“We should do something less complicated,” she said, hushed. “I’ve been fighting with you a lot more than I want to. Which means... Fighting with you at all. I don’t like it. I don’t want to be in a fight.”

“Tough to avoid when you started a fight, baby,” he said.

“It became something it shouldn’t have. I should not have asked for your help with this. I shouldn’t have accepted it. It is weird, you’re right. I didn’t need to involve you in my sex life, and we crossed some lines.” She used her best calm, rational voice. “But we won’t cross them anymore. You’re the most important person in the world to me, Ryder,” she said softly. “I couldn’t stand it if something affected that.”

He didn’t say anything; he only stared at her with dark, fathomless eyes.

“I have to go. I have a custom order and I need to get to work on it. I imagine you have some work to do.”

He nodded once. “That I do.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”

She slipped past him and into the camper, and it was only after she settled in with all of her fittings and gemstones in front of her that she realized he hadn’t agreed to not let it affect them. And she feared that it already had.

CHAPTER EIGHT

RYDER WAS ALL bound up in the gut the next day, and on into the evening. He didn’t know why he couldn’t let the thing with Sammy go. She seemed to be ready to do just that, and that meant that he needed to do it, as well. But he found the whole thing difficult.

You’re not her parent, though.

He was well aware of that. Nothing he felt for her was parental or brotherly or anything of the kind. It was something he’d never particularly liked. Something that he knew would be a violation of her trust in him. And so he’d done a really good job of keeping it pushed down all this time, but he was failing now more and more.

He gritted his teeth and returned to the task at hand—which was mucking stalls, an evening chore that he never minded.

It had been a long day moving the cows from one pasture to another, and in general dealing with cantankerous animals. It was nice to be back at the barn dealing only with the horses.

He pitched out the last of the foul shavings and took his wheelbarrow out of the stall, heading toward the back of the barn where he would find fresh bedding for the animals. And that was when he saw Sammy, lingering in the doorway, staring at him curiously.

In one of her typical Sammy outfits, she had on a long skirt that the backlight from the barn door lit up, letting him see the exact shape of her legs beneath the diaphanous fabric. Her blond hair was down around her shoulders, a pale cloud, and the golden glow cast around her hair could easily be confused for a halo if he didn’t know her quite so well.