Chapter 9 Rose
CHAPTER NINE
ROSE
I didn’t sleep.
Not because of the kiss, though the kiss was part of it. The kiss was a grenade thrown into the middle of everything, and now I was lying in the dark, staring at my ceiling, watching shrapnel fall.
I’d kissed Graham Fraser Kincaid in the lounge of my ranch.
We'd been circling each other like two magnets flipped the wrong way, pushing back against something that was always going to connect.
I could still feel his hand in my hair. His mouth, warm and deliberate and tasting like something I wanted more of. The sound he’d made when my teeth caught his bottom lip. Low and unguarded.
I pressed my face into the pillow and said a word that would’ve made Theresa wash my mouth out.
This was a disaster.
He was a liar. He was famous. He was leaving soon. He was every bad decision I’d ever sidestepped, wrapped in a Scottish accent and forearms that should come with a warning label.
And I’d told him the Iceland series was good.
God.
By five a.m. I gave up on sleep, pulled on boots, and went to feed the horses. Cassiopeia bumped my shoulder when I reached her stall, her breath warm on my neck.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I told her. “I’m handling it.”
She snorted.
“I am.”
She turned away and stuck her face in her feed bucket, which was the horse equivalent of sure.
I made it through morning chores on autopilot.
I unwrapped Starlight’s hoof and found it cool and dry, the abscess fully healed.
I left the bandage off for the first time in ten days.
One problem actually solved. Muscle memory carried me through the rest of the motions while my brain replayed the lounge on a loop.
Graham’s face when he caught me watching his videos.
That half-smile. I was telling Brutus about you.
Who says that? Who admits that to a woman who’s been actively hostile to him for a week?
A man who’s either completely sincere or dangerously good at seeming like it.
And I couldn’t tell which one scared me more.
By nine, I’d exhausted every possible task that didn’t involve leaving the barn, and Kaya had started giving me looks.
“You’ve cleaned that saddle three times,” she said, leaning against the tack room door.
“It’s a dirty saddle.”
“It’s the cleanest saddle in Colorado. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
Kaya studied me the way she studied horses. Patiently, without blinking, until the subject got uncomfortable enough to reveal themselves.
I didn’t reveal myself.
“I’m taking Cassie out this morning,” I said instead. “I need to check the north trail after the weather last week.”
“Want company?”
“No.”
“Okay.” She pushed off the doorframe. “Graham asked about riding this morning, by the way. Something about Brutus needing exercise.”
My hands stilled on the saddle. “He can ride in the arena.”
“That’s what I told him. He said the arena was too small for Brutus and he didn’t want to bore him.” Kaya’s mouth twitched. “He also said, and I quote, ‘If Rose is heading out, I’d be happy to tag along and stay out of her way.’”
“He wouldn't just be happy to tag along. He'd be smug as hell about it.”
“Probably.” Kaya grinned. “But Brutus does need the exercise. And the north trail is better with two riders in case something goes sideways.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it.
She wasn’t wrong. The north trail climbed through rocky switchbacks above the tree line, and after the temperature swings this week, there could be loose rock or downed branches. Riding it alone wasn’t dangerous, exactly, but it was the kind of thing I’d lecture a guest about.
“Fine,” I said. “But this is not a date.”
“Nobody said date.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was thinking about lunch, actually.” Kaya ducked out before I could throw the saddle sponge at her.
Graham was waiting by the arena when I led Cassiopeia out, Brutus already tacked and fidgeting beside him. He’d done the saddling himself, correctly, I noticed, with the cinch snug but not overtight and the breast collar properly adjusted.
“Morning,” he said.
“There’re rules,” I said, not breaking stride. “You ride behind me. You follow my lead on terrain. If I say stop, you stop. If I say turn around, we turn around. This is my trail and my property and I’m not interested in heroics.”
“Understood.”
“And this isn’t a date.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “I didn’t say it was.”
“Good.” I swung into the saddle and gathered the reins. “Keep up.”
We headed north through the east pasture, following the fence line toward the tree break. Cassie moved underneath me with easy, ground-eating strides that always settled my nerves.
Neither of us spoke.
It should have been awkward. Two people who’d been kissing twelve hours ago, now riding in silence through a Colorado forest. But the silence wasn’t heavy. It was the comfortable kind, the kind that happened when you were moving through landscape that didn’t require conversation.
