Page 68 of Rancher's Return

“Of course I am,” he said, slinging his arm over the back of the seat. “I’m in love.”

And for the first time in twenty years, Buck Carson was well and truly home.

Rancher’s December Miracle

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Epilogue

Chapter One

Escaping teenage heartbreak was usually pretty easy. Step 1: leave your hometown. Step 2: don’t go back, and if you do, stay out ofhisfavorite haunts.

Don’t go to his favorite bars, don’t drive past his house.

Very basic stuff.

It was much more difficult to do, however, if your great teenage heartbreak also happened to be your stepbrother.

And that was the essential problem that faced Lily Rivers every time she came home.

He was family. So she should be used to it.

When their parents had first moved in together, they had been seventeen. They had cohabitated for eight months. And then blessedly they had gone off to college. Which meant they were mostly confined to interacting during holidays.

The problem wasn’t that he was mean to her. It was that he was fine. Aggressively and totally fine.

And why shouldn’t he be?

They had dated for a couple of months when they were teenagers. He had been her first kiss. Her first...well, she was a little fuzzy on which base was which. They hadn’t hadsex, but they had donestuff.

Stuff she couldn’t get out of her head. Stuff that haunted her.

Made her wake up in a cold sweat.

With her heart pounding and her body aching and...

And then she had gone and imploded their relationship by breaking up with him because she could see that her mother was into his father, and the rest was history. She had told him their relationship was probably doomed—and it had been.

She had also told him it was very important they not get into a situation where their dating got so serious that if they ever broke up it would be impossible for them to be around each other.