I never expected Gracen to give herself over to me so easily.

Never thought I’d believe I could be more to her than a friend.

Holding her naked body against my own as our heated flesh cooled was almost more than I could process. More than I could contain. Knowing she’d let me inside not only her body, but also a part of her heart made me want more. Made me want to claim her. Brand her with my body so that there would never be any doubt as to whom she belonged with. Because she belonged with me.

I’d never meant to wait so long to let her know how I felt. I should have told her sooner. Should have asked her to come with me to Montana back when I’d decided to take the job instead of trying to run away from her. I’d been blind. Stupid. It scared me—the thought of leaving her. We’d never been apart, and I couldn’t see myself living so far away from her, especially after sharing one of the best moments of my life with her.

Grant’s offer had thrown me for a loop. It gave me a reason to stay and still be close to home. I wouldn’t have to walk away or ask Gracen to uproot herself just so I could keep her with me.

But I’d given my word.

My daddy had always told me a man’s word was his honor. If a man couldn’t uphold his word, what kind of man was he? In his time, handshakes were contracts. A man’s promise was the ink. Men, real men, didn’t walk away from what they said they’d do.

Gracen rolled over onto her side, hand curled under her chin with a sigh of content as she slept. She held my heart in that hand. And as if an invisible string was connected to it, I rolled onto my side, pulling her against my chest.

For a moment, just one, I didn’t want to think about the future. I wanted to hold her. Trail my fingers down every inch of her soft skin. I’d waited so long for her. Life could wait on me for a little while.

Moonlight spilled into the room past the thin floral-print curtains. The barest hint of light climbed up the bed and over Gracen’s sleeping form. The image burned into the back of my eyes as I fell asleep.

* * *

I woke with the smell of her perfume in my nose, the subtle scent firing my blood. Nipping at her shoulder, I sought her breasts with my hands as I moved against her back. Having only one taste of her hadn’t even begun to sate the longtime craving I’d fought. Like an addict, I wanted more and more of Gracen.

She opened her eyes almost immediately with a gasp. Her hand found my hip, fingers digging into my thigh as my hand slid down her stomach, fingers dipping into her heat. She arched into my hand, panting, as I brought her right to the edge and left her hanging there. I wanted to slide inside her, feel her body surrender once more to mine. Needed to feel that pulse of muscle beckoning for my own release.

She turned in my arms, lips finding mine as she pulled herself flush against me.

Need for her burned through me as she gripped my hip, pulling me until I rolled over. When I settled in between her hips, she shifted, reaching between us and urging me inside her, bare of any barrier. We both stilled when my forehead rested against hers.

“We can’t,” I found myself saying.

“I know,” she whispered back. “I just needed to feel this. To feel all of you at least once.”

Our hearts thundered as our bodies strained to move.

Common sense was quickly leaving the building with each exhale. Each subtle move. Just once, she’d said. Could I give in and let her have what she’d asked of me? My body screamed yes, but my mind said no. All it would take was once to change everything. I wanted it all with Gracen, but in time, not because we’d lost our heads in the moment.

She gasped, grabbing my arms. “Please…”

I rocked against her, holding myself off with as much restraint as I could muster. When she cried out, I quickly pulled free, shuddering as I felt the aftershocks of her release trying to scatter my restraint and lure me back in.

Blindly, I reached across the nightstand, fingers connecting with the foil packet I sought by touch alone. She trembled beside me, waiting for me, ready for me, like I’d pictured a million times before in my dreams. Only this time, it wasn’t a dream. She was really there. In my arms. The ache I’d felt for so long quenched, if but only for a moment.

* * *

I couldn’t move. Didn’t want to move. Her leg was hooked over mine, her fingers trailing soft circles at the base of my spine. My lips pressed against the throbbing vein of her neck as I kissed a path up to her lips. Both my arms were under her, cupping her shoulders, yet keeping half my weight from crushing her.

I’d never in my life experienced something so powerful before. Sex had normally been just that… sex. It had fulfilled a need. Hell, it had even felt good. But with Gracen? I’d never lost myself so completely. Never felt the surrender of a woman’s body as if it were connected to my own. I felt the moment everything in her coiled. And when it broke free, I felt the untamable wildness that ricocheted between the two of us.

Gracen shifted under me.

“You okay?” I asked, pulling away from her and getting off the bed, holding my hand out to her.

When she sat up, her hair fell forward over her shoulder, but she made no move to push it back. “Started getting a cramp in my thigh. I’d crack some kind of lame joke about your girth, but I’ll leave that for another time,” she said, taking my hand.

