CRUSHED (Beaumont Vineyard #1)

Chapter 1

SADIE

I hit the brakes. Gravel screams under my tires.

The horse is a blur of copper and muscle, mane whipping, panic showing in every wild line of him. He's going to end up under my truck or through my windshield, and there's nothing I can do about either one.

Then a man runs into the road.

He comes out of nowhere, straight off the pasture side, boots pounding dirt. He doesn't look at me once. He watches the horse, timing his steps, and right as I brace for impact he grabs a trailing lead rope and hauls the animal sideways like it weighs nothing.

My truck stops a foot from his boots.

Dust drifts between us, catching the early sun.

I sit there with both hands locked on the wheel, my whole body braced for a crash that never comes.

The horse circles him twice, blowing hard, and settles. The man keeps a hand flat on its shoulder, murmuring something soft I can't hear through the glass. Whatever he's saying, the horse quiets under it, ears flicking back toward him like it's listening.

Must be nice. Having that effect on things.

Then he looks at my truck.

I roll the window down because it feels rude not to, and also because my hands need something to do besides shake.

"You hurt?" he asks.

Not hello. Not sorry about your near-death experience. Just that, flat and low, like he's asking about the weather.

"No." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "You?"

He doesn't answer that. He holds the lead rope, watching me with an expression I can't place, like he's trying to solve something.

"That's a nice way to make an entrance," I say, because silence makes me nervous and I fill it with noise. "Almost getting flattened by a runaway horse. Very dramatic."

The corner of his mouth moves. Not quite a smile.

"He got spooked during a fence repair." He nods toward the pasture, where two other men are jogging up, way too late to be useful. "Wasn't supposed to happen like that."

"Good thing you were fast."

"Good thing you were paying attention."

I wasn't, not really. I was thinking about the notice sitting on my mother's kitchen table and how many days we have left before the bank stops sending polite letters about the equipment loan and starts sending worse ones. But I'm not telling a stranger that. I'm not telling anyone that.

He's still looking at me. Really looking, like he's cataloging something.

Big hands. Sun-worn skin. The kind of quiet confidence that comes from owning the ground under your boots, not renting it. My pulse hasn't settled from the near-miss, and I'm not entirely sure anymore how much of that is the horse.

I know the type. Grew up surrounded by the type. Learned a long time ago not to trust it.

"I don't think we've met," I say, because he clearly recognizes me and I have no idea why.

"No," he agrees. "We haven't. Not in a long time, anyway."

That stops me cold.

I look at him closely now. Tall. Built like he works outside for a living, not like he plays at it on weekends.

Dark hair, a few days of stubble, and eyes the color of good whiskey held up to the light, the kind of amber-gold you learn to name after enough years spent swirling glasses for a living.

There's something familiar in the set of his shoulders, something I can't quite place, and it needles at me the way a name does when it's sitting right at the edge of your memory.

"I'm sorry," I say slowly. "Do I know you?"

He lets go of the lead rope. One of the other men steps in to take the horse, murmuring to it in the same low tone, and the man in front of my truck squares up like he's about to say something he's already regretting.

"Rhett Beaumont," he says.

The name hits me sideways.

Beaumont.

Of course it's a Beaumont. Of course the first person I run into after all this time is standing on Beaumont land, holding a Beaumont horse, wearing that same quiet, careful way of watching people that his whole family has. Like they're deciding whether you're worth the trouble of talking to.

My stomach drops somewhere around my boots.

"You're Rhett," I repeat, mostly to give myself a second to breathe. "Rhett Beaumont."

"Yeah."

I haven't said my own name yet. I don't need to. I can see it happening behind his eyes, the recognition sliding into place like a lock turning.

"And you're Sadie Collins," he says.

He doesn't say it like a question. He says it low, careful, like he's been holding onto it a while.

My throat goes tight.

Six years since I left this town. The Collins name stopped meaning winemakers and started meaning scandal right around then.

I swore I'd never set foot on this stretch of road again after that, and now I'm parked a foot from a Beaumont's boots with my hands not yet steady from almost hitting his horse.

