Chapter 15

Dawson Rhinehart pushed the shirt off his eyes as his alarm sounded. Yes, even at five o'clock in the morning, he needed something to block the sunlight from waking him even earlier than that.

His eyes felt like someone had spent the night rubbing sand in them. He sat up and pulled his arms up over his head, his ribs on the right side pulling in a not-quite-comfortable way. He'd been battling cattle all summer, and they only had one more round of antibiotics to get through the last group of cattle to eradicate the brD on the ranch.

Respiratory diseases weren't trivial, not on a cattle ranch in Texas. Especially when it bordered the largest cattle operation in the Panhandle. His oldest brother, Duke, ran the ranch, and he'd been down to the hospital twice this year alone from accidents on their family land.

He worked the ranch with his wife, Arizona, and Dawson loved going to their house for dinner. They had four children who adored Dawson, and he'd see all of them out on the ranch somewhere today. Their parents made them all work in the summer, and Dawson remembered really looking forward to school starting again, because then he didn't have to work in the hot sunshine for twelve hours every day. Seven days a week. All holidays.

At the same time, Dawson loved nothing more than working the family ranch. In his mind, he just called it the Rhinehart Ranch, as did plenty of others. But on the books, they did business as Hidden Hills Ranch. They weren't as fancy as Shiloh Ridge next door, with big arches and fancy houses.

Dawson currently lived with his younger brother Brandon, and he wasn't surprised to hear the shower in the cabin start while he still tried to stretch out the discomfort in his right side. He gained his feet and walked out of his room, stretching out his arms and legs. He wouldn't shower until he finished his run anyway, and by then, Brandon would be finished, with breakfast on the table.

They had a good routine going, and while that sometimes drove Dawson nuts, he also liked the predictability of his life.

Back in his bedroom, he dressed in his running shorts and shoes, then pulled a tank top over his head. He'd probably lose it at some point, because the sun baked Texas in July, no matter the time of day.

Dawson liked to check his calendar for the day before his run, because then his thoughts would set his intention and mindset for the day, something he'd learned to do in high school to avoid panicking when something came up he hadn't anticipated.

He'd been through quite a bit of cognitive behavior therapy in an attempt to get his thoughts to bring up the good things about him instead of the bad, and a morning run with his schedule in his head had helped immensely.

"Oh, my triple date is tonight," he muttered when he saw the event on the calendar. He was going out with Finn and Edith Ackerman and Alex and Nicki Baxter. Yes, they were both married couples, but Dawson was the same age as Finn and Edith, and he got along well with them.

Alex was Edith's younger brother, and he'd only been married for about a month now. Dawson didn't have a serious or steady girlfriend, but he'd asked Galatia Haws to go to dinner with him and his friends. He'd met her through Brandon, who'd met her when he'd gone to pick up his girlfriend at her office in one of the downtown high rises.

He'd taken her out a couple of times now, but he hadn't kissed her. He was still deciding if he even wanted to kiss her. If he did, that would take their relationship to another level, and Dawson wasn't sure if he wanted to go to the I-have-to-talk-to-her-in-person-to-break-up stage.

Right now, he could text her—or just not text her about another date—and that would end things.

Besides the date, he'd be meeting with Duke and also Cactus Glover to administer the last round of antibiotics, and then he had soil samples to collect from their far western fields, and then he'd get to escape to the office to handle some administrative tasks here on the ranch. All in all, he'd probably eat lunch at Zona's house, laugh with his nieces and nephews, and stop by the homestead to visit his parents before his date tonight.

All nice, normal things Dawson did on a regular basis.

He ran; he ate breakfast with Brandon; he showered. Seven o'clock still hadn't struck, but he left the cabin with his brother to get their nastiest chores done before the heat really burned them.

He fed horses, swept stalls, and then finally saddled his equine so he could ride out to where the last group of cattle waited for their final dose of antibiotics. His long sleeves and cowboy hat kept the sun off his skin, thus avoiding a burn, and he wasn't surprised to find Duke and Cactus at the temporary fencing that had created a paddock for the remaining cattle.

"Morning," he said to his brother, who was really his half-brother. They only shared their daddy's genes, but Duke gave him a nod and said, "Morning, Daws."

Cactus said nothing, because if there was someone grumpier than Duke, it was Cactus Glover. He handed out the supplies and they all went over the fences and into the thick of the cattle. No wonder Dawson's ribs and shoulders hurt him almost all the time.

As he went about his job, his mind wandered down a road it shouldn't. A path he didn't even explore during his morning runs.

Continuing his education and doing something a little less physically taxing. Something where he wasn't body-slammed by thousand-pound cows into fences or the ground. Something where he didn't have to lift hay bales or haul feed bags or shovel mud out of stalls in the winter.

Something a little more white collar and a little less cowboy.

The problem was, Dawson had already been to college. He'd earned a degree in ranch management, in fact. When he wasn't helping with the chores and things like making sure their herd stayed healthy, he managed most of the back-end affairs on the ranch.

Forms, paperwork, and accounting took up most of his afternoons, but at least he got to work indoors. Still, in his most uncomfortable moments, Dawson wondered if he was old enough to be feeling so…rusty.

