He was going to fuck this up. He was going to fuck this up so bad.

The slightly fallen expression on Book Girl’s face was enough to tell him, so was the immediate mask to hide her reaction. Ox could have handled shocked and confused when he mentioned getting involved. He was hoping for surprised and amused. But slightly fallen told him that—at least on some level—Book Girl was attracted to him.

“Of course,” Emmie said quickly. “Of course. I mean, that would be… Obviously, we’d be professionals first. This is business.”

He was fucked. Because she was too damn cute to ignore for long. Sometime on the ride home yesterday, he’d reclassified Book Girl—Emmie—from cute and kind of boring to cute with a side of quirky and intriguing. She had a dry sense of humor and a quiet passion for her job. She’d subtly put him in his place enough to show him that she wasn’t anyone’s doormat. A little on the thin side, but she had a sweet body under the oversized clothes, and he wasn’t pretending he hadn’t noticed that. Plus she had thick brown hair almost down to her waist with all sorts of red colors in it when the sun hit it. Hair like that gave a man ideas.

So he was interested, and that presented a problem. Ox plus cute, intriguing girl equaled complications. Forget a bull in a china shop. He was an Ox in a bookshop and he was going to screw this up.

No. No, you can do this.

He had to. Because he agreed with Emmie. If they played this right, it could be killer, even if the idea of going out on his own was also slightly terrifying.

“Okay.” He lifted his hands from her shoulders and rested them on his hips. Her shoulders were softer than his jeans, but he needed to get his hands off her. “Like I said, I need to think about this. Get some questions answered on my end. Talk to my mom and my sister, that sort of thing.”

Emmie nodded.

“But I have your number. So I’ll call you back by…”

“Tomorrow,” she said decisively. “I totally respect wanting some time to think it over, but I’d like an answer from you by tomorrow. If you don’t want to take the space, then I need to find someone else. So I don’t want to be waiting weeks.”

Ox nodded. He liked her attitude. “Fair enough. I’ll talk it over with my family tonight and make sure they can spare me at the ranch. Then I’ll call you.”

“Okay.” She smiled big, and he mentally cursed himself.

Ox, you are an idiot.

“Okay.” He cleared his throat. “Well, I should…” He motioned toward the pile of boxes. “Should I leave these here?”

Emmie shrugged and turned back to the catalog she’d been flipping through. “I don’t mind if you leave the boxes here. If you decide to rent that side of the shop, you’d just be moving them back. They’re not in my way.”

“Okay.”

She was staring at the catalog and not at him. He glanced down to see a tall, twisting copper-and-brass espresso machine with old-fashioned knobs and valves. It was cool as hell and would look amazing in the shop.

“Are you getting that? It’s cool.”

Color rose on her cheeks. “This one? No way. I wish. It’s like two grand, and I’m not opening a café, just getting something customers can use to grab a cup, you know? It’ll probably be used. This one is just…” She shrugged as if she was embarrassed for wanting something nice.

“That’s the one I’d want for a place like this.” He looked around at the huge windows edged by stained glass and the golden wood of the bookshelves. “It fits perfectly.”

“I know.” She turned the page. “But I don’t have the budget for it. Maybe in a couple of years.”

“You gotta indulge sometimes.”

“Not when I’m the one paying the bills.” Emmie closed the catalog. “I’m sure I’ll find a used one that works for me.”

Discussion closed, Mr. Oxford. The message couldn’t be clearer. “Okay, well, if you’re sure it’s cool, I’ll leave my stuff here and call you tomorrow.”

“Totally cool.” Emmie bobbed her head but didn’t look at him. He’d lost her attention.

Which was fine. Because they were just going to be friends. Workmates. Associates of business.

Professionals. What had she said? Obviously.

He was definitely going to fuck this up.

“Are you sure that this is what you want to do with your money from Grandpa?” Melissa sat on the fence with him, drinking a beer and watching the moon rise over the mountains. “You can only spend it once, Ox.”

