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She blinked. “One what?”

“Apology. I think we’ve got four or five left to go.” She stared at him. As if ticking off a list he said, “Let’s see, you apologized for stopping in your tracks to admire my father’s painting. Shouldn’t need an explanation about why that wasn’t necessary. Then you apologized twice for asking questions. Good, solid questions, not silly, esoteric things about inspiration and vision. Didn’t need those, either. And you sure didn’t need to apologize for sharing the kind of pain we both know too well, of losing a father we loved.”

She was still staring at him. She couldn’t help herself. It wasn’t so much what he was saying, that she hadn’t needed to offer any of those apologies, it was that he’d listened. And not just listened, but really heard what she’d said. And remembered. She wasn’t used to that, not on a job where Jillian was involved. The woman tended to suck up all the oxygen in the room, especially when it came to men. But Rylan Rafferty was obviously not an ordinary man, in more ways than one. Many more ways than one.

And he hadn’t mentioned her most recent apology, for asking about him being gone from the ranch. Did that mean she had overstepped, and that apology had been needed? Or did it not count because he’d already asked her after she’d said it, why she’d apologized?

Her head was starting to whirl a bit with trying to figure this—and him—out. She opened her mouth to speak, realized she was going to start with “Sorry” again, and stopped herself.

“You were going to do it again, weren’t you?”

It took everything she had to say with any amount of cool, “Mind-reading now?”

“I just figured that’s why you stopped.”

“Maybe I was going to say something else.”

“Which you’d then apologize for? Is this how it usually goes for you?”

“No,” she said wryly. “Usually I manage to keep my mouth shut when working with Jillian.” The moment the words were out she regretted them, but under the circumstances she managed not to apologize.

“Why do you?”

“Work with her? Because she asks for me. This could be a career-maker for me. I need the line on the résumé. And the money,” she ended bluntly.

He gestured back at her gear. “Equipment’s not cheap, huh?”

“It’s my mother’s rehab that’s not—” She cut herself off, horrified. She sank down to sit on the edge of a stone outcropping. Whatever it was about this man that blasted away her guardrails, it had to stop.

He was staring at her again. “After she killed your father, you’re paying for your mother’s rehab?”

“Again,” she muttered.

“You apologizing again, or do you mean…this isn’t the first time you’ve paid for it?”

“It’s certainly the last. I told her I’d do it this time because I’d promised I would if she really tried. And I won’t be one of those who makes promises and breaks them without a second thought.”Like my mother.“I vowed I’d stop when I turned thirty.” She said it with fierce determination. This was a vow she would keep, even if it meant finally turning her back on the woman who’d borne her. And if that made her heartless, as her mother so often said, so be it.

Ry turned to look out over the landscape, as if he needed to process what she’d said. She’d never had a man, other than her father, pay such close attention to everything she said. It was a strange feeling. A little bit heady. But it also made her uneasy.

After a minute or two he said, very quietly, “Shane Highwater’s mother drank herself to death at thirty. Shane was ten. The youngest kid, Sage, she was only two. I was always angry on their behalf, thought it was the worst thing that a mother could do. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe putting your kids through years of hell is worse.”

“Be thankful for the mother you have,” she said, meaning it. She’d only spent a short time with Maggie Rafferty, but she already knew she liked her. She was the kind of mother Kaitlyn would have wished hers into being, if it were possible.

He turned back to her then. “Oh, I am. Every day. We all are.” The love that glowed in his eyes was unmistakable. These weren’t casual words thrown out because they were expected; he meant this from the gut. “I don’t know where we all would have ended up if she hadn’t held us together after Dad was killed. Certainly not here, together. And as tight as we are.”

“She never remarried?”

“No. I think she had her hands full with us. And…she adored my father. Yours?”

Kaitlyn gave a sour laugh. “Twice. And engaged three more, although those guys had the sense to break it off before the wedding.”

“Yet you pay for her rehab.”

“She’s my mother,” she explained. Then his true meaning hit, and she blinked. “You mean I don’t have as much sense as those guys?”

He shrugged. “Just wondering, when does the blood obligation wear out? Your father was loyal and look what happened.”

She winced, but it was nothing she hadn’t thought herself. And he was looking at her as if he knew that. And she decided she appreciated his bluntness. “Like I said, this is the last time. No matter what. I made that clear, told her the third time had better be the charm, because I wasn’t doing it again.”