And he didn’t like it one little bit. Not from some mouthy blonde outsider who’d looked at him like he was a piece of chewing gum on her designer Uggs.

Okay, maybe he’d asked for the cowpoke crack. He had pretty much accused her of husband hunting and had all but pulled out his dick and pissed around his house to mark his territory, but that look in her eyes just before she’d asked him what he was doing tomorrow night had scared the bejesus out of him. Her incredible eyes had lightened and gone all teasing and, on the heels of calling him Joshua, calling him Josh, he’d panicked.

Gone on the attack.

His mother had called him Joshua. And Bethany, his high school sweetheart, had been the last woman—girl, really—to call him Josh. And they’d both died, along with his father, in a horrific interstate pileup in terrible conditions more than seventeen years ago. December, seventeen years ago.

Yeah. Merry fucking Christmas.

His cell vibrated in his back pocket, and he grabbed it, grateful for the distraction. It was another text from his uncle.

Suzanne settling in okay?

Grady gave a soft snort. She had looked very at home standing in front of the huge picture window of the cottage, the flat, brittle landscape behind framing her curves. He, on the other hand, was seriously fucking disturbed.

He tapped yes and sent it.

Burl’s reply was instantaneous. What’s she like?

Grady grimaced. Unprepared. Annoying. Disturbing. And his kind of hot. But Grady settled on something more neutral to send his uncle.

Chatty.

A crying tears of laughter emoji appeared on the screen. Burl may have been sixty-five, but he’d always been a gadget man. New tech had never fazed him. Grady would bet his last nickel his uncle was probably at Annie’s at this time of day, enjoying his retirement from the ranch, eating pie and laughing his ass off, huddled over his screen.

Do you good to use your words. You’re going to turn mute out there by yourself.

Grady rolled his eyes at his uncle’s exaggeration. He shot off a quick reply. People talk too damn much.

Three little dots appeared on the screen as his uncle composed his reply. They wavered for long seconds as if Burl was writing a tome, but when the words appeared long moments later, there were only two. Be nice.

Grady didn’t want to be nice. He wanted to get through this month like he did every December—as quickly as possible. Not entertaining some artist chick from New York City who used the words wet dream in casual sentences with people she’d only just met and had the most freakishly unsettling eyes.

I’ll be civil.

Thanks to his military training, Grady had never promised things he couldn’t deliver, and he’d already been not very nice. He’d accused her of something he had no basis for and besmirched Burl’s character in the process. His uncle was a good, decent, honorable guy who’d brought Grady to the ranch to live after his parents’ tragic deaths and given him a way to channel his grief and anger that was productive instead of destructive.