Eli threw his cards in the center of the table. “Actually, I’m out. I’m heading home anyway. Gotta be up early.” He lightly punched Kyle in the shoulder. “Come on, kola, you’re with me.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Kyle swayed to his feet.

“I’ll be taking off too,” Bran said.

“Well, hell, ain’t no reason for us to stick around,” Max said to Nikki. “Come on, angel, let’s go.”

“You guys all okay to drive?” Lainie asked.

“Nikki’s the DD for me.”

“Bran? How about you?”

“I’m fine.”

Hank stood. “Tell you what. Let’s meet at Buckeye Joe’s tomorrow night. We can get as loud as we want and ain’t no one gonna chase us off.”

Abe glared at him and walked away.

Bran couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

The next morning Celia Lawson was leaning against the old outhouse, enjoying a smoke, when she heard footsteps crunching in the snow. She didn’t move, nor did she stomp out her cigarette like a guilty teen. She knew Eli hadn’t come looking for her. He didn’t give a shit what she did when she wasn’t on her horse. That left one other possibility.

She inhaled a lungful of smoke and blew it out before she said, “Mornin’, Kyle.”

“Mornin’, Celia.”

“How’s your head?” Start out snarky, keep it snarky—that was her motto when it came to dealing with Kyle Gilchrist.

“You assume I got shit-faced last night?”

She shrugged. “Ain’t my business even if you did. Just makin’ conversation.”

“My head’s just fine, thank you for asking.”

“You’re welcome.” Now go away.

“How long you been smoking?”

“Since I joined the circuit. Keeps me awake on the long stretches of road.”

“It’s a disgusting habit.”

“Says the man who chews tobacco,” she said with saccharine sweetness.

“You’re in a mood.”

A bad mood when I have to deal with you.

She smoked, gazing across the snow-covered hills stretching as far as the eye could see. The landscape was completely different here, at Eli’s place, than on Lawson land, although only thirty miles separated the ranches.

So why did she feel so far away?

She’d come home because she was homesick. After her arrival, she felt more homesick. The place she’d driven all night to get to . . . didn’t feel like her home anymore.

It’d left her unsettled. Which pretty much described her life in the last year and a half.

“You have just this week off?” Kyle asked.

Why was he being so goddamn nice to her? Usually the ass**le went out of his way to embarrass her. Like last night. Bringing up Pueblo.

Speaking of ... Celia wasn’t about to let him off the hook for that. “So you walked into Breck’s horse trailer when I was givin’ him a blow job, huh?”

Kyle’s mouth tightened. “It wasn’t the first time I’d seen someone on their knees in front of Breck. I doubt it’ll be the last.”

“Got a high opinion of your sometime traveling partner?”

“Breck’s a great guy. Great competitor. But the man is a f**kin’ slut. I was surprised to see you’d gotten sucked in by him.”

She laughed, inhaling one last drag of her cigarette before tossing the butt to the snow and snuffing it with her boot heel. “I was the one doin’ the sucking, Kyle.”

“Jesus, Celia.”

“What? You can be crude but I can’t? Typical macho chauvinistic behavior for you.”

“That you’re tryin’ to be like me warms the cockles of my heart, dumpling,” he said with a silken drawl. “I didn’t think Breck was your type.”

“He’s not. I don’t have a type. Breck and I hook up when we cross paths. No big deal. It ain’t love. I’m not expecting a ring and a vow of devotion.”

“Or a vow of chastity.”

“For either of us.”

“So you’re not . . . falling for him?”

Celia rolled her eyes. “Not hardly. He’s amazing in bed, and sometimes I just want to be with a guy who has no sexual boundaries.”

Kyle pinned her with a look. “Then you know that Breck is sometimes with guys?”

“I figured. But it’s not like we’ve talked about it. Wouldn’t be a good thing for Breck if word got around the circuit.” She cocked her head. “How’d you find out he swings both ways?”

The muscle in Kyle’s jaw jumped as he gritted his teeth. Bingo. She’d sent a question mark right to the heart of Kyle’s sexuality. He deserved it for all the comments he’d made over the years about her less than feminine attributes and tomboy actions.

“I don’t know from personal experience, smart-ass. I showed up at our motel room an hour early and found him f**king some dude. Breck freaked out, because he thought I’d freak out. I couldn’t care less who he does as long as he ain’t putting the moves on me.”

“Spoken like a true homophobe.”

“Wrong. I don’t like people pushing their religion on me neither.”

“Ditto.” Celia fired up another smoke. “Why’d you follow me out here?”

“To be a complete and total dick to you, naturally. See if I can get you to punch me in the face or knee me in the ’nads.”