Page 18 of Drive Me Wilde

Nev comes out from the back. She's added a touch of color to her lips and cheeks. "Oh, Zander, I didn't hear you come in." It's funny because it's impossible not to notice or hear Zander when he enters a room.

"Nevvie, my little sandwich queen. I'll have the usual."

Nev is someone who never gets flustered, but she's clearly thrown off balance by Zander's presence. He has that kind of impact on people, but I never would have expected it from Nev. I watch her from the side of my eye as she turns back to thesandwich prep counter. She closes her eyes for a second and takes a deep breath and then busies herself with the sandwich.

"You should come out to the ranch. The twins are back home and I'm going to be breaking a new colt we just got in. He's going to be a cool horse once I pop the air bubbles out of him. I think Jameson will be there, too." He laughs. "If you talked to him, then you know about Rio. I'm going to put her up on Irish, our old pony, today."

"Irish? She's still alive? I loved that pony," I say. I spent time at Finn's ranch because Weston was always there riding horses, racing tractors, jumping from haylofts and anything else that might result in a trip to the emergency room. Finnegan never minded having a lot of kids running around his place, and he certainly never paid attention to whatever the boys were up to. The term hands-off parenting originated with Finn Wilde.

"Yeah, ole Irish is still plodding away. Lost track of how old she is, but she gives some of the younger horses a quick nip or kick if they're getting on her nerves. She can still hold her own in the pasture. Rio's started riding lessons. Did you meet her?" he asks it with a proud uncle sparkle in his eye.

"I've met her, and she's amazing." I think about how Jameson and I ended our talk this morning, and it feels heavy and disappointing. It seems we both jumped right back to our old ways of constantly rubbing each other the wrong way. There had been many abrasive, disappointing incidents with Jameson.

Nev barely lifts her gaze as she slides the wrapped sandwich across the counter. Zander is offering her what I consider to be a heart-stopping smile, but she doesn't look at him. He looks disappointed, hurt. He passes her his bank card, and she rings him up.

"Thanks, Nev," he says quietly. It's not his usual boisterous, bowl-over-everything-in-the-path tone. She nods and finallylifts her face. Her smile is sweet and demure, and it seems to wash over him like a soothing hand.

"Come to the ranch," Zander says. "You can come too, Kiki, but I'm not letting you sit on any horse."

"Oh my gosh, that was fifteen years ago, and there was a bee. That's why I screamed."

Zander shakes his head. "A bee," he mutters as he strolls out.

I turn to look at Nev. The color is just starting to fade from her cheeks as she watches him stroll down the sidewalk and out of sight.

"I'm going to take Indi home, so she can put her things away," Kiki says. "I'll be back before the lunch hour." She stops. "What happened with that last interview? I hate working at the bank all week only to have to spend my weekends working here at the shop."

Nev shakes her head. "She didn't know the difference between cheddar and jack cheese, and she said she couldn't work on Sundays. So, she was a big no."

"Great. Well, I'll be back soon," Kiki says on a sigh. "C'mon, bestie. We've got a lot of catching up to do."

eight

. . .

Jameson

"I'm going to check how this hat looks in the mirror." Rio pulls down the visor and throws off her seat belt once we're on the ranch.

"I told you to keep it buckled until we stop," I say. It's ironic considering I used to surf on the back of the truck while Zander whipped around the ranch, making sure to hit every dip and bump in an effort to throw me out of the bed. He considered it a bonus if I broke a bone at the end of the ride. But with my own kid—all I can think is I want to wrap her in giant balls of cotton and follow her everywhere she goes to make sure she doesn't get hurt and that no one says a mean word to her.

"You are such a worrywart. What can possibly happen—" Before she can finish, the front end dips into a rut. The straw cowboy hat bounces off, and Rio is tossed back hard onto the seat.

I glance over at her. She's pouting with embarrassment. I want to say "told you so" but decide to skip it.

It only takes her a second to recover. She reaches for the hat on the floor and pops it back on her head. "Now, when you take pictures of me on the horse?—"

"It's a pony," I say.

She looks over at me. She has her mother's complexion, but everything else about her is Wilde. "A pony is a horse, am I right? I mean, it's not a donkey or a zebra or a pelican."

I laugh. "That last one sort of went off topic, but I get your point." We roll past the main house. It's a massive two-story log cabin with a wraparound porch. Even though some of the shit that went on at the ranch wasn't exactly family-ish, the new cabin always felt like home. Dad built it when Zander and I were toddlers, and the twins were just born. Back then, we were all living in the old cabin. At that time, it was more of a shanty, but Zander and I didn't mind. We had the run of the place and the acres surrounding it. The old cabin was built by our grandfather, Lachlan Wilde. Lachlan managed to snag over two hundred acres for almost nothing back in the early 1900s. The land was mostly untouched when Dad inherited it. The stories around Lachlan's untimely death grew more sordid as we got older, but it seemed to involve stealing someone's wife, an angry husband and a shotgun. Just like the stories surrounding Lachlan's unexpected death, stories of how Dad got the money to build the new cabin and barn and everything else on the ranch were better left untold.

"So, when you're taking pictures of me on the horse, make sure to get my left side. I've got this annoying pink dot on my right cheek." She turns her head all the way around to show me thedot.

"Uh, tiger, I think they call that a zit."

"Shhh!" Rio says briskly. She leans over and presses her small finger against my mouth. "We don't use the Z word, all right. It's a pink dot. That way, I can brag on social media that I've never had a zit."

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