LITMIR.BIZ

      Carter stood in the center of the corral and turned in a slow circle, trying to keep an eye on all the riders as they practiced their emergency dismounts. Clouds plodded through the sky like a herd of lazy cattle, but even then, it was much nicer out than he was used to for the time of year. March in the Northern states still brought plenty of snowstorms and frozen ground, but here in Texas it was already sunny and green. He had to cover a smile when he heard Shannon insist that all the girls zip up their coats.

      Shannon repositioned her horse so the kids could get another look at how to perform the dismount. “The most important thing is to get your feet clear of the stirrups.” She had told them they would only be practicing the dismount from a stopped position today but if they did well, then they could try it at a walk in the coming weeks. “Hands on the withers.” She put her hands on the horse’s neck. “Kick out of the stirrups, then jump, using the horse as a vault—really push away from him.” She perfectly kicked her legs out and vaulted away from her horse, landing to the left. Done demonstrating, she handed the reins to Easton. “Really launch yourself away from your horse. Remember, if you’re doing an emergency dismount it’s a bad situation to begin with, so you’re trying to get off and away.”

      Shannon stopped to give a struggling rider some extra attention, and within a few minutes she had the girl laughing and trying again. She caught Carter watching her and smiled as she crossed to where he stood. Her short blond curls bobbed with each step.

      “Are you sure you’re not cold?” Shannon jutted her chin toward him. As she stepped close he caught a whiff of the same vanilla-and-caramel smell that had lingered around her last night. So not just the cupcakes. Something she wore.

      He swallowed hard.

      Carter knew she was talking about his coat. When he hadn’t found an extra in the office, he had shed his, giving it to Easton. At first the boy had protested, but when Carter had insisted, he’d relented easily enough.

      “I’ll be just fine.” He realized that people who were used to the Texas weather might think it was cold out, but his Northern blood was feeling warm even in the jeans and button-down he had on. He should have just worn a T-shirt. He had been glad to shirk his unnecessary coat. Even gladder when the teenage boy had fawned over the article of clothing like it was the nicest thing he had ever worn. Carter would probably just tell Easton to keep it.

      “I had wanted to have an indoor arena built last summer.” She hooked her thumbs into her pockets and scraped the toe of her boot into the dirt. “That way we could ride in any type of weather and it would shield the horses and riders from the worst of the sun in the summer. It would have opened up the ranch to host more types of events, too.”

      “They’re useful, but they can be expensive.” He had helped build one when he had worked at Dove’s Peak Ranch in Wyoming. But there they were sometimes hit with feet of snow, so the arena had been a much-needed addition to keep the horses exercised during the long winters.

      “It had been on the list, but with the storm—” She met his gaze. “Did you know this place was almost leveled by a tornado a year ago?”

      Carter took his time looking out over the expanse of Red Dog Ranch—large buildings, brand-new cabins and barns, fields of healthy grasses and a huge herd of cattle. “You guys have done an amazing job rebuilding.” He noticed Shannon’s frown. Carter cleared his throat. “But I’m guessing the indoor arena got scrapped from the build list after the storm?” And for some reason that really mattered to her. He wondered why. Maybe she just really loved horses.

      “For a while it was still on, but everything else took priority, you know?” Her mouth twisted to the side. “So it just kept getting moved down the list until there weren’t funds left. I tried to argue for it but I was overruled.” She sighed. “I guess it doesn’t matter.”

      His mind was stuck on overruled.

      “By your brothers?” Rhett had explained to Carter how their father had passed unexpectedly last spring, leaving Rhett with the ranch. Now, from what Carter could tell so far, Rhett and Wade oversaw everything. But if Shannon was a Jarrett, then her opinion should matter, too.

      She gave a quick laugh. “Yeah, all three of them. Even Boone, who doesn’t even live here, outvoted me.” She held up a hand. “But they were right. It was the least important item on the list. It would have been nice on a day like today, though. The girls are freezing.” She rubbed her arms as if she might have been cold, too, despite the fitted jacket she had on. “And it would definitely come in handy in the summer.”

      Carter folded his arms over his chest. He hadn’t known there were three Jarrett brothers. All the more reason to give Shannon a wide berth. Carter didn’t want to get caught in the crosshairs with any of the Jarretts.

      Still, he fought the desire to press her about why the arena had been so important to her, but he swallowed that question. Too personal. Stick to the weather. “It’s what—upper fifties out here?”

      Shannon kept her eyes on the girl she had just been helping. “It’s a little colder than normal. Usually we start hitting the seventies by now.” A couple of the kids even wore winter hats.

      Carter chuckled. “Where I’m from this is called summer weather. We don’t wear coats unless it’s well below freezing.”

      Shannon turned to face him. Even in the diminished sunlight, her brown eyes held unreadable depths of both light and dark hues. “And where is that, where you’re from? You haven’t said.”

      He had walked right into that, hadn’t he? Personal information he didn’t want to give.

      Carter shrugged. “North.”

      She didn’t need to know about his sad upbringing in Montana or the many states he’d meandered through in the last thirteen years, either.

      “That encompasses a lot of places.” She arched an eyebrow. “But you know that, don’t you, Doctor?”

       Doctor.

      The title still felt odd, like a child slipping into his dad’s too-big shoes.

       If you were going to spend all that time and waste so much money, I don’t know why you couldn’t have become a real doctor. That would have been something. But you threw that all away on animals. Too bad. It would have been nice to tell people my son was really a doctor.

      Carter clenched his jaw as he shoved his father’s words away. His dad’s opinion had stopped mattering the day he had walked out on Carter and his mom to run off with his much younger mistress. Had mattered even less when he had turned Carter away when he had showed up at his front door as a homeless teenager.

       I don’t want you near your half siblings. You’ll be a bad influence on them. I haven’t even told them they have a big brother. They have bright futures and I don’t need you ruining their lives.

      Then his father had taken his new family and moved to California. Far enough to make sure Carter would never be a part of his stepbrothers’ lives.

      There was a reason he didn’t dwell on the past.

      He mentally shook his father’s words away like a horse shaking off bothersome flies so he could focus on Shannon, who was smiling warmly, waiting for him to answer her.

      “I’ve been a lot of places.” There. Nonspecific and revealed nothing.

      “How cryptic of you.” Shannon popped her hand on her hip. “Work with me here, cowboy. At least name your favorite one.” She blew a strand of hair away from her face. “Listen, I just want to hear about someplace other than here. I’ve been nowhere. Never left Texas. Pathetic, right?”

      “It’s an awfully big state,” he offered.

      “But I’ve always wanted to see other places. Be adventurous.”

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