The young mare lying on the straw inside Ben Stalling’s horse barn struggled to a stand. She was wobbly and exhausted but beginning to show interest in the newborn curled at her feet. With a soft whicker, she nudged the foal, urging the baby stallion to stand and take his first meal.

“She’s looking better, Nate.” Ben said. “For a while there, I thought I’d lose her. Can’t thank you enough.”

“Glad I could help.” Nate rose from his crouch next to the foal. He’d dried off the newborn and checked him over. So far, so good. “I know what this stallion means to you, Ben, and he’s a good-looking fella. Like his daddy.”

The horse rancher had lost his registered stallion, a champion quarter horse, to a lightning strike last spring. A couple of months later, he’d been both delighted and nervous to learn his young mare was pregnant for the first time. Knowing that the prized stallion lived on in this foal meant a lot to Ben’s livelihood as a horse breeder.

“Not many men would give up a night’s sleep for another man’s horse. Calypso’s fortunate to have your knowledge and your willingness to lend a hand.”

Nate rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and rolled his head back and forth. He remembered another long night with animals, but a certain redhead and a kiss had been included with that one. Unless he counted the nuzzle the mare had given him after he’d helped her baby come into the world, kisses weren’t the norm in his world.

“Two years of vet school isn’t all that much, but what I learned there and in the school of experience, I’m happy to share. I’m just glad she and her foal are going to make it. Births like this are tricky.” One of the foal’s legs had been folded back, and the young mare had been nervous, hurting, and scared.

Nate’s arms and back ached from fighting against the tide of the mare’s contractions to correct the improper presentation, but a sense of satisfaction he couldn’t explain to anyone filled his chest. God had made man to be stewards of the animal kingdom, and Nate loved knowing he’d made a difference for both the animal and his neighbor.

The two ranchers stepped out of the stall and walked the length of Ben’s horse barn, the scent of horses and alfalfa swirling around them. Valuable animals, purebred stock, stuck their heads over the half-door stalls and watched the human’s progress with liquid eyes and soft whickers.

At one end of the barn, Nate stopped at a sink to scrub up. When he finished, Ben clapped him on the back. “How much do I owe you, Nate?”

Nate replaced his hat, left above the sink on a hook while he delivered the foal. “Not a thing. Pay it forward. Or, if you prefer, make a donation to my church. We’re raising funds for the after-school program.”

“Consider it done and stay for breakfast. Nelly’s cooking pancakes.”

He was hungry. Near starving after the energy he’d exerted, but Whitney’s kitchen, not Ben’s, appeared in his thoughts.

“Thanks for the invite, but I’d better get to work.” At Whitney’s ranch. Preferably at her scarred kitchen table with the twins playing around his legs and Whitney looking too pretty to be real as she scrambled those jelly bean eggs into a tasty omelet.

Ben laughed. “You’ve been at work since one this morning.”

Nate waved as he headed for his truck. Being with Whitney didn’t count as work.

Yeah, he was getting in over his head, though he’d managed to keep his growing feelings to himself. Whitney had been crystal clear about her intentions. One year on Sally’s ranch, one year to make it legally hers, and she would sell out and hit the road, head to the city where she belonged.

Calypso was only a stopping place, and he was only her neighbor. If he hadn’t long ago decided that he and relationships didn’t work, he’d be worried that he would crash and burn again when she left.

He pulled into her potholed driveway and mentally kicked himself. The next time he was nearby on the tractor, he’d fix this road before they both lost a wheel in the holes.

He killed the engine, eager to see her, to share his latest adventure. She’d want to know about the baby stallion and how he’d manipulated the bent leg into place.

Whitney opened the front door, and Nate experienced that sudden loss of air pressure, the dip in internal altitude that occurred every single morning. Couldn’t be the ranch air. He lived on a ranch. It had to be the redhead.

The babies appeared, one each side of her, chattering something. Sophia spotted him and reached her arms toward him. He loped up the sloping lawn and onto the porch to pick her up. The tiny girl leaned in with a body hug. Honey sweet. Enough to melt the hardest man.

And he’d always been a soft touch.

“Her hands are sticky,” Whitney said, too late.

“I’ll live. When you hear where I’ve been all night, you won’t worry about sticky fingers.”

She didn’t pry, and he was a little puzzled. Usually, she was eager for his stories. Wasn’t she curious in the least? Didn’t she wonder if he’d been out on the town? Or was he such a loser that another woman never crossed her mind?

Inside the kitchen, she handed him a damp cloth. He wiped the baby’s hands first and then his sticky cheek.

The place smelled like bacon, and he saw a crispy stack on a plate next to a bowl of pancake batter.

“Pancakes okay?” She poured batter onto a hot skillet. The sound and smell sizzled. His belly growled loud enough to make her smile.

