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Chloe knew what he’d just said. She’d heard it. He’d sounded out that word, spoken it. Right here.

But she couldn’t understand it. She couldn’t put together the knowledge with the reality of Jack Hudson standing there saying...

No. No . He was...

No.

This was the weirdest time to tell someone they...

No, he was just trying to trick her. To get what he wanted. Which was protecting everyone and everything. And yeah, it wasn’t like he hated her, but it was... It was...?

Why was her heart doing this terrible, hopeful dance in her chest? She knew better. She knew so much better. Chloe didn’t trust love. How could she?

“Jack...” She tried to say more, but her throat was so tight, she couldn’t seem to get words out. And he was standing in her yard, looking so good and strong and perfect.

God knew she wasn’t meant for that .

“I think somewhere deep down, you have to know that. You know me, Chloe. Why else would I break any rule?”

She couldn’t come up with an answer for that, and she tried. She tried so hard.

“So yeah, I have some issues when it comes to protecting people. I wonder why,” he said, so dryly she might have laughed in another context.

But he’d said he loved her, and there was absolutely nothing funny about this horror show.

It had to be horror coursing through her. What else could it be?

“I’m overbearing. I think I’m right pretty much all the time.” He took a few steps forward, and she had no choice but to scramble back. Away. Until he stopped moving toward her.

He couldn’t touch her right now. She’d...she’d crumble.

“But I don’t cross lines,” he continued. “I don’t break rules. I don’t do gray area . Except when it comes to you. And if that was about fun or sex or whatever, I would have resisted. I would have put a stop to it. I would not have engaged in this whole thing for a year .”

“Secretly,” Chloe whispered, because it was the only thing she had to hold on to right now. The last line of defense against whatever he was doing to her.

“Yes, secretly. Because no matter how or when this comes out, I know how it shakes down, Chloe. I know how people will treat you. How they’ll treat me. There will be whispers for sure, at a minimum.”

She couldn’t breathe. He’d thought about an “after everyone found out”? He’d considered the consequences ? When all she’d ever done was...be sure he wouldn’t want them without thinking what they might be.

“I can take it. At worst, I suffer a few comments and lose a few votes during my next sheriff election, but I still win. I won’t be a party to having people question you, though. Your character or anything else. I know that most of our department won’t have a problem with this, but there’s a wider world, and I won’t listen to people at Bent County pretend to know who you are or what you stand for because of your relationship with me. No number of speeches or interventions or loving you can change what people will say when I’m not there to stop it, and I never want you to have to deal with that.”

She could only stare at him. All this time... All this time , and she’d been so sure she understood what they were doing. She’d known part of it was about work, about not breaking his precious rules, but she hadn’t thought about...

And he had. What it would really look like if people knew about them. He’d thought it through. And he cared, deeply, that it would affect her .

She wanted so badly to protect her heart. Everyone who’d ever had it had bashed it into a million pieces.

But Jack laid out the reality of their situation, and she could see it. He laid it out and she knew him.

Of course the secrecy was about protecting her . Of course it wasn’t superficial, about her family reputation—poor Jack didn’t have an ounce of superficial in him.

Which only left one thing.

“Jack, I can’t...”

“You don’t have to do anything, Chloe. That’s not why I said it. I said it so you’d understand. So you’d stop fighting me on this because you think... I don’t know. That it doesn’t matter to me? I need you to be careful. I need you to care that something dangerous is going on, one way or another.”

This time when he moved for her, she let him. Let him take her hands in his. Let him look at her like...

Like he loved her. Because Jack Hudson, somehow and very inexplicably, was in love with her. And Jack didn’t lie, except maybe sometimes to himself. But this wasn’t that.

“I care that you are safe, Chloe. That you are... happy isn’t the right word, but that you’re okay. I have no feelings one way or another on your brother. I know you love him. I know how hard and complicated that is for you, and I respect it. And because I love you , I’m going to honor it. For as long as it takes, I need to protect you and Ry. And I need you to let me. That’s all I need from you right now.”

The fact that he was including Ry, that he understood just how complicated and frustrating her love for her brother was, made the tears she’d so desperately been battling all afternoon fall over.

