Page 36 of The Rancher's Heart

“I wish I’d had a chance to watch Clara grow up.”

“Tracy might not have told you about Clara, but she didn’t throw the letter she wrote to you away, either. She left it where someone would find it if something happened to her. Maybe that was her way of making sure Clara would find her sister—” He put an arm around her shoulders.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she climbed into the UTV and sat close to Clara.

Taking the long way home, he drove them around the ranch, showing Clara all his favorite places, ending up at the pond with the tall grasses edging the north side. Sloane tried to keep the conversation going, giving him a chance to tell Clara stories of when he and his brothers were kids, helping their dad and mom around the ranch, but he could tell her heart wasn’t in it.

There had to be something he could say or do to make her heart lighter. She caught him glancing her way when he could take his eyes off the road.

“I’m okay, Jonas... really.”

He had to take her word for it.

At the house, she followed Clara. “We’d better get going.”

“Can’t we stay a little longer?” Clara asked.

Sloane shook her head, her gaze glued to his. Before he could ask her to stay for dinner, she cut him off at the pass. “We have a lot to do to get ready for our meeting with Nora. We’ll see you tomorrow at your office?”

“Sure. I’ll make the arrangements. Say ten in the morning?”

Her chin dipped once. “Perfect. We’ll see you then.”

He didn’t have an argument that might persuade Sloane to stay, so he watched as they loaded into her truck and drove away without her usual wave goodbye.

It was dark by the time he helped Nathan put the horses in their stalls for the night, then checked his notes for the next day when they would meet with the social worker. From everything he’d researched, unless another relative came forward, and he couldn’t see who that would be, Clara would remain with Sloane.

The last thing he checked was his email, where he found a notification from Perfect Match. He arched his brows and opened the email titledYour Profile is Complete.

What did they mean his profile was complete? He hadn’t signed up for the dating app.

Take advantage of our three-day FREE trial.

The message had come into his personal email account. Only his brothers and Sloane used that address. Had Sloane signed him up on the app? Before he could think about deleting the email, he followed the link to a profile with his picture. The name on the page wasJonas Adam.

What the heck?

Sloane wouldn’t have set him up on Perfect Match. Not without asking him. It wasn’t how she rolled. He would ask her after they finished their CDHS business tomorrow, but he already knew what her answer would be.

That left his brothers and what they’d been whispering about the other day. Blake and Nathan were up to their usual mischief.

Women responding to his profile was not what he needed. No Sloane finding out he had a page on Perfect Match was the last thing he wanted to happen. Not if he was determined to put things right with his former best friend.

Chapter Ten

Clara ending upin a foster home was not going to happen. Before she could concentrate on the meeting with Nora Owens, Sloane had to first decide what to do with her feelings for Jonas. She’d thought she was done with them, but when he’d put his arm around her shoulders and was so understanding about Tracy—more thanshe’dever been—her heart had fluttered like a butterfly.

Had Tracy meant for Clara to find the letter that had brought the teen to Sloane?

She’d wanted to break up their friendship because she couldn’t stand by and only participate in Jonas’s life from the sidelines. Now, she wasn’t so sure that’s what he was asking her to do. His arm holding her securely to his side, and the sympathetic compassion he’d cocooned her in felt like a door opening, inviting her back in.

Her relationship with Jonas had been easy before he moved back to Strawberry Ridge. She saw him once in a while when he came home or when she went to Denver. For the most part, all she had to do was pretend she didn’t have unnerving feelings for the rancher. They would spend a day or two doing the things they both liked. Then he would go back to Denver, or she would return home and the routine of her days, and she would forget, or at least try to forget how much her heart thumped when they breathed the same air and she daydreamed about what it would be like to kiss her best friend. On the lips. His arms locked around her like unbreakable bands. The more time she spent with him,likingJonas was a very vanilla way to describe the emotion that was growing in her chest.

She had to put that aside now because what was more important was to make sure she made a home for her baby sister and that Clara knew she was loved.

“You don’t have to tuck me in,” Clara said, biting her lip, an uncertain frown pulling her brows together when Sloane followed her into her room to do just that.

“But I want to.” Sloane put a glass of water on the nightstand. “Is that okay?”

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