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Even though he more or less had an empty nest now, he hadn’t quite made the switch mentally.

Quinn Sullivan...

He would like to think it had nothing to do with her. Nothing to do with the fact that her red hair and freckles felt burned into him.

Nothing to do with the fact that she enraged him, but had exhilarated him a little bit, too.

The blonde had just seemed bland by comparison by the time he got back in.

That fight had run his blood temperature up far too hot.

She’d called him stupid. She outright had.

And that was the thing that made him angriest.

When people underestimated him. Thought he was an idiot...

Yeah. Well. He’d done some things that were dumb. That was the simple truth.

Brian Sullivan had made sure that Levi knew that he had only been able to take advantage of him because Levi had been careless. Because he wasn’t as smart.

And he could see that same arrogance in the man’s daughter. She thought that because she’d gone to school she was smarter than him.

He shook his head and got in his truck, driving over to the barn where the horses were.

A couple of his hands were on the grounds already, and he nodded, tipping his hat to both of them as he got out of his truck to head over to his horse Jasper’s stall.

He did his best to run his spread with the kind of courtesy and kindness that he valued. He did his best to prove that he had a place here, and a right to be a rancher, and it didn’t matter that Four Corners, the Death Star, was only a few paces away. His place was a good place to work.

He couldn’t pay the wages they did over at Four Corners, but the men he had working for him were loyal. They believed in what he was doing, and eventually, he would be able to pay better.

That was another problem of existing next to such a giant spread.

They paid well. They had their own school for the children of the people who worked there. Many of the people who worked there also had places to bunk. They were just so big they were able to offer the kinds of benefits that Levi could only dream of offering his employees.

Hell. It didn’t matter. He loved what he had. And it had taken years for him to dig out from under the soybean fiasco.

His reputation had been shot to hell because of it.

He could still remember...

The day that Brian Sullivan had shown up on his doorstep with this plan.

He’d said that he heard Levi was in some trouble, particularly since his parents had died, and that he was at his wit’s end figuring out how to work the land and what exactly to do with it.

Levi had been so desperate for help. For someone to come alongside him and...

He’d had to drop everything and care for his siblings. He’d had no real support for himself and this had felt like a gift.

The truth was, as wonderful as Levi’s father had been, he was not a businessman. And most of the land was sitting in disuse. There had not been a lot of money for...anything. The house they lived in was modest at best, and there were many things in it that needed repair, and Levi didn’t even know where to begin. He needed money. Money to take care of the kids, and time. Time to cook the meals and...

He was grieving all over again, having just lost his mother a few years before, and he just hadn’t known what else to do but to sit down with Brian Sullivan and listen to his plan.

It can’t fail...

Yeah. He’d heard that again recently. It can’t fail.

And from Brian’s perspective, Levi supposed it hadn’t failed.