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Stupid was not a word he often thought about himself. But when it was, it was in dealings with people. It was, he’d realized later, why of all his brothers he’d gone to Chance. He’d known that he, with his tendency to withdraw from the world, would best understand. And he had.

He doubted Chance understood why it was so important, though. Nobody in his family would ever believe he was standing here in Britt’s kitchen, half lusting after her, half being ground down by fear of what would happen when she found out the truth. He closed his eyes, and his jaw tightened.

“Cody? What’s wrong?”

He didn’t want to lie and say nothing, adding to his burden of guilt, so he only shrugged. “Just thinking.”

“Solving another problem?”

Startled he looked over at her. “Hoping it’s not a problem,” he said.

She smiled, and his throat tightened. “I’ve worried about more things than have ever happened.”

He managed a smile back and the moment passed.

The pancakes came out well, which surprised him considering how distracted he’d been. And he was glad to see her eating. Although he wasn’t sure glad was exactly the feeling he had watching her eating something he had fixed.

Her mother checked in on the intercom shortly after they’d finished, while he was cleaning up. Although Britt told her he was here, he noticed her mother didn’t ask nor did Britt volunteer that he’d spent the night. He couldn’t blame her—this had happened fast enough to make him dizzy; he could only imagine how her mother would feel. Then again, there had been that look she had given them, and the way she had hustled Britt’s dad out of here…

“I need to check my email. Could you get me my laptop off the desk over there?” she asked when they’d gotten her settled on the couch again. “Preferably without telling me it’s old and outdated?” she added, her tone unmistakably wry, yet teasingly light, as was the smile she gave him when she said it.

“I try not to offer an opinion unless asked,” he said as he went for the device. “If it works for you, then it’s good enough.” He looked at it as he picked it up and couldn’t resist adding, “Even if it is from the Stone Age.”

“Smart-ass,” Britt said, but she was laughing. And he felt a new round of wonder at the simple fact that they could be like this. That he could be so relaxed around her, that he could simply enjoy being with her.

He opened the laptop for her before he handed it to her, since it was a two-handed job. “You going to be able to type one-handed?”

“I’ll manage.” She gave him an arch look then. “Unless you’re offering to take dictation?”

He laughed. “You want a secretary?”

“You’d make a really cute one.”

He swallowed. “Careful, I’ll think you’re flirting with me.”

“I need to work on that, if you only think it.”

Cody had a sudden flash of a future spent with a woman who didn’t play games, who didn’t hide what she felt, who would never leave him wondering where he stood. Who, once she made up her mind, was full speed ahead. That he was even thinking about that future with Britt seemed both astounding and inevitable.

For a moment he couldn’t speak, but just looked at her. Then, finally, because he had to know, he asked, “Are you as…boggled as I am by this?”

Again very Britt-like, she didn’t dance around it or pretend not to know what he meant. “Yes,” she admitted. “It’s crazy. But it also feels as if it’s always been there, we were just too…stubborn to see it.”

Relief flooded him, at this proof he wasn’t way out in left field on this. He was still pondering the craziness of it all when he went out to check on the nexus of all this chaos. Ghost greeted him almost like a normal horse. He knew if he took her out to the corral for a run, things would change in a big hurry. Once she realized where they were going she’d decide she no longer needed this boring human leading the way. So, on this Sunday morning he decided to just leave well enough alone.

“She’s fine,” he told Britt when he came back. “She’ll be wound up tighter than a cheap watch next time she’s cut loose, but she’s fine.”

“She is,” Britt said dryly, “a pain in the proverbial ass.”

“I would not argue that,” he said with an eye roll.

It wasn’t until he sat down in the chair where he’d taken to doing his own work that she said, unexpectedly, “Trey’s a much better horse.”

He gave her a startled look. “What?”

“He’ll do whatever he’s asked, sometimes before you even ask it.”

“I would not argue that either. He’s saved me too many times to count.”