She glanced over at him and again met his gaze thinking, yes she had. But she figured he didn’t want to hear her thoughts out loud and certain things she needed to keep to herself.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was thinking about Friday,” she decided to say.

“Friday?”

“Yes. Pamela invited me to dinner.”

“She did?”

Bella heard the surprise in his voice. “Yes. She said it would be the perfect opportunity to meet everyone. It seems all of my neighbors are Westmorelands. You’re just the one living the closest to me.”

“And what makes you so preoccupied about Friday?”

“Meeting so many of your family members.”

He chuckled. “You’ll survive.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Then she said, “Tell me about them.” He had already told her some but she wanted to hear more. And the ladies who came to visit had also shared some of their family history with her. But she wanted to hear his version just to hear the husky sound of his voice, to feel how it would stir across her skin and tantalize several parts of her body.

“You already met the ones who think they run things, namely the women.”

She laughed. “They don’t?”

“We let them think that way because we’re slowly getting outnumbered. Although Gemma is in Australia she still has a lot to say and whenever we take a vote about anything, of course she sides with the women.”

She grinned. “You all actually take votes on stuff?”

“Yes, we believe in democracy. The last time we voted we had to decide where Christmas dinner would be held. Usually we hold everything at Dillon’s because he has the main family house, but his kitchen was being renovated so we voted to go to Ramsey’s.”

“All of you have homes?”

“Yes. When we each turned twenty-five we in herited one hundred acres. It was fun naming my own spread.”

“Yours is Jason’s Place, right?”

He smiled over at her. “That’s right.”

While he’d been talking her body had responded to the sound of his voice as if it was on a mission to capture each and every nuance. She inhaled deeply and they began chatting again but this time about her family. He’d been honest about his family so she decided to be honest about hers.

“My parents and I aren’t all that close and I can’t remember a time that we were. They didn’t support my move out here,” she said and wondered why she’d wanted to share that little detail.

“Is it true that Kenneth is upset you didn’t sell the land to Myers Smith?” he asked.

She nodded slowly. “Yes, he told me himself that he thinks I made a mistake in deciding to move here and is looking forward to the day I fail so he can say, ‘I told you so.’”