“Daddy, what was it like growing up on a ranch?”

Laredo looked up from the contract he was reading on the kitchen counter and found Bella sitting on a barstool in front of him. She had her little chin on her hands and was staring at him as though she had the weight of the entire world on her shoulders.

“Growing up on a ranch?” Laredo mused. He wondered what had brought this on. Bella had been acting weird ever since Darren had brought her home from her dance lesson. “It was dirty.”

“Dirty!” Bella groaned and rolled her eyes. In that moment, Laredo could see the teenager lurking beneath the nine-year-old’s sweet demeanor. “So what if it was dirty! You were a little boy. All little boys are dirty. Maybe you were the dirty one and the ranch was clean!”

“I’m sure your gramma Avery would say that,” Laredo muttered. He really didn’t want to talk about this. He was having a tough time keeping himself from walking to the sideboard and pouring himself a drink. “It was busy,” he finally decided. “There was always more work to do than there were people to do it. The horses had to come first. So did the cows. Sometimes we would be out all night long trying to find strays and still have to go to school the next day.”

“Wow!” Bella breathed. “That sounds awesome!”

Laredo raised a brow. “Awesome? Seriously? You think it sounds awesome to spend the whole night on a horse and then get like two hours of sleep before you have to get up and go meet the bus to go to school?”

“I’ve never ridden a bus,” Bella pointed out. “We don’t have busses at our school. I think it sounds exciting.”

“And I suppose you think it sounds exciting to be on a horse all night too.” Laredo wondered if there was anything he could tell her to make her realize that horses were not all fun and games.

“Yes!” Bella shouted. “I would love to ride all night looking for cows! It would just be me and Smokey riding and the moon in the sky!”

Something she said plowed right through his brain. What was she talking about? “Smokey?” Laredo could not believe that Bella would still remember the little grey mare she’s only seen once over a year ago. “How do you know anything about Smokey?”

“I want her to be my horse,” Bella explained. “Someday I want a horse just like her.”

“Right.” Laredo felt suspicious somehow. There was something weird about the way his daughter was acting. He pursed his lips. His mouth was watering. He wanted that alcohol bad. He wanted the floaty feeling of not caring. He didn’t want to think about Helena and how his father thought he was a loser. He just wanted to forget. That would do it.

“Dad?”

“What?”

Bella was looking at him funny now. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” He struggled for something to talk about. Something that was not about horses. “How was dance class? Did you learn anything new for the spring recital?”

“No.” Bella didn’t seem to care about it. That bothered him. She should love the dancing. When she was a little tiny thing in a pink tutu and leotard, she had loved it. What had happened?

“The summer recital is just a few weeks away, right?” Laredo couldn’t quite remember, but he knew it had to be coming up soon because the end of the school year was coming up fast too. “Don’t you have costume fittings and stuff?”

“Oh, probably.” She sounded so flippant. Why? “They just sort of measure your arms and stuff and then that’s it.”

“Oh.” Laredo shook his head. He felt like he was missing something. Maybe it was his brain telling him that he needed alcohol. Odd, but this problem was a little bigger than he was comfortable admitting. Finally, he looked at the clock. “It’s bedtime, kiddo.”

“Okay.” She leaned up onto the counter and kissed his cheek. “Night, Daddy.”

“Night, Bella.”

Laredo watched Bella prance out of the kitchen and down the hallway. Were those neighing noises she was making? What the hell? It was like his kid was a stranger or something.

He began to pace in front of the front windows of his den. He didn’t use the den. Nobody did. In fact, there were lots of parts of this house that nobody used. Laredo was feeling shaky. His hands were literally shaking. He needed to finish reading that contract, but he couldn’t even begin to focus. His gaze kept coming back over and over again to the bottle of scotch on the sideboard. Maybe he should pour it down the drain. But that sounded like a bad idea. What if he needed it? Like really needed it for something?

