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“Don’t worry about it. Just get Moldy out of here as quick as you can.”

“No problem,” Gina said.

Unfortunately, from that moment on problems were all that she had.

* * *

For the second time in a week, Matt drove his rental car toward Nahua Springs Ranch.

Gina had agreed to his terms. She hadn’t really had any choice. Matt should have felt bad about that, but he didn’t. Sure, he’d bought her ranch, but he’d give it back. All she had to do was show him that place.

The one that made her turn white and swallow back puke.

The ranch appeared on the horizon, and Matt pressed the accelerator. He wanted to get there. He wanted to see—

“The tree.”

Not Gina. Any chance he might have had for a relationship with her was as dead as he was gonna be if Jase McCord got him cornered in the equivalent of a Colorado dark alley.

As Matt drove into the yard, Gina led Spike and Lady Belle from the barn. The horses were saddled and packed. Where was she going?

He got out of the car. “I thought you were taking me—”

“I am,” she interrupted. “Let’s go.”

Gina tossed him Spike’s reins. Matt was so surprised they hit him in the face and slithered to the ground. Spike tossed his head, stomped, and gave Matt a look that plainly said, Nice one.

“Sorry,” Matt muttered, picking them up. “Where’s the fire?”

Gina had already mounted Lady Belle. “Under your ass if the As see you.”

“They’re here?”

“Where else would they be?”

“The French Riviera if we had any sort of luck at all,” he muttered.

“We don’t. So let’s make some time.”

She urged Lady Belle down the road, and after a quick glance toward the house, where he could see several people milling beyond the sun-sparkled windows, Matt mounted Spike and followed.

* * *

Two hours later, Gina and Lady Belle stood on the bank of a raging creek.

“Huh,” Gina murmured.

She wasn’t sure how, but she’d spaced off the day in the deluge with the As, the Gordons, and the Hurlaheys. In her defense, she’d had a lot on her mind during the hours in between. And at the time she’d been intent on urging everyone back to the house, not concerned about what the downpour would mean to the creek on the opposite end of the ranch.

She hadn’t considered it today, either. Because if she’d been paying attention and not doing her best to avoid a conversation with Teo, while at the same time playing the truly obnoxious game of what if in her mind—What if she and Teo had met somewhere else? What if she’d gone to college and he’d been her professor? What if he hadn’t been obsessed with his mother’s work to the exclusion of all else? What if he hadn’t lied? What if he hadn’t bought her ranch?—she might have considered that the creek would be flooded and taken a different route.

Gina dismounted and kicked a large rock into the water. “What if you’d been watching where you were going, and then you wouldn’t have wasted hours riding to an area you can’t get across?”

The thud of hooves and the snort of Spike announced Teo’s arrival. To his credit, when he’d discovered that she wasn’t in the mood to be sociable he’d stopped trying to keep up and let Gina ride ahead.

He stopped next to her. “Huh.” He peered right, then left. “Anywhere not so frothy?”

“Frothy?”

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