Page 12 of Indigo Ridge (The Edens 1)

Maybe I should have put it together. Maybe I should have tied Winn to Winslow. But Dad had spoken so highly of her and her experience that I’d pictured an entirely different woman in my mind. Someone older. Someone harder. Someone rougher.

Winn was nothing but smooth edges and unrivaled desire.

Two days and I was still struggling to fit Winn to Winslow.

Those preconceived notions were a bitch to erase.

Dad had taken his role on the search committee as seriously as he had any job I’d seen him tackle, including managing the Eden ranch. He was the kind of man who took every responsibility to heart, no matter how big or small. It was a trait he’d passed to me.

Though the way he’d jumped into the search committee had been borderline zealous. Mom blamed boredom for his enthusiasm for a nonpaying position. Since Dad had retired and handed me the reins for the ranch three years ago, he’d been spinning his wheels.

There were other family businesses that still required his attention, like the hotel. But those mostly ran on autopilot these days. The time commitment was nothing like it was for the ranch. This land had been his priority for decades, second only to his family. Us kids were grown. The ranch was mine.

He’d needed that search committee almo

st as much as they had needed him.

I had to give my father credit. A lot of farmers and ranchers struggled to pass the baton to the next generation. I had friends from college who’d abandoned their family’s operations to work a desk job simply because their parents refused to step away.

Not my dad. After his retirement, he hadn’t given me a single piece of unsolicited advice. If a hired hand asked him for input, Dad would send the man to me. He’d pitch in whenever I asked, but besides a few slips that first year, he’d stopped giving orders to everyone, including me. There were no critiques when I introduced a new idea. No muttered censures when I made a mistake. No guilt trips when I stopped doing something his way.

I loved my father. I respected him above any other man on earth. But for fuck’s sake, couldn’t he have mentioned, just once, that Winslow Covington was a beautiful, vivacious woman who was going to turn a hell of a lot more heads than just mine?

Instead, he’d praised her energy. He’d said twice that she’d outshined the other candidates. She was sharp. She had the tenacity to take the police department into the future.

In my mind, I’d pictured a brawny woman with a masculine haircut and narrow nose like her grandfather’s. Certainly not the bombshell who’d been sitting at Willie’s.

I’d been blinded by Winn’s looks, that smile and her wit. I’d come in for one drink and thought, what the hell? When was the last time I’d seen such a stunning woman?

I preferred to hook up with tourists because their time in Quincy was temporary. If she had brushed me off or not shown any interest, I would have walked away. But the desire in her gaze had matched my own, and I’d just . . . had to have her.

That was the most erotic night I’d had in years. Maybe ever.

I clenched my jaw and tightened my grip on the steering wheel to keep myself from glancing at the backseat. Winn’s scent was gone but it had taken all of yesterday for her sweet citrus to vanish.

Now it reeked like Conor.

Bless that kid and his sweat glands.

He’d started working for us in high school, stacking hay bales and doing odd jobs around the ranch. He’d tried college in Missoula for a year, but after flunking out, he’d come home to Quincy. Conor was the youngest full-time employee at the ranch and this kid moved nonstop.

There weren’t many men who could keep up with my stamina. At thirty-one, I felt just as fit as I had a decade ago. But the ten-year age gap between Conor and me, combined with his work ethic, meant he could run me into the ground.

He’d spent the morning cleaning out the barn by my place, and what normally took me three hours, he did in half that time. Sweat ringed his plaid shirt and the brim of his baseball cap. The hat was as sun-bleached as my own, the black fabric having faded to brown. The Eden ranch brand—an E with a curve in the shape of a rocking chair’s runner beneath—had once been white stitching and was now a dirty gray.

Conor was a good kid. But damn, did he stink.

I hated that I missed Winn’s perfume.

“Nice day,” he said.

“It is.” I nodded.

Rays of pure sunlight streamed through the cloudless blue sky. The heat had already melted away the morning dew, and as we drove, I could practically see the grass growing. It was summer days like this when, as a teenager, I used to find an open field, lie down and take a power nap.

I could use one of those naps today after waking up at four, hard and aching for the woman who’d invaded my dreams. Sleep was risky, so I’d settled for a cold shower and my fist before retreating to my home office. Paperwork had been a decent distraction. So had work in the barn. But it was moments like this, when the world was quieter, that she crept up on me again.

Try as I might, there was no shoving Winn out of my mind.