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“So? Can I be on the team or not?”

He returned his attention to the girl. “What’s your name?”

“Sophie Mitchell.”

Jace held out his hand. “Jace Carson. You’ll need a physical and a permission slip signed by your parents before you can join the team.”

“My parents are . . . gone.”

He didn’t know what gone meant, nor did he ask. He remembered how much he hated people asking about his daddy. “Okay. Then have your guardian sign the permission slip. You won’t be able to play until I have it. But I will expect you to come to the game on Friday and sit with the team.”

She glanced down at the ball she held and smiled. “I guess I’ll need to get another ball.” She looked at him. “So are you going to go after her?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe the old proverb is right. If you love something, you set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.”

Sophie snorted. “Boys really are dumb.”

Chapter Nineteen

Hallie had always loved fall on the ranch. The temperature was still sizzling hot during the day, but as soon as the sun started sinking below the horizon, the heat waned and a scent rose up from the cooling ground. A scent that always had, and always would, remind Hallie of hayrides and trick-or-treating and running barefoot through harvested fields of turned soil.

Although, this evening, the scent reminded her of a man. A man with hair the golden colors of harvested wheat and eyes that mimicked an autumn sky—going from clear blue to cloudy gray in a heartbeat. A man she’d thought she knew, but now realized she never had.

“We’re getting ready to head out to the football game. You sure you don’t want to go?”

Hallie turned from the sunset to see Mimi standing by the ladder that led to the hayloft. “You’re not supposed to be climbing ladders, Mimi.”

Mimi gave her a warning look as she moved toward her. “So now you’re gonna start telling me what I can and can’t do too? I thought if anyone would understand me wanting to keep my independence, you would, Halloween.”

“I don’t want to take your independence, Mimi. I just don’t want you to fall and bust a hip.”

“As an adult, isn’t that my choice?” She sat down on the hay bale Hallie was sitting on and looked out at the sun edging below the horizon. “So Corbin tells me you’re heading back to Austin.”

Hallie scowled. “Corbin shouldn’t have said anything until I made the announcement to the entire family.”

“And when were you planning on doing that?”

“I was going to tell everyone tonight at dinner, but then Daddy wanted to get hot dogs and nachos at the football game. And what Daddy wants, Daddy gets.”

“I believe it was your mama that had a hankering for hot dogs and nachos. But you always did love blaming everything on your daddy. Or maybe you just like to blame every man for everything that’s wrong in the world.”

She turned to her grandmother. “I do not! I just refuse to be controlled by a man’s whims.”

Mimi glanced around. “I don’t see any man trying to control you.”

“Because I refuse to let them.”

“Ahh . . . so you’d rather be without a man than chance him controlling you. Which is why you broke things off with Jace.”

A pang of pain pierced her heart. “It wouldn’t have worked. He wasn’t the man I thought he was.”

Mimi’s eyebrows lifted. “Really? And what kind of man did you think he was?”

Hallie turned away and stared at the sunset hoping she could use the brightness as an excuse for her teary eyes. “I thought he was the kind of man who cared about what I wanted. Not a man who thinks he knows what I need better than I do.”

“And what exactly did he think you needed?”

“To stay here in Wilder and become a rancher.”