After I’d helped her from the bed, she paused briefly to place a quick kiss to my lips and then brushed past me.

The bathroom door closed behind her, so I headed to the kitchen, grabbed a paper towel, and discarded the condom in the trash.

Lucy, hearing us move around, woke from her spot on the couch and jumped down to investigate. Her wet nose pushed against my skin in hello as she trotted to the door.

I let her out and waited for her to do her business. The grey streaks of dawn broke through the canopy of trees overhead, making it easy to see where she’d trotted off to. Normally, I’d let her out and she’d let me know when she was ready to come back in. But I was ready to curl back up in bed with Gracen and snatch a couple of more hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Lucy’s head jerked up, nose twitching.

In the early morning, sound traveled a lot further, making it seem louder than normal, which was how I heard the unmistakable sound of my brother’s truck long before his headlights bounced into view.

“Gracen, Lex is pulling up,” I called to her as I snatched our discarded clothes from the night before off the kitchen floor.

“Lex?” A yellow wash of light spilled over her from the open bathroom door.

My fingers itched to touch her. Peel the shirt she’d covered herself with back off her and disappear under the covers. Lex showing up halted that before it could happen.

I couldn’t help but sigh as we quickly got dressed. Whatever he needed had to be important for him to come at the ass crack of dawn.

The kitchen light snapped on as I met Lex on the porch.

He looked like hell.

“Lex, what’s wrong?” Gracen said, coming around me and grabbing his arm.

He scrubbed his hands down his face. “It’s Uncle Joe.”

Gracen pulled him inside as she darted a worried glance at me.

“What happened?” I asked as Gracen started assembling what she needed to brew a pot of coffee.

He shook himself. “We need to get to the hospital.”

I darted to the bedroom and grabbed my wallet. By the time I made it back to the kitchen, Lex was already in his truck waiting for me. “Gracen, do you want to come? We can swing by your place and drop Lucy off.”

She shook her head. “Leave your keys. I’ll clean up here and drive your truck down when I’m done.”

I knew Lex was in a hurry, but I couldn’t rush out without a word after everything we’d shared only hours earlier. “I…”

Lex honked the horn.

“It’s okay, Slade. Call me later and let me know how Uncle Joe is doing,” she said, curling her fingers around Lucy’s collar to keep her from following me out the door.

I wasn’t leaving without at least a kiss goodbye, so I crossed the room and quickly dropped a kiss to her lips. “I’ll call you when I know what the hell is going on.”

Lex honked again.

Gracen waved me out the door. “Go before he leaves you.”

* * *

“A heart attack? I’d talked to Uncle Joe the day before. He’d looked fine to me then. How the hell could something like a heart attack pop up on someone who appeared as healthy as I was?

Lex snorted. “When’s the last time you went to dinner at the big house?”

“Since Aunt Betty left,” I answered, realizing how much distance I’d put between us. I lived, breathed, and bled the farm, but kept to what could only be called my personal bubble. It disconnected me from my family, even though they lived only steps away from my own front porch. It wasn’t because I wanted to. Hell, if I had as much time as Lex seemed to, I would have made more of a point to go. Normally, it was already dark by the end of my day. My only thoughts at that point were how fast I could shower, stuff food down my throat, and get to bed before the alarm clock went off again. My hours were long, and my days were full. I loved every second of it, but I sometimes found myself feeling like I couldn’t wait to get away from it all.

Lex shifted in his seat, clutching the steering wheel a little tighter. “I called her.”

Those three words jolted me. “Why? She left him. What makes you think she’d even care?”

“He told me to. And before you ask, I don’t know why. What I do know is she’s getting a flight out of Florida as soon as she can.”

I let my head fall back against the seat. “Wonderful.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t like Aunt Betty. She’d been like a mother to Lex and me when we were younger. But something had happened. Whatever it was had been pretty damn big. The blowout between her and Uncle Joe had shaken the very roots of Owens’ Ranch before Aunt Betty decided it was best she left. There were no explanations. No apologies. Nothing but angry outbursts from Uncle Joe whenever Lex or I asked about her. So we decided to stop asking. And we never heard from her again.

The same couldn’t be said for Uncle Joe. At some point, she had to have contacted him. Otherwise, how in the hell would Lex have known how to get ahold of her?

I scrubbed my hand along the stubble of my chin. “How bad is he, Lex?”

