Page 177 of Dusty Spur Ranch Cowboys

“You’ve checked on me the whole drive.”

“Forty-three times,” Emmett says, grinning.

“I quit counting after that,” I tell her. “I was making myself crazy.”

She laughs, pushes the quilt onto the seat, and reaches for the door handle. “I can manage.”

Red is already around the truck by the time she steps onto the gravel. His gaze sweeps over the scrape on her forehead before he offers his hand to help her clear the running board. “You warm enough?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve been saying that since the ambulance.”

“Because everybody keeps asking.”

His mouth softens into a tired smile as he nods toward the porch. “Let’s get inside.”

The passenger door flies open before any of us reaches the steps.

Sadie climbs out clutching her stuffed horse, stretches after the long drive, then reaches for Arizona’s hand as soon as both boots hit the gravel.

“We’re home,” she announces with a grin.

Arizona laughs and lets Sadie lace their fingers together. “Looks like we are.”

Sadie glances up, her smile fading when she notices the scrape on Arizona’s forehead. She rises onto her toes, studying it with a worried little frown. “The bad man did that.”

“He did.”

“He’s gone now?”

“He won’t be hurting anybody again.”

Sadie’s shoulders loosen. She gives one firm nod, squeezes Arizona’s hand, then starts tugging her toward the porch. “You still have to tuck me in.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

We trail behind them, shucking boots by the door and hanging hats on the hooks while Sadie fills the hallway with stories about everything she planned to show Arizona tomorrow.

Halfway to her bedroom, a yawn sneaks up on her so wide she nearly drops the stuffed horse.

Red grips the back of a kitchen chair and stares toward the hallway where Arizona disappeared with Sadie. “I should’ve stopped Arizona getting hurt.”

“You couldn’t have stopped her,” Emmett says, holding his gaze. “Once she’d decided Travis was using her to get to us, she would’ve climbed every fence on this ranch if she thought it would keep us safe.”

Red exhales through his nose and drags a hand across his beard. “I came close to losing her.”

“We all did.”

Nobody says another word because there’s nothing left to add. Arizona has always charged toward trouble when she thought it would spare somebody else, and every one of us knew it long before tonight.

Her voice drifts down the hallway as she sings Sadie to sleep, and the familiar tune settles over the house until I find myself smiling without meaning to.

This place always felt like home. Now it sounds like it, too.

A few minutes later Arizona walks back into the kitchen and drops into the chair beside me. “She’s out.”

Emmett smiles. “She fought sleep harder than Travis fought the sheriff.”