About halfway through the antibiotic dosing, Duke's phone rang. He stepped out of the fence to answer it, and he paced away from the contained herd while Cactus and Dawson continued to work. Duke never stood still to talk on the phone. Heck, Duke never stood still. He ran on high energy all the time, and just thinking about him exhausted Dawson.

"Dawson," Duke barked.

He straightened and found his older brother perched on the top rung of the temporary fence. "Yeah?"

"I thought you talked to that wildlife officer about the owls."

Dawson's face scrunched up as he tried to remember such a conversation. "What?"

"A few weeks ago," Duke said as he frowned at his phone. "Her name is Caroline Thompson, and she said the paperwork for the endangered owls on our ranch never got filed." He lifted his eyes. "We have endangered owls on our ranch?"

"No." Dawson stood among all the bovines, his mind sparking at him. "And I met with a guy named Ryan Murphy. He said they'd had sightings of burrowing owls here, due to our large population of prairie dogs. It was nothing."

"Well, it's not nothing to Caroline Thompson. You need to call her and figure out what form she needs. Then file it."

Irritation sparked through Dawson. If he'd needed to file a form, he would've. The last wildlife officer who'd been out to the ranch had said no such thing. "Yes, sir," he said as he turned his back on his brother to return to work.

After lunch—which his sister-in-law Zona did feed him—Dawson went to work in the detached office next to the main barn. He'd built it himself with the help of his daddy, and while it wasn't huge, it suited him perfectly.

A big desk waited for him, with a view of the ranch beyond the only window in the building. Four filing cabinets flanked the desk, two on each side, and Dawson knew every file in every folder in the drawers. He'd hung a whiteboard on the right-hand wall, where he kept track of deadlines and dates, websites where he needed to file various taxes and forms, and his own notes from his thoughts.

He closed the door behind him and reached to flip the air conditioning up higher. He kept it on seventy-five when he wasn't working in the office, and seventy when he was. It wouldn't take long to cool down, but it did run continuously most afternoons.

By some miracle Dawson didn't understand, his father didn't complain about the cost of air conditioning the small office.

He settled at his desk and looked at the list from yesterday. He made sure to keep a meticulous to-do list, and he paged back in his desk planner until he found the day he'd met with the Wildlife Officer Ryan.

It had been the same day of the electrical fire—well, the day after. They'd all gone down to Shiloh Ridge Ranch, where they'd hosted a big luncheon for the people who'd been displaced, and Dawson had taken the call from there.

He'd pulled his brother away from talking with Link's girlfriend and Misty's best friend, and they'd come back to the ranch to talk to the man. Only Dawson had met with him, but he'd taken notes.

Sightings of burrowing owls in prairie dog colonies. Watch for them and report them to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department if seen.That was it.

"And I haven't seen any owls," he said, flipping back to today, a little over a month later. In fact, Dawson hated the prairie dogs that holed up the farmland here on the ranch, and he'd consulted with Daddy and Duke over the years about removing them from Hidden Hills.

Duke had forwarded the text from Caroline Thompson, a woman Dawson had never heard of nor met, but he'd deal with her after he finished today's to-do list. He added her to the bottom of it and went back to the top to get through the tasks that needed doing today.

After setting his phone to play classical music through the Bluetooth speaker on his desk, he pulled the ledger with the ranch's finances toward him. Duke had turned in receipts for payroll, the water bill, and more, and he needed to get everything entered for June so they had an accurate picture of their money for July.

They weren't all billionaires like the Glovers, after all.

Hidden Hills did well for its size—it produced enough to support him, Brandon, and Duke, as well as a tidy retirement amount for Dawson's parents. They all worked hard around this place, and with some of Arizona's money, they'd expanded the ranch on the western edge and added three hundred more cattle to their herd.

Duke partnered with the Glovers in everything, from when they drove the cattle into the hills, to splitting the manpower required to watch over them there, to the round up, branding, planting, harvest, all of it.

Dawson lost himself inside the pretty music notes and a series of numbers, and before he knew it, someone had opened the door behind him. It took him a moment to pull himself from the computer screen and what dominated his thoughts, so he hadn't turned around before a woman demanded, "Why have you been ignoring my messages?"

He turned then, blinking at the person who'd interrupted his peace. Who was letting in all the hot air and releasing all the cool air conditioning.

A blonde woman stood there in a pair of sexy khaki shorts with a matching shirt with buttons running up the front. She wore the insignia of Texas above her breast pocket and a pure tornado in her expression.

"I—who are you?" he asked as he stood up. He didn't want to be attracted to her, but plenty of fizz fired through him as she took another step toward him.

"Caroline Thompson," she spat at him. "We spoke on the phone this morning."

Dawson returned her glare, the only thing on his mind how stunningly gorgeous her blue eyes were. He'd forgotten his own name. What he'd been doing. Why he hated being interrupted, and how the heat of a Texas July bothered him.

Something nagged in his mind, and his eyebrows drew down. "We talked this morning? Are you sure?"

She scoffed, which only made his heart beat faster. He couldn't wait to find out who she was, if she was single, and if she might go out with him.