He was a rock. And he was hardheaded. But he was a smart man, and she had been certain that he would see sense.

She shifted where she sat, all her jewelry laid out in front of her on a blanket outside her camper, and her top scraped against her nipples.

Arousal coursed through her body and she let out a frustrated growl.

He had turned her into some weird sex fiend.

She had always considered herself sensual. Somebody who liked touch. Somebody who was completely relaxed about it, in fact. And until he had gotten in her face about orgasms she had thought that she was neatly organized on that score.

That she knew where to have them and when, and that sex itself served the kind of spiritual function of creating human connection.

But Ryder had taken it and he had melded those things, and when he had done that he had stolen her control. Her neatly ordered way of looking at things.

She felt absolutely vile about it. And she wasn’t someone who normally kept things to herself. But her confidantes were all deeply tied to Ryder, or they were Ryder himself.

If there was anything more annoying, she couldn’t think of it.

She heard the sound of footsteps and looked up. But it wasn’t Logan or Ryder, and for some reason she had expected it to be either of them. No, it was a red-faced and angry-looking Rose, picking through tall grass.

“What’s wrong?” Sammy called.

“Did a calf wander this way?” Rose asked. Her cowboy hat was askew, her dark hair falling out of its braid. Her white tank top was dirty, and so were her jeans.

“No,” Sammy said. She scrambled to her feet, setting her jewelry fixings down. “But I can help you look.”

“You look pretty,” Rose said, not as a compliment but in kind of a regretful tone.

Rose was dressed for practicality and sweat. Sammy wasn’t. But she always dressed like this and all of her clothes were machine washable anyway, so it didn’t matter.

“Oh, I wear skirts every day. I’m not particularly dressed up.”

“Well, fine,” Rose said skeptically. “But at your peril.”

“What happened?”

“A calf must’ve gotten through the hole in the fence, and I’m just really hoping that that’s what happened, and a predator didn’t take him. But I went charging down the hill back there, and I fell on my face, so now I’m just mad.”

“Where’s Logan?”

Rose waved a hand. “Oh, I told him to go look in the other direction.”

“You know, it’s not a crime to take help,” Sammy said, feeling every inch the hypocrite as she spoke those words.

It was so easy for her to fall into a role of giving advice, usually advice contrary to what Iris would give when it came to Rose and Pansy.

She had installed herself in a kind of counterbalance position. One that was a little bit more loose and free than their older sister. And every so often she gave advice to Iris, as well, but really, they all did try to help each other.