The Rancher's Baby. Maisey Yates

to celebrate Will’s return, just for those of us who were at the service. You can imagine that we’re all thrilled.”

      If she was thrilled, Knox wouldn’t have been able to tell by her tone of voice. She was more resolute. Determined. And he had a feeling that refusing her would be a lot like saying no to a drill sergeant.

      “It will be kind of like a funeral, only celebrating that he’s not dead. And you’ll be invited. He said he wanted you to come.”

      “He did?”

      “Not in so many words, but I feel like it is what he wants.” And Knox had a feeling it wouldn’t matter if Will did want it or not. Cora Lee was going to do exactly what she thought was best. “And he wants that ex-wife of his to come, too. He says you two are close.”

      “Which ex-wife?” He had gotten the distinct impression that there was more than one former Mrs. Sanders floating around.

      “The one you’re close to,” Cora Lee responded, her voice deadpan.

      Reluctantly, Knox decided he liked Will’s stepmother. “Well, I’ll let her know. She went to the funeral, so I imagine she’ll want to go to this.” He wasn’t sure he particularly wanted to, but if Selena was going, then he would accompany her. He was honestly concerned that the other women who had been named beneficiaries, or whoever was responsible for sending the letter, might take advantage of a situation like this.

      “Good. I’ll put you both down on the guest list, and I’ll send details along shortly. You have to come, because I wrote your names down and there will be too much brisket if you don’t.”

      And with that, she hung up the phone. He looked down at the screen for a moment, and then Selena came in, her footsteps soft on the hardwood floor.

      He looked up and his stomach tightened. Her long black hair was wet, as though she’d gotten out of the shower, and he suddenly became very aware of the fact that her gray T-shirt was clinging to her curves a little bit more than it might if her skin wasn’t damp. Which put him in mind to think about the fact that her skin was damp, which meant it had been uncovered only a few moments before.

      What the hell was wrong with him? He was thinking like a horny teenager. Yeah, it had been a few years since he’d had sex, but frankly, he hadn’t wanted to. His libido had been hibernating, along with his desire to do basic things like shave his beard.

      But somehow it seemed to be stirring to life again, and it was happening at a very inappropriate time, with an inappropriate person.

      The good thing was that it must be happening around Selena because she was the only woman in proximity, and it was about time he started to feel again. The bad thing was...Selena was the only woman in proximity.

      “Who was that on the phone?” she asked, running her fingers through her hair.

      “Will’s stepmother. She wants us to go to a non-funeral for him in a few days.”

      “Oh.”

      She was frowning, a small crinkle appearing on her otherwise smooth forehead.

      “Something wrong?”

      “No. It’s a good thing. I’m glad to be asked. I mean, I was thinking, when I assumed he was dead, that it was so sad he and I had never...that we had never found a way to fix our friendship.”

      “You want to do that?” He was surprised.

      “It seems silly to stay mad at somebody over something that happened so long ago. Something I know neither of us would change.”

      “The marriage?”

      She laughed. “The divorce. I don’t regret the divorce, so there’s really no point in being upset about it. Or avoiding him forever because of it. I mean, obviously there was conflict surrounding it.” She looked away, a strange, tight expression on her face. “But if neither of us would go back and change the outcome, I don’t see why we can’t let it go. I would like to let it go. It was terrible, thinking he was dead and knowing we had never reconciled.”

      Knox pressed his hand to his chest and rubbed the spot over his heart. It twinged a little. But that was nothing new. It did that sometimes. At first, he had thought he was having a heart attack. But then, in the beginning, it had been much worse. Suffocating, deep, sharp pain.

      Something that took his breath away.

      No one had ever told him that grief hurt. That it was a physical pain. That the depression that lingered on after would hurt all the way down to your bones. That sometimes you would wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to breathe.

      Those were the kinds of things people didn’t tell you. But then, there was no guidebook for loss like he had experienced. Actually, there was. There were tons of books about it. But there had been no reason in hell for him to go out and buy one. Not before it had happened, and then when Eleanor had gotten sick, he hadn’t wanted to do doomsday preparation for the loss he still didn’t want to believe was inevitable.

      Afterward...

      He was in the shit whether he wanted to be or not. So he didn’t see the point of trying to figure out a way to navigate more elegantly through it. Shit was shit. There was no dressing it up.

      There was just doing your best to put one foot in front of the other and walk on through.

      But he had walked through it alone, and in the end that had been too much for him and Cassandra. But he hadn’t known how to do it with another person. Hadn’t really wanted to.

      Hadn’t known how he was supposed to look at the mother of his dead child and offer her comfort, tell her that everything was going to be okay, that anything was going to be okay.

      But now they had disentangled themselves from each other, and still this thing Selena was talking about, this desire for reconciliation, just didn’t resonate with him. He didn’t want to talk to Cassandra. It was why they were divorced.

      “It’s not the same thing,” she said, her voice suddenly taking on that soft, careful quality that appeared in people’s tones when they were dancing around the subject of his loss. “Mine and Will’s relationship. It’s not the same as yours and Cassandra’s. It’s not the same as your divorce. Will and I were married for a year. We were young, we were selfish and we were stupid. The two of you... You built a life together. And then you lost it. You went through hell. It’s just not the same thing. So don’t think I’m lecturing you subtly on how you should call her or something.”

      “I didn’t think that.”

      “You did a little. Or you were making yourself feel guilty about it, and that isn’t fair. You don’t deserve that.”

      She was looking at him with a sweet, freshly scrubbed openness that made his stomach go tight. Made him want to lift up his coffee mug and throw it down onto the tile, just to make the feeling stop. Made him want to grab hold of her face, hold her steady and kiss her mouth. So she would shut up. So she would stop being so understanding. So she would stop looking at him and seeing him. Seeing inside of him.

      That thought, hot and destructive, made his veins feel full of fire rather than blood. And he wasn’t sure anymore what his motivation actually was. To get her to stop, or to just exorcise the strange demon that seemed to have possessed him at some point between the moment he had held her in his arms on the floor of the funeral home and when they had come back here.