6. Business as Usual （Failing）
BUSINESS AS USUAL (FAILING)
Ariel
The drive back from Dallas takes four hours.
Brock spends three of them on his phone. I spend all four staring out the window.
West Texas at midnight is its own kind of lonely.
No hills, no trees to break it up, just flat dark stretching in every direction, the occasional water tower standing guard over nothing, a string of highway lights that promise a town and deliver a gas station.
The sky is enormous out here. Too much of it.
The kind of sky that makes you feel small in a way that has nothing to do with the stars.
I watch it blur past and pretend I am a woman who did not sleep with her employer three days ago and then stand next to him at a gala while he let a reporter assume we were together.
I am so good at pretending.
Neither of us mentions it on the drive. Neither of us mentions it when we pull through the ranch gate at midnight. He says "get some sleep" and I say "goodnight" and we walk to opposite ends of the property like two people who have never seen each other without their clothes on.
Professional. Easy. Fine.
Morning comes anyway.
I'm up before six, out with the horses before the sun finishes deciding what it wants to do.
The barn is the best part of early morning.
Cedar shavings and sweet feed and the particular smell of warm horse, not unpleasant, not to me, never to me.
Light comes through the slats in long thin strips, catching dust motes and hay particles floating slow in the still air.
The ranch is quiet at this hour. Just the soft sounds of horses shifting weight, the occasional exhale, the creak of wood settling.
It's the one place I feel like I know exactly what I'm doing.
Titan's tendon is tracking clean, still warm, still needs rest, but the inflammation is down. I make notes. I recheck the wrap. I talk to him the way I always talk to horses, low and steady, because it helps me as much as it helps them.
I hear Brock before I see him.
Boots on packed dirt. Unhurried. He stops at the stall door and looks at Titan the way he always does, like the horse is the one thing on this ranch he doesn't have to perform for.
"How's he looking?"
"Better. Another four days of stall rest, then we reassess."
He nods. Doesn't move.
I keep my eyes on my notes. "Coffee's on in the barn office if you need it."
"Already had some."
"Great."
Silence. The comfortable kind, which is somehow worse than the uncomfortable kind, because it means we're already too used to each other.
He leaves without another word. I breathe.
We spend the day like that.
Brock on the far end of the property, working a young mare through her paces.
Me in the barn, then the pasture, then the makeshift treatment area Red set up by the south fence.
We cross paths twice, once at the water trough, once in the narrow aisle between stalls, and both times we do the thing we've silently agreed to do.
We act like professionals.
It almost works.
Almost, except for the way he hands me a water bottle at noon without being asked. Almost, except for the way I catch him watching from the arena rail when I'm working a spooked gelding back to calm, not hovering, just there, and when I glance over, he looks away first.
Small things. Stupid things.
I file them under does not matter and keep moving.
It's Red who brings up the fundraiser.
We're at the fence line near dusk, the sky doing that thing it does out here where it can't decide between orange and pink and just does both at once.
The horizon is flat and wide and endless, the last of the sun bleeding out across the pasture in long gold streaks.
Somewhere out past the south fence, a windmill turns slow.
Red is leaning on a post with his coffee, me reviewing the week's treatment notes, both of us quiet in the way that feels earned rather than awkward.
He hasn't looked at me once. His eyes have been on the pasture the whole time, tracking the horses the way I track vitals. Steady. Automatic. Like he's been reading these animals so long he doesn't need to think about it anymore.
"That bay mare's been favoring her left front since Tuesday," he says, not pointing, not even turning his head. Just stating it. "Nothing dramatic. Just a little short in her stride."
I look out at the pasture. Find the mare. Watch her move for a few seconds. He's right, barely noticeable, but there.
"I'll check her tomorrow morning."
He nods like he already knew I'd say that. Takes a sip of his coffee. Goes back to watching.
That's the thing about Red. He doesn't need to say much because he's already seen everything twice.
"Cattlemen's Gala's next Friday. Brock goes every year. Whole town turns out." He takes a sip. "You'd probably know half the animals those ranchers bring in. Good for the clinic."
I keep my eyes on my notes. "I wasn't invited."
"Didn't say you were." Red shrugs. "Just said you'd know people."
I hear Brock's boots before I hear his voice.
"It's a good event." He stops next to Red, hands in his pockets. Eyes on the horizon. "Local press. Board members. Half of Midland." A beat. "Could be useful. Professionally."
I look at him then.
He looks back. Steady. Giving me nothing.
Professionally. Like we're two people who haven't, like the guesthouse is just a room on a property and not the reason I've been avoiding the south hallway for three days.
"I'll think about it," I say.
Red makes a sound that might be a laugh and walks away.
Brock stays one second longer than he needs to. Then he nods, once, and follows.
I stand at the fence line alone and watch the last of the light go flat across the pasture.
The sky has gone from gold to bruised purple, that specific West Texas dusk that happens fast, like the sun doesn't bother with a slow exit out here, just drops and leaves you in the dark before you're ready.
The windmill turns. The horses drift toward the far water trough in a loose, unhurried group.
Everything quiet and settled and exactly where it belongs.
Me included, for about two more weeks.
Professionally.
Right.
That night, I sit on the guesthouse bed with my laptop and tell myself I'm charting patient notes.
I'm not charting patient notes.
I type his name before I can talk myself out of it. The results load fast, Steele Oil quarterly earnings, Steele West fall campaign launch, Brock Steele Midland gala —
And then a photo.
Six months old. A charity event in Dallas. Brock in a dark suit, arm around a woman who is laughing, all long legs and a Cowboys logo worked into her earrings.
The caption reads: Steele's latest. Sources say it lasted one night.
I close the laptop.
I already knew. That's the thing I keep coming back to. I knew before I looked. I knew before Dallas, before the gala, before I ever set foot on this ranch. I walked into the guesthouse with my eyes open and my head clear and every single warning light flashing.
One night. That's the pattern. That's what the caption said. That's what I am, a warm body between board meetings and brand crises, same as every woman before me who thought proximity meant something.
The worst part isn't that I knew.
The worst part is that some stupid, soft piece of me keeps forgetting.
I open the laptop again. Pull up the clinic's loan portal. Stare at the number until it stops feeling like a gut punch and starts feeling like a reason.
I have work to do. I have a clinic to save and a patient to monitor and a fundraiser to decide about and exactly zero time to be the woman who caught feelings for Brock Steele's one convenient night.
I close the portal.
Sit in the quiet.
Professionally, he said.
I almost believe he meant it.