“My mother thinks I get my free spirit from my father.” Robin had no idea why the words spilled from her mouth. “And I don’t like that. I mean, I never even knew the guy. Why does he get to make my life complicated?”

Shane stepped a few times before saying, “We don’t get to choose our parents.”

“How very pragmatic of you,” she said.

A heartbeat of silence went by before he said, “I started therapy.”

A blip of surprise moved through her. “Really? When?” She glanced at him, the same, handsome, strong cowboy she’d admired for so long. “You’ve been by my side for days, and we’ve spent evenings together too.”

“It’s an app,” he said. “I can text or chat a counselor, and we talk.”

Robin absorbed his words. “What’s it called?” Maybe she could talk to someone about how to be less flighty. How to put down roots without freaking out and running away. She’d been doing that for so long, she wasn’t sure it was possible to change now.

“It’s called Talk To Me,” he said. “May told me about it, and it’s pretty good.” Shane paused near the driver’s side door of her truck. “So I bet I can get my work done by three. You want to head to the Llano River after that?”

Robin found herself nodding and unlocking her truck. “Sounds like a date,” she said.

“Oh, boy.” He chuckled and then leaned into the truck after she’d climbed behind the wheel. “If you bring food, it’s definitely a date.”

“I’ll swing by the grocery store while you’re doing your chores.” Robin enjoyed flirting with him so much, and as he leaned closer, she thought he’d kiss her right there in the church overflow parking lot. He gazed at her the way she’d always dreamed a man would, with adoration and excitement in his expression.

Then he tapped the top of the truck and backed up. “All right, then. I’ll come pick you up about three-thirty. That should give us plenty of daylight.”

Robin started the truck but then waited as she watched Shane saunter away. The man was devastatingly handsome. Kind. Faithful. Why was her stomach twisting and her heart pulsing against itself?

“Because he’s your boyfriend,” she muttered to herself, reaching over to turn up the air conditioning. And boyfriends had brought Robin nothing but trouble. Instead of driving to the grocery store, she pulled out her phone and searched the app store for Talk To Me.

The pricing plans seemed reasonable, and she put in the information required to sign up. The app led her through a series of questions about what kind of help she needed, if she preferred a phone call, texting, or a video chat, and several other options.

In the end, she was matched with three therapists, their rates listed next to their pictures. Again, the twenty-five dollars for the first session seemed reasonable, but Robin hesitated with her thumb over the CONNECT button.

She didn’t need someone with a bunch of letters after their name to tell her she was like her father and there was nothing she could do about it. Worse, she didn’t want a psychiatrist to tell her she needed to give up parts of her life she loved so she could be with Shane. Then what would she do?

Robin sighed, set her phone on the bench seat next to her, and drove to the grocery store. She spent the hours while Shane did his chores putting together the best potato salad she knew how to make, and building a killer ham and cheese sandwich for both of them. She was just spreading out the caramel corn she’d made when Shane knocked on her door.

He poked his head into the tiny house a moment later. “Wow, it smells good in here.”

Robin’s whole body warmed with his presence. “Thanks. There’s lots of food.”

“Are we swimming?” he asked.

She spun from the counter where she worked. “We’re swimming?”

“The river is nice in the summer,” he said. “I wasn’t sure, but I threw my trunks in the back of the truck.” He scanned her. “But I don’t see you wearing your suit.”

Robin wasn’t sure how to answer. The thought of seeing him in a pair of swimming trunks—and nothing else—made her mouth dry. And her skin shivered when she thought of wearing a swimming suit in front of him.

“I don’t think I even own a swimming suit right now,” she said. “I, uh, downsized a lot when I sold my house in Temple and packed up this tiny thing.”

“All right.” He glanced over her shoulder to the cooler on the counter next to the popcorn. “I brought a blanket too. We can just lie around and eat.” His right hand flitted along her waist, finally making direct contact and bringing her closer. He pressed the side of his face to the side of hers and drew in a deep breath, almost like they were slow dancing in her miniscule kitchen.

As quickly as he’d done that, he stepped back. “You ready? What can I help you with?”

“The cooler,” she managed to whisper. After clearing her throat, she added, “I’ll bag this popcorn and be right out.”

“We takin’ Misfit?”

“If you want.”

“Will she wander off?”

“No, she’s afraid of tall grass.” Robin laughed, her heart expanding two sizes when he scooped her tiny dog off the bottom step and patted her.

“All right. See you out there.” He left with the dog and the cooler, and Robin sagged into the countertop. She was in so much trouble, and she hastily pulled out her phone and dropped her thumb onto that CONNECT button.

A message from Doctor Cecily Smith popped up only moments later. Tell me what you have on your mind regarding your RELATIONSHIP and I’ll get back to you within twelve hours.

Robin stared at the chat bubble, unsure of how to articulate what she had on her mind. Shane was waiting, and she hadn’t even started bagging the caramel corn yet.

So her thumbs flew like falcons as she typed I have a really great guy in my life and I’m scared. See, I’m not the settling-down type, and he is.

She read over the words. That was exactly what was on her mind, so she sent the message before she could delete it and then erase the app from her phone entirely.

“Everything okay?” Shane’s voice made Robin drop her phone. She swiped it back into her hand, heat crawling through her face now.

“Yes, I’m coming.”

He watched her from the front door, which was only a few strides away. Robin kept her eyes down and her hands busy, hoping it would be on the end of the twelve hours that the therapist would get back with her. She wasn’t sure why she cared if Shane knew she’d signed up with Talk To Me.

She didn’t have anything to be embarrassed about. But somehow, for some reason, she wanted to keep her therapy sessions to herself for now.

“I think that one looks like a dragon,” she said, pointing to a wisp of cloud on the horizon that barely looked like a snake.

