Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Cade Sullivan learned long ago that control was an illusion men clung to while the world did whatever it wanted.
But illusions kept men alive in storms, so he held tight to his.
The norther rolled in at dawn like God’s own vengeance, turning the Montana plains into a white hell with no beginning and no end.
Now, four hours later, the temperature dropped twenty degrees, and two thousand longhorns were running scared, their hooves thundering against frozen ground like war drums.
Cade kept his head down, chin tucked against his chest, though the sleet still found ways to needle through his collar and slice at his neck. His beard froze solid an hour ago.
Paloma, his mare, shuddered beneath him, her muscles bunched tight as fence wire.
“Easy, girl.” He pressed his gloved hand against her neck. “Another Wednesday in paradise.”
The mare’s ear flicked back, her way of saying she didn’t appreciate his sarcasm. Fair enough.
Ten years he worked cattle. Ten years since he left Iowa the morning after they’d buried his mother in a pauper’s grave.
The old man died still talking about the next big scheme, the next sure thing that would make them all rich. California gold, Texas land, railroad stocks, always one deal away from Easy Street.
Cade discovered early that the only certainty was hard work and keeping your word. Build something real, one day at a time. No shortcuts. No schemes. Show up, do the job, become the man others counted on when everything went south.
Like now.
A longhorn veered close, its horn sweeping past Paloma’s flank. She jerked back.
Cade shifted his weight, and pressed his knee into her shoulder. “Stay with me, sweetheart.”
The endearment slipped out. With people, he didn’t do endearments. Didn’t do soft. But horses? Horses were different. They claimed the tender part of his heart.
Through the white blur, Rhett Kelsey appeared, cutting a steer back into line, his slicker whipping around him like broken wings.
Holden Reed’s curses carried on the wind, creative combinations that would’ve made a saloon girl blush.
Good men, both of them. Men who deserved to make it home with money in their pockets and stories no one would believe.
The storm screamed harder. He read storms the way other men read books. This one had fangs, and it was hungry.
Paloma knew too.
She moved at an angle, a dance horses did when every instinct screamed run. If she bolted, the herd would stampede. Men might die trying to gather them back.
“No ma’am.” Cade leaned forward, his chest pressed against her neck, and gave her his calm when he had none to spare. Drew in a breath that ached like swallowing shattered glass, held it until his lungs burned, then let it out. Once. Twice. Three times.
Come on, sweetheart. Borrow it. Take what you need.
The mare trembled, fighting between trust and terror. Then, like always, she chose him. Her breathing slowed to match his. The bunched muscles under his legs softened.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured, and meant it.
He should’ve figured that’s when everything would go to the devil. The air changed first, more than just the howling wind chasing them south. Thicker, stranger. The hairs on his arms stood up beneath three layers of clothes.
It was the same sensation he got once outside Amarillo, right before lightning struck so close he tasted copper for a week.
Paloma went rigid beneath him, not the coiled tension of a horse about to bolt, but the absolute stillness of prey spotting a predator.
“What is it, girl?”
The question died in his throat as the frozen ground ahead shimmered like heat waves off summer ground, except it was twenty degrees and dropping fast.
The cattle nearest to the shimmery mirage bellowed, not their normal complaints about the cold, but the sound they made when they scented disaster. A wolf. A wildfire. Death.
Rhett’s horse reared, his outline wavering like a reflection in disturbed water. Holden’s curse cut off mid-word.
The glow spread, rippling outward like rings in a pond, and Cade had enough time to think This isn’t possible before the world ripped open.
One second he was on Paloma, the next he was falling through a powerful light. White-hot and electric. It speared through his skull like someone driving a railroad spike between his eyes.
Paloma vanished from between his legs.
No—
He grabbed for the reins. They weren’t there. For his Colt. For anything solid. Nothing.
His stomach pitched like he rode off a cliff in the dark, the moment when a fella realizes he’s falling but hasn’t hit bottom yet. He smelled peppermint.
His knees hit wood.
Crack.
Pain shot up through his thighs. Instinct took over. He rolled with it, palms slapping down on smooth boards.
Horses. Screaming.
Not Paloma. Not the deep-chested calls of working horses. These were higher, shriller, small. And bells. Bells everywhere, clanging like a church gone mad.
Cade shoved himself up, his hand finding a wall. Splinters poked into his gloves. Finally, something made sense. He inhaled.
