Chapter 3
Savannah
Oklahoma heat sticks like a memory you can’t get rid of.
The fairgrounds smell of corn dogs and diesel hangs in the air.
Dust grits under my heels with every step as I cross behind the chutes.
Cowboys slap backs, bulls snort, and somewhere a teenage girl is crying because she didn’t get the photo of Cash that she wanted.
I angle my badge where it catches the light and keep moving.
Cash Dalton is still surrounded by reporters and a wall of fans that part and re-form like a living thing each time he raises that lethal smile.
He’s taller up close, broader too, sweat tracking a clean line through arena dust at his temple.
His hat’s pushed back just enough to show off those green eyes, and every camera flash loves him as much as he loves it back.
Here he is … my new assignment. My last chance, if Marlene’s email is more threat than pep talk.
I wait while he signs a kid’s brim with a flourish that turns the mother’s knees to water.
He side-hugs a woman in a sequined tee that reads JUST LASSO ME, and I hear the shutter clicks from ten phones.
The rodeo announcer is still booming his name over the loudspeakers like a benediction from the Church of Bad Decisions.
Time to work.
“Savannah Brooks.” I step forward, smile professional and small. “Public relations. The board sent me.”
He doesn’t take my hand right away. He looks at it like he’s deciding whether to shake or kiss it. One corner of his mouth tips higher. “Guess they finally decided I need a babysitter.”
“I prefer the term damage control.” I don’t lower my hand.
His palm is warm and calloused when he finally closes around mine.
A low-voltage shock skims up my arm. He holds a fraction too long, confident enough to turn even a handshake into theater.
Finally, he lets go, thumb dragging my knuckles.
His hand dwarfs mine. It’s warm, rough, and entirely too sure of itself.
For a moment, I forget the checklist in my head and remember I’m still human.
“Cash Dalton,” he says, as if the grandstands didn’t chant it. “Hope you brought a big mop, sweetheart.”
“I brought contracts, schedules, and a list of things you’re never doing again.”
That grin. Wide enough to be a dare. “Can I see the list?”
“Not until you promise to read it.”
“Darlin’, I don’t read anything unless it’s got my name at the top and a dollar sign next to it.”
“Perfect,” I say sweetly. “Page one.”
He laughs, and it’s a rich, easy sound that vibrates through my ribs despite every wall I’ve mortared into place. Focus, Brooks. You’re here to fix him, not feel him.
A reporter elbows in from my left. “Cash! One for The Okie Ledger?”
I pivot, already a buffer. “Two minutes,” I say, professional smile back in place. “Then he’s due for medical check and sponsor quotes.”
Cash cocks a brow at me. “Am I?”
“You are now.”
I run the quick hit with the reporter—two softballs and a local angle about lifting up young riders—nudging Cash with my shoulder when his answers start drifting toward cocky.
He adjusts, to my surprise. Plays the hero instead of the hell-raiser, lines up beneath my cue cards like he can read them off my face.
Interesting.
When the reporter thanks us and peels away, Cash leans in. His voice drops into a private register that feels like a gloved hand closing around a secret. “You always boss a man around before you know what he likes?”
“I don’t manage your likes, Mr. Dalton. I manage your outcomes.”
“Tell that to the way you nudged me.” His eyes flick to my shoulder, then back to my mouth like he’s imagining a different kind of pressure. “Thought I might owe you dinner for that save.”
“No dinners,” I say softly. No second chances. No bracelets shared with other women. “There’s a sponsor corral in fifteen. You’ll thank them by name, you’ll pose with their signs, and you will not—under any circumstance—make a joke about their beer tasting like pond water.”
He presses a hand over his heart. “I would never.”
“You did,” I say. “Twice. Last season.”
He looks—briefly—caught. Then he smiles like a man who never met a fence he couldn’t clear. “You’ve been doing your homework.”
“Your file reads like a fireworks manual. I’m just here to label the fuses.”
He laughs again, but there’s something else underneath it now—curiosity, maybe.
A flicker that says he’s not used to a woman refusing to be charmed and sticking the landing.
The crowd shifts, pulling his attention.
A handler waves. A girl with a poster board sign declares herself FUTURE MRS. DALTON in glitter glue.
“Take your victory lap,” I say, stepping to the side so the next wave can flood him. “Then meet me by the sponsor tent.”
“Or,” he says, tipping his hat just enough to see my eyes clear, “you could walk me there.”
I shouldn’t. I know better than to put myself next to his body and that smile and the humid thrum of everything that says danger. But walking him also keeps him within my reach, and reach is control, and control is the whole point.
“Fine,” I say. “Move.”
We cut through the tide. He’s taller than the noise.
People part for him the way they part for parades and wreckage, compelled by the same impulse.
He thanks the kid who hands him a Sharpie, asks a rancher if the drought hit him hard this year, tells an old timer he remembers watching him ride when he was ten.
It’s a neat trick—humble without bending, generous without giving anything away.