Graham rode well. Better than well. He and Brutus moved together like they'd been partners for years, not weeks, his body absorbing the motion instead of fighting it, his hands quiet on the reins.
“He really trusts you,” I said, before I could stop myself.
Graham looked up. “Sorry?”
“Brutus.” I nodded at the gelding’s ears, which were tipped forward and relaxed. “He only trusts about three people. Me, Hank, and apparently you.”
“Should I be flattered?”
“You should be aware that he’ll use it against you. The more he trusts you, the more creative he gets about stealing food out of your pockets.”
Graham laughed, and the sound settled warm and unwelcome in my stomach.
The trail narrowed as we climbed into the aspens. Golden leaves drifted down around us, catching the light, turning the path into something that looked staged. I could almost hear Jamie crying about not being here with her camera.
“When’s the last time you rode this trail for fun? Not to check it. Not for a guest. Just for you.”
I didn’t answer immediately, because the honest answer was embarrassing.
“I don’t remember,” I admitted.
“That’s what I thought.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you built something beautiful and you never let yourself enjoy it.” His voice was matter-of-fact, not accusatory. “You run this place like a general. Every ride has a purpose. Every hour has a task. When’s the last time you just... sat with it?”
The trail opened onto a ridge, and I pulled Cassie to a stop. Below us, the valley spread out in layers of gold and green, the ranch visible in the distance. Tiny, perfect, mine.
I hadn’t looked at it from up here in over a year.
“It’s different when it’s yours,” I said quietly. “When it’s yours, you can’t just enjoy it. You see every fence that needs fixing. Every bill that needs paying. Every way it could fall apart.”
“Aye.” Graham brought Brutus alongside Cassie, close enough that our boots nearly touched in the stirrups. “But you also get to see this.”
He gestured at the view. The valley, the mountains, the incredible blue of the sky.
“And this is worth sitting with,” he said. “Even for five minutes.”
I looked at the view. Then I looked at him.
He was watching me, not the mountains. The morning light hit his face at an angle that turned his eyes the color of molten emerald, and there was no defense against the way he looked at me.
Not admiration, not desire, though both were there.
Just... seeing me. The way he’d seen me in the lounge.
The way he’d seen me in the barn during the storm.
Like I was the view.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m something worth looking at.”
“Can’t help it.” He held my eyes. “You are.”
My pulse kicked. Cassie shifted beneath me, sensing the change in my body, the way my thighs tightened, the way my breathing went shallow.
“We should keep moving,” I said, but my voice came out rougher than I intended.
“Should we?”
“Yes.”
I nudged Cassie forward. Graham followed.
We rode in silence for another half mile, the trail climbing through a dense stand of ponderosa pine, and the whole time I was aware of him behind me in a way that had nothing to do with safety.
I could hear Brutus’s hooves on the packed earth.
Could hear Graham’s breathing. Could feel his presence like a hand pressed to the small of my back.
The trail curved around a boulder, and a branch hung low across the path. I ducked under it easily, but heard Graham swear softly behind me as it caught his shoulder.
I turned in the saddle. “You okay?”
“Fine. Just—” He was pulling a twig out of his hair, grinning at himself, and for some reason, the grin, the twig, the morning light in his hair, it all broke through every barrier I had left.
I wanted him.
Not in the abstract, distant way I’d been managing for days. Not the acknowledgment that yes, Graham Fraser was attractive and yes, my body had opinions about that.
I wanted him in the immediate, physical, devastating way that made my skin hot and my brain shut down. I wanted his hands on me. I wanted his mouth where it had been last night and then everywhere else. I wanted to know what he sounded like when he—
The realization must have shown on my face, because Graham’s grin faded and his eyes went dark.
“Rose.”
“Don’t,” I said automatically.
“You’re looking at me the way I’ve been trying not to look at you for a week.”
“I’m not looking at you in any way.”
“You are.” His voice had dropped, gone rough at the edges. “And if you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to have a very hard time staying on my side of the trail.”
Everything between us pulled tight. Two weeks of tension, of fighting this, of pretending we could keep our hands to ourselves, and it was all right there in the way he was looking at me and the way I couldn’t look away.
I turned Cassie around.
“Where are you—”
“We’re going back,” I said.
Graham stared at me. “What?”
“We’re going back. Now.”