“I think I’m sure.”

“I think is not I’m sure.”

“I don’t do sure as easily as you.”

“No,” she said. “You just don’t know what you want.”

Melissa wanted the ranch. Always had. Always would.

She’d used her money from their grandfather to plant orange groves on the lower hills. She’d been an agronomy major in college and had been preaching to her mother about utilizing some of the more fertile land in the lower part of their property for years. Orange groves were her first expansion of the ranch, and so far they’d been successful.

From the time she was a child, she’d sat on a horse and yelled at steers. She’d been able to grow anything in their mother’s garden. She loved every inch of it. She’d mourned for their grandfather, but her determination had never wavered. Melissa was the ranch.

Before her husband had been killed in a car accident, Melissa and Calvin had worked it together. Calvin had been the youngest son of an old cattle family on the west side of the valley. He and Melissa had met in college and gotten married and pregnant with their daughter as soon as they graduated. Melissa’s life had been planned out with ruthless and loving efficiency until an eighteen-wheeler and a foggy interstate had destroyed her small world.

But she still had the ranch.

Ox did not. “I know you’ve been counting on me to help with some of the winter—”

“Don’t worry about us,” Melissa said. “I can hire people. We’ve got cash right now.”

“I can do my part.”

Melissa turned to him and rubbed a hand over his buzz cut. “It’s not your job. You have your own thing, and it’s fine. It’s good. I just want you to think it over carefully before you put a bunch of money into this and have that girl invest a lot of hers in you. Make sure it’s really what you want.”

Ox took a deep breath. “I’ve talked about my own shop.”

“Yeah, but then you stopped talking a few years ago.” Melissa cocked her head. “You stopped talking about your own shop… after Calvin died.”

Ox didn’t say anything. The wound where his brother-in-law’s memory lived was deep, but it wasn’t the aching void that Melissa carried. He didn’t need to rake things up and make them all bleed again.

But of course Melissa wouldn’t be his big sister if she didn’t poke at him. “Why did you stop talking about your shop?”

He cleared his throat. “You know why.”

“I didn’t need your help.”

“The fuck you didn’t.” He tossed his beer bottle in the bucket near the fence post. “Shut it, Lissa.”

“Have you been putting this off because of me and Abby?”

“It’s not like that.”

She angled her shoulders toward him. “Then tell me how it is.”

He forced a grin. “You’re not my mom.”

“No, I’m way meaner than Mom, so spill.”

Ox hooked an arm around her neck and pulled her into a playful headlock. “Don’t boss me around. I’m bigger than you.”

Melissa dug her knuckle into the sensitive flesh just above his knee on the inside of his leg, causing Ox to yelp and almost lose his balance.

“Ow! You little… Mo-om!”

Melissa snorted with laughter and Ox couldn’t hold back. He started laughing too. He laughed so hard his sides ached.

His sister was wiping tears from her eyes when Ox said, “I wanted to be close. I wanted you close. Wanted Abby close. She was still a baby. I needed… I just needed to be here. That’s why I moved back from Metlin.”

“If you need to be here, you’re always welcome. You know that. Always. But if starting your own place, running your own shop, is what you really want, then you need to go for it. You need to put everything you have into it. Use your money from Grandpa. Dedicate the time. Make it something special that you’re proud of.”

Ox nodded.

“And tell me about the girl.”

“There’s nothing to tell about the girl.” He glanced at her. “I told you. She’s nice, but we’re business only if I do this. Strictly business.”

Melissa finished her beer, tossed her empty into the bucket, and narrowed her eyes. “She’s cute, isn’t she?”

“Melissa…” He couldn’t say anything. If he said no, he’d be lying. If he said yes, his sister would never let up.

“She’s Betsy’s granddaughter. Owns a bookstore. I bet Mom would love her.”

Ox shook his head. “I’m not telling you—”

“Don’t make me hurt you again, Ox. You know I can.”

“You are so mean.”