The world swam into focus, and his brain glitched.
He was in a barn, but not like any barn he’d ever seen. Light blazed from the ceiling. He squinted. Not lanterns or candles, but something white and constant that hurt to look at. The walls were painted. What man wasted paint on the inside of a barn?
Nine horses, if you could call them that, stood in front of him. They came up to his hip, maybe, decked out like...
Lordy, he didn’t have words for it. Antlers strapped to their heads. Bells on red leather too fine for working tack. They stared at him with the universal expression of horses who’d seen something otherworldly.
What was happening? Had he hit his head? Was he dead? In heaven?
Or hell?
Then he saw her, and everything else, the impossible barn, the tiny horses, faded to gray.
She stood at the far end of the aisle, frozen like she’d been carved from marble.
The light from above caught in her hair, black as midnight, gleaming like a raven’s wing.
She wore something that defied every bit of sense he had left.
A sweater with a deer on the front. Not just any deer.
This one had a red nose that was... blinking?
Actually blinking, like it had trapped lightning inside the wool.
The sight should have been ridiculous. Was ridiculous. But the way the soft knit hugged her curves, the way her chest rose and fell too fast beneath the absurd blinking nose—
Her eyes met his.
Blue. Fierce. Unflinching.
I know those eyes.
The thought slammed into him with the force of a stampede. Not from here, not from now, but from midnight dreams that came when his guard dropped.
Dreams he blamed on too much whiskey or too many nights alone. Dreams of a woman with eyes this exact shade of blue, who looked at him like she could see straight through to his battered soul and didn’t flinch at what she found.
You’re going soft. Loneliness playing tricks.
A man like him, hard-used, hard-lived, didn’t get to dream of women who looked at him like he was worth something.
But here she stood. Real. Breathing. Staring at him like he walked out of her dreams too.
A Christmas card trembled in her grip. Even from here, he saw the painted cowboy on a horse. His horse. His coat. His life rendered in strokes of color.
The sight should have unmoored him, but strangely, she anchored him.
She stood at the far end of the barn, like a vision the storm itself carved from ice and breath. The overhead light turned her hair into black fire, glossy as a raven’s wing.
Her eyes found him. Blue. Fierce. Unflinching.
Heat surged through his chest, primal and wild. He didn’t know her name. Didn’t know if he was alive or dead, in heaven or hell. He only knew the truth roaring through every part of him.
Mine.
* * *
For a heartbeat, Tessa forgot how to breathe.
The man filled the space like he’d been poured into it. Tall, broad-shouldered, dressed like he’d stepped straight out of every horse girl’s secret Pinterest board. His duster dripped onto her barn floor.
This was real. Not a story. Not Eliza’s grief-induced fantasy about a time traveler Tessa pretended to believe while secretly wondering if her friend needed an intervention.
An actual, breathing, gorgeous cowboy just appeared in her barn.
Via magic. Or time portal. Or maybe she whacked her head harder than she thought when she fell.
His gaze locked onto the card she was death-gripping. “Who are you?”
A shiver raced down her spine at the way he was looking at her. Like she was a puzzle he needed to solve. Or a prize he’d won.
Eliza described this exact moment when Wyatt appeared in her bakery storeroom, confused and seeking answers. Same situation. Same impossibility.
Tessa’s brain spun through her options like a slot machine. She could: A) scream and run (tempting but cowardly), B) pretend this was normal (hilarious but unconvincing), or C) channel her inner adult and handle this like the mature twenty-seven-year-old she absolutely was not.
His eyes never left hers, storm-gray and intense enough to make her forget her own name.
The minis, who thirty seconds ago had been auditioning for Horses Gone Wild: Christmas Edition, stilled. Even Einstein. And they were all staring at him as if they were in the presence of greatness.
Her heart slammed once, twice, so hard she pressed a fist to her chest, certain he’d hear it.
She couldn’t look away. Wouldn’t. The pull was too strong, too dangerous.
It wasn’t just attraction. At least not the flutter-eyelash, oh-he’s-cute kind. It was recognition. As if her bones had been waiting for this exact man, this exact moment, and now that he was here the world finally made sense.
Which was absurd. Which was impossible. Which was terrifyingly, breathtakingly true.
“I’m Tessa.” She cleared her throat. “Tessa Mitchell, and this is my barn. Who are you?”