7. Chapter 7
Tana
Things sound differently here at night.
Without the regulars milling about outside, coming in and out of the house, the only things I hear now are the refrigerator downstairs and the slow complaint of pipes settling in the walls.
I notice it on the third night, when I wake a little after two and see light under a door farther down the hallway.
At first I think I dreamed it. I’m still half tangled in the sheets, trying to remember where I am before the answer comes back in pieces: guest wing of the main house, and too close to the man I keep trying not to think about and thinking about.
The room smells faintly of clean linen and whatever expensive detergent they use here, and for one stupid second that almost annoys me too.
Even the sheets at Wild Mercy feel richer than anything I have ever bought for myself.
I sit up and push my hair out of my face. The floor is cold enough to make me wince when my bare feet touch it. I cross to the door and open it a crack.
The hallway’s completely dark except for one strip of golden light coming from Rebel’s office.
I stand there longer than I mean to, staring at the light under the door and telling myself that it’s perfectly normal for wealthy ranch owners to keep strange hours.
Men like Rebel Ashford never do anything ordinary.
And amidst the stillness, the light stays there, and something about it gets under my skin.
It is not only that he is awake, it’s also because he’s in the room that he disappears into whenever he needs to get away from people.
The next morning I’m in the kitchen before sunrise with a mug warming my hands, looking back at my own reflection in the dark windows over the sink. The coffee is burnt but acceptable enough. Outside, the yard is barely beginning to gray.
I hear him before I see him.
His footsteps are even and unhurried as always, like his body only knows one speed.
He comes in wearing well-fitted running clothes, hair damp at the temples, a fine sheen of sweat still catching where his throat disappears under the collar of his shirt.
Whatever he’s been up to doesn’t seem to haven’t stolen any energy from him.
If anything, he looks sharper than he did at dinner, like he has already been up for hours cutting pieces off the day before anybody else got out of bed.
He stops when he sees me. Not dramatically, just enough that I catch it.
Then his face closes again.
“Tana.”
That’s all. No, good morning or how did you sleep. Nothing that admits he saw me last night in his doorway, or that I woke up in his house with the memory of his mouth still moving around in my head like it owns stock there.
I lift my mug. “Rebel.”
His gaze drops once to the coffee pot, then to the mug in my hand, as if he’s recalculating whether the kitchen still belongs to him if I have already taken the first cup.
He walks past me without brushing close enough to count as an accident and reaches for a clean mug from the cabinet above the counter.
Everything about him is smooth and economical. The way he moves without fumbling as he pours the coffee and takes a small sip, pure grace in motion.
“You’re up early,” I say, because the silence between us has started paying too much attention to itself.
His eyes flick to mine over the rim of the mug. “You’re up too.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
“I didn’t realize that was a question.”
Apparently his cool edge doesn’t even sleep in late.
He sets the mug down and reaches for the file he must have left on the counter, a stack of typed pages clipped together with handwritten notes in the margins.
“Do you ever sleep?” I ask before I can decide whether that is my business.
He goes still just long enough to tell me I found a sore spot.
Then he looks at me with that same unreadable face and says, “Enough.”
We both know that comment is just a front, but I decide to leave it alone.
He takes his coffee and file and leaves the kitchen before the opening can widen. I watch him go, then look down at the black surface of my coffee where the overhead light catches in a dull gold shimmer.
The rest of the day proves two things at once: Rebel never rests, and trying not to notice him is a complete waste of effort.
He turns up everywhere. In the barn aisle with his phone to his ear, voice low and even while two grooms wait for him to finish.
On the porch steps flipping through a legal pad.
Back in the kitchen long enough to refill coffee and disappear again.
By dinner it is obvious the man does not have a pause button. He just changes locations.
Cassie catches me after dinner halfway up the back stairs, one hand wrapping around my wrist with the kind of confidence that says she has already decided I’m not getting out of whatever comes next.
“Oh, no,” she says, eyeing the oversized ranch hoodie I’m wearing like it offended her personally. “Absolutely not. You’re not spending another night in that house pretending you don’t have a pulse.”
I try to pull my hand back. “What do you mean? I’m not pretending anything.”
