greatest, but we haven’t had too many pregnant guests stay here. We’re a little unprepared. I’m sure pre-baby vacations were part of your luxury resort spa, weren’t they?”
“They were.” Emma would give anything for a little pampering. “I appreciate the extra effort you’re making on my behalf, but it’s not necessary. I don’t want to put anybody out.”
“You’re not putting us out.” There was no disguising Dylan’s double meaning. “The staff is good about keeping the walkways clear at all times, but I’ve asked them to be vigilant with the ice melt. So, if you do go outside, you won’t slip and fall. They will continually recheck it during the day, especially in the mornings.”
“Thank you.” Emma thought about her company’s plans for the ranch. It included heated walkways, ensuring guests could safely walk from one area of the resort to the other.
He tugged his hat down low, shielding his eyes. “I’m just being hospitable. After all, this is a guest ranch and you’re a guest.” He turned his back to her and strode to the open door. “Let my staff know if you need anything.”
Before she could respond further, he was gone. Despite his gruffness, she found his gesture endearing. Not that he’d ever admit to it being more than his job. Because they both knew he could have sent anyone up with a tree or forgotten about it altogether. Either way, she was there to convince him to sell the ranch, not make friends.
* * *
DYLAN KICKED HIMSELF for going to her room. The only reason he had was because she’d looked exhausted earlier and he wanted to make sure she was all right. That was his job as the ranch owner. He could’ve insisted an employee drop off the tree and report back to him. The thought had crossed his mind, but he vetoed it because Emma had managed to make quite a few enemies on the ranch. It was hard enough adjusting to life without Jax. Everyone had begun to breathe again when he told them he wasn’t selling Silver Bells. Now her presence brought up myriad speculations. He’d spent the better part of an hour reassuring everyone he hadn’t changed his mind. He didn’t have extra time for that, but he’d had to make the time. Instead, he needed to focus on finding another investor in the ranch if he wanted to keep rooves over his employees’ heads. It irked him that Emma was there. Now he felt responsible for her while they were snowed in and she was one more aggravation he didn’t need.
It was almost noon when Dylan hopped on one of the ranch’s snowmobiles and headed toward the stables. Nothing cured a man’s worries like honest hard work. He shut the engine off in front of the first building. With almost a hundred horses in residence, they had four separate stables in a row with the last building reserved mostly for maintenance. The weathered barn siding had faded to a light gray over the years. They needed updating along with the rest of the ranch. Dylan had tried to allocate money equally between the horses and the lodge, but there just wasn’t enough to go around.
When you didn’t have a whole lot of money, it meant you always had work to do. Considering they were short-staffed after many of their employees had decided to leave when Jax announced the ranch’s imminent closing, Dylan had been pulling double duty. But he needed the distraction of extra work now more than anything.
One of the stables still hadn’t been mucked thanks to Wes once again skipping out on work. In hindsight, he should’ve fired his brother a long time ago, but Dylan and Jax had been the only ranch around willing to put up with his extensive bull-riding schedule. He’d thought after the World Finals that Wes would have returned to work full-time again. He’d been mistaken. At least his brother had the courtesy to send him a text message and say he wasn’t coming in. He didn’t even know where the man was sleeping anymore. He had a cabin on the ranch, but he rarely stayed in it.
He couldn’t blame Wes for not wanting to stick around. Their family had fractured the moment their father had died. Correction, had been killed. His brother, Ryder, had confessed to running over their father after a drunken argument. Four and a half years later and it still didn’t make sense to him. Ryder and their father had always had a great relationship. He had never seen them argue let alone get into a drunken brawl. It didn’t matter now. Dylan had been forced to accept it. He just wished it hadn’t destroyed the rest of his family. He still couldn’t bring himself to visit his brother in prison.
His mother had sold the family ranch and moved to California shortly after the funeral. She’d remarried a year ago and had no plans of returning. His other brother, Garrett, had moved to Wyoming with his wife years earlier and Wes devoted ninety-nine percent of his time to bull riding. That left only Dylan and Harlan in Saddle Ridge. Jax had become a second father to them both. And now he was gone, too.
Dylan reached into his back pocket for his work gloves and realized he’d left them in his truck. He grabbed a spare pair from the tack room and set off in search of the wheelbarrow. He’d already fed the horses that morning. Normally the stalls were empty this time of day, but he’d kept the horses inside when he’d seen the weather report. Mucking stalls when you had to continually move horses around was a pain in the ass. Between that, repairing some tack, ordering supplies and a second attempt at fixing one of their ranch trucks, it would be well past sunset before he finished for the day. Good. That’s what he wanted. No—it’s what he needed.
Over the past six months, Dylan felt like what was left of his family had splintered even further. After Harlan and his ex-wife had split up, whenever he was on late-night patrol as deputy sheriff, Dylan used to babysit his daughter, Ivy. Now that Harlan had married Belle, she watched Ivy when he wasn’t home. There were still rare instances when they both had work or were in desperate need of a date night, but it wasn’t like it used to be. He missed spending time with his niece. Combined with many of his friends leaving the ranch and Jax’s death, he had never felt more alone.
Dylan snatched a shovel from the wall bracket and swung open a stall door. He jammed it into the soiled hay and tossed it into the wheelbarrow. By the time he reached the last stall in the first stable, he no longer felt the cold. Hay and manure replaced the sweet scent of Emma’s hair. A blister had begun to form between his thumb and index finger and he welcomed the ache. If only it would replace the one that had settled deep within his heart.
Five years ago, he had been a man-with-a-plan. He had bought into Silver Bells with the best of intentions. Jax had owned the ranch for three decades and it made a solid income. But he’d had plans to make it better. Together, they were going to create the biggest and best family guest ranch in the state of Montana. His ex, Lauren, had told him repeatedly that she didn’t want to live on a ranch. She wanted to stay in her modern home with sheetrock walls, not rough-hewn cedar logs. She wanted neighbors and a two-car garage, not hundreds of acres for a backyard. And the horses... She’d warned him she wasn’t an animal person, yet he had pushed and pushed until finally she’d pushed back and left.
In hindsight, they couldn’t have been more opposites of each other. It’s what had attracted him to her in the first place. She wasn’t a big city girl like Emma, but she was definitely suburbia. Dylan had made a name for himself training horses and he had set aside every penny he’d made, earning interest. When he’d met Lauren, she’d been divorced for a solid two years already. She had two kids—a boy and a girl, ages three and five. Sweet as the day was long. He loved those kids as if they were his own. And they loved him enough to call him dad. It made her leaving that much harder.
Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if their marriage had started on a ranch. If he had let her know from the beginning that this was the life he wanted. Instead, he had moved into her traditional four-bedroom home in Bozeman. The city was touristy, rugged and quaint all in the same breath. He had found work but felt suffocated living in their cookie-cutter housing development. The only time he had felt at home during their marriage was when he was working on someone else’s ranch. So, when Jax had presented
