Free Rancher's Deadly Risk by Rachel Lee Page A

was he thinking? He’d brought her out here to turn her off, not offer to see her again.
    Instead she’d shattered all his preconceptions about her, and now he was offering to take her riding? He considered banging his head on a stall post to get his brain back into working order.
    Too late. Well, he reassured himself, he was busy with football, and they had this whole bullying thing to deal with. He could reasonably avoid having time to take her riding until spring. And by then, she’d probably be crying uncle about this whole middle-of-nowhere place, and pining to have a bagel shop around the corner or something.
    The nights were growing chilly enough that he blanketed the horses because they couldn’t move much to keep warm. On the coldest nights he could blow heat into this barn, but like everything else, he did his best to conserve by avoiding it as much as possible.
    He should have taken her home then, but he didn’t like to be needlessly rude, even to protect himself. Instead, he invited her in for a hot drink and light snack. She might as well see the rest of it, the farmhouse that had seen better days, the furnishings left over from earlier generations. There was a difference between maintenance and decorating, and while he was good at the former, he had little interest in the latter. And, frankly, little enough money to waste on nonessentials. Or maybe that was largely his preference. If it served its purpose, it was good enough for him.
    The kitchen was an old farmhouse kitchen, huge enough to feed the hands when necessary. The days when this place had been able to hire hands were past, but the kitchen and its long trestle table remained, as did the huge mudroom leading into it.
    If he let himself think about it, he could hear better times almost whispering around him. Better times for the ranch, that was. He certainly didn’t think his own times were bad.
    Cassie stood on the threshold blinking. “Did you guys build for an army?”
    He had to laugh as he motioned her to the table. “Families were a lot bigger in the old days. And back then we had hired hands to feed, too.”
    She sat, watching him as he moved around making some hot chocolate and breaking out some cookies. “What changed, Linc?”
    “The times. After the Second World War, everybody but my grandfather moved away. The G.I. Bill helped with that, I guess. Regardless, my great-grandfather also broke up the land, so his kids could have a share. From the stories I hear, it didn’t make much difference because everyone was working together anyway. But after the war...” He shrugged. “My granddad bought them back as everyone started moving away. We’ve still got a few thousand acres but the economics of things now make them almost pointless to put into use. You could call it splendid isolation.”
    A smile flickered over her features as he turned toward her to put the cookies on the table, but his face looked almost sad. “How do you feel about that?” she asked.
    “I’m okay with it. I keep my hand in, I sell wool, I sell lambs, and keep it to a level I can manage.”
    “Do you ever see it changing?”
    He poured the cocoa from the pan into two mugs. “Not anytime soon.”
    She grew thoughtful and quiet, and he let her be as he joined her to sip his beverage and eat a store-bought cookie.
    “It’s funny,” she said after a while. “Some things are growing rapidly, and other things are shrinking.”
    “Times change, needs change. Cultures move on.”
    “I know, but I’m not sure that’s always good.”
    “Right now it’s good for the land out there. I didn’t just happen into biology by accident. I get a kick out of watching nature move back in.”
    “Your own little eco-sanctuary?”
    He had to smile. “I guess so.”
    The thermostat had kicked on a little while ago, raising the house from its daytime setting of sixty to a more comfortable sixty-eight for the evening. As the room warmed, he began to detect Cassie’s