6. Chapter 6
Rebel
The house is quiet when I come downstairs, but the quiet doesn’t reach me.
Another morning on the ranch, and like every other day, the coffee’s already waiting in the machine. I pour a mug, drink half of it too hot, and stand at the counter looking out toward the barns while the bitterness burns the last soft edge out of my mouth.
That’s the plan for today: no softness, no room for interpretation, and no repeat of the kind of lapse that leaves a woman in my bed and my control half a step behind by sunrise.
I know better than this. That’s the part I keep returning to, not the fact that it happened twice, but that both times I saw the line and stepped over it anyway.
It isn’t bad luck but choice, and Wild Mercy doesn’t survive on choices made in weakness.
By the time I cross the yard, I have the shape of the day locked back into place: stallion review at eight, shipping call at nine, contractor meeting before lunch. The ranch responds to structure, and so do I.
The main aisle has already been swept clean, and grooms are moving through morning tasks with the clipped efficiency I pay for. Then I see her.
Montana’s at the far end of the aisle with her hair tied back, sleeves pushed up while she listens to Cassie talk through turnout changes.
She’s wearing one of the branded sweatshirts now, the green too dark against her skin, and for one hard second my body remembers the drag of her hair across my forearm, the heat of her tucked against my ribs, the slow shift of her leg over mine while dawn pressed at the windows.
I shut the thought down before it finishes forming.
When I reach them, Cassie is mid-sentence. “... so if the south paddock’s still too wet, Wade wants the yearlings split instead of ...”
“Cassie,” I say.
She stops and looks at me. Montana doesn’t, which is interesting.
I let the silence sit for half a beat before I say, “Turnout changes go through Wade. Medical notes go through me or Rhodes. If there’s confusion about a procedure, ask before you improvise.”
The instructions are for both, but the tone I use is meant for only one of them.
Cassie’s brows lift just slightly, the expression of a woman who knows when a correction is carrying extra weight and is smart enough not to name it. “Got it, boss.”
Montana finally turns her head, but her face gives me nothing that points back to the woman who looked at me in the dark like she was already deciding whether I was worth the trouble.
“Understood,” she says.
Her answer comes back level and stripped clean, and I feel the tension between my shoulders ease before I can stop it.
I nod once and keep walking, because stopping would only.
When Cassie turns to leave, I hear her exhale through her nose in a way that’s dangerously close to a laugh, but I don’t turn around.
As I head towards the tackroom, I hear a quick scrape of boots behind me, followed by Montana’s voice cutting through the barn noise with enough edge to make me stop.
“Is that how you’re doing this?”
I turn and find her standing three paces away, one hand hooked around her opposite wrist hard enough to hold herself still. The morning light coming through the side doors catches loose strands of hair at her temple. Her expression barely shifts, but her eyes are bright enough to give her away.
I glance past her toward the aisle, then notice that Cassie’s gone and Wade’s nowhere in sight. Good.
“If you have a question about procedure,” I say, “you can take it to Wade.”
Her fingers flex once against her wrist. “That’s cute.”
I say nothing.
She closes the distance until there’s nothing left of the workday between us. “You get to follow me into your bed twice,” she says, keeping her voice low, “but suddenly in the barn you can’t manage basic eye contact?”
“This isn’t about eye contact.”
“No?” She tips her head, but her eyes don’t leave mine. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks a lot like you’re trying to make me pay for something you were fully on board with a few hours ago.”
I lower my voice, not for drama, but because the aisle is carrying sound this morning and the last thing I need is Rhodes or Cassie catching pieces of this on the way past. “What I’m trying to do is keep this from turning into something bigger than it already is.”
She lets out a short breath that might have been a laugh if there had been anything amused in it.
“This conversation is over,” I say.
“No, it’s not.” She shifts her grip again, tighter this time, like she needs the pressure somewhere. “You don’t get to wake up feeling guilty and come in here acting like I’m the part of this that needs handling.”
A mare in the rehab row slams the back of her stall hard enough to jar dust from the crossbeam, and from the open end of the barn comes the scrape of a shovel biting into wet bedding before somebody curses and starts over. The morning keeps moving whether I get my footing back or not.
