibly could be.

She had moved out of the house and into an old camper on the property when she had been fourteen. It had helped her keep her distance. Her mother had liked it because she felt that without Sammy’s fractious presence in the house, her father might be calmer.

Sammy suspected that might have been true. But regardless of the truth of it, the arrangement had been better for her.

And it had allowed her to sneak over to the Daniels’s ranch with much greater ease.

It was when she had put her plan into place. Operation: Befriend Ryder Daniels.

The memory made her smile even now. Then she looked at Pansy, and something turned over in her chest.

Pansy had been a little girl when Sammy had first started spending time with the family. And now she was getting married. Starting a family of her own. Pansy was one of the few who had moved out right at eighteen.

The rodeo boys came and went with the season. There was no reason for them to not bunk up on the property when they traveled so much. Keeping a permanent residence didn’t make any sense.

Logan lived in the original ranch house on the property. Rose, Iris and Ryder lived in the main house. Sammy herself had moved her camper onto the ranch when she’d been about seventeen.

Sitting there looking at Pansy, Sammy still felt about seventeen, but somehow Pansy was a grown woman, getting married and...