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Never gonna happen.

I know. That’s why I’m safe.

Funny, now he found himself wondering if Cody hadn’t just been joking, and why he had been so damned sure. Was it that impossible to think he might find someone who could put up with his crazy life, living in a barn, the erratic work hours, and the slipping into a different world when he was deep into a project?

He grimaced.I think you just answered your own question, Rafferty.

He got kind of stuck on that thought as they rode on. Kaitlyn had her camera out and was shooting whenever something caught her eye. And she was focused on that, leaving him with his thoughts. Which was not necessarily the best place for him just now.

He was actually glad when he heard her cell phone ring, because it derailed him from wondering why he was thinking about this love thing so much, when he’d thought it well and truly put away for some nebulous time in the future. It was just watching his two older brothers fall—that was it. As for Kaitlyn, it was just that she was the first woman he’d spent a lot of time with lately.

And what about the admittedly gorgeous Ms. Jacobs?He silently answered his own question again.She’s way too aware of her own appeal. Unlike Kaitlyn, who seems to think she’s completely unappealing.

He reined Flyer in, and Kaitlyn looked at him as she did the same with Latte, pushing her camera to one side.

“We go much further, you’ll lose the cell signal,” he explained, and she nodded in understanding.

She pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket and tapped the screen. He saw her expression change when she looked at the display. She smiled, but it was different than the smile that sent those weird sensations through him. No less warm, but touched with…worry?

“Nick?” she said when she answered, telling him it was her mentor calling. An instant later the worry in her expression vanished.

And that explained it, Ry thought. She’d been worried something was wrong, but apparently he’d called himself, so even if there was a problem, it wasn’t so serious he couldn’t manage a phone call.

But after listening for a couple of minutes, the worry returned. “Tomorrow morning? All right,” she said. “I’ll be there.” A pause. “No, it’s fine, I’ll be there.” She tried to smile, as if he could see her even though it wasn’t a video call. “I want to be there, so hush.”

When she slipped the phone back into her pocket the attempted smile vanished.

“Is he all right?” Ry asked, a little surprised at the urgency he felt about a man he didn’t even know.

She gave him a startled look, and he knew it must have been in his voice. “He says he will be. But then he would,” she added with a wry quirk of her mouth.

“What is it?”

“He’s been having some heart rhythm trouble, and has to have a pacemaker put in. Tomorrow morning at nine.”

“Hey, that’s not so bad,” he said, trying to sound reassuring. “And it helps. Dutch—the guy I learned leatherworking from—had one, and he said he felt much better afterward. He used it to make jokes any time he didn’t want to do something. Said he didn’t feel like it, his battery must be dead. Even though they last ten years or more.”

She stared at him for a moment, and he thought he’d stepped in it, that he’d made too light of it. The guy meant a lot to her, maybe she wasn’t ready—

She laughed. And he breathed again. Crazy, how making her laugh seemed so…special.

Then she became serious. “I’m sorry you lost him.”

That was like her. To jump from her own troubles to someone else’s. “Me too,” he said simply. “But that tough ol’ bird made it to ninety-six. So your Nick has a lot of years to go yet.”

“I hope so,” she said. Her brow furrowed again. “He insisted them doing it on a Saturday is routine.”

“I don’t think medicine is a Monday to Friday, nine to five kind of thing.”

She smiled at that, and he felt an echo of what he’d felt when she’d laughed. He found himself noticing the freckles across her nose again, tiny and scattered. They reminded him a bit of the spots across Mom’s Aussie Quinta’s nose. He wondered how Kaitlyn would feel about that comparison to a dog. He suspected she wouldn’t mind it at all.

Unlike Ms. Jacobs, who had looked at the sweet, loving dog with distaste. But then, Quinta hadn’t cared much for her, either. Kaitlyn, she’d liked. Right off, she’d liked her. And the dog was an excellent judge of people, so he knew that was part of the reason Mom had been so quick to welcome Kaitlyn and sidestep the blonde.

She pulled her phone back out, looked at it, then put it away again.

“Where is he?”

“Up in Temple.”