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He truly believed that.

So, he was learning from them. Because it was the only thing to do. And that meant being cautious when it came to making this deal.

He didn’t know how much traffic it was going to bring through the land, and there were other variables. And he liked to be certain now.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s stop and get some food.”

“I’m fine,” she said, looking all dirty, sweaty and determined.

“No. You need to get some food. I’m not letting you go pretending I’m some kind of tyrant.”

Well. He was kind of a tyrant sometimes. But he didn’t starve tiny women. That was a hard line, even for him.

“Let’s go have lunch at Becky’s.”

“Oh, that’s really not necessary,” she said. “I’d be totally fine with some cheese or bread or...”

And the more she protested, the more he felt like digging in.

“I’m not having you drop dead on my land, Miss Sullivan. If you ever want to be let back here again, we’re going to lunch now, and it’s my treat.”

“Well, thanks.” She looked at him with a very bland expression on her face.

She was mad. Mad mad.

He was beginning to recognize that the blander she appeared, the more she was seething.

He urged her into the truck and drove across the field, back toward the road that would take them out to the main highway.

“So you’ve been in charge of the ranch since you were eighteen?” she pressed.

He turned out onto the highway and kept his eyes fixed on a pine tree at the first curve in the road. “Yep.”

“That must’ve been really difficult.”

He never talked about this. There was no point. He wasn’t a big talker, never had been. He hadn’t had a lot of friends growing up, or in his whole life. He’d had Damien, who had been there every step of the way, so there had never been anything to explain.

When it came to women...

He didn’t do the talking thing.

He couldn’t remember if anyone had ever asked him something like this before. Conversational, but digging into his past. Into him.

“Think you ought to get to know the devil a little better?” he asked.

“No. I just... I’m curious. When you did that deal with my dad, I was so young. I remember you coming by the house but of course we never...”

He looked over at her and she turned pink. Interesting.

“I never got to know you.”

“Not surprising. You Four Corners people keep to your own. You’re kind of snobby.”

“No, we aren’t,” she said, and now she was pink because she was mad. “We are a huge community filled with people who love ranching and the land, and we have barn parties every month after our town hall meetings and...”

“For the people who work on your ranch. You’re like a club that nobody else can get into. That’s fine. But you have to know that you’re a little bit...insulated. Plus, very few other places around here have your land and your earning capabilities. Land is the most valuable thing you can have.”

“Well, it can be a little bit of an albatross, too, believe me. The work that we’ve had to do to make Sullivan’s as profitable as everybody else’s plot is pretty intense. It is a hell of a lot of work. We’re all sisters. We had to get creative. Everybody has hired ranch hands—that isn’t the thing. It’s just that when it comes to the McClouds... You have five men who can contribute to the heavy lifting. That’s just a whole lot of manpower that you aren’t paying hourly. The Kings have four. The Garretts only have two, but still. We wanted something that we could do. Practically. We’ve been creative with leasing fields, with planting... And the farm store is part of that. It’s diversification, which is good for the whole endeavor, but also for us specifically. We needed to provide something that only we could provide. You doing beef is a great example of that. You’re a smaller operation and are focusing on premium product rather than simply producing volume.”