The Rancher's Rules

Grant stood up and moved toward her. He looked like he was going to touch her and she couldn’t bear it. She jumped up. “I need to get back to the house. I’ve got presents that still need wrapping.” And she desperately needed time to think—to come to terms with Grant’s role in her dad’s decision. “I’ll leave the cats here for now, if you don’t mind.”

He put his hand out to grab her, but she evaded him and rushed from the room.

Grant wanted to shoot something, and his dad, sitting next to Lottie and looking so calm, made a likely target. “Why the hell did you have to tell her I advised Jensen to sell?”

“I didn’t know it was a state secret.”

Grant gritted his teeth. “It wasn’t. It was something Zoe didn’t need to know and clearly won’t understand.”

“Maybe you should try explaining it to her again, when she’s had a chance to calm down.” Lottie laid a hand on his dad’s forearm. “And maybe you should learn to leave well enough alone.”

His dad shook his head. “I’ve left well enough alone long enough. It hasn’t gotten me one step closer to being a grandfather. Jensen neither.”

Lottie groaned. “I should have known. So, you think putting their friendship at risk is going to catapult them into each other’s arms?”

“It’s worth a try. Jensen selling his ranch and leaving his daughter homeless sure as hell didn’t do the trick.”

Grant experienced a glimmer of understanding at his dad’s belligerent words, along with more than a glimmer of aggravation. “Are you saying Zoe’s dad sold the ranch to me as a way to bring the two of us together?”

His own father shrugged. “I’m not saying anything. But it’s what I would have done if it had been left up to me.”

Aggravation grew to anger. “And causing a major disagreement between Zoe and me is your idea of matchmaking?”

“It’s time you two stopped dancing around each other and figured out the reason I don’t have any grandchildren is because my son is in love with his best friend and too blind to see it.”

Grant controlled the urge to yell. “I’m not blind.”

It was his dad’s turn to look enlightened. “So you figured out you loved her, did you?”

“I don’t know about love, but I care about her.”

“Hell, what else would you call it, boy?”

Grant remained stubbornly mute.

“Are you seeing each other again?” Lottie asked.

“We never stopped seeing each other.”

“You know what I mean. Are you dating?”

After last night there could only be one answer to that question. “Yes.”

His dad frowned. “So, what’s the problem?”

“Don’t you mean problems?” Grant sighed. “Zoe hated being a rancher’s daughter. Really hated it. She was miserable on the ranch. But I belong here. And when I’m not here, I live in a world that doesn’t impress her much either. She’s a small-town girl, but not a rancher, and I’m not sure where that leaves us. Added to that, you’ve got her so mad at me I’m not sure she’ll ever speak to me again.”

“Are you sleeping with her, son?”

Tension arced right up Grant’s spine and landed behind his eyes as a pulsing headache. Zoe was going to kill him, but she’d have to get him out of jail first, after he’d strangled his dad. “That’s none of your business.”

“I agree.” Lottie’s voice held the firm authority Grant had learned to respect as a child, and he knew his father didn’t dismiss it lightly either. “Whatever is happening between the two of them is just that—between the two of them. I think you and Mr. Jensen have done enough.”

His dad opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again at one look from Lottie’s usually gentle gray eyes, now gone hard as slate. She turned her attention to Grant.

“Have you asked yourself what the ranch would mean to you if you lost Zoe because of it?”

“You mean like my dad had to do when you demanded he choose between you and his life as a rancher? He wouldn’t give up the land for my mother, but he did for you, and, yes…maybe I’m beginning to understand how he could have made that choice.”

But it wasn’t one Grant wanted to make.

His dad leveled a look of censure at him. “Lottie may have made me choose between the ranch and her, but she didn’t do it because she couldn’t stand living the life of a rancher’s wife.”

“Then why did she do it?” Grant asked.

“I did it because your father was running his health into the ground, trying to run both the Cortez ranch holdings and his business ventures in Portland. He had a heart attack a couple of months before I gave him my ultimatum. It was a mild one, but the doctor told him something had to give.”