LITMIR.BIZ

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a tired man. Down to his bones. He hadn’t felt a moment of wonder in longer than he could recall. There was nothing new here. Nothing new in him.

      But right then it felt like the world stopped turning, just for a second, and in that space, between his last breath and his next heartbeat, he forgot everything but the beauty around him.

      And it seemed new.

      But then the world moved again, and that feeling was gone.

      “It’s nice,” he said, clearing his throat and charging on through to the inside of the barn.

      He turned to make sure that McKenna was with him, and she was, almost hunched forward, looking around them with a strange mix of trepidation and wonder.

      “Have you not been in a barn before?”

      “No,” she said.

      “I thought you’d done all the manual labor there was to do. There’s a lot of it to be done in barns, McKenna, let me tell you.”

      “Clearly I’ve done all the city-type varieties of manual labor.”

      “Have you spent most of your time living in the city?” He shouldn’t ask. He shouldn’t care.

      “Not exclusively,” she said. “I’ve lived in my fair share of medium-size towns. It’s just that nobody was inviting me to go hang out on the ranch. I didn’t get asked to a lot of hoedowns.” She shrugged. “Or much of anything.”

      He knew that a lot of people would feel sorry for her. He didn’t. She was standing in front of him healthy and on two legs. Life was tough, but it was a hell of a lot tougher when you were dead.

      “You’ll probably end up at a few. Depending on how long you stay. My sister-in-law has grand plans for some big-ass Christmas party over at her winery. So.”

      Her expression went soft, and then shuttered again. “I doubt I’ll be here through Christmas.”

      “Don’t make me waste time training you. I don’t mind if you skip out before Christmas, but you better do the work you say you’re going to do. Understand?”

      “You’re grumpy,” she said.

      “Yeah,” he agreed. “I am.”

      “Most people don’t like being called grumpy,” she said.

      “Well, I told you I wasn’t going to deal with your tough-girl act, so I suppose as long as we’re being honest, I have to take that one on the chin.”

      “So this is what you do,” she said, following him out of the barn as he led them both down the path that would take them a long way to the mess hall, and would give her a good sense of the size of the property. “I mean, you’re a professional... Cowboy.”

      “That’s about the size of it.”

      “Did you always know you wanted to be a cowboy?”

      “No,” he said.

      There had been a time when all he had wanted was to get the hell away from the ranch. From his dad. From everything familiar. When he had wanted to escape and start over. Get out of Gold Valley. He hadn’t cared what he did or where he went. The only thing driving him had been anger.

      And then he met Lindsay. And all he’d wanted was to make her happy.

      All he’d wanted was to be a good husband.

      A good man.

      Because she knew he could be, and if Lindsay believed it, he wanted to make it real.

      “When did you decide you wanted to be a cowboy?”

      “When did you decide to become an interrogator for the police?”

      “I’m curious,” she said. “First of all, I don’t get to talk to very many people. Or I haven’t talked to anyone in a while. I’ve been by myself for a couple of weeks. Second of all, I really don’t meet very many people like you.”

      “Grumpy assholes?”

      “Cowboys,” she said. “Assholes are par for the course, at least in my experience. Though not very many that are so aware of what they are.”

      “I didn’t really decide to do it,” he said. “My brother decided to revitalize the ranch. I hated my job.”

      “What did you do?”

      “I worked in the office for the power company.”

      “Well... That does sound boring.”

      “It is. Pays well. Retirement. Benefits. All that.”

      “I bet this doesn’t.”

      “Yep,” he agreed.

      She stopped talking for a while as they walked on the trail that wound down toward the river. The smell of the frigid water filtered through the heavy, damp scent of pine around them, the sound of the rushing rapids a comforting whisper beneath the wind in the trees. She had that look on her face again. That one that made his own eyes feel new.

      He wasn’t sure that he liked that.

      Wasn’t sure he liked at all that this stranger had the power to affect anything in him.

      The path they were on led to the back of the mess hall, to the outdoor seating area that had a good view of the river. Even though it was just the beginning of November, his sister-in-law had put up white Christmas lights around the perimeter. Because, she said, winter was dark and any cheer was welcome. And she had also argued that white lights were not necessarily holiday specific.

      She had argued these things with Wyatt, Bennett, Bennett’s wife, Kaylee, and the youngest Dodge, Jamie.

      She had not argued it with Grant.

      Because Grant didn’t care.

      He wasn’t going to waste a moment of damned breath arguing about the appropriate date to string lights.

      In the end, he’d been the one to put them up.

      Somehow, he’d been the deciding vote, since he was seen as neutral ground in some ways.

      Funny, he wasn’t sure he considered himself neutral. Just apathetic about pretty much anything that didn’t involve alcohol.

      Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He liked to ride horses. In some ways, he thought that this endeavor at the Get Out of Dodge ranch had saved him. Sitting behind that desk had been a slow path to hell. When he’d been working at the power company still, his only solace really had been drinking.

      He had spent so many years ignoring the way that other men his age lived their lives. Had spent so many years pushing down the kinds of appetites men his age had. Had honed his entire focus onto his wife. Not on the things they didn’t have, but on what they did have.

      Their small, perfect house down in town, within walking distance of all the cute little shops that she loved so much. Cozy dinners in on the nights when she felt like eating. And sometimes, Ensure shakes on the couch with a movie on when she didn’t.

      On those kinds of nights he waited until she went to bed, then heated up a TV dinner after she fell asleep. Not because he was hiding the fact that he was eating. She wouldn’t want him to do that. He just didn’t like to remind her of anything she might be missing.

      He’d stripped his life down to the essentials because he didn’t want to be out living a life that Lindsay couldn’t. There was no one on earth he could talk to about it. And anyway, he spent as much time as possible talking to Lindsay when she had been alive.

      The problem was, after she’d died, after he’d clawed his way out of the initial fog of grief, what he’d found on the other side was that he didn’t exactly know how to live anymore. Not like a normal person. He didn’t have a confidant, didn’t know how to talk to anyone about it.

      And there had been so many

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