The Rancher's Rules

“Yes.” The word carried a wealth of guilt, which stung Zoe’s own conscience.

“The hamster wouldn’t have been such a big deal if I wasn’t already four pets over my one pet quota.”

“You wouldn’t have any fool quota for your pets if you’d let Grant rent your old house to you.” Roy shook his head as he shifted his tall frame on Grant’s living room couch, moving infinitesimally closer to Lottie.

Zoe took a sip of the Christmas blend coffee Lottie had brought with her and insisted on making when they arrived. The subtle cinnamon flavor teased her tastebuds as she prepared to defend her decision not to rent her old home from Grant yet again. She wasn’t taking charity from Grant and that was that. “I can’t afford the rent a house like that would command.”

Roy glared at her, his expression so like his son’s Zoe couldn’t help an internal smile. “Grant wouldn’t have charged you more than you could afford. He’d have been happier if you would have taken the house as a gift, like he wanted you to in the first place.”

Zoe grimaced, but held onto her temper. It wasn’t Roy Cortez’s fault he saw the world through the eyes of independent wealth. “Bottles of expensive perfume are gifts. Houses are not.”

Grant frowned at his father. “Zoe didn’t want the house.”

Zoe stifled an urge to sigh. Grant was wrong. She had wanted the house, and the security it represented, but she’d had to prove she could make it on her own. If her own parents could cut her loose, she couldn’t rely on the Cortezes to take care of her.

“That’s right, Roy. Leave the poor girl alone. She’s independent, and we wouldn’t want you any other way,” Lottie said as she smiled gently at Zoe.

Roy shrugged. “Stubborn too, but I still say Grant would have felt a whole lot better if Zoe’d taken the house. He felt pretty bad, advising Jensen to sell.”

Zoe felt as if everything inside her had gone still. She turned to meet Grant’s wary blue gaze. “You told my dad to sell the ranch?”

He’d never said. Neither had her dad. Not that that surprised her.

“Yes.”

“Did you also advise him to sell it without telling me first? Without giving me a chance to talk to him about it?”

It was Grant’s turn to grimace, his gorgeous blue eyes reflecting frustration. “No. I didn’t tell him to make the sale without talking to you first. But what would you have said, niña? You couldn’t run it.”

Ignoring Roy’s interested gaze, and Lottie’s sympathetic one, Zoe demanded, “How do you know?”

Grant’s expression said it all. He knew—just like her dad had known. “Come on, Zoe. You never wanted to be a rancher. You’re a kindergarten teacher and you love it.” He leaned forward in his chair, tension vibrating off him. “Can you honestly say you would be happier trying to run the ranch?”

Of course not. But that wasn’t the point. “If my brother had lived, you can bet my dad wouldn’t have sold off the land and house without talking it over with him first.”

Grant sighed. “If your brother had lived, your dad wouldn’t have sold the ranch at all. But—”

She broke in before he could go on. “But he didn’t live and my dad was stuck with me. I flunked at being a rancher’s daughter and he knew I’d fail at running the ranch as well.”

Pain coalesced inside Zoe as so many unmet needs rang hollowly through her soul. She had needed her father’s unconditional acceptance, but she’d never gotten it. She’d needed to know she counted for something in her family besides the “oops” baby that had grown into the incomprehensible child. Those needs had never been met, and now Grant was telling her he’d been a part of one the most painful experiences of her life—her parents’ final rejection.

They had sold her childhood home, bought property in Arizona, and waited to tell her until everything was a done deal.

Grant trapped her gaze with his own. “When you were six, you took a cow you’d befriended out on the range to save it from the stock sale. When you were nine, you buried the branding irons in your mother’s garden. When you were thirteen, you opened the gates on the cattle-holding pens that had been marked for beef. You became a vegetarian when you were sixteen and you refused to come home from college for Spring Break your freshman year because it coincided with spring roundup.”

She couldn’t deny a single one of his charges.

He sighed, pain she did not understand reflecting in his eyes. “This isn’t about failing. It’s about wanting you to be happy—and your dad knew it wouldn’t be running a ranch.”