Shane simply chuckled and shook his head. “I’m not even going to look. There aren’t any clouds in the sky. And even if there were, you wouldn’t be able to see them through the leaves.” He put another forkful of potato salad into his mouth, a quirk in his eyebrow that made her laugh.

If there was one thing Robin had learned on this trip, it was that Shane could eat. And eat. And eat. It was as if the man hadn’t consumed anything in a month. And she’d thought she’d made a lot of potato salad, but it was almost gone.

The drive up to the Llano River had been forty minutes of laughter and talking, and Robin was glad she hadn’t tainted this afternoon with her melancholy thoughts about therapy and why she couldn’t commit to a relationship. To anything really.

But that wasn’t really true. She’d been a farrier for a decade, and she’d certainly dedicated her life to that.

“My momma would love Texas.” She sighed, the clear blue sky somehow better here than in Georgia. “But I can’t get her to leave her patch of land.” She looked right at Shane. “I just don’t get that, you know?”

“There’s something about having somewhere to call home.” He finally finished eating and leaned back on his elbows, a sigh leaking from him too. “Not that I would know.”

“You have your cabin.”

“I don’t own that cabin,” he said, a bit of flint coming into his voice. He closed his eyes and Robin admired the lines of his face, the strength in his shoulders.

“I had my whole life mapped out,” he said. “You know? I’d worked my dad’s ranch since I was six years old. It was gonna be mine. Somewhere I could raise a family of my own.”

Robin didn’t know how to soothe him. She reached over and patted his arm like he was her ninety-year-old granny. He didn’t flinch or yield or anything. She settled next to him, and he opened his arm so she could cuddle into his side, resting her head against his chest.

“I’m sorry about your dad.”

“He has another family now,” Shane said quietly, his words mingling with the breeze in the trees. “I don’t understand it. My mom was a good woman. She’s loyal and strong and he just threw her away.”

“What you really mean is he threw you away.”

“Yeah.” His arm around her tightened. “And what are you? My counselor on Talk To Me?”

She smiled, though there wasn’t much to be happy about. “Sorry. I guess I just know what it feels like to be discarded.”

He pressed a kiss to her temple, and they fell into the silence surrounding them. Misfit trotted over and tried to jump up on Robin. She giggled and helped the little dog up, where she settled in the crease where Robin’s body touched Shane’s.

“I think we need to get a bigger dog,” he said.

Robin’s mind seized onto several things at once. She asked, “Why? Then it couldn’t sit right here on both of us.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to step on this one and kill it,” he said.

“Well, she lives with me, so I think you’ll be okay.”

“Mm.”

Robin wished she felt tired, but she didn’t. “What kind of dog would you get if you could?”

“I don’t know. Something big like a German shepherd or a black lab or something.”

“Well, that’s out,” she said.

“Why’s that?”

“My whole house is two-hundred-eighty square feet. There’s no way a dog that big will fit.”

“Oh, so we’ll be livin’ in your house?”

“Well, we can’t share with your two brothers.” A beat of silence passed before Robin burst into laughter. Thankfully, Shane joined in almost simultaneously. He shifted, and Misfit fell into the gap between them now.

He faced Robin, and while he looked joyful, he was deadly serious at the same time. “What are we talkin’ about here, Robin?” He reached over and tucked her hair behind her ear, and Robin loved the simple gesture. It spoke of his care for her, and how gentle he was, and how big of a heart he possessed.

“You’re the one who said ‘we’ should get another dog.” She blinked slowly, like her eyelids were too heavy to lift back open.

“We do have unique living situations,” he said. “That might have to change.”

She stiffened.

“Ah, so there’s the first thing that makes your relationships unsuccessful.” His eyes crinkled as he smiled. “You don’t like change.”

“No one likes change.”

“Maybe you don’t want to change for someone else.”

Maybe. But Robin hated how selfish that made her sound. “Maybe I’d change for the right man.”

“So you’re saying none of your previous boyfriends were the right man?”

“Boyfriend,” she corrected. “Singular.”

“You’ve only had one boyfriend?” His eyebrows shot up, and Robin wanted to smooth her hands over them to make them go back down.

“One man I’d label a boyfriend, yes. His name was Kevin.”

“Oh, you don’t belong with a Kevin.”

She laughed. “No?”

“Absolutely not.” His chest vibrated with a laugh too. When he sobered, he said, “He probably wanted you to do all kinds of things you didn’t want to do.”

“He did.”

“Like what?”

Robin pressed her eyes closed, but the summer sun still permeated her lids. “He wanted me to leave Texas, for one. And he wanted me to move to California with him. And he wanted me to give up my job and find something else to do on the beach while he did his residency at a hospital in San Diego.”

Shane stroked his fingers through her hair, lighting her scalp on fire with the intimate touch. “Hm. And if Kevin were the right man, would you have done it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “He wasn’t the right man.”

“And he’s the only boyfriend you’ve had.” He wasn’t asking this time.

“I guess. There have been other men and a few dates here and there. But like I said, I’m never girly enough or whatever.”

“I think you’re plenty girly,” he murmured, his breath washing across her forehead just before his lips pressed there. “What makes a man your boyfriend?” he asked next, his mouth migrating to her cheek and touching there.

Robin could barely think. The scent of him infected her reasoning. She only continued breathing because it was an involuntary thing she didn’t have to prompt her body to do.

“Would kissing you be too much of a change for you?” he asked, his mouth catching on the corner of hers.

“No,” she managed to whisper. And it was the first time she’d used the word no to really mean yes. Yes, please kiss me.

She drew in a breath, waiting, hoping, praying.

Finally, his lips brushed hers, and fireworks popped through Robin’s whole system. The next time his mouth met hers, it held on, and Robin wondered how she’d lived her whole life without a kiss from Shane Royal.