He wouldn’t gripe if she fed him mud pies, though he’d had his mouth set for her southwestern style omelet. “Pancakes are fine.”

“I have plenty of eggs if you’d rather.”

“How about both? I’m hungry.”

“I figured.” She flashed him a smile, and his stomach dipped. He was doing the one thing he’d promised never to do again. He was falling in love. Not that she was anything like Alicia, other than being a city girl. Alicia had never planned to live on a ranch. But then, come to think of it, neither had Whitney. She was only here for the inheritance.

Maybe the two women had more in common that he wanted to believe, and he was being a fool again.

“What’s that scowl for?” She squinted at him, a shiny metal spatula aloft like a weapon.

He intentionally brightened his expression. “Better?”

She cocked a hip. “If you’re too busy today, I can handle things. I’ve already imposed on your good nature too long.”

The scowl returned, and he didn’t try to hide it. Was she trying to ditch him? “I’m here because I want to be.”

She let that soak in, her expression thoughtful. He had no idea what she was thinking. Probably that he was a grumpy old cowboy. Maybe she wanted him to go home and leave her alone.

“If I’m bothering you—”

“You’re not,” she said. “I don’t want to be a burden.”

“I thought we were friends. Friends are never a burden.”

She turned back to the stove and dished up a tall steaming stack and set it in front of him. He poured warmed syrup over them while she cracked eggs into a bowl and made stirring sounds.

“You don’t have to feed me.”

“I like to. But if you don’t want me to cook for you—”

With a sigh, he shoved the plate away, appetite still there but definitely flagging. “I think we need to talk.”

She got a frightened doe look about her. “About what?

“You and me.” There, he’d said it. The next move was hers.

“Are you mad at me about something?”

“No.”

“Then eat your breakfast before it gets cold.” She pointed the spatula at his stomach. “We can talk after your belly quits growling.”

Since she put it that way, he dug in, but the thought of talking about us rolled around in his head like a renegade pinball.

Whitney cooked his omelet while he consumed the fluffy pancakes and sneaked bites to two little bird mouths standing at his knee as if she never fed them. Both girls would be sticky again, but he’d clean them up.

When she’d refreshed his coffee and plated the omelet, she took the chair across from him. “All I can cook is breakfast.”

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected her to say, but it wasn’t that. “I’m not complaining.”

“You never complain, Nate. You just work. And work. My guess is you worked last night.”

Was he that boring and predicable? No hint of mystery whatsoever? “Ben Stallings’s mare was in foal.”

She folded her hands beneath her chin, interested. He’d told her the story of how God had blessed the rancher with the pregnant mare after the tragedy with his stallion.

“She had trouble? Is she all right?”

“We got her through it. Mom and baby are fine. The foal is a stallion that looks a lot like his sire. Ben was delighted.” He put his fork down. “Good man. I’m happy for him.”

She reached across the small square table and covered his hand with hers. He felt the sensation of her touch all the way to the toes of his boots. Heart music tuned up like the Boston Pops Symphony.

“You’re a good man, too, Nate Caldwell.”

That’s all it took from her. One touch, and he was messed up. Even when they brushed accidentally in the barn or out in the pasture, his nerve endings reacted like he’d grabbed hold of a frayed electric cord.

He regained his fork, trying to appear nonchalant. “Folks around Calypso help each other. I’ve been on the receiving end a few times.”

With a disbelieving huff, she leaned back. “Name one.”

He finished the omelet in two bites. “Sure you want to hear this?”

He wasn’t much for talking about Alicia, but she’d already trusted him with her story. Turnabout was fair play.

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.” She lifted one of the twins onto her lap and wiped Nate’s syrup off the baby’s face and hands. With twins, he guessed she always kept a wet cloth handy.

He cleared his throat, stretched his hands out on the table top and heaved a sigh. “I always wanted kids. My ex-wife didn’t, a little fact she didn’t bother to tell me until we miscarried. I was crushed and heartbroken. She was glad to have an excuse to leave. I didn’t know she was already seeing someone else.” Dumb cowboy. That’s what Alicia had called him. Dumb, clueless country bumpkin.

She turned his hand over and laced her fingers with his. “I understand that kind of hurt.”

Some of his tension ebbed.

“I know you do.” He saw his reflection in her blue eyes, the elements of sorrow and loss and the shock of knowing failure. He’d recovered from Alicia’s betrayal, but not the loss of the child. Whether it had carried his DNA or not, he’d wanted that baby. “For a while after she left, I was so low, I could have crawled under a snake’s belly and quit breathing, but Calypso wouldn’t let me.”

“What did they do?”

