I gazed at him, wondering why he wasn’t coming any closer. Then I realized he wasn’t approaching because of Shiloh.

She would kick him. She knew him, knew he was mine, but she wouldn’t allow him next to her without my restraint, and I couldn’t give it. I hadn’t yet.

I was still staring at him and experiencing all the emotions I tried to suppress for so long. It was why I stayed away. I had to forget him. I had to move on or I was going to do something drastic.

“What are you doing here?” My voice was hoarse, and Shiloh reacted to the thick emotion there. She danced to the side, her head flaring up.

I patted her absentmindedly, and she settled, but Brody backed another good distance away.

He held his hands up slowly, speaking low and fast, “My nieces are missing. I need your help to find them.”

“What?” They were here?

Shiloh shifted again, her anxiety rising with my own.

“I can explain everything later, but they’re somewhere on your land.”

My mouth dried. “Are there search parties?”

He nodded.

“They tried to find you first but couldn’t, so by the time they called me, eighteen hours had already passed.” He pointed behind him toward the southwest section. “They haven’t swept the east side at all. I have no idea where the girls went. No one does, but they would go past the fields. They wouldn’t have gone to the north side of the house. Everything slopes south. That’s where they would’ve gone.”

“How old are your nieces?”

“Nine and eleven years old. They’re smart, but they’re only . . .” His voice rasped in barely contained desperation.

“Okay.” I began edging Shiloh toward him. My legs tightened. I was telling her to remain calm, and I was running a hand over her neck to further soothe her because she was going to hate me in a moment.

“What are you doing?” He eyed Shiloh as she eyed him right back.

I scooted forward on her and drew her body to the side of him. “You need to get on.”

“What?” His eyes almost bulged out. “No. She’ll kill me.”

“She’s never bucked me off. If you’re coming up, she knows it’s because I want you up here. She’ll allow it for now.” She would have to. Going on foot wasn’t an option.

He was still watching her, his jaw clenching.

Shiloh kept shifting around. She wasn’t happy about this, but she wasn’t bolting. Not yet.

“You have to get on. We can’t waste time. I can’t ride to get a horse for you from the barn, and I wouldn’t waste the time even if there were horses there. I can’t leave you out here alone.”

“I can find my way back.”

I snorted. “How?” I gestured to the side. “Which direction would you go?”

He pulled out a compass and smirked at me. “I’d go north.”

“That works if you’re in a straight line from the house. You aren’t.”

“I’m not?”

“You’re southeast, and you’re close to the next mountain. You go north, and you’ll walk right by the house. You won’t even see it.” I leaned down, my arm extended. “I love that you came, and I love seeing you right now, but enough’s enough. Get the fuck up so I can save the day.”

He started to reach for my hand but drew back at the end of my words.

His eyes met mine.

A bolt spread through both of us.

I needed him. That was all I knew in that moment, and he answered the look. He needed me too.

It was dark, deep, and almost desperate. They were all the same feelings I’d been tortured with since he left, but I was different. I had become different in his absence, and I wanted to tell him, but those words—like everything else—needed to wait.

He nodded and then his hand touched mine, and I felt the tingle like I knew I would.

I pulled at the same time as he jumped, and then we had a wild mustang beneath us. He was firmly settled behind me, and Shiloh was jumping all around. She was trying to buck us both off, but I held firm. Brody’s arms were wrapped around my waist, and if we’d both been naked, he could’ve been inside me already. But I was bent forward, whispering and crooning to Shiloh. I was asking her not to leave us, telling her we needed her help.

I spoke to her as if she were a human. “There are two little girls who need our help. We have to take him back. I can’t leave him out here. I love him, Shiloh. I can’t lose him.” Not again. She was still darting around, kicking her hind legs.

I began begging, “Please, Shiloh. I need your help. I will give you a whole bag of apples after this, but we need to find the babies. Two little girls. They’re the same age I was when your mother helped me.”

I didn’t know what did the trick—if it was my pleading, if she somehow magically understood me, or if she felt the desperation in me.

For all I knew, it was the promise of treats.

But in the next second, she swung around and bolted to the house.

I almost fell off from the abrupt change in her, but I grabbed her neck and held tight. Brody was plastered to my back, and I think maybe she realized the only way to get him off was to deliver him to the place he always went.

She tore through the woods at a breakneck speed.