He flicked a quick glance in my direction before settling his eyes back on the road. “It’s not good, Slade.”

Worry settled over me. Uncle Joe, in my eyes, was the saddle-sitting version of Superman. The years might have aged him, but he’d always be the man who could do anything.

I wanted to throw open the truck door at the first available moment and run far away from the reality Lex raced to get us to.

Lex whipped into an empty parking spot and fired open his door. “Let’s just hope we’re not too late.”

Dread rolled through me as we crossed the parking lot and entered the hospital through the emergency room.

The nurse behind the desk looked up from her computer. “Can I help you?”

“You have a patient, Joe Owens, who came in by ambulance not too long ago. We’d like to see him,” Lex answered.

The nurse’s face pulled into a frown. “I’m afraid you can’t do that.”

Lex and I both stiffened.

“Why not?” he demanded.

She bristled. “He’s been taken to surgery. Once he’s in a room and the doctor clears it, then you can see him. Until then, any family wishing to stay can wait in the waiting room down the hall to the left.”

Lex leaned forward to say something else. By the look on his face, whatever it was wasn’t going to be ‘thank you’.

I grabbed his arm, pulling him beside me as I thanked her.

“What the hell are you thanking her for? It’s not like she did anything for us,” Lex demanded, pulling his arm away with a sharp jerk.

“If he’s in surgery right now, all we can do is wait. Yelling at her wouldn’t have helped any. Jesus, Lex, you need to take a damn breath. They’ll let us know how Uncle Joe’s surgery went as soon as they can.”

Lex stalked into the family waiting room. I left him to cool his heals there while I headed to the cafeteria for a much-needed cup of coffee. Waiting was the worst part. It seemed no matter how much I didn’t want to think about all the things that could go wrong, I couldn’t help but think of them anyway.

If something were to happen to Uncle Joe, the ranch would be handed down to Lex. I wasn’t sure what worried me more… the unknown state of Uncle Joe, or Lex gaining full control of the ranch.

Grant had been right about one thing. The land wasn’t in Lex’s blood like it was in mine. As terrible as it sounded, I thought the only reason he hadn’t taken off was because he didn’t have anywhere else to go.

That’s a shitty way to be thinking right now, since I have no damn idea what the hell is going on, I scolded myself.

Lex’s worry spilled over to me, scattering my thoughts in a million different directions. No matter the outcome, Uncle Joe was down, which would leave running the entire ranch to Lex until he was back on his feet. But what if Uncle Joe never made it back on his feet? What happened then?

The what-ifs chased each other around and around inside my head.

Down the hall, close to the nurses’ station, was a complimentary coffee pot. I plucked a cup from the stack and stuck it under the spout, pushing the handle on the top. Coffee, black as tar, streamed out in one long, thick ribbon. From the look of it, a spoon probably would have stood straight up in it. Good. I’d need the extra kick to get me through whatever came next.

I took a sip, grimacing at the acidic bite, and pulled out my phone. Gracen answered on the first ring.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

I sighed. “He’s in surgery now, so we don’t know anything.”

“How’s Lex?”

“He’s cooling his heels in the waiting room. I left him there to get a coffee and call you.”

“Actually, he’s calling me, too. Hang on.”

The phone went silent in my ear as I rushed back to the waiting room.

Lex paced the floor, firing off directions like a drill sergeant. “…and tell Clint once he’s done with that to check the fence Slade fixed. The last thing I need right now is Grant calling me.”

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, disconnecting the call to Gracen as I marched up to him.

Lex waved me off. “And tell Clint to call me.”

I could feel my blood boiling inside my veins. Why the hell didn’t he just call Clint himself?

He hung up on Gracen without even saying goodbye. Typical Lex.

He shoved his phone in his pocket and scowled at me. “What?”

It took every bit of self-control I had not to wrap my hands around his neck and squeeze. “What the hell do you mean, what? Why didn’t you just call Clint in the first place?”

“Because I don’t have his cell phone number, that’s why,” Lex fumed.

“Are you kidding me? How do you not have your ranch foreman’s cell phone number?” What the hell was wrong with my brother? That was the first thing I would have made sure I had.

His hand came up, cutting through the air. “Don’t start. You don’t have any sort of say anymore. You’re leaving, remember?”

My brother knew just the right buttons to push. “Seriously, Lex? That’s the best you could come up with? I might be leaving for Montana, but it doesn’t change the fact that my last name is still Owens. I’m not some random ranch hand you can dismiss.”

“I know who you are. Do you? Besides, I’m not the one walking away from the ranch.” He shook his head.

