Page 28 of The Rancher's Heart

Clara twisted her fingers together in her lap and nodded.

“Tracy says you’re my sister. How do you feel about that?” Sloane asked gently.

“I don’t know you,” Clara said, a note of anger in her voice.

Her gaze steady on Clara’s face, Sloane took a breath and reached for her sister’s hand. “Then I think we’d better get to know each other, don’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

Jonas kept his distance.

“I would be okay if you wanted to live with me. At least give it a try.” Sloane took Clara’s hand in both of hers. “We could be a family.”

If the kid agreed, Sloane would be getting exactly what she wanted.

Something broke open in Jonas’s chest. This was his Sloane. Always leading with her heart. Why hadn’t he realized...

He would do everything he could to help her and Clara stay together.

“I’ll have pizza delivered to your house.” Too absorbed with the newness of having a real sister, neither responded.

Not for the first time since she’d told him they couldn’t be friends, his heart beat harder. Watching the sisters together, he knew there was nothing casual or out-of-habit about what he felt for Sloane Michaels. He’d always known that. As soon as the dust settled with this new development in her life, he was going to make sure she knew it too.

Chapter Eight

She had asister.

Sloane was sorry her mother was gone, killed by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel, but she was sorrier Clara had been left behind at an age when a girl’s mother was vitally important. It brought back all those memories of feeling lost when Tracy left her behind.

Tracy never wanted to be a mom. She made sure Sloane knew it. Wouldn’t let her call her “Mom,” insisting instead that she use her given name. Probably not as punishment, but because she didn’t know what to do with a young child.

So, she’d clung to her dad. At six, when one day Tracy was suddenly gone without saying goodbye, she was relieved to be left with her dad. To this day, Sloane thanked her lucky stars. Who did Clara have to cling to?

When she turned around from putting Tracy’s letter in the top drawer of the china cabinet that had once belonged to her dad’s mother, Clara watched from the living room where she hovered by the coffee table. The bags they’d picked up from the transit center were at her feet. “Come sit down.” Sloane indicated the table in the dining room. When Clara sat in one of the chairs, Sloane reached out to cover the teen’s hand. “This must be as strange for you as it is for me.”

Clara pulled her hand away. “You won’t let Nora take me back, will you?”

“No,” she told the girl, probably for the fifth time. “We’ll talk to her, tell her our plan. And Jonas will submit whatever papers she needs tomorrow.”

She’d been shocked when the words came out of her mouth, telling him they couldn’t be friends anymore. It was how she’d started feeling, but saying it out loud, and then to his face... It surprised her... and him too.

Despite that, he’d called the minute he realized Clara could be her sister. Maybe she’d been too hasty. Just looking at him, dressed in black slacks, a white button-down shirt—though slightly wrinkled—and his favorite black, polished cowboy boots, her heart took a serious, unwelcome tumble.

She could not be doing this every time he did something nice for her. Making sure she got the chance to meet Clara was more than nice. It was... amazing... even heroic. At least, that’s how it looked from her side of the fence she’d erected.

Giving them time to get acquainted, he set the table with plates, napkins, and slices of the pizza that had arrived a few minutes ago. The man loved his pizza, but after what she’d said to him, she was surprised he decided to join them for dinner. Ex-friends didn’t hang out together after they broke up, did they?

Maybe he made an exception because of Clara. They needed him to get her paperwork sorted, and he was aware of that. All she could say about that was she was glad. She didn’t want to mess up her chance to have her sister stay because she missed filling out a needed form.

“Dinner’s ready, ladies,” Jonas announced.

Watching Jonas with Clara was an eye-opener. She’d never thought to see him with a child that didn’t belong to his brothers. He was good with Blake and Malorie’s Andee, Reece, and Timmy. And the kids loved their uncle. It’d never occurred to Sloane that the man who said he wasn’t ready to get married would have such a natural affinity for a teen in trouble.

Clara was her responsibility, not his. For the first time, Sloane understood what it meant that her dad had filled the hole Tracy had left by becoming both her mom and dad all those years ago.

“Do you want to go see Duke and his mares tomorrow?” he was asking as Sloane sat with them at the table.

Swallowing the bite she’d already taken, Clara’s eyes went round as saucers. She looked at Sloane. “Can I?”

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