“Yeah, I’ll be there. The pleasure was all mine, Emma.”

Her eyes lit up when I said her name, but other than that, she had no response. I watched as Wayne walked out with the girls, and he began talking to Emma. I knew what the jerk was thinking—new girl, new chance to score. There was no way in hell I would let that happen.

“You got your eye on the new girl?” Billy asked as he pushed my shoulder, causing me to stumble into the stool.

I turned to face him and shrugged my shoulders. When Billy let out a laugh, the people sitting farther down the counter looked at him.

He leaned closer to me and said, “Did you see how stacked she was?”

I instantly felt my face get hot. I grabbed on to him and pulled him closer to me. “Don’t ever talk about her like that again.”

His smile faded, and I gave him a good push away. I threw money down on the counter and thanked Mr. Horster.

Billy followed me out. “I’m going to take that as a very clear response that you’ve got your eye on Emma Birk.”

I smiled as I jumped into Billy’s truck.

Neither one of us said a word as Billy drove me back home. His family owned the ranch next to ours, and we had been best friends for as long as I could remember. I thought this was the first time we hadn’t spoken a word to each other on this daily drive. I got a funny feeling in my gut that maybe Billy liked Emma also. The last thing I wanted to do was ruin our friendship over a girl. No girl was worth that.

“You want me to take you all the way down?” Billy asked as he pulled up to my family’s gate.

I looked up at the big M on the gate and smiled. Someday, this will all be mine.

“Nah, I need to clear my head, so I think I’ll just run home,” I said as I got out of his truck.

He nodded his head and glanced around before looking back at me. “I like her, too, Garrett,” he said.

My stomach dropped. “All right. How do you think we need to handle this, Bill?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I saw the look on your face when you first saw her, Garrett. In an instant, I knew you were attracted to her. I gotta ask…is it just a sex thing? Or is it something more?”

Just the idea that he was asking if I was interested in Emma for only sex pissed me off. “What is it for you?”

He looked down and then back up at me. “Honestly?”

I nodded my head and got ready for his answer.

“At first, it was just the idea of getting her alone, but the more I talked to her, the more I liked her. She’s different than the other girls around here.”

I looked down and kicked the dirt. We really need rain to get out of this drought. My heart was aching now, more than it ever had before. I’d already been worried about my family’s ranch because of this drought, and now, I was worried that my best friend and I were about to go head-to-head over a girl.

I simply said, “Yeah.”

I looked at Billy, and we both smiled at each other.

“Gentlemen about this?” I asked.

Billy nodded his head and said, “Always.”

I hit the side of his truck. “I’ll pick ya up in a couple of hours.”

I stood there and watched as my best friend drove away. I turned and climbed over the gate before taking off toward the house. Maybe a good, hard run would help me figure out these feelings floating around that I’d never experienced before. As I ran faster and faster, I couldn’t seem to shake the blue-gray eyes from my head as I thought about what Billy had said.

I hated to admit this, but I was ready to fight my best friend to the death for Emma.

My Emma.

“Did you meet anyone today, darling?” my mother asked as she gave me a sweet smile.

I smiled and nodded my head. “A few people, but no one like my friends back home.”

My mother gave me the you-better-watch-out look.

I sat down and let out a sigh. I had planned to hate Mason. Moving from Fredericksburg to Mason had been bad enough, but the thought of making new friends had pained me. My only saving grace was Margie, my cousin. When she had introduced me to Anna, I’d liked her almost immediately. It hadn’t taken me long to figure out that the girl was a sexpot and a ditz, but she was funny and actually very sweet. She did like the boys though. Then, I’d met Wayne. He was a typical guy.

Nothing new there.

“So, did you meet girls and boys or just girls?” my mother asked, drawing me out of my thoughts.

“Both.”

There was no sense in lying because I’d seen my mother and aunt walking by the drugstore. They’d looked in when I was saying good-bye to Garrett.

Garrett Mathews—that boy has me confused for the first time in my life.

My mother let out a little giggle. “I saw you talking to Garrett Mathews. He’s a nice boy.”

My mouth dropped open. “H-how do you know Garrett?”

My mother was from Mason, so I didn’t even know why I’d asked that question. She probably knew his parents or something.

She turned and began cutting up sirloin for sauerbraten. “I went to high school with his parents. I might have had a crush on his father at one point before I met your father.”

I felt my face blush just from my mother admitting to liking another man besides my daddy. “Mom, can I ask you something?”

She set her knife down and wiped her hands on her apron as she leaned against the counter. “Of course you can.”

I took in a deep breath and said a quick prayer. “When did you know you were in love with Daddy?”

She smiled so big that it caused me to smile. “The first time I saw him. I was walking with my friends to class, and I saw him walking toward us. The moment he looked into my eyes, my breath caught, and I got a weird little feeling in my stomach. I’d never felt like that before, not with any of the guys I went to high school with…not even Thomas Mathews,” she said with a wink.

I let out a giggle and shook my head.

My parents had met and fallen in love in college. My father had been studying to be a doctor, and my mother had been going to school to be a nurse. They had lived in Fredericksburg ever since Daddy got out of college. He had worked there since I was a baby, but once an opportunity had opened up in Mason for a doctor, my mother hadn’t even had to ask twice. My father had known how much she loved home, and he’d moved us here, so she could be closer to her parents.

I looked at my mother and smiled. “Love at first sight?”

She giggled again. “Yes, Emma Rose, love at first sight. Your father turned around and followed my friends and me for a bit while we walked to the café for lunch. Before we walked in, he asked to talk to me. We spoke for a bit. Then, he asked me out, and I said yes. The rest is history.”