Page 28 of Wrangled

“Just yesterday.”

Teague shook his head. “His timing is for shit.” Then he grinned. “You know what that is, right?” His smile grew smug. “It’s a sign.”

I laughed. “Sure it is.” We fell silent, and I stared into the fire.

“I’ll always be grateful to you and your dad. You know that, don’t you?”

I shrugged. “We just took you in. That’s all.”

He shook his head. “No, it was more than that. You made me feel like I was part of the family. “

I smiled. “That’s because you are. Like I said, you keep my secrets. Except after talking to Zeeb and Diana, I don’t think I have any left.”

“Diana too?” Teague whistled. “You sure had a red-letter day, didn’t you?”

“What are the new guests like?” I hadn’t paid them much attention, other than scanning the paperwork. Three was a lot less than we usually dealt with. The average was five or six.

“You remember Declan? Money guy from New York?”

I smiled. “Regular as clockwork every June. He’s okay?”

“Yeah, he’s fine. Better now he’s here, I think.”

“He just needs to feel the wind in his hair and on his face. Except as I recall, he was losing the hair last time I looked.”

“There’s Garrett Evans, a newcomer…” Teague stroked his chin. “I think we need to keep an eye on him.”

“Why? You think he’s trouble?”

“Not what I meant. He’s kinda… fragile. Put it this way, Butch is handling him with kid gloves.”

I widened my eyes. “Whoa. Did Hell freeze over, and no one told me?”

“I know right? Maybe he’ll settle down once he gets into the swing of things.” He paused. “And then there’s Toby Merrow.”

Something in his voice got my attention. “Why are you smiling?”

“Oh, no reason. I think you’d like him though.” I arched my eyebrows, and his smile widened. “Not gonna say more than that.”

I searched my mental logs. “He the one from San Francisco?”

“Yup. Says he’s at home on a horse—or used to be, when he was younger. Guess we’ll see tomorrow.”

I chuckled. “Itistomorrow.” Saturday had slipped into Sunday while I wasn’t looking.

Teague leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “He reminds me of Kevin.”

And just like that, he had my attention.

“I see. We talking a physical resemblance?”

“Yes, but… it’s more than that.” I peered at him, and he shrugged. “Just a feeling.”

“What kind of feeling?” I pushed.

His gaze met mine. “The kind of feeling I used to get about Kevin when I watched you two together.”

Now that wasallkinds of interesting. In that moment, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get a better look at Toby Merrow—or keep my distance.