Claimed!

“No problem.” She started the engine. “Just where is your truck, anyway? I seriously doubt you walked into town.”

“I rode in with Gabe. We … had an errand over at Morgan’s.”

“Oh?” She pulled the Bronco onto the two-lane main road, which was deserted at this hour. “So where’s Gabe?”

“Still at Morgan’s, I’m sure.”

“Oh.” She caught the green at Shoshone’s only stoplight and headed toward the edge of town. “So they’re back together?”

“Looks like.” Jack thought it was Gabe and Morgan’s business when they announced the engagement. Although the ending to the evening could stand improvement in his case, he was happy that those two had patched things up.

“I’m beginning to get the picture.” Josie increased the Bronco’s speed as they left the town limits. “You had nowhere else to go, so you came over to my place.”

“You make it sound like a last resort.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“No. I could have.” She had him there. He had some buddies in town, but he’d made himself scarce recently because of the ranch responsibilities. After blowing his friends off every time they’d asked him to meet them for a beer, he couldn’t very well show up in the middle of the night looking for a ride home or a place on the couch.

“Reliable old Josie.” Her good humor seemed to have faded some. “A guy can always count on her to take him in, right?”

“That’s not the way I was thinking.” Fact was, he hadn’t been thinking or he would have figured out an alternative. Worse came to worse, he could have gone to Grandma Judy’s. Technically she wasn’t his grandmother. She was his stepmother, Sarah’s, mom.

She would have taken him in, though. And then told Sarah all about it the next day. He could have weathered that, but he wasn’t about to get an eighty-six-year-old woman out of bed, especially one who’d had a hip replacement barely two months ago.

“To think I imagined you’d chosen to come over to my place,” Josie said. “Instead I was just handy.”

“You have it all wrong!” The more she voiced the truth, the harder he’d deny it.

“No I don’t. Man up and admit it, Jack. I was the alternative to sleeping on a park bench, nothing more.”

“Is this why you offered to drive me home? So you could chew my ass all the way there?” Not that he blamed her.

“I offered because I’m a bartender, and I’m trained to recognize when someone is impaired and shouldn’t drive. I thought you had your truck and were about to get in it. I didn’t know you were stranded.”

“So if you’d known I didn’t have a truck to drive, you would have let me walk?”

She didn’t answer.

“You would have, wouldn’t you? Well, we can take care of that right now. Pull over.”

“No.”

“Pull over, damn it!”

“I said I’d drive you home and I will drive you home. I honor my commitments.”

“What do you mean by that crack?”

Her jaw tightened. “I think you know.”

She’d pushed him too far. Jack Chance always honored his word. “We didn’t have a commitment.”

“Oh, good one, Jack! No woman ties you down, does she? You can spend every spare minute getting naked with her, but I guess it’s all about the sex, just like you said that day, because when it comes to making a commitment, you just can’t see yourself doing that, can you?” Her voice sounded funny, sort of choked up.

He peered at her in the dim light of the dashboard. “Josie, are you crying?”

“No!” She swiped at her cheeks. “Got something in my eye.”

He didn’t buy it. She was crying, and that rattled him. In six months of being together, he’d never seen her cry. Of course, he’d broken up with her over the phone, because he couldn’t have done it in person. In person, he wouldn’t have been able to say the one thing that he knew would convince her they were finished—it was just sex. After delivering that message, he’d hung up quickly. He’d probably made her cry then, but he’d avoided thinking about that.

“Josie.”

“That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.”

He sighed. “I’m sorry for … everything.” He doubted a global apology would do much good, but he wasn’t experienced at saying he was sorry.

She cleared her throat. “No reason to apologize, Jack. You’re just being you. I guess you got tired of the celibate life, huh?”

“What?”

“I know you haven’t been seeing anybody since we broke up. Everybody says you’ve become a workaholic. Stands to reason that given a free night in town with no truck available, you’d look up the woman you used to have sex with. Perfectly logical.”

“Damn it to hell! That’s not why I came to see you tonight!” But it was, in a way. He’d had some vague idea that she might be glad to see him after all this time. She hadn’t hooked up with anyone, either, or at least that’s what he’d thought until he’d seen a guy standing in her doorway.

“It’s okay, Jack.”

No, it wasn’t. Everything was a gold-plated mess. He’d followed Gabe’s suggestion in hopes that he’d be able to make up with Josie and return to an uncomplicated relationship built on laughter and sex. At least he’d always considered the relationship uncomplicated.

Clearly he’d been wrong.

Jack didn’t know what to say that would help the situation, and Josie seemed all talked out, so they drove in silence the rest of the way to the ranch. The long road in from the highway was unpaved because that’s how Jack’s father had wanted it. Jonathan Chance thought an unpaved road would discourage gawkers, while true horsemen and women determined to see the registered Paints bred by the Last Chance wouldn’t be deterred by a little dirt and dust.

Jack wasn’t about to pave the road and go against tradition, but as Josie’s Bronco jolted over the ruts, he vowed to have it graded soon. Maybe he’d rent a grader and do it himself.

At last Josie eased to a stop in the circular gravel drive in front of the two-story ranch house. Constructed of logs by Jack’s grandfather Archie, the house had grown as the family expanded. The right wing was added when Jack’s father was born, and he’d built the left wing as his three boys grew older and needed more space.

Each wing was angled so that the house seemed to offer an embrace. Or a trap.

“This is a big place,” Josie said, breaking the silence.

“Yeah.” Jack didn’t need to be reminded. Big place. Big responsibility.

“I know I’ve been out here before, but everything was … different.”

“My dad was still alive.”

“Right. But tonight, driving through Chance land, and then seeing the house and the outbuildings again … it’s made me realize what a huge job you inherited last October.” She stared straight ahead, as if fixated on the house. “I remember you said once that you didn’t want to be in charge of the Last Chance.”