2. Chapter 2 #3
The mare paces in the trailer, tossing her head, whites showing around one eye. Not full panic, but not far enough from it to make me comfortable.
I watch it twice.
“Unload if he can do it safely,” I say. “Let her walk, water her, and give her ten minutes before he reroutes.”
Wade nods once, already texting. “That’s what I told him.”
“Then why are we still talking?”
“Because,” he says, pulling another paper from under the first file, “that would be the only fire if Larkspur hadn’t started showing first-stage behavior thirty-six hours ahead of schedule.”
I take the second paper. Larkspur. Valuable, temperamental, and bred on the kind of timing that makes a whole barn feel slow the second something slips.
I glance toward the whiteboard on the wall, every column neat.
Feed, vet check, transport, semen collection, mare watch. One moved part forces another.
This place looks polished from the outside, but the margin is always thinner than it seems. Timing is everything. One delay, one bad decision … and the whole day starts slipping sideways.
I set the transport file down and shrug out of my jacket.
“Call Rhodes and tell him I want him on standby for Larkspur if she progresses before noon. Reroute the Johnson shipment, and tell Travis if that mare comes off the trailer hot again, to wait it out before he moves her. I’d rather lose time than lose sense. ”
Wade’s mouth tilts at one corner. “That almost sounded humane.”
“I’m in an excellent mood. Don’t ruin it.”
He snorts and turns toward the door, then pauses. “There’s one more thing.”
He glances down the hallway. “The new live-in groom showed up early. Cassie stuck her in the front office with coffee and paperwork.”
I pull open the next folder without looking up. “Great.”
Wade stays where he is.
Something in the silence makes me lift my head.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says, too neutral to be believed. “You may want to handle this one yourself.”
I don’t move right away. Something in Wade’s tone catches, and I don’t like how quickly my mind supplies her face.
No. There are lots of women in Texas capable of showing up early for ranch paperwork.
I set the folder down with more care than it deserves.
I step out without answering him, already irritated that my pulse has changed pace. I pass the open tack room and the narrow closet where vendor files are kept.
I can hear voices coming from the front office as I approach.
Cassie's leaning one hip against the edge of the desk, coffee in hand, talking too fast as usual.
She glances up when I appear and goes still for a fraction of a second before her expression smooths into something too innocent to be real.
“Morning, boss.”
I barely hear her.
Montana's seated at the small desk by the window, paperwork spread in front of her.
Her hair is pulled back, and she's still wearing the same denim jacket from last night over a plain fitted top that does absolutely nothing to reduce the memory of how she felt under my hands.
There is no visible startle in her when she looks up, just one clean, direct look.
Then her gaze drops, briefly, to the front of my shirt … the same place she wrinkled in her fists a few hours ago.
When her eyes come back to mine, there is the slightest shift in her expression. Recognition, followed immediately by something that looks alarmingly like amusement.
Cassie, because she was apparently born without self-preservation, says, “You two look like maybe you’ve met.”
I turn to her first. “Out.”
Her brows lift. “Wow. Friendly start.”
“Cassie.”
She pushes off the desk, muttering something under her breath, and slips past me into the hall. I wait until her footsteps fade before closing the door.
The room goes very quiet.
Montana sets down her pen.
I look at the stack of onboarding forms in front of her, then back at her face.
“No,” I say.
One brow lifts. “No what?”
“No chance this is funny.”
That almost-smile appears, the same one that made last night more difficult than necessary. “I don’t know. It’s developing a personality.”
A colder man might have admired the nerve.
I do admire the nerve, which is part of the problem.
“You’re the new groom,” I say, though clearly she is.
“Looks like it.”
I glance at the file on the desk and catch her last name printed neatly across the top.
VEGA, MONTANA.
There it is. Proof, if I needed any, that the universe has a vulgar sense of timing.
I drag a breath in through my nose and feel my control lock into place one piece at a time, because it has to.
When I speak again, my voice is even.
“What happened last night does not leave this room. Do you understand me?”
Her eyes hold mine. Calm and entirely too steady.
“I wasn’t planning to stitch it on a pillow, if that’s what you mean” she says.
Under any other circumstance, that line might have done real damage to my composure.
Now it only hardens something in me, because the reality of it has finally landed in full.
My one-night stand is my new employee, and every muscle in my body locks around the fact a second too late.