A knock at the front door startled Laredo so badly that he nearly tripped over his own boots. He managed to catch himself on the doorjamb at the last second. Who would be calling right now? Was it one of his brothers? He could see them showing up and poking at him. Or maybe it was Paul Weatherby. Maybe he had come back to arrest Laredo for something else stupid. It could have been someone from the homeowner’s association too. Wow. There were a lot of reasons not to answer that door.

Except he went to the door anyway. He took a peek through the little peephole and immediately felt his entire body begin to relax.

“Aria?”

Laredo flung the door open and was powerless to stop the smile that stretched across his face. There she was. She looked tired. She was still dressed in her jeans and T-shirt. The jeans looked as though she’d been used as an equine scratching post, and there was a nondescript green stain across the front of her shirt. Then, of course, he could see that she was peppered with about a billion little pieces of horsehair. All in all, she looked beautiful.

“Come in,” Laredo urged. “What brings you out so late at night?”

The sudden and almost overwhelming urge to drink was just abruptly gone. Laredo didn’t find his gaze drifting toward the liquor. Nor did he feel as though he were stressed out and at the end of his wits. Aria’s effect on him was that immediate.

“Actually, I’m really sorry to bother you.” She stepped into his foyer. “I completely forgot earlier to have you sign some boarding agreements for those horses. My accountant and my insurance agent will murder me in my bed if they found out that I have horses on my property that don’t belong to me and don’t have any paperwork.”

“Of course.” He tried not to be too disappointed that this was more of a business call than a social visit. There was really no reason for her to make a social call on him. Not at the moment. Laredo was just hoping that she would start having reasons to make social calls before too long.

She held up a folder that looked very full of papers. “I’ve got them right here. Do you have time to take a look? I don’t want to interrupt your father-daughter time.”

“Bella has gone to bed. I try not to let her stay up too late. She reads before bed, and sometimes I swear she’ll read half the night if I don’t send her up with at least a half hour or forty-five minutes to get her book fetish in.” Laredo felt like he was rambling. He was. Why? Was he nervous?

“Okay.” Aria drew back and looked a bit uncomfortable. “Can we go in the kitchen or something to look at these?”

“Sure.”

Laredo quickly led the way into the kitchen. He wondered what she would think of his place. Sometimes he was at a loss as to exactly how he’d wound up living in this place. His family thought it was very much him. All expensive trappings and a horrible display of wealth, but that wasn’t him at all. Laredo didn’t need to show off. Who was he showing off for anyway? It wasn’t like anyone was around to care.

Laredo could see her looking at everything. He wished that she would just say what it was she was thinking. She seemed determined to ignore their surroundings for the most part. She put the folder on the kitchen counter beside the contract he was trying to read just a few minutes ago and opened it up.

“They’re pretty straightforward,” Aria explained. “If you need to have a lawyer look at them, you can. I just need a tentative agreement in place because if anything should happen to one of your horses, I need to know who to call, what vet you use, and how much money you’re willing to spend on the bills.”

“Oh. Right.” Laredo had forgotten that there was a whole lot more to horse ownership than was immediately obvious. Then he spotted a sheaf of paper behind the contracts she was pulling out and saw something strangely familiar. “I’m sorry, does that say Smokey?”

“Huh?” Her dark eyes widened until they looked like they were going to pop out. “What do you mean?”

“Does that contract say Smokey? Is that the name of the horse?” Laredo deliberately pulled it out. “This has my brother’s name on it!” She was biting her lip. That’s when Laredo realized he was yelling. He immediately backed off. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to act like that. I just don’t understand what you would be doing with that horse.”

“Jesse brought her out the other day as a potential horse for me to buy as a school pony,” Aria said slowly. “And yes. It’s got your brother’s name on the contract because he’s the one who was with Jesse. I don’t know how all of you Hernandez people do your business, but in my experience, the sale can be made by pretty much any one of you.”

Laredo felt his heart turn over. “So, you own Smokey?”

“Smokey is at my farm,” she confirmed. “Why?”

