“He’s fifteen. He’s allowed to flirt.”
Bear grumbled.
She looked at him. His jaw had set. His arm had come down off the bleacher behind her, and his hands were braced on his knees. He glowered at the blonde girl on Logan’s left, and she thwacked his arm.
“Stop it. Why are you glaring daggers at that poor girl?”
“That’s Sadie Goodwin.”
It took her a second to place the name. Then she had it—the pale blonde hair, the way the girl tilted her head—and she could see Hank in her, around the eyes.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. Hank Goodwin’s daughter is flirting with my son.”
“Bear.”
“Hank Goodwin, who tried to bury all of Naomi’s cases. Hank Goodwin, who put Jax in a holding cell. Hank Goodwin, who is brothers with that fucker Daniel?—”
“I know who he is, Bear.”
He shifted in his seat like he was about to stand up, the slow gather of a very large, very protective man preparing to remove his son from a perceived threat in the middle of a crowded rodeo. She put her hand on his thigh.
“Don’t.”
“Greta—”
“Don’t. Bear. Dane,” she said when he didn’t seem to be paying attention. “Look at him. Look at your son.”
Finally, he turned his gaze from the girl to his son.
Logan was talking now, hands out of his pockets, gesturing with one of them while he made some point. He looked easy. Loose-shouldered. Confident. He wasn’t awkward, wasn’t bracing for rejection, just standing there talking to two girls as if he belonged there.
“He’s good,” Greta said. “Look at him. He’s doing fine.”
Bear’s jaw worked.
“She’s not her father,” Greta said quietly. “She’s a fifteen-year-old girl at the county fair. He’s a fifteen-year-old boy at the county fair. They’re not running a corruption ring, Bear. They’re flirting at a fence.”
“You don’t know what she’s heard about us. About Valor Ridge. What Hank’s said over the dinner table for the last decade.”
“No. I don’t. But Logan’s not stupid. And if she’s anything like her father, he’ll figure it out, and he’ll come home. And if she’s not—if she’s a kid trying to be a person separate from her dad—then maybe that’s something he gets to figure out for himself.”
He was quiet for a long time. “I don’t like it.”
“I know you don’t.”
“I’m allowed to not like it.”
“You are.”
Below them, Sadie said something that made all three of them laugh. Logan ducked his head, ball cap going lower, and reached up to scrub the back of his neck—a gesture Greta recognized because Bear did it, too. The girl on the right pulled out a phone, and they leaned in, all three of them, looking at something on the screen.
“He’s going to come back up here in a minute,” Greta said. “He’s not stupid. He’s not going to miss X’s ride. Let him have this.”
Bear exhaled slowly, and the muscle in his jaw stopped jumping.
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