“That’s actually worse.”
She lets go long enough to shove a pair of boots into my arms and jerk her chin toward the guest room. “You have fifteen minutes.”
“For what?”
Her expression goes flat in a way that would probably scare a weaker person. “For me to drag you to the Rusty Spur before I shame you into putting on real clothes.”
Despite myself, I laugh. It comes out rusty, like the sound had to force its way past too many other things to get free.
Cassie points at me like she just won a case in court. “There. That version of you. I knew she still existed.”
“I’m tired.”
“You look tired.”
“Thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome.” She folds her arms. “Now go put on something that doesn’t make you look like you’ve accepted a life sentence.”
I have enough reasons ready to refuse if I want them. There’s also the smaller, more humiliating problem of living in Rebel’s house and not loving the idea of walking back in after midnight smelling like beer and bar music while he’s probably still awake.
Cassie reads all of that off my face.
“You don’t have to let that house eat your whole night,” she says. “And you definitely don’t have to start arranging yourself around him.”
That lands closer than I want it to.
I look down the hall toward the guest wing, where everything is already settling into that expensive, restrained quiet the house puts on after dark.
Cassie bumps my shoulder with hers. “Come breathe some different air for a couple hours,” she says, softer now. “Pleaseee.”
I let out a breath and look at her. “If you make me line dance, I’m reporting you to HR.”
Her grin breaks bright and immediate. “We don’t have HR.”
“Exactly. Too much power.”
She claps once. “Fifteen minutes, Vega.”
This time when she heads downstairs, I don’t stop her.
Maybe I'm tired enough of this house getting inside my head that a loud bar and one harmless bad decision in denim sound healthier than another night looking for light under Rebel Ashford’s office door.
The Rusty Spur sits twenty minutes outside town under a sagging neon sign and a sky so clear it makes the whole place look lonelier from the road than it turns out to be.
By the time Cassie pulls into the gravel lot, the parking area is half full ...
dusty trucks, a couple of sedans, and a horse trailer parked crooked at the far edge like its owner gave up on order after dark.
Music hits us the second we open the doors.
Inside, the place is all scarred wood, beer signs, and music loud enough to make thinking less available.
A woman in a black hat spins under the string lights over the dance floor.
The bartender has one hand on the tap and the other braced against the counter like she has been moving without a break since six.
Cassie glances at me, waiting.
I know that look. It is the one people get when they have decided you are going to enjoy yourself whether or not your own opinion gets consulted.
So before I can overthink it, I let her tow me through the crowd, claim two stools near the corner of the bar, and order something cold enough to make my teeth hurt. The first sip is sharp, fizzy, and mean enough to cut through the stale mood I brought with me.
“There she is,” Cassie says, and pointing her finger at me.
I angle my bottle toward her. “You are so annoying.”
“Yeah, whatever. You’re welcome.”
The song changes, the floor fills, and Cassie launches into a story about a mare in south turnout who kicked through a panel because someone underestimated how much spite could fit inside one pretty chestnut body.
Somewhere between the second drink and her impression of Wade trying not to swear in front of a teenage intern, something in me finally loosens.
When she catches my wrist and says, “Come on,” I let her pull me toward the edge of the dance floor instead of planting myself stubbornly on the stool.
The boards hold the heat of the crowd. Every step answers with a low thud under my boots.
The smell of beer hangs in the room, cut now and then by somebody’s perfume when the dancers turn.
Cassie's grinning like she personally rescued me from despair, and when I roll my eyes at her, it finally feels like my face again, my body, my night.
For a few precious minutes, the music is louder than everything else and I start to unwind.
That's when Holt Danner appears out of the crowd like he has been there all along and just finally found an opening.
I know who he is before Cassie even leans in and says his name under her breath. From what I’ve heard, he’s a local stallion handler … mid-thirties maybe, with 70’s sideburns and an easy grin. The kind of man built to make a room feel less tense just by standing in it.
“Holt,” Cassie says, smiling like trouble wearing lipstick. “You know Tana, right?”
“Only by reputation,” he says.
I tip my bottle toward him. “That sounds dangerous.”