RECKONING (Stay Wild #2)

1. Mud, Blood, and a Stranger

MUD, BLOOD, AND A STRANGER

Brock

Titan loses it before anyone sees it coming.

One second, he's moving clean, collected lope, haunches driving, hooves kissing the arena dirt like he knows exactly how much he's worth. The next, a plastic bag catches the wind off the south fence and everything goes sideways.

He breaks hard to the left. His hindquarters swing wide, clipping the rail with a crack that echoes across the whole property. The crowd along the fence, investors, brand reps, two reporters Marcy invited for the photo op, scrambles back in a single lurching wave.

A woman in a sundress screams.

Someone drops a champagne flute. It shatters.

I don't think. I move.

I'm off the gate post and into the arena before the dust settles, cutting the angle hard, reading where Titan's going to go before he knows himself. He's heading for the far corner where three investors are pressed against the rail with nowhere left to move.

I get there first.

I grab the reins with both hands, no gloves, no time, and plant my boots in the dirt. Titan rears. The leather burns a line of fire across my palms, but I hold, putting my full weight against twelve hundred pounds of panic, keeping my voice low and even while my hands scream.

"Easy." I don't let anything into my voice. Not the pain, not the adrenaline. "Easy, son."

He fights me. Ten seconds that feel like ten minutes, hooves churning, head tossing, the whole arena holding its breath.

Then the whites stop showing around his eyes.

He blows out hard through his nose, sides heaving hard, and comes back to earth. All four hooves on the ground. Weight-bearing. I run a hand down his neck and feel the shudder moving through him, the last of the panic burning itself out.

Behind me, Red is already clearing the crowd back from the rail, voice level, hands out.

My brand director Marcy is on her phone before the dust even settles, already spinning, already managing.

The investors are doing that tight, polite murmuring that means we saw everything and we're deciding what it means.

"Sir." Red steps up beside me, voice pitched low. "You're bleeding."

I look at my right hand. The rein burn opened a line across the base of my fingers and the heel of my palm. A wound that doesn't hurt yet. That means it will.

"I'm fine."

"You should let?—"

"I said I'm fine."

That's when I hear it.

Boots hitting arena dirt behind me. Fast. Sure-footed. No hesitation.

I turn.

She's already crouching beside Titan's left foreleg.

Not a ranch hand. Not one of the investors in their pressed shirts and new boots that have never seen actual mud. She's got dark hair pulled back, dusty scrubs the color of sage, and hands moving over Titan's cannon bone like she's done it ten thousand times and plans to do it ten thousand more.

She hasn't asked permission to touch my horse.

She hasn't asked permission for anything.

"Hey." I step toward her. "This is a private?—"

"Shh." She doesn't look up. "I'm working."

The absolute nerve.

"Excuse me?"

"He landed hard on this leg." Her fingers press along the tendon with a precision that stops me mid-step. "I need sixty seconds. You can be mad after."

I stare at her.

Nobody shh-es me on my own property. Not Red, who's worked this ranch for eleven years. Not my father's attorneys, who've tried. Not anyone in the state of Texas with a working sense of self-preservation.

She tips her head slightly, like she's listening, actually listening, like the horse is telling her something the rest of us can't hear.

She shifts, checks the right front. Then both hocks.

Her hands are quick and sure and completely unbothered by the fact that I'm standing two feet away radiating twelve kinds of irritation.

Titan stands dead still for her.

My horse, who just tried to put a woman in a sundress through the fence, stands there like she's the only calm thing in the entire state of Texas.

I close my bleeding hand.

"Who are you?" I ask.

She finally looks up.

Green eyes. Warm at the surface, sharp underneath. Sharp in a way that means she's already taken stock of me, reached her conclusions, and isn't particularly impressed by any of it.

"Dr. Ariel Hart." She straightens to her feet and wipes her hands on her scrubs like introductions are a formality she's tolerating.

"Large animal vet. Before you ask, I wasn't on the guest list. My truck was on the county road when someone flagged me down saying a horse went down at the Steele ranch. "

"He didn't go down."

"He almost did." She nods toward Titan's left leg. "That tendon is warm. Not hot, not yet, but warm. He needs cold therapy and rest for the next three days. No more demo today."

I look at Red. Red studies the dirt like it owes him money.

"This is private property," I say. "I don't recall inviting you in."

"You didn't." She doesn't flinch. Doesn't shift. Just holds my gaze without blinking, with the kind of patience that makes me feel like I'm the one being difficult. "But your luxury western brand is going to mean exactly nothing if that horse comes up lame at a press event."

"Is that right."

"That's right." She glances at my hand, quick, clinical. "You should get that cleaned up. Rein burns get infected fast."

She turns toward the rail like she's going to climb right back out the way she came. Like she vaulted my fence, saved my horse, told me what to do, and now she's just done.

Heat moves through my chest. Not quite anger. Hotter than irritation. I don't have a good name for it.

"Hart."

She stops.

"The tendon. How warm are we talking?"

A beat. She turns back, and there it is, that flicker in her expression. Reluctant. Like she didn't want to be interested in the question but she is anyway.

"Grade one concern. Catch it now, rest him three days, cold wrap twice daily, he'll be fine for the season.

" She holds my gaze. "Don't catch it now and you're looking at weeks off.

Maybe longer. Maybe permanent soft tissue damage on a horse worth—" She pauses, looks at Titan with a practiced eye. "What did you pay for him?"

I don't answer that.

"A lot," she says flatly. "I figured."

No flattery in it. No performance. She looked at my horse and told me the truth and now she's waiting to see if I'm smart enough to hear it.

I hate how much I respect that.

"Red." I keep my eyes on her. "Get Dr. Hart a water. She's not leaving yet."

"I have other calls?—"

"Five minutes." It comes out the way everything comes out of my mouth. Not a request.

She studies me for a long moment. Something shifts in those green eyes, not quite amusement, not quite annoyance, but that exact charged space between them.

"Five minutes," she says. "Then I'm gone."

She moves toward the far pen without waiting to be pointed there, already scanning the other horses with that same calm focus. Like she can't turn it off. Her brain already cataloguing everything that might need her.

Red leans in close. "That's the vet the board's been pushing you to hire."

I stop.

"Hart Animal Care. The board approved the contract two days ago. Marcy's been trying to reach her all week." He clears his throat. "Apparently her clinic lease fell through, so the timing?—"

"Stop talking, Red."

He stops.

I look at Ariel Hart, who is now running her hands down the legs of a horse she has no business touching yet, completely at home on property she vaulted a fence to reach.

She told me to be quiet on my own land.

She put her hands on my horse without asking.

She's already on my payroll.

I close my bleeding hand until I feel the burn all the way up my forearm.

Hell.