He chuckled, remembering. “Nearly worked me to death. Every time I’d get gloomy, my phone would ring. I suspect Connie and Emily had a lot to do with that. Some tried to fix me up with dates.” He titled his head in a comic pose, eyebrow jacked. “I refused those, but a few were intended to make me smile. One was with old Mrs. Pearson who is at least ninety and hasn’t had a lucid thought since she was sixty.”

Whitney laughed and then sobered. “Poor lady. I shouldn’t have laughed.”

“Go ahead. I laughed too. But I took her some flowers at the rest home, and she asked me to marry her. I said she was too good for me, and she agreed. We parted friends.”

They both laughed again, the mood lightening as he went on, “Others wanted my opinion on a mare or a cow or the color they should paint their barn. I think I helped paint six barns in two months. Not to mention the fence I built, the fishing holes I fished, and the calves I worked, all with a friend or relative right next to me filling me with wisdom and good humor. I wanted to go somewhere like an old worn out bull and die, but they wouldn’t leave me alone long enough to do it.”

“Keeping busy helped me too. If I hadn’t had the twins, I’m not sure how I would have survived.”

Unlike him, she didn’t mention friends and family to help her through the loss. Again, he realized how blessed he was.

He also realized she was still holding his hand and decided he wouldn’t mind sitting here all day. If that made him a fool, he guessed he was one. But maybe that was as far as he should take it for now.

“About us,” he said. “I liked kissing you.”

Not a good start, Caldwell. One thing for sure, he’d never be a silver-tongued Don Juan.

“I wondered.” She started to pull her hand away, but he held fast.

“Wouldn’t mind trying it again sometime.”

She blushed. “Me, either.”

“Well, then.” He stood, slowly bringing her up with him. The twins patted at his legs and jabbered, but for once, he ignored them.

She followed him up, her light blue eyes never leaving his face. Her chest rose and fell as her pupils dilated, the black centers pushing the blue out to the rim.

“I know you’ve been hurt.”

“You too.” Her breath tickled the skin on his face, raised his yearning a good two notches. “But a kiss between friends is safe, isn’t it?”

Friends? Not hardly. But if he didn’t kiss her, he’d implode right here on her white linoleum floor, so he locked onto her suggestion. “Whatever you say. However you want to play it.”

But he wasn’t playing at all. And the realization jarred him. Whitney Brookes was shaking him out of his lethargy, no matter what she wanted to call it.

“I like that idea. Kissing friends.” Her answer was a whisper as her bottom lip dropped open.

He could no more resist that invitation than he could resist her omelets. As gently as he knew how, as if she were one of his flighty mares, he cupped her face and pressed his mouth to hers. She shivered, and he took that as a good sign, wrapping his arms around her until they were as close as a thought.

He breathed her in, a mix of bacon and sunshine, and deepened the kiss until his knees went shaky and the heart music started playing. Reluctantly, he broke the kiss, but not his embrace. He could stand right here in her kitchen with her slender arms holding him close from now on and not ever get hungry again. Except for her. His good, good friend.

He studied her pretty face, all pink and cream and long pale lashes. A man could get used to that face across his breakfast table every morning. And on his pillow every night.

He caught himself up short. There he went again, forgetting everything he’d learned the hard way. Though the idea chafed against him worse than cheap boots, Whitney only wanted friendship, and her way was for the best. All he had of Whitney and the twins was a year. Less, now that two months had passed and winter crept in like a burglar threatening to steal her away.

Less than a year to be with her, to care for her, to love on those little girls and show them what a daddy was supposed to be. To show her how a real man loves.

To convince her that staying was better than leaving.

But this time he knew the score. This time, he’d be prepared for the day she drove away with his heart.

It was only a kiss between neighborly friends. No reason to go all junior high school and swoon over a big, sexy cowboy with a heart the size of his ranch. But that’s the way Whitney felt as she strolled across the green lawn, holding Nate’s hand on one side and Olivia’s on the other. Sophia had attached herself to the cowboy on the opposite end until they looked like a game of Red Rover.

Her mouth still tingled from the passionate kiss that didn’t feel anything like a friendly peck. If she’d been wearing socks, Nate would have knocked them off.

For a tired man who’d been up most of the night, he’d retained plenty of energy. Wow, did he ever! She was amazed at all he did and understood now why he’d been so reluctant in the beginning to help on her ranch. Not counting his own horses and cattle, the man was in high demand all the time.

He’d delivered Ben’s colt last night. Two days ago, he and the pastor had built a wheelchair ramp on Mr. Jacob’s back porch so the older gentleman could get his wife in and out. Last week, somebody’s dog got hit by a car. Before that, he and Gilbert had erected a new sign at the church and patched a leaky roof.

She slid a glance his way, admiring his profile and the way he dipped sideways now and then to listen to her daughter and make her giggle.

