Unlucky in Love by Maggie McGinnis Read Free Book Online

overload?”
    Dammit, she wasn’t supposed to look exhausted. She’d been going for
life of the party
here. But she’d been up since before dawn, fighting early-morning Boston commuter traffic before she was fully caffeinated, and on planes for six hours. Anybody’d be exhausted, right?
    “Just a long day.” She smiled but could tell it probably wasn’t very convincing. “I’ll be good as new in the morning.”
    “Well, the first dinner with the Driscoll clan can be enough to do anybody in, even without all of the in-laws. You held your own just fine. You’ll get everybody straight soon enough.”
    “Thank you.” She looked down the hill toward the line of cabins dotting the pathway, wondering which one might be his…wondering if he shared it with anyone, like adorable-sounding sugar-pusher Jenny, for instance. “So is your day actually over now, too? Or do you guys still have evening chores to do?”
    He smiled. “Day’s never over on a ranch. But there are finally enough of us to cover things so we’re not all doing fifteen-hour shifts like last summer. I’ll do a last pass through the stables on my way back to my cabin, but a couple of the other guys are in charge down there for the evening.”
    “I…can’t wait to see the horses tomorrow.”
    That was the right thing to say, right? No need to admit quite this early that she was terrified of the beasts.
    “Kyla didn’t take you through the stables when she did the tour?”
    “She did, but they were empty at the time. I just saw the stalls.” Lexi raised her eyebrows. “Your stables are ridiculously pristine, by the way.”
    He laughed quietly as he pointed to the barn closest to the lodge. “Well, according to Decker and Cole, that one was pretty run-down just a few years back. They slaved one whole summer to spruce this place up, and then it started doing well enough to build a new stable and add horses. When you’ve got that much sweat equity in a place, you don’t let it fall to pieces very easily.”
    “How long have they been running Whisper Creek as a guest ranch?”
    “Actually, just four or five years now. They started out small.” Gunnar tipped up his Stetson. “Between you and me and a fence post, their father just about ran this place into the ground before he died. They worked their butts off to save it. Kyla actually had a pretty big hand in getting the guest piece of it to where it is today. They were just dabbling in that end of things when she and her friends came out the first time.”
    Lexi nodded. “She seems like the kind of woman who could make men, women,
and
horses take direction. But in a really nice way.”
    “Yep. That’d be Kyla. Heart of gold, spine of steel. She’s the only kind of person Ma would ever have given
any
reins to, let alone as many as she’s handed over.”
    “Where do she and Decker live?”
    Gunnar pointed west. “They built a house over the hill there. Looks down on a great little valley with a duck pond at the bottom.”
    “Do Cole and Jess live here, too?”
    “Yep. Up over the spa with their little girl, Layla. Hayley and Daniel have a house closer to town. If you see blond twins running around, that’s who they belong to.”
    Lexi nodded slowly, trying to catalog the names in her head again. For some reason, she could memorize a couple hundred kids’ names in no time flat, but adults were another story. She’d tried every trick in the book, but no matter how hard she tried, she constantly came up blank.
    “Don’t worry.” Gunnar smiled. “You’ll get everybody straight, because hardly anybody ever leaves. You won’t be able to help it.”
    “That’s reassuring, thanks.”
    “Well, you look completely done in.” He tapped her porch railing. “Oughta head inside before somebody else comes along to bother you. Pretty girl on a porch swing invites conversation. It’s a rule out here.”
    Lexi laughed, at the same time feeling warmed by his compliment, no matter how