I make a note for the internal file I keep in my head: Not just swagger. Knows how to read a room.
We pass the open gate where the arena dirt glows rust-red under stadium lights.
Heat ripples off it in waves that carry the smell of sweat and something metallic I don’t want to name.
For a second my chest tightens—muscle memory of another cowboy, another tunnel, a laugh against my hair, a lie warm as a brand.
I clamp the thought down so hard my molars click.
Cash glances over, like he heard it. Or maybe he’s just that tuned to his audience of one.
“You okay?” he asks, and the question’s so unvarnished I almost stumble.
“I’m fine.”
“You looked like you swallowed a thorn.”
“Occupational hazard.” I tip my chin toward the sponsor tent ahead, white canvas glowing like a landed moon. “Time to make nice.”
He looks, then back at me. His voice slides velvet-soft. “You think I’m some wild thing that can’t be tamed.” He steps closer, and the smell of leather and soap wraps around me like a hot August night. “Maybe you just never tried holding on.”
The line hits low—where adrenaline and memory live side by side and don’t ask permission. I keep my face smooth, my tone lighter than I feel. “I don’t hold on to my clients, Mr. Dalton. I leash them.”
“Now that,” he says, smile turning slow and wicked, “sounds like fun.”
I ignore the flush that climbs my throat and lift the tent flap.
Inside, Oklahoma politeness and corporate money shake hands over coolers sweating in the heat.
The floor is temporary board laid over dirt, and it creaks under my boot heels as I move to intercept a sponsor before he corners Cash with a fishing story from 1998.
For the next ten minutes, I run the choreography.
Cash says the names I whisper, hits the cameras from angles I angle him toward, side-steps a joke that would’ve turned into a minor wildfire last season.
It shouldn’t satisfy me as much as it does to watch him follow my lead.
Not perfectly—he’s allergic to perfect—but close enough to prove he can.
Between photos, a teenage rider hovers at the edge of our cluster, clutching his hat like it might float away.
Cash sees him, peels off. “You keep your free hand high,” he tells the kid, demonstrating with an easy flick of wrist and shoulder.
“Loosen up your hips, or you’ll lock and eat dirt. Promise me you’ll wear the vest.”
The kid nods so hard I’m afraid his head will topple. Cash ruffles his hair and comes back, and I don’t know what to do with the way my ribcage rearranges.
“He’s green,” Cash says, almost apologetic.
“I saw.” My voice is steady. “That was good.”
“Don’t sound so shocked.”
“I’m not shocked.” I let my eyes flick over his face, a deliberate assessment. “I’m recalibrating.”
He looks like he wants to ask what I’m calibrating from, what it cost me to learn the contours of men like him. Instead, he reaches for a bottle of water, cracks the seal with his teeth, and takes a long drink that shouldn’t be indecent and absolutely is. Damn, he’s handsome and can’t even help it.
“Media bullpen in five,” I remind him. “Keep answers tight. No swearing. No commentary on the judges.”
“No swearing?” He leans close enough that his hat brim shadows my cheek. “What if I say hell yes when you tell me I did good?”
“I won’t be telling you that.”
“You already did.”
I open my mouth and shut it again, annoyed to find he’s right. My phone buzzes—Marlene—because timing is a vulture. I glance at the screen and send her a quick text: Made contact. Containable for now. It’s not a promise. It’s a prayer I don’t believe in.
When I look up, Cash is watching my hands like he’s learned something from how fast I type. “Boss breathing down your neck?”
“She breathes on the entire department.”
“Bet you don’t let her get to you.”
I don’t answer. Truth: I let everyone get to me. I just don’t let them see it.
The PA crackles with feedback and a volunteer waves from the bullpen entrance. Reporters adjust their mics, the local news team tips a light higher, and the sponsor rep mouths thank you at me over Cash’s shoulder.
“Ready?” I ask him.
He tips his hat, eyes gleaming like he’s already halfway into trouble. “For you, Savannah Brooks?” He lets my name roll slow, tasting it. “Always.”
I step aside so he can pass, refusing to give ground and doing it anyway. He brushes me on purpose. Not enough to count. Enough to feel.
As he moves toward the lights, the heat of the day crests and breaks, and the tent breathes cooler air that smells like rain that won’t come. I smooth my blazer, re-stack my mental note cards, and remind myself—aloud, because I need to hear it. “Outcomes, not likes.”
Across the boards, Cash takes his place in front of the mics. He looks once over his shoulder, straight at me, and the smallest corner of his mouth lifts like we share a private joke no one else heard.
I square my shoulders and raise my hand to cue the first question. If I’m careful -- if I keep my feet under me and my heart where it belongs -- I can do this job and walk away clean.
But as the first camera light pops hot and white, the Oklahoma evening presses closer, and I feel that old tug … the one that says falling isn’t always a mistake.
Sometimes it’s the plan you didn’t know you were making.