Page 28 of The Cattleman's Unforgettable Love

She smiled. "Well, since you put it that way, I'll latch onto it as a good excuse. It's not that I'm out of shape, it's just that my stride doesn't quite match yours, right?"

He smiled. "Exactly. And I'm sorry. I should have thought. Do you want to keep going or...?"

"Of course I do. I'm excited to see this lake of yours. I've seen Daily Lake, but I thought that was the only one around here."

She caught up to him, and since the path had widened again, they walked side by side – and she was relieved that he took it a little slower.

"I may have oversold it," he told her. "It's not really a lake; it's an old quarry. When the snow melts in the spring, it forms a lake. I like it because no one ever comes up here and the water always seems so blue."

That made her smile. "Then I'm more eager to see it than I was before."

He gave her a puzzled look. "Because you like old quarries?" he asked.

She laughed. "Because it's somewhere that's special to you – isn't it?"

He dropped his gaze. "I guess so. It was a place I used to come and hang out when I needed to get away."

"And you don't need to get away anymore?" she asked.

He chuckled. "It's not usually an option anymore. There's always something to do on the ranch."

She nodded, but she didn't like the idea that he never got any time for himself – if she had anything to do with it, that situation was about to change. Even if they only became friends, she wanted to make sure that he got some free time and that he got to enjoy it.

"What about you?" he asked. "I don't even know where you're from."

"I was born and raised in the Bay Area."

"Is your family still there?" he asked.

"My cousins are there, all the family I have left."

"Shit, I'm sorry, I didn't know that."

"That's okay, how could you?"

He turned to meet her gaze, and she shrugged. She didn't normally elaborate when people asked about her family – she just said that all she had were her cousins and left it at that.

She let out a breath. "My mom died when I was small. My dad died almost ten years ago, and my brother eight years ago."

Ford stopped walking again and when she stopped, he turned to her and rested his hands on her shoulders. The concern in his eyes sent a shiver down her spine. "I'm sorry..." He shook his head. "I hate it when people say that when they hear that someone died. I don't mean it that way. I mean I'm sorry that I didn't know. Sorry that I didn't ask. Sorry..."

She reached up to grasp his wrists. "It's okay. There's nothing for you to be sorry for. I don't talk about it. There's no way you could know. Sierra would never have told anyone. She knows I tend to be quite a private person."

He nodded, but it was easy to see that he felt bad.

"Come on," she told him. "Let's keep walking, or we're never going to make it to this lake of yours."

As they walked on, she could feel that he kept glancing at her. "I'm fine," she told him after a while. "You haven't upset me or anything. They've all been gone for a long time; I'm used to it."

"Maybe so, but... so you don't have anyone else? Nowhere to go home to?"

"No. As you know, I've been working with the guys for a while now, but their base isn't exactly a home. Not to any of them, let alone to me. I used to keep an apartment in San Francisco when Sierra still lived there, but … she’s here now."

He nodded. "So, you think you might stay here?"

"I've been thinking about it. I mean, if Mav and Blaine move the whole operation here and set up base on Mav's ranch, then yes, I'll definitely stay, at least for as long as I'm working with them."

He frowned. "You're thinking about leaving them?"