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With a round of seed money, we can furnish the guest rooms, hire some staff, and open for business. It all still seems like a big undertaking, but now that I have a vision for the place, I’m even more motivated to make this happen. And from the way Dylan is fawning over the photos and the progress Tessa and I have made here at the ranch, I can finally see the vision becoming a reality.

“Uh huh.” I can practically hear the eye roll. “So how’s your wrong guy in the right hot cowboy package? You two dating for real yet?”

“Nope.” I’m having enough trouble figuring out what’s happening between us to lay it out in detail, so it’s better to keep things brief.

“You like him,” she says, pointing an accusing finger.

“Of course I do. He’s a good dad and a good guy.” I’m underselling that point. His employees love him, and I’ve yet to meet anyone in town who doesn’t sing his praises and tell me how lucky I am to have “caught his fancy.”

“Let me see his picture.”

I scroll through what has become a large album of photos of the two of us, looking for one of just Luke. There shouldn’t be any, really, because the whole point of our photo shoots is to show us together over time looking like a cute couple in a blossoming relationship. But every so often, I’d catch Luke in good light or doing something so good it was worth capturing on my phone. I felt a little like a voyeur, but I consoled myself, figuring a few pictures were harmless, and he’d never know.

“Here. This is him.” I toss Dylan my phone and look at my lap, anticipating her reaction.

“Holy crap, Cal. That broody cowboy is hot. No wonder you suddenly felt like doing a good deed.”

“Yeah, I’m a regular Mother Teresa.”

“Is that the reason you agreed to it, for the ogle factor? I’m not blaming you if you did.”

I pull my phone back before she can see just how many pictures of Luke there are on it. “No! Give me a little credit.”

“I’m giving you plenty. And if you’re not gonna date him, can I?”

I start pulling up carrots and tossing them into a basket I brought from the kitchen. Some of them could use a little more time underground, but the image of Dylan and Luke together has me needing to take out my aggressions somewhere.

“Whoa, okay, forget I said it. Don’t throw perfectly good carrots out with the bathwater,” Dylan says, scooting away from me to pluck some ripe cherry tomatoes and add them to the basket.

“That’s not the expression.”

Dylan drops in a few tomatoes and leans away from me, as though she needs distance to size me up. I move from the carrots to the row of squash, plucking some blossoms from the plant so I can stuff and fry them for dinner later.

“When did this happen?” she asks.

“What?”

“You totally fell for him.”

“I did not totally fall for him.” I try to find the accurate words to describe how I feel about Luke—friendly, supportive, congenial, platonic— and come up empty. “Yes, I fell for him. He’s exactly the kind of emotionally detached gorgeous dude with an incredible work ethic and a soft spot for his son that I go for every time.”

“You’ve never in your life gone for someone like that.”

“I know! What is happening?” I give up on gardening for the moment and stand up. Breaking the greens off a carrot, I wipe them on my shirt, take a bite, then spit it out. “I just ate a lot of dirt.”

“Um, yeah, that’s what happens when you pull something out of the soil. Yeah, you have it bad. And I kind of love it. This is actually perfect because once we get the seed money, you can stay here and be his actual fiancée and decorate the ranch.”

“Except that I’m not staying. I can do the decorating from LA and drive up now and then to supervise. Or Tessa can pinch hit.”

“Come on, there isn’t even a sliver of you that wants to make this little fake fiancé thing real?”

“That’s not the arrangement. He just needs me until he can win his custody battle. And I’m just this frivolous girl from out of town with no job and no roots anywhere who’s passing through long enough to do him a solid. We both know where it ends.”

“But the whole thing you’re selling to the mediator—and his ex-wife—about how you’re this stable little family, what happens when you leave and he can’t keep all the balls in the air? Or worse, his ex comes back and proves this was all a lie.”

I swallow, uncomfortable. I can’t say the thought hasn’t occurred to me. All this time, the goal has been to get custody of Scout, but his ex’s points are valid. He’s overworked and exhausted. The last thing I want is to see Scout suffer because of it.

“I guess we’ll figure it out when we get there,” I say with confidence I don’t feel.