“That was Bella’s favorite horse.” Laredo was feeling twitchy again. He shoved his fingers through his hair. “Damn, I want a drink.”

Suddenly, he felt Aria’s cool fingers sifting through his hair and settling atop his. She stroked his hands and gently began to massage his head. In spite of everything running through his mind, Laredo felt himself start to relax. Aria’s touch was magic. His whole body felt alive. His skin was on fire, and every nerve in his body was awake and sensitive to her presence.

“That’s it,” she whispered. “Just relax. You’re tense enough to blow a gasket. Seriously, Laredo. You’re going to give yourself a coronary.”

“Nobody would care.”

What was this? A pity party?

Her low laugh made him shiver. “I would care,” she told him softly. Leaning forward, she put her lips beside his ear. “Or is that what you were trying to get me to say?”

“Maybe,” he murmured. “But only if it’s true.”

“It’s true.” She sighed. The whisper of her breath tickling his ear made the blood surge through his veins. He was alive. In that moment, he was alive. Then she very slowly, very carefully, pressed her lips to the shell of his ear. “Can’t you tell how much I care?”

“Maybe.” He was feeling a rush of endorphins that made him light-headed. “I can’t even think straight right now. Talk to me about it later.”

Her low laugh was sexy beyond belief. “Do you remember the summer you turned eighteen? The summer you met Helena?”

He didn’t want to think about that, but he did remember it. “Yes. I shouldn’t have gone out with her. It was a bad idea.”

“Do you remember kissing me?”

“What?” Surely he would have recalled that! Had he kissed her? When? Why?

“There was a rodeo that night. It was a hot summer night. The lights were blazing, and I think one of your brothers was about to get on a bull. You were behind the stands unsaddling your horse. I was walking by, and you asked how my barrel run was.”

“You walked over.” He had the haziest memory of a younger, leaner Aria moving toward him with her hips swinging side to side as though she were still on a horse. They’d been so young! It was the barest hint of a memory. How could he have forgotten? “You told me that your horse had tipped the third barrel, so you were out of the money.” Laredo remembered her lips as they’d moved. He recalled the pink perfection of that bowed set of lips as she had talked to him of what she considered her failure.

Aria nipped Laredo’s earlobe. He heard her suck in a quick breath. “You kissed me that night. You told me that some things were more important than money or winning.”

Holy shit. He had said that.

Suddenly, Aria cupped his face. She ran her thumbs over his cheekbones. Her touch was infinitely gentle. Laredo exhaled slowly just as Aria pressed her lips to his. The kiss was hot, and the passion beneath it was real as the sunset. Flavor exploded in his mouth as he tasted her sweet feminine spice. She was so incredibly beautiful. The counter was between them or he would have had her in his lap. Instead, he had to be satisfied with cradling the back of her head in one hand and gently making love to her mouth as the papers on the counter in front of them fluttered to the floor.

“Aria,” Laredo murmured against her lips. “I should have never let you go back then. I should have known the minute I kissed you that this is what I wanted.”

“Is it?” Her whisper was filled with simple curiosity. “You’re still healing. What that woman did to you is unforgivable. What she did to both of you.”

“You aren’t Helena.” Laredo wasn’t sure if those words were for her or for him. “You’re not like her.”

“No. I’m not.” She sighed and pulled away. “But there are things we need to work out before things can go any farther. There are things…” She stopped talking as though she could not bear to be this close to him right now. “I’m not what you think, Laredo. I have secrets too.”

“Everyone has secrets,” he reasoned.

Her sigh was deep and profound. “Sometimes secrets are more than secrets. Sometimes they’re little lies.”

“I can’t believe that about you,” Laredo argued. There was no way this woman was anything but genuine. She wasn’t wired any other way.

“Look these over,” she told him softly. “I’ll see you tomorrow once you’ve got them signed.”

And just as suddenly as she had appeared on his doorstep, she was gone and Laredo was left feeling as though he could not decipher what any of it had meant.