I step toward her and stop close enough to make the point without making a worse one.
She doesn’t retreat. She shifts the clipboard tighter under her arm, plants one boot, and looks at me with that flat, level stare she gets when she has decided the next person to push her is going to do all the work of it.
“I’m not trying to make you smaller,” I say. “I’m trying to keep this from getting loose in my barn.”
Her mouth moves once, not quite a smile. “That must sound a lot cleaner from your side of it.”
Before I can answer, she turns past me with the clipboard tucked high against her ribs.
She comes close enough that I catch the cool outside still clinging to her jacket under the warmer smell of soap and horse, and then she is halfway down the aisle, already looking at the whiteboard by the tack room like we did not just rip strips off each other between the broodmare stalls.
I stay where I am, watching her make one neat correction in the corner of the schedule before she caps the marker and keeps moving.
That is what sticks.
Not that she pushed back. I expected that. It is the fact that she goes straight from calling me on my own morning-after bullshit to fixing a problem on the board without missing a beat.
By the time I reach the yearling lot, the mud has dried in a dark stripe up one side of my boot and Wade is walking me through contractor delays with the expression of a man personally offended by sloppy concrete work.
I answer where I have to, sign what needs signing, and keep moving through the morning in the order it asks for.
It does not help.
Every time I look up, Montana is in the middle of something that matters. She catches a feed mistake, flags a loose gate pin, and sorts Cassie’s inventory sheets before anyone asks.
By noon I find her outside the broodmare barn, crouched by an open feed bin with an inventory sheet over one knee while one of the new grooms hovers beside her.
She taps the chalk mark on the lid, says something brief, and waits until he reaches for the right scoop.
Then she stands, brushes her palms on her jeans, and turns just enough for the sun to catch her profile.
Wade follows my line of sight and makes the mistake of opening his mouth.
Across the yard, the young groom says something that gets a laugh out of her. It is quick and low, and she covers it almost immediately with the back of her hand before dropping her eyes to the sheet again.
I don’t need Wade catching the exact moment that laugh gets to me.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
He drags the word out like he has all day. “Sure.”
I say nothing. The trouble is not that Montana came here wanting to prove herself.
The trouble is that by noon the ranch is already adjusting around her.
Problems stop sooner when she’s near them.
People check things twice after she speaks.
Even the new hands are starting to take their cues from her.
I look back down at the paperwork before Wade can read the rest off my face.
Then the smell hits … sharper than hay, manure, or wet leather, wrong enough to pull my attention loose again.
I catch it in the employee housing wing, where the contractor is already waiting with a hard hat tucked under one arm and the look of a man who knows every second he waits makes the number worse.
“We’ve got a problem,” he says.
I step past him into the hallway and look down. Water has worked its way along the baseboards in a dark line, swelling the laminate and peeling the paint back from the trim. A dehumidifier is roaring in the common room, but it’s getting beaten.
“When did this start?”
“Sometime this morning, I think.” He drags a hand over the back of his neck. “Burst line behind the shower stack on the east side. I got the water shut off quick, but not before it got into the wall.”
The east side. That means occupied rooms.
I look past him toward the open doorway at the end of the corridor. A mattress has already been dragged halfway into the hall. Someone stacked two duffels on top of a milk crate and covered them with a towel like that makes the situation temporary instead of what it is.
“How bad?”
He blows out a breath. “Bad enough that between the pipe, the mold risk, and the framing delay we already had, I wouldn’t keep staff in here.”
Not a chance. The housing repairs have already been wasting enough time and money without turning into this. It was supposed to stay contained. Instead it’s in the middle of the ranch, climbing through the walls.
I push open the nearest door and step in. The room smells like wet insulation and drywall paste. A dark stain has spread across one corner of the ceiling, and water is beading on the metal bed frame before dropping to the floor in slow, steady hits.
The room’s done for.
Behind me, the contractor says, “We can push the crew harder, but you’re still looking at at least a few days if you want it done right.”
A few days means this is no longer one bad night or a simple shuffle of beds and apologies. It’s long enough to become a real problem.