I need you to let me . She’d give him so much—anything, really. He had to know it. “You’re not playing fair,” she managed to say, even as tears trailed down her cheeks.

He reached out and wiped them away. “I might play by the rules, but that doesn’t mean I have to play fair.”

She managed a watery laugh, but it died quickly because maybe she could believe he loved her. Maybe she would give him that thing he needed—the chance to protect her and Ry. But he was ignoring something very important.

“You have to look at the very real possibility that my father killed or had something to do with the murder of your parents. You can’t just brush it away. Because when this is all figured out, it’s going to matter. You have to really think about what that’s going to be like.”

Jack nodded. “I have.”

“But—”

“No. No buts. I understand. If it’s true, if we finally have the answers my family has wanted for seventeen years, it’ll be a relief. But it won’t bring them back, and it won’t change anything. Not really.”

“I’ll be a reminder.”

“No. You’re not an extension of your father, Chloe. Any more than you’re an extension of your mother or Ry. You’re you, and I love you.”

He said it so earnestly, holding her hands, looking at her tearstained face. Coming up with an answer for every one of her arguments. Taking away all the excuses she’d held herself up on for the past year.

It was scary—the scariest thing, really, because this had the potential to go so very wrong. But when he looked at her like that, she wanted to be someone else, just for a little bit. Someone who could just enjoy the fact that the man she’d been pining after for far too long had feelings for her too.

No, not just feelings. Loved her.

“You know, I’ve been in love with you for longer,” she managed to say, not quite sounding like her usual self, but closer. More in charge.

His mouth quirked up at one side. “Is it a contest?”

She nodded emphatically. “Absolutely.”

“Okay, how about this?” He pulled her close, brought his mouth next to hers. “I’ll love you best,” he murmured. Then sealed that promise with a kiss.

J ACK H UDSON WAS a planner. He had emergency backup plans to the emergency backup plans. And yet it had never served him. He’d focused for the past seventeen years on wielding more and more control, and still...he’d never actually gotten it.

Grant had gone to war. Palmer and Anna had gone to the rodeo. Cash had gotten his high school girlfriend pregnant at sixteen. Not exactly a great parental track record to his way of thinking, certainly not if he compared himself to what his parents might have been able to do.

Then, over the past two years, Grant had been hurt on Dahlia’s case; Palmer had been hurt and Louisa had been kidnapped; Anna had gotten pregnant, almost burned alive; and Mary had been kidnapped by a madman. And that didn’t even get into everything that had happened with Cash when his ex-wife had tried to frame him for murder.

And every time something terrible had happened, Jack had tried to hold on tighter and tighter only to be reminded it never really mattered.

Bad things happened.

Loving Chloe wasn’t a bad thing, but it was a complicated thing, and for all the ways he planned for twists and turns of fate—the inevitable bad —he had not ever once come up with a plan for what happened on the other side of I’m in love with you.

They drove to the station in silence, the weight of it sitting there between them. Because now they had to go into work.

Maybe next time he could plan love confessions around their work schedule.

“You should have let me drive my own cruiser,” she muttered as he pulled up to the building that housed the Sunrise Sheriff’s Department.

“Everyone will understand why I want you riding two-man right now. In fact, they’ll probably be surprised I’m not making you take some leave.”

She glared at him. “I’ll take leave over your dead body.”

“I know, that’s why I’m not going to make you.” He’d certainly considered it, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

She grunted and pushed out of the car, and he realized this wasn’t so much her real frustration as it was her trying to build that wall back. So they could walk into their place of work and not have what they’d just laid out between each other broadcast to the world.

Jack had long ago given up on the world being fair. He never expected it. But it struck him in a way it hadn’t in a long time what a bad hand they’d been dealt with this.

Still, he let Chloe blaze her way in first, and he took his time following. When he walked into the office, Suzanne immediately got to her feet. “Sheriff, is it true?”

For a second, Jack was distracted enough to think she was talking about everything that had just happened with Chloe. Which was ridiculous. The look on Suzanne’s face was clear. Anguish.