“I know what it looks like, Lex. Do you think I wanted to leave? Do you even know how hard it was to make that decision? You don’t. So stop judging me and stop being a dick about it.”

I didn’t want to fight with Lex. Not in the waiting room of the hospital. And definitely not about the ranch. Not when we were waiting on word about Uncle Joe.

Lex tipped his head back, staring at the ceiling and letting out a long sigh. He didn’t want to fight with me either.

Along the back wall, a well-used couch beckoned me to sit. I walked over, plopped down, and stretched my legs out, crossing them at the ankle.

The springs squeaked in protest when Lex dropped down beside me, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “What the hell am I supposed to do when you’re gone, huh? We’ve run the ranch together for so long that I’m not sure how to do it without you.”

I swallowed the last of my coffee and set the cup down on the magazine-laden table beside the couch. “Uncle Joe will be there. You’ve run it this long with him…”

He sighed. “No, Slade. For the last four years, you and I have been running it.”

That was news to me. “How so?”

Lex spoke without picking up his head. “He stopped coming to me. He stopped checking on things, or even asking about things. It was like he didn’t even care anymore. He put on a good face if anyone talked to him, but he always differed everything to me. And I always caught him up with everything going on at the end of the day. You and me? We’re the ones who’ve been running things. How the hell am I supposed to train someone to replace you?”

I had no answer for that.

“If something happens… if he doesn’t make it, will you reconsider about leaving for Montana? Or at least give me more time to get Clint trained?” he asked, sitting up to look me in the eye.

I nodded, unsure if it meant I’d stay for good or only long enough to get Clint trained.

Lex’s phone rang, breaking the tension, but it was only a momentary reprieve when I noticed the call was from Florida.

“This day just keeps getting better and better.” Lex sighed, answering his phone.

I listened to the one-sided conversation as Lex pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, I’ll see if Gracen will pick you up. No, Slade and I are at the hospital. It’s either Gracen or you’ll have to take a taxi. No… no, I’m sure Gracen won’t mind. Okay, Aunt Betty, we’ll see you tonight.”

He dropped the phone in his lap. “What’s the chance that Uncle Joe makes it through the surgery and then decides to keel over when she gets here from the shock of seeing her?” He waved the question off. “I shouldn’t have said that. I just want him to come out of this okay.”

“He’s all we have left,” I said, thinking out loud.

“No, he isn’t. We still have each other. And we have Gracen.” He paused for a minute, eyebrow winging up under the brown hair falling over his forehead. “You never had any issues with the ranch. Some days, I wondered if you were even my brother. Thought maybe you’d sprouted up from the dirt and Momma had picked you.” He briefly chuckled. “But seriously, you leaving? Why? What does Montana have to offer you, besides really long winters, that you can’t have right here in Texas?”

I wasn’t ready to answer his questions. Wasn’t ready for him to give me hell over my decision to leave that was based off Gracen and my need to protect my heart. Would he even understand? It was doubtful. Lex had never fallen for any particular girl, let alone pined over one. Not that I knew about, anyway.

All I could do was give him a lopsided grin.

“Is it because the ranch will be mine one day? I can’t help the fact I was born before you.” He watched my eyes, gauging my reaction as he waited for some sort of clue that he’d figured it out.

“It’s not any of that… Look, my reasons are my own. They have nothing to do with who owns what…”

He cut me off. “It’s because I kept piling things on you, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not that either. I don’t mind the work. I never have.” I closed my eyes, wishing he’d drop it.

“Well, what is it then? Everything you want is right here—”

When he went quiet, my eyes popped open, fully expecting the doctor to be at the door.

I could see Lex staring at me from my peripheral. “You’re still in love with Gracen.”

I froze.

“Don’t even try denying it. It’s written all over your face. Why would you leave if you’re in love with her and she’s in love with you?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, ready to bolt out of the room.

“I’ve seen the way she looks at you. I know exactly what I’m talking about, and so do you. I always wondered when the two of you would get it together. You’ve been in love with each other for so long that y’all practically gravitate around each other like your own personal solar system.”

If only what he said was true. Last night had been the best night of my entire life, but it might have been a huge mistake as well. What if Gracen regretted it? It wasn’t as if we could take it back. And there was no way I’d be able to look at her and not remember. Unease worked its way through me. How could I have been so reckless? I’d asked her to come with me to Montana, but she’d never answered me.

“Are you the family of Joe Owens?”

Lex and I both stood.