Jason snarls at me. “What the hell are you doing here?”

I snap my head toward him, nothing short of fury on my face. “Get the hell off my land.”

“This isn’t your land.”

“Oh, make no mistake. This is absolutely my land.”

“Your father—”

“My father can’t make the call to sell this without my approval. Whatever shady, back alley deal you two assholes cut is as worthless as you appear to be. Now, get your ass off this ranch before I make it my mission in life to find a place to bury you in these woods.”

I can tell he wants to argue and part of me wants him to. I want him to keep going, keep pushing, so I’ll have an excuse to tear him limb from limb with my bare hands. But he doesn’t. I top him by three inches and at least twenty pounds of muscle. Add to that the fact that I’m so close to the edge right now and, yeah, I’m the bigger threat of the two. He seems to pick up on that pretty quickly, too. He balks for a second, but then keeps that mouth of his shut. Without a word, he walks past me, back the way he came, leaving me to go find Haley on my own. Just the way I want it.

I start off after her. She’s not hard to track. Not because I’m some sort of expert, but because she was upset and she broke a thousand twigs and branches along the way. About ten minutes later, I find myself stepping out of the woods to the west of the main house, though, and I still haven’t found her. I couldn’t move as quickly as Haley because she knew where she was going, so I lost her. At least for the moment I have.

I walk to the main house and go in through the back door. Harper is sitting in the kitchen painting her fingernails while Hannah spreads something on little triangles of bread. I don’t bother with niceties. “Seen Haley?”

I see Hannah glance at Harper before she shakes her head. Clearly, they’re lying. Blood is thicker than water, after all.

“Well, if you happen to not see her again, please let her know I’m looking for her.”

They both nod, and I head through the house to John’s office. The door is open, and he’s behind the desk with his head down. When I knock on the doorjamb, he looks up and his face takes on that pleasantly relieved expression he wears so often with me. “Nixon. What can I do for you?”

“Fair warning, Haley knows.”

He stands up so quickly, his chair whips back against the wall behind him. “How the hell did that happen? I wanted to tell the girls myself.”

“You should’ve done it sooner. You know how hard it is to keep secrets like this.”

“I was going to. I just didn’t want to ruin this last bit of time they have together here, where they grew up. I figured a month wouldn’t hurt.”

“Well, it did. Jason showed up. Told her he’d bought the ranch from my father.”

“What?”

I shake my head and wave him off. “Calm down. They can’t do that. It’s not legal.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. I purchased the ranch with my own money rather than under the umbrella of the company. Dad doesn’t know that.”

“Lucky for me, I guess.” He pauses. “Wait. Jason? You mean her ex?”

I nod.

“He told her?”

I nod again. “She’s pretty upset, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

“She left this place, but she loved it more than all of us when she was a girl. If it weren’t for Jason, she probably wouldn’t have left at all.”

“Are you going to tell her what happened? Because she’s gonna want to know how you lost the ranch.”

John hangs his head. “I guess it’s time to have a family meeting.”

“I think that’s a good idea.” He looks so defeated, I find myself offering help, help I don’t know how to give and shouldn’t be offering. “Anything I can do?”

“No.” He looks up after a few seconds and smiles halfheartedly. “You’ve already done enough. I appreciate you, son.”

I nod and make my exit. Something tells me I’ve gotten far more involved with this family than I should have.