Page 32 of The Rancher's Heart

Opening her texting app, she handed Clara her phone. “Will you text Jonas and tell him we’ll be there in a little while?”

The teen’s fingers danced across the face of the cell. She hesitated a second, then—“He says he’ll be there.”

Sloane wasn’t surprised. She knew he would be. He’d only ever let her down by not taking her hints that she would welcome more from him than friendship. While she disagreed with him, he may have made the right decision. With Clara in her life now, she didn’t have time to try to figure Jonas out, or go on dates, or spend her energies looking for theperfectguy. She should probably close her Perfect Match account too. Making a home for her sister was more important than finding a guy who would hang around forever.

After they cleaned up from breakfast, Sloane helped Clara unpack her things. The girl spent more time looking out the window at the back garden than she did talking. Sloane hoped to change that.

When they were done, she said, “Your room is kind of plain—” It felt cozy, but it was a guest room, not a young girl’s sanctuary. “Should we liven it up a bit with new sheets and a comforter, and some colorful curtains? We can look online and see what you like.”

“I’d like that.” Sloane put an arm around her sister’s shoulders as they stood just past the doorway and took in the room. Clara leaned into her, whispering, “Will you always be my sister?”

“I willalwaysbe your sister,” she said, tilting Clara’s chin up. “No matter what.”

“Even when I do something stupid?”

“Like what?” Sloane was curious about what the girl considered stupid. Something as crazy as having a crush on her BFF for more years than she wanted to admit, then deciding to find someone else on a dating app? Nothing could be more foolish than that.

“I’m not good in school.” Before Sloane could reassure Clara that was an easy thing to fix, she rushed on, staring down at her hands. “If I hang out with my friends and don’t tell you where I am. Or have a boy in my room, even if he’s just a friend.”

“Well... I’ll help you with your schoolwork, so that’s not a problem. When you’re out with your friends, you have to tell me where you’re going, with no exceptions. And you will not have boys in your room, even if all you’re doing is homework or watching a movie. You can do that in the living room. Can you live with that?”

Clara looked up at her, a look of guarded hope in her brown eyes, and nodded.

Could she be a good parent to her sister? That was the question. The kind of parent the kid needed? Love was not the issue. Sloane already loved Clara more than she’d ever thought she would love a sister if she’d had one. It was all the other parenting skills she had to acquire.

“Good.” Sloane gave Clara a quick hug. “If you ever wonder if something you’re doing is right or wrong, just ask me, and we’ll talk it out.”

Clara stepped out of the hug. “Do you do stupid things?”

“On occasion,” Sloane confirmed with a tiny frown, admitting, “I’ve never been a big sister before.”

“If you ever wonder, you can talk to me,” Clara repeated with a contagious sparkle in her eyes. “I’ll tell you if you’re making a mistake or not.”

Sloane laughed. “I bet you would.”

Clara wasn’t saying out loud that her life with Tracy had been problematic, but Sloane figured it had. Her dad had let her mom go because she’d had a hard time always being there for her husband and daughter. It wasn’t unusual for Sloane to come home from the first grade—even after they moved to Strawberry Ridge—and most of the time find Tracy gone. That much, she remembered quite well.

Clara deserved more. Sloane silently promised to do better. “Are you ready to see Jonas’s ranch?”

Clara almost smiled back. “I’m ready.”

And off they went.

Sloane rolled her eyes. Would her heart ever stop madly pumping every time she got a chance to see Jonas Lohmen? Having him for a best friend had always... mostly, until recently... been a good thing. Maybe she should think again about calling their friendship quits?

Chapter Nine

When Jonas wasn’tat the office following up on Clara’s paperwork or working for his other clients, he helped Nathan with the horses, making sure he and his brothers didn’t skip a beat while preparing to establish a new Triple L Rangerbred breeding program.

He’d spent the morning investigating the Colorado Department of Human Services rules and what had to be done to ensure Clara’s placement with Sloane, and he finished up the guardianship papers without any hiccups. He did not want any mistakes on his end.

He’d mostly practiced intellectual property and corporate law in Denver, but what appealed to him most was the pro bono work he did in family law. Now that he was setting up his practice in Strawberry Ridge, he wanted to do more family cases, much like he was doing for Sloane and Clara. Solving family problems and helping them put the pieces of their lives together gave him more satisfaction than anything else he’d done since law school. The only thing that came close was keeping the ranch afloat.

It was a direction he hadn’t seriously thought of taking until now... the ranch, his brothers and their new families, Sloane—not his best friend anymore, if he believed her, which he didn’t—and Clara, a kid who needed a family who cared about her. In the short time since he’d met Sloane’s sister and gotten to know her a little bit, his future suddenly became very clear. The trick was convincing Sloane he wasn’t the same guy who was focused only on his work.

Family. That was the most important thing. The kind of work he could do by moving his practice to the smaller town, while on the side, reestablishing his dad’s breeding program, and getting acquainted with the grown men Blake and Nathan had become was the only motivation he needed to make his permanent home on the ranch and put all his disparate pieces together.

So, here he was, waiting for his ex-best friend and her newly discovered sister to come and spend the afternoon with him on the ranch. He’d made a mistake when his mom passed. He should never have let his grief and anger take control when he ordered Blake to leave and never come back. It didn’t take more than a few days before he regretted those actions. By then, it was too late. Blake was not in Strawberry Ridge, and it was many years before he was able to locate his brother, and many more after that, before he took the bull by the horns and brought him home again.

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