Suzanne Smithfield, Sunrise’s administrative assistant, had known both his parents. Well, everyone in town had. People loved to tell him stories about how one of his parents had helped them out of a bad situation. But Suzanne had been close personal friends with them. She’d gone to school with his dad, and his mother had babysat Suzanne’s kids sometimes.

He managed a reassuring smile for Suzanne. “We don’t have ID confirmation yet. It’s probably going to take a while. Don’t let the gossip mill upset you.”

Suzanne sighed heavily. “The news hasn’t made its way through town yet, but it will. And soon enough.”

Jack nodded. “That’s all right. I’ll handle it.”

“You handle too much, Sheriff.”

“So they say.”

She leaned in close. “All this stuff with Chloe’s cabin... Is it related?”

Most people asking that question would put his back up, but he knew Suzanne cared about each and every Sunrise deputy like one of her own kids. She was worried about Chloe, nothing else. “We don’t know yet, but Deputy Brink and her brother are going to be staying out at the ranch until we get it sorted. I also want her riding two-man for the time being, so keep an eye out if she tries to dance around that.”

Suzanne nodded. “Good. That’s good.” Then she nodded to his office. “Messages are on your desk.”

Jack nodded, then focused on being Sheriff Jack Hudson and nothing else. He returned messages, worked on some paperwork, did what needed to be done. And if he occasionally took a walk around the office to get more coffee than necessary to check on Chloe, well...

Who knew that was what he was doing besides himself?

But she had calls to respond to and work, too, so their paths didn’t cross, and that was fine. Great, even. Best all the way around.

If it settled in him like frustration, he was just going to have to get used to that.

Toward the end of the day, he got a call from Bent County. When he heard Hart on the other end, Jack doubted they had good news coming.

“We haven’t got a hold of Mark Brink yet, but we did get a report he was spotted in Denver. Morning after the remains were found.”

Denver. Pretty much halfway between Texas and them. “Going to ask around and see if anyone saw him here?”

“Already got a deputy on it. Laurel’s also going to head out to the ranch and question Ry again.”

“Why?”

“That’s a pretty quick turnaround, Jack. Being in Denver the morning after a middle-of-the-night discovery? If it’s connected, he had warning.”

Jack closed his eyes and tried not to groan. He wanted to argue with Hart, but how could he? If he was in charge of the investigation, he’d been drilling Ry for information too.

“Phone records?” Jack asked, though it squeezed his heart to do it. Chloe was a realist when it came to her brother, but that didn’t mean she was going to be okay with any of this.

“Working on a search warrant, but Laurel’s going to see if he’ll hand it over of his own free will. Ry doesn’t strike me as a hardened criminal despite his rap sheet, but I don’t know what kind of relationship he has with his father.”

Jack didn’t, either, and Chloe clearly didn’t think Ry had one. Which was maybe true. Maybe not. Either way, Chloe wasn’t going to be too happy with this turn of events. She’d want to head over to the ranch right now, intervene.

“I also wanted to talk to Brink about what we found in the chest,” Hart said. “Can you transfer me? She can call me back later if she’s out on a call.”

“Are you going to tell her about Mark?”

“No, Sheriff. I’m only even telling you as a courtesy. It’s an active investigation into her father. The less she knows, the better off we’ll be.”

“She doesn’t have a relationship with her father.”

Hart was quiet for a few humming seconds. “Regardless. She’ll be kept in the loop in what directly affects her.”

It was a clear-enough warning. Jack wasn’t supposed to tell her either. He didn’t like how that settled in him like betrayal instead of just the nature of the job.

“It’s almost shift change. She should be available. Stay on hold for a second.” Jack got up and stepped out of his office and peeked into the main lobby, where his deputies met for shift change.

Chloe was at the front desk, smiling over something on Suzanne’s phone—probably the insane pictures Suzanne took of her cats dressed up like old Hollywood stars.

He hated to wipe that smile off her face, but when both Suzanne and Chloe looked over at him, he saw any enjoyment melt away. Because she knew it wasn’t good news.

“Chloe, Detective Hart’s on line one for you.”