Free Beauty and the Brit by Lizbeth Selvig

enough.
    “We’re moving out West to our own ranch when I’m done with school,” Bonnie continued, in a shortened version of the story she’d told David just days before. “Rio’s been planning it since she was in high school.”
    At the prompt, Rio remembered the name of the town: Bear Falls, Wyoming. They’d stopped there for lunch on one day of the Boys and Girls Club trip she’d won in a raffle back in tenth grade. She’d seen some of her country’s most iconic sights: Mount Rushmore, and the Crazy Horse monument, and Wall Drug before reaching Devils Tower with the group. But it had been the ad in the window of a little real estate office next to the Ma and Pa café in Bear Falls—population two hundred and twenty-seven—that had captured her imagination.
    Two hundred acres, house and barn, with outbuildings. Needs some repair. Wooded and secluded. Suitable for horses or cattle.
    “That’s so strange.” Kim’s cheerful voice brought Rio back to the present. “Ever since my mom got remarried a year and a half ago, my stepdad has offered to let us move to a bigger farm, but Mom refuses. So they’re just fixing up our old place. It’s kind of cool, everything’s getting updated. Like David’s doing here and Jill is doing at their house. But I think it would be fun to move somewhere new. Where are you moving to?”
    “It’s going to be a while until that happens,” Rio said.
    “Probably Wyoming.” Bonnie ignored her. “There are always farms and land for sale. We can’t wait to get away from the city and have horses of our own.”
    “That’s a pretty perfect dream.”
    “It’s not a dream, it’s a goal.”
    Bonnie parroted the promise Rio had been drumming into her head since their father had died. Now the words of that promise pierced like daggers.
    “Sure.” She forced a smile. “We’ve just had a little setback.”
    “Setback?” Kim asked.
    “We had a fire at our house in Minneapolis,” Bonnie explained. “That’s why we’re staying here until we can find a new place.”
    “Oh my gosh! That’s awful.” Kim stopped working on the horse and turned fully to Rio. “I’m so sorry.”
    She clearly meant every sympathetic word. She was very hard not to like.
    “Thank you.”
    “So, do you guys ride?” Kim asked. “Can you at least have some fun while you’re here?”
    “I’ve never ridden,” Bonnie said. “Rio has once or twice, but only in Western saddles.”
    Kim grinned. “Western is awesome. But if you try English, you’ll never want to do anything else.”
    The two girls launched into the new topic. Rio tuned them out and turned to watch a dark-gray cat leap gracefully up and over a stall door. Another cat, this one a wiry calico, joined the first. One stall door just down the aisle hung open with the front end of a wheelbarrow sticking out of it and tuneless whistling emanating from inside. A very short hallway off the tidy aisle led to the smaller of the two indoor arenas. So amazing. So opulent.
    The acreage for sale in that real estate window so long ago had seemed worth a fortune to sixteen-year-old Rio. The surmised costs of this horse palace boggled her mind.
    “Did you get the penny tour?”
    She turned at the sound of his voice and did a double take that shamed Bonnie’s earlier Dawson-gaping. Jeans now set off David’s long legs and hugged his waist like a lover’s embrace. A soft, white, button-down shirt had been tucked in but left open at his neck, and the sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. His thick brown hair curled in damp waves, and he smelled of pine and spice.
    “I’d think you’d have to charge much more than a penny for this place,” she replied, and immediately regretted the slight judgment in her tone.
    He frowned. “My bank creditors would like me better if I did book tours and collect money. And gave it all to them.”
    She knew he meant nothing by off-handed jokes about money, but the man could not be hurting no matter what he