The Cowboy's Texas Heart (The Dixons of Legacy Ranch 3)

“I don’t know what’s going on with your kids, or their mother,” she added carefully, even though she was beginning to sense why he was reluctant to talk about them. “But they’re obviously a big part of your life. I know you’re not comfortable with a girlfriend around them, so I can get a hotel in Nacogdoches and drive out each day once they get back from camp, if you give me permission. That way, I can slip in and out unseen, like just another work truck, and maybe I can see you a little more—”

He pushed to standing, slipped out from between her and the desk. Dammit! She’d done something wrong, or said something wrong. Her stomach plummeted. Heat crawled up her neck, suffused her cheeks as he gave her his back at the window. Noticed his granite jaw clenched, muscles ticking, a hand slouched at his waist, the other raking through his hair. Nothing. No response. She didn’t dare follow him, didn’t dare try to decipher his expression or his mannerisms except to understand them at face value.

She’d suggested something he wasn’t comfortable with. She’d finally killed the chemistry.

How had she misread the signs? After his whispered words last night, she’d thought that maybe this could be the place to give her those roots that he had.

She hurried from the room, jamming her feet into her boots. She yanked open the front door. She never put herself out there like that. Guys were light and breezy keep it easy, ever since her fiancé and told her in no uncertain terms, as he held out his hand for his ring back, that he wanted a family, and he didn’t want to adopt. If she couldn’t have kids, he didn’t see it working out. Why had she thought there might be something more here?

“No worries, Ty, it was just a thought. I’ll be done by the end of next week like we agreed, and I’ll give you my report on the slump to do what you want with.”

She dragged closed the door, tore her keys out of her pocket, and hastened to her truck. She roared in reverse as the front door yanked open and Tyler, fighting his way into his boots, spilled out chasing her, but finished her two-point turn around and gunned down the road, back through the pine trees behind his farm and over the escarpment, out to the ninety acres where the grasshoppers sat, where all her equipment remained, to pack it up for the day. Forget about the preliminary hike she’d taken up the escarpment today, and the wealth of paleontological material that might be hidden there, waiting to be discovered. She’d come here to do one job, and she was way off-track.

Except the oil survey wasn’t a job she wanted anymore.