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She wrinkled her nose at him. “You justhadto bring that one up.”

“We’ll put a helmet on him. We’ll guide the horse. Won’t take our hands off her. It doesn’t have to take twenty years off your life. Maybe just one or two.”

Her heart swelled a little at that. Both at the gesture and at the fact that Shane understood no amount of precaution would ever make any of this completely without worry. She wasn’t sure she knew anyone like that. Lilly was always trying to take her worry away, make it better. Her friends weren’t parents. They couldn’t fully get it.

Shane wasn’t a parent either, and yet he got it. It was a strange mix all in one person. All in one very, very attractive person. “You’re a strange man, Shane Tyler. I don’t know quite what to do with you.”

He pulled his cowboy hat down farther on his head, obscuring his features in shadows. “Ditto, Cora. Ditto.”

* * *

They got Micah up on the horse, and the kid tried so hard to act unaffected and bored, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. Not his mother. Certainly not Shane or Gavin.

The kid wasin love, and there was something special about introducing someone to that. Mostly Shane only ever associated with people who’d grown up around horses and had always worked with them. Ranchers and ranch hands. His life was a summation of connections he’d made from the Tyler ranch.

Watching Cora’s trepidation and Micah’s free-falling love affair did something uncomfortable to Shane’s chest. Something, much like what Cora had said about him, he wasn’t sure what to do with.

Shane had instructed Gavin to take Micah around on Bodine. Although Shane thought the best course of action for his own peace of mind, and other body parts, would be to put some distance between him and Cora, he also thought he’d be the best person to stand next to her and reassure her everything was fine while Micah rode his first horse.

“I hope we’re not stealing your whole morning away,” she offered.

“We’ll put you to work this afternoon to make up for it.”

She smiled at him, one side of her mouth going up farther than the other, making him think about mouths and the meeting of and . . .

He forced himself to look ahead as Micah and Bodine passed, Gavin dutifully keeping his hands on the reins.

“We could get you up on one if you’d like.”

“I would not like. I would rather shovel poop for the rest of the day. Possibly my life.”

“They’re not so bad.”

“They are to me.”

He grinned at her, already forgetting his ordering himself to look ahead. “I’m going to get you up on one. One of these days. You just wait and see.” Because it was stupid to pretend he didn’t want to see her. Again and again. Like this, where he didn’t have to think about Mom and Ben and the wedding, just a pretty woman who smiled and flirted with him.

She pushed a stray strand of reddish hair behind her ear. “That sounds like another thing we disagree on. I’m going to start a list.”

It sank some of the easy camaraderie and, yes, maybe even flirtation, because everything that reminded him of his mother marrying that crook did.

“He lies.”

Cora blinked, clearly not following Shane’s train of thought, so he had to press on. “You said if you had reason to believe Ben would hurt my mother, you wouldn’t be a part of it. Well, he’s a liar. He forged his references to get a job here.”

“Is that all?”

“All? It’s a lie.”

Cora studied Shane thoughtfully, blue eyes contemplating and serious. “Who hasn’t lied when they were desperate for a job?”

“Me,” Shane replied indignantly.

She blew out a breath, shaking her head. “You’ve never been desperate for a job.”

He opened his mouth to argue, except, of course, there was no argument for that. The Tyler ranch had always been his. There’d never been a question or time for anything else.

“I assume you found out about his lying about the references yourself?”