“You?”
“Yes, me,” I said, indignant as I shrugged out of the restrictive jacket and draped it over the fence. I turned to pick up the post again and look down the line. “I’m perfectly capable of it. And with it so small now, it’s really nothing.” I set the post back down and nodded. “I’ll go into town later and get supplies. I can probably fix this tomorrow.”
“You?” he said again.
I turned back around, fixing him with a look as I shielded my eyes from the rain. “We’ve established that.”
“You’re going to fix the fence.” He said it as a statement.
I dropped my hand and crossed my arms, suddenly a little too aware of my state of dress, or lack of it. Especially wet. And white.
“I’m a rancher’s daughter,” I said. “I’ve done every job on this land at least once, and fixing broken things is a daily chore.”
He wiped a hand over his face.
“You can’t go on like this, Josie. You need help to run a ranch.”
I snorted. “Really, now? Come up with that all by yourself?”
“So that’s why you were interviewing for husbands last night?”
I shook my head. “Are you—do you mean to keep insulting me, or is it just your natural charm?”
“I’m sorry, but do you realize the dangerous position in which you put yourself last night? Not all men are gentlemen, Josie.”
“Do you realize I don’t have a choice?” I spat, stepping up to him just as the rain went a little more horizontal. It didn’t matter anymore. There came a point when you couldn’t get any wetter. “And I suppose you’re calling yourself a gentleman?”
“I try to be,” he said, rain dripping off his hat as his gaze burned down into mine. “Every day. I try to be some sort of standard my daughter can use to measure a good man by.”
Words stuck in my throat at the sincerity that emanated from him with that sentence.
“Well, here’s a tip: Don’t be a cad.”
His jaw ticked, and being close enough to see that wasn’t a good idea. I backed up a step and turned back to survey the damage. Think, Josie. If Malcolm and I went into town together, we could probably get enough precut railings to take care of this. He was getting too old to do the physical work. I could do that; I just needed help manhandling the timbers.
“Get the horses out of this,” he said behind me, already leading both under a nearby tree.
“Feel free to leave,” I said. “You aren’t needed—”
“I’ll take care of it.”
I whirled around. “No, you won’t. I just need to get the materials, and I will do this myself. It’s not your problem, Mr. Mason.”
Anger flashed in his eyes, and that’s what I wanted: to make him mad enough to leave. I couldn’t keep up this back-and-forth bantering and seeing good in him. I didn’t want to see good in him.
“Well, because it borders on my property and your three cows might wander over, it does become my problem,” he bit back. “I’ll have my men over here in an hour.”
I curled my nails into my palms, relishing the burn.
“It’s more than three,” I muttered. “Did you miss the part about not being an insulting cad?”
“Yes, well, sometimes I fall short,” he growled, loosely tying both horses to low branches. Walking back to me, he grabbed my arm and pulled me under the tree before I could register that my feet were moving. “You’re soaked. Get out of the damn rain.”
I yanked my arm free, glaring up at him. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“You—” He blew out a breath and ran a hand over his face again. “God, you are so infuriating.” He stepped closer and I backed up the same distance. “You should have said something. To someone. Anyone. Let people help you.”
“I don’t have people, Benjamin,” I said, hating the hurt that worked its way into my voice at the admission. “I have Lila and Malcolm. That’s it. I had my father, and—” I swallowed hard. “And I had you. Both of you are gone now.”
I watched that land on him like a punch to the gut.
“I know what I did was horrid, Josie,” he said, his voice low, his words slow and measured, as if I might fly off and away at the wrong one. “I can’t say that any of my reactions that night five years ago were smart. I was floored.”
I scoffed. “You were floored?”
“Yes,” he said emphatically. “I was spinning out. Uncle Travis dying in front of me. Winifred appearing out of—nowhere. Pregnant.” He shook his head, looking off past me somewhere in the distance. “I thought I’d left that chapter of my life far behind me. Like in another state.”
“She had your ring on her finger, Benjamin,” I said, reminding him. “That’s not leaving things behind.”
“A ring I let her keep to ease the breakup—I thought,” he said. “She loved fancy things. I told you then that she wasn’t for me.” He stepped forward again, and I backed up, feeling the bark of the tree against my back. My breathing increased, and I cursed in my head. Not out of fear. Out of another response that I had no business having. “That never changed, Josie, not then and not later, but once she was carrying my child, I had no choice. Everything I wanted . . .” His eyes seared me, the gold flecks in them burning like little fires. “It had to wait,” he finished softly.
I closed my eyes. “You’re a good father, Benjamin.”
“Please stop calling me those things,” he said, the hoarseness in his voice and the proximity making my eyes flutter back open. My stomach flipped at the rawness in his. “I’m Ben to you.”
I shook my head, or it felt like I did. Maybe I didn’t move at all. I wasn’t even sure I was breathing.
“That was another lifetime.”
“Josie.”
“And you know damn well that it wasn’t just about Winifred,” I said hurriedly, my voice pitched
