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I pick my head up and look over my shoulder to make sure I heard right. “You’re not going to lecture me about getting fired?”

She gestures to the drawer. “Will you grab me a diet something and close that thing? Electricity bills in the summer are no joke. And no, I don’t plan to lecture you. I already have a daughter who I can already tell is going to give me a run for my money. You’re free to live your own life.”

There’s so much to unpack here. First of all, Tessa, who always compulsively looked after my siblings and me, seems to have loosened up. Love that. But even more, she’s making me realize that I almost planned on a lecture, maybe because I felt like I deserved it. And maybe I don’t.

Tessa’s eyes scan the kitchen to where I’ve been subtly moving things around to straighten up and make the room look cuter. I know she has no time for this kind of puttering because she and Fitz mainly live at his place. “You make everything look pretty, Cal. You should definitely take this on if you’re down for it. We even have the budget to pay you a little bit.”

I take out a cola for her and a sparkling raspberry water for me and slam the fridge door. “Thanks for not being judgy. And, since you seem supportive of my life choices, I guess I’ll tell you my other bit of news.” I come behind her chair and wrap my arms around her shoulders. I blow out a breath. “I’m fake engaged to a cowboy.”

I sit down at the table and watch my sister open her mouth, then close it again. And then she shakes her head and laughs. “Of course you are.”

CHAPTER 6

Luke

Callie is late, and it puts me in a mood.

Plenty of technology is available to ensure that people get to places on time—maps with estimated arrival times and traffic conditions, alarms and backup alarms, calendar reminders. As a parent, if I’m “a few minutes late” for anything, it’s a ten-alarm fire. I hear my mother's stern voice. “There’s no such thing as being on time. If you’re not early, you’re late.”

It’s also a farming mindset that has helped me run the ranch, which operates on a schedule everyone follows. Starting at five in the morning, the horses get fed their hay and grain, we check that the automatic systems in the water troughs are working, and we drive out to the pastures. We look for injured or sick cattle, calves born overnight, and broken fences.

At seven, it’s all about repairs and cleaning—fences, watering systems, horse stalls. Then we train and exercise the horses. My foreman, Ryan, manages those tasks while I do the normal dad tasks and take Scout to school. Then he and I confer about unexpected emergencies, and my day really begins. Paying bills, negotiating hay prices, driving cattle to new pastures. If we fall behind on any of it, that throws off the rhythm for the rest of the day, and tasks might fall through the cracks.

My employees know I don’t tolerate anyone showing up late, so coming fifteen minutes early is the new “on time.”

Wiping the beading sweat from my forehead, I contemplate for the hundredth time how I came to be standing on the side of the road in front of a junk store called Love-Hate Relationship, waiting for a woman I barely know to document a relationship we’ve never had. And somehow this is the best solution to prove to the custody judge that my life is a stable, two-parent environment for Scout.

I’m about one minute away from throwing in the towel on the entire plan. Not only is Callie nowhere to be found, but she picked what has to be the strangest meeting point I’ve ever seen. The shop looks like a 1950s moving van exploded, littering the beat-up shelves in front of the store with odd Americana detritus like soda fountain glassware and metal lunch boxes.

Scrolling through my messages, I feel the tension in my shoulders mount. Not only is my hay delivery going to be late, but Ryan found an unanticipated problem with an irrigation line that will take him most of the day to fix. I call him up and bark my discontent before he even says hello.

“Can you get one of the guys to fix the irrigation line?” I ask by way of greeting. He won’t take offense. He’s worse than me when it comes to unnecessary pleasantries.

“Not if you want it done right.”

“I want it done.” I enter the store and feel assaulted by the clutter and barely organized junk on every visible surface.

“Great. So let me do it and find someone else to drive the cattle out.”

“Yeah, that would be me.” It annoys me that he’s telling me what to do, even if there’s no doubt I’d come up with the same plan myself.

“First beer’s on me if you’re coming to First Thursdays.”

“I’ll take you up on that. Hitching Post at eight?”

Ryan confirms, and I bark a few more instructions about where to get spare irrigation parts. Then I stab at my phone screen to hang up.

“Oh, there you are. I was worried you were going to stand me up.”

There’s no mistaking the cheerful voice that sounds as though invisible wind chimes enhance it. It instantly calms me, which is a feat in itself when I’m this wound up. Something about the obvious joy in her voice makes my crabbiness seep away. Well, some of it.

I turn to find Callie standing in an aisle wearing a red tank top that matches her lipstick and denim shorts. Tendrils of blond spill over her shoulders. Her blue eyes are so innocent that I’m not sure she knows she’s also wearing a red, white, and blue top hat with feathers waving from the brim and carrying a giant, rusted yellow street sign that says “Dip.”

My breath hitches at the damn sight of her. So sunny. Pretty.

“I don’t stand people up. I’ve been here for ten minutes.” It sounds like I swallowed sandpaper.

“Really? I’ve been here for fifteen. How did I not see you until now?”