Welcome home, Sadie.

"Small world," I manage.

"Smaller than you'd think." He steps back from my truck, giving me room, but his eyes don't leave mine. "You headed into town?"

"Something like that."

"Long way from California."

California. Where I spent three years earning a sommelier certification nobody in this town ever asked me about.

That one stings. He's been keeping track. Or somebody in this town has, and word travels the way it always does here, fast and ugly.

"Word gets around," I say, keeping my voice light even though nothing about this feels light.

"Small towns talk." He says it like an apology, though I don't think it is one.

I look past him at the busted fence rail, at the horse being led away, at the whole postcard sprawl of Beaumont land stretching out behind him.

Green pasture rolling toward a tree line miles out.

White fencing that never seems to need a fresh coat of paint.

A view that goes on in every direction, all of it his family's, all of it untouched by the trouble mine is drowning in.

I used to run these fields as a kid. Before everything. Before the Beaumont name became the reason half this town looks at mine sideways.

"You should get that fence checked," I say, because I need to say something normal, something that isn't years of history sitting between us in the middle of a county road.

"We will."

I put the truck in gear. My hands aren't done shaking yet, and I'd rather he not see that.

"Good to see you," I say, which is a lie, or maybe it isn't. I honestly don't know yet.

He doesn't step away from the window right off.

"Sadie."

I stop.

"It's not luck you ran into me," he says, and something in his voice drops, rough enough that the back of my neck goes warm. "There's things about your family's place you don't know. Things I should've told you a long time ago."

The horse shifts somewhere behind him. One of the ranch hands calls his name.

Rhett doesn't look away from me.

"What things?" I ask, and my voice comes out smaller than I want it to.

He opens his mouth like he's about to answer.

Then something shifts in his face, some private battle I'm not invited to, and I watch him decide, right in front of me, not to.

"Drive safe, Sadie Collins," he says instead, and steps back from the truck like the conversation is over.

It is not over. Not even close.

I pull away slow, tires popping over loose stone, and I catch him in my mirror before the curve swallows the road behind me.

Still standing in the middle of the road.

Still watching me go.

The road curves away from Beaumont land, limestone bluffs rising up on either side, live oaks leaning in over the asphalt like they've been standing guard for a hundred years.

By the time I hit the county line, my hands have stopped shaking.

My head won't quit. It replays the moment anyway, the way he said my name like it weighed something.

Bluebonnets crowd the shoulder in thick blue-purple patches, the last of the season before the heat burns them out. I barely see any of it.

The way he almost told me something and changed his mind at the last second, right in front of me, like I wasn't even worth finishing the sentence for.

And Rhett Beaumont acts like he gets to decide what I'm allowed to know about my own family's land, same as always.

Some things never change.

I turn onto Main Street ten minutes later with the radio off, nerves humming under my skin.

Red Oak Ridge looks exactly like it did the day I left it.

Limestone storefronts line both sides of the street, sun-bleached and pretty in that old-money way that draws tourists in from Austin every weekend. String lights crisscross overhead even though it's nowhere near a holiday, because Red Oak Ridge never takes them down.

Same hanging flower baskets outside the Mercantile, spilling petunias over the edges. Same faded red awning over the Café, the smell of coffee and cinnamon rolls drifting out the propped door.

A row of trucks lines the curb outside the Hill Country Bakery, ranch plates mixed in with a few out-of-state rentals. Somebody's got the White Saddle's doors propped wide, already sweeping last night off the floor.

Live oaks shade the sidewalk in front of the courthouse, roots buckling the old concrete in places nobody's bothered to fix in fifty years. People plan whole vacations around this town, and one look tells you why.

Same women outside the Gilded Boot who stop talking the second they recognize my truck.

I used to love this town.

I grip the wheel a little tighter and keep driving, because whatever Rhett Beaumont wasn't telling me back there, I have bigger problems today.

A loan notice with my grandfather's name still on it.

A bank that doesn't care about legacy. A family business three payments from losing the equipment that keeps it running.

Whatever Beaumont secrets are sitting out there waiting, they're going to have to get in line.