The man absolutely stopped her breath with the way he adored her girls. Nate would make a great father.

She caught the direction of her thoughts and reeled them in like a fishing line tossed out too far. Some places she simply could not let herself go. Nate was a friend and neighbor. Two kisses didn’t indicate a relationship or even a desire for one. Plain and simple, a man who could kiss like simply had to kiss someone.

Suddenly, Nate stopped walking and yanked Whitney out of her teenage daydream. “Did you leave that gate open on purpose?”

“What gate?” Before he could reply, she saw the opening to one of the pastures. “Oh, no.”

She broke the connection of hands and jogged toward the sheep pasture, hoping like mad that none of the baby doll sheep were on the loose. “How did this happen? I’m positive I shut that gate.”

Nate, with the twins hot on his heels, went around her to look across the fenced field. “I don’t see anything out there, but they could be back in the woods or lying down by the creek.”

Whitney spun toward the barn, pulse jumping like crickets in a forest fire. “Yesterday, something got into the barn and knocked over some feed. I wonder—”

She’d blamed Clive at first, but he’d been right where she’d put him, along with the other horses. The donkeys and cows weren’t responsible, either, which left yesterday’s spilled feed a mystery. And now another gate left open.

“You check the barn,” Nate said. “I’ll walk the fence and see if I can find any sign of the sheep.”

He was gone in a flash, strong legs eating up the ground between the barn and the big pasture. He probably wished for a real horse at a time like this, and maybe she needed one to keep up with this many critters, especially since they seemed to be conspiring against her.

“I go. I go, too. I go!” Jumping up and down, Olivia chose that moment to declare her preference for the cowboy, and when she didn’t get her way, the toddler set up a howl that startled the goats. Three of them fainted.

With Olivia yowling and Sophia beginning to sniffle in sisterly sympathy, Whitney’s journey to the barn was slow and torturous. By the time she’d checked all the feed rooms and found them undisturbed, Nate was back.

Olivia, drama queen in training, threw herself at his legs and squealed. “My Nate! Mine.”

Out of breath from the jog, he patted her ponytails, but his attention was on Whitney. “I counted fifteen sheep in the pasture with the donkeys and horses. That’s all of them, right?”

“Yes. But how did they get back there? Was the gate into the horse pasture open too?”

“No.” He removed his hat and scratched at the back of his head. “You sure you didn’t get distracted and leave the gates open even for a few minutes?”

“I don’t think so.” But that’s what she’d done before, wasn’t it?

After much thought and retracing her every moment in the barnyard, she’d come to the conclusion that she’d been the guilty party when Billy, the goat, had escaped. Yet, she didn’t recall opening that gate. Or closing it.

“Maybe I did, Nate.” She told him about the other incident. “I must have been opening the gate when Sophia cried out, and I ran to her without securing the latch.”

“It happens. Human kids are more important than goat kids.”

She tried to smile, grateful for his understanding. That was Nate. Kind to everyone and everything.

She glanced at those perfect lips, now in a flat line of concern, and wished to turn back time to the kitchen. For that too brief moment in his arms, she’d experience more comfort and security than she’d had in months. Years, actually. Not to mention the riot of romantic notions still skating through her bloodstream and dancing on her nerve endings. A woman didn’t easily forget a kiss like that.

“Sally’s lawyer was here at the time.” She gently pushed the kiss to the back burner, where it remained fully ignited. “I don’t think he approves of me as Sally’s heir. For sure, he doesn’t think I can handle this farm, and maybe he’s right. Sometimes I feel so inadequate.”

Nate glanced away, staring at the row of barn stalls, a scowl on his face as deep as her driveway ruts. “Does that mean you’re giving up? Going back to St. Louis?”

If the statement hadn’t been so impossible, she would have laughed. He didn’t know, and she wasn’t about to tell him, that she had nothing but a homeless shelter to go back to.

“This is my inheritance. Mine and Olivia’s and Sophia’s. No matter her reasons, Sally wanted us to have it. And I intend to do all I can to finish out this year successfully and claim this ranch as mine.”

For some reason, her words didn’t have the impact she’d expected. Nate’s head bobbed once and, without meeting her eyes, he clapped his hat back on and said, “Let’s get busy then. Sheep won’t move themselves, and the water troughs are empty.”

“That’s impossible. I refilled them last night.” She scooped up the girls and hurried to keep up with him as they exited the barn. “Did I say something to make you mad?”

He looked at her but kept walking. “You sure those troughs were full?”

“Positive.”

His scowl returned, but this time she knew it wasn’t for her. “Then, how?”

Whitney gnawed her bottom lip. Had she forgotten? Was she that distracted? That inadequate?

Finally, she admitted. “I don’t know.”