LITMIR.BIZ

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in fifteen years.

      For as long as Bennett could remember, he’d liked to fix things. That need had only grown stronger after the death of his mother.

      And stronger still later on.

      He could have been a doctor, but he truly hadn’t been able to face the idea of working on people and losing them. He lost enough people in his life. But having such a comprehensive veterinary practice in Logan County kept himself and Kaylee fully occupied. Being able to go into business with his best friend was a privilege.

      The two of them had talked about doing that from the time they were kids. Usually when you made a pact with dirt and spit and a handshake underneath an oak tree when you were thirteen years old you didn’t keep it.

      But he and Kaylee Capshaw had.

      She was the truest and most constant person in his world. His friend, his partner. Always. From the moment he’d met her when they’d been in seventh grade. She was new to school, and looked lost, but defiant right along with it. And he couldn’t help but be intrigued by the redhead with a thousand freckles who didn’t talk to anyone for the first half of the day.

      Something in her reminded him of his own losses. The way it felt to feel like you were walking through a room of people all alone.

      So at lunch he’d sat down and introduced himself.

      She hadn’t been friendly at all. Not until he’d asked if she liked horses, and if she’d like to come over to his ranch sometime and see them.

      That had made her smile. And something about her smile had felt so damned good. He’d wanted to keep on making her smile.

      She hadn’t been smiling when she’d left the ranch just now.

      He pushed away the guilt at not having her come over as he turned into the driveway that led up to his brother’s ranch. Well, the family ranch, really. Bennett was part owner in the place, even if he wasn’t working on it full-time. He had thrown a good lot of his money into it, but then, that was another thing about him staying in veterinary medicine. He made enough money to help Wyatt with this crazy scheme. Bennett was mostly a financial backer when it came right down to it.

      Although, Wyatt had made a decent amount of money on the rodeo circuit. Bennett had no idea how much, because Wyatt preferred to be a mystery.

      He shook his head and parked his truck, getting out and slamming the door.

      He walked up the familiar steps, steps he had walked on thousands of times, and up to the door. He just opened it up and walked in, because he wasn’t going to knock on the door of his childhood home. He might not live there anymore, but it still felt like home in many ways.

      “Hey,” he called out.

      “Drinking in the kitchen,” shouted Wyatt.

      Bennett moved through the entryway and into the kitchen, where his brother Wyatt, his other brother Grant, and their sister, Jamie, were all sitting around the high counter on barstools, clutching various alcohols of choice.

      “That’s nice,” Bennett said, “are you all having a drink for me?”

      “Wash your hands,” Jamie said, wrinkling her nose, her brown hair pulled back in a loose braid that had likely started the day tight, but had ended askew, a testament to the activities of the day. Knowing his sister those activities had been riding horses like hellhounds were biting at her heels.

      Jamie didn’t know caution, not on the back of a horse.

      “All right,” he said, looking down and seeing that while he had been wearing gloves for a good portion of the procedure he had not escaped unscathed.

      He started to scrub up in the sink, very aware of the fact that all of his siblings were watching him. “Did any of you have a comment to make?” He gestured broadly.

      “Olivia is pregnant.” Jamie leaned forward, resting her chin on the lip of her beer bottle. “How do you feel about that?”

      “I didn’t know Jamie was going to be here,” he said to Wyatt.

      “Where else would she be? Anyway, you didn’t ask.”

      “I just came over for a drink,” he said pointedly, “not a talk. If I had wanted to talk, I would have had Kaylee come over.”

      “You should have had Kaylee come over here,” Jamie said.

      Jamie wasn’t a whole lot more of a girl’s girl than Kaylee was, and the two of them got along pretty well now that Jamie wasn’t a kid. Though, at twenty-three she still seemed a lot like a kid to Bennett.

      “She was tired. She had to leave a date to come help me deliver a calf. It was breech.”

      “Did you save it?” Grant asked.

      “Yeah,” he responded. “Hopefully it makes it through the night. But at this point I don’t see why it wouldn’t. Everything was good when we left.”

      “She left a date to come and help you deliver a calf,” Wyatt said, his eyebrows raised.

      “It was a life-and-death situation,” Bennett said. “It’s more important than dinner.”

      “Sure,” Wyatt said, “but couldn’t you have called someone else?”

      “No,” Bennett said. “She’s the only person I can count on in a situation like that. And anyway, I didn’t know she was on a date.” Though, he probably still would have called her. Kaylee was always there when he needed her.

      It wasn’t like he’d needed help choosing a tie. He was trying to save a life.

      “Careful,” Wyatt said, “or she likely won’t be at some point. Not if you keep taking advantage of her.”

      “I don’t take advantage of her. First of all, we run our business together. So, she benefits from the extra time I put in and in the middle of the night. Second of all, she’s my friend. And I would do the same for her, and she knows it.”

      “Still,” Jamie said, her tone sly, “you have a history of losing women now, Bennett.”

      For one blinding second Bennett wished that he were still fifteen. Because if he were, he would have yanked on Jamie’s braid until she apologized for that.

      “I do not have a history of that,” he said. “One girlfriend broke up with me.”

      “And now she’s having Luke’s baby,” Grant pointed out. “Which I feel like is why you’re here, even though you don’t want to talk about it.”

      “I don’t want to talk about it,” Bennett returned.

      “That’s fine,” Wyatt said. “We do have more important things to discuss than your lack of a love life.”

      Of course, Bennett hadn’t had a love life when he was with Olivia, not that his family knew that. Olivia had said she wanted to wait until they were engaged to have sex, and he had honored that. It just wasn’t the kind of thing that you discussed with your older brothers. Well, it wasn’t the kind of thing you discussed with anyone, first of all, because he wouldn’t go talking about Olivia’s business like that. But second of all, because he had no desire to get harassed. Not that Grant was in any position to harass anyone on that subject.

      Since the death of Grant’s wife eight years ago, Grant’s love life had been in the deep freeze. Grant hadn’t even gotten close to having another woman in his bed, let alone in his life. At least, that was the impression that Grant gave to his family.

      They tried to get him to go out when they could, hoping to do something to heal that hollowed-out look in his eyes. But nothing ever did.

      Though, that likely explained why his siblings enjoyed giving Bennett such a hard time about the situation with Olivia. It wasn’t fatal. Not even close. It was just one of those things.

      “Much more interesting,”

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