Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
elena
The following day, when the sun has dipped low, casting golden streaks through the slats in the stable walls, my arms ache in that satisfying, hard-earned kind of way.
I’m brushing down the mare I’ve been riding, a sweet sassy girl named Lady, sweat sticking my shirt to my back, when Isaac walks in with two of the ranch hands.
Before I have time to greet him, his phone rings.
He answers with a distracted, “Yeah?” but his spine straightens almost instantly.
“Shit.” He pulls the phone from his ear and looks at the hands with him. “There’s a wild mustang out past the ridge—on high ground. Injured. Antonio needs help wrangling her.”
I drop the brush into the grooming bucket. “I can help.”
Isaac blinks at me as if he hadn’t realized I was in the stables. “Definitely not. You could get hurt. I’m sure that’s against the production rules.”
I frown. “I think I can manage.”
“You don’t have anything to prove, Elena.”
“I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m trying to help,” I say, gripping the saddle like that’s the end of the discussion. “You’ve seen me ride. I can handle it.”
His mouth twitches like he wants to argue but knows better. “I’m not riding out there. I’m flying.”
“Flying?” Maybe this is a Montana ranch term I’m unfamiliar with.
He tells the ranch hands to head out on their horses, then turns to me. “She got caught up in some fence. I’ve got to carry equipment to free her. So, I’m taking the plane. You’re not riding out to the ridge unsupervised with ranch hands.”
The urge to remind him I’m not a child that needs supervision is strong. But it’s overtaken by the new information he’s presented. “You fly the plane yourself? Like a pilot?”
“That’s what my license says.” There’s a flicker of something cocky beneath his calm exterior. “Plane’s gassed and ready.”
“Then I’m flying with you.” I move toward the door before he can stop me. “We both know you’re wasting time arguing with me.”
A few minutes later, I’m strapped into the passenger seat of his small plane as we taxi down a short runway.
The urge to chew my nails is overwhelming, even though I kicked the habit when I went into acting.
“Nervous?” he asks as we lift off, voice steady through the headset.
“No,” I lie, eyes fixed on his hands as they move over the controls with the same kind of reverent confidence he uses when saddling a horse… or touching me.
He’s not the reckless cowboy I met that first night, even if he still carries that untamed edge in his smile. When he flies, he’s focused. Methodical. Every move is precise.
And God help me, it’s sexy as hell.
The takeoff steals my breath the same way it does when I fly commercial for work, though it’s less intense. The plane hums beneath us, smooth and steady, but my fingers are clenched so tightly around the armrests I suspect I’ll leave marks.
I’m trying not to be obvious about it. Trying not to let Isaac see how my stomach coils every time we tilt, how the view of jagged cliffs and open sky outside the window makes my stomach tighten and my pulse race.
He’s whistling quietly. Aviators covering his eyes, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, seat leaned back farther than someone keeping us suspended in air should be. He might as well be lounging on a porch swing instead of flying a damn aircraft for how relaxed he is.
Meanwhile, I’ve chewed the inside of my mouth to pieces.
“You good, superstar?” His voice floats through the static in my ears, rich and easy, laced with a smile I don’t turn my head to see.
“Totally,” I lie, staring straight ahead. “Just…absorbing the view.”
“Absorbing it like you might pass out?” he teases gently, one hand flicking switches while the other rests casually on the yoke.
“I fly all the time for work. This is nothing.”
He side-eyes me. “Yeah? Then how come you’re white-knuckling that seat like it insulted you?”
I grit my teeth and peel my fingers off the armrest, shaking out my hands. I try to laugh, but it comes out thin. “Maybe I was just testing out the upholstery. Very sturdy.”
He doesn’t press, just reaches over, calm and sure, and flips a switch. The plane dips slightly and I go rigid again, bracing for…I don’t know. A crash? A nosedive? Imminent death?
“Elena.” His tone softens. “You trust me, right?”
Do I trust him? “I barely trust myself most days.”
He lets out a small laugh. “Fair enough. I get it. But let me show you something.”
Before I can protest, he shifts in his seat and guides my hand over the controls. My pulse skips and I’m instantly light-headed.
“I’m not—Isaac, I can’t—”
“Sure, you can,” he says, wrapping his fingers around mine. “You’re one of the toughest women I’ve ever met. You do Krav Maga at the crack of dawn. You run lines while running five miles and shadow boxing. You can fly this plane.”
I didn’t realize he’d paid so much attention to my daily activities. But then I suppose he knows most of what goes on at his family’s ranch.
“Okay, stalker. Well, none of those things require months of training and a license.”
“You’re not flying alone. I’m right here.”
His words calm me a tiny bit. So does the way he keeps his hand on mine, warm and steady. He adjusts my grip on the yoke, nudging gently, guiding as we level out again.
“See?” he murmurs. “You’re not falling. You’re flying.”
The panic eases, just a little. Enough that I can breathe.
Below us, the Montana wilderness stretches wide and endless, shadowed in evergreen and dusted gold where the sunlight kisses the peaks.
“You ever let anyone else touch these controls?” I ask, voice quieter now.
“Absolutely not.” He turns to me then. “But you had that look, the one you get when you’re trying to hide how close you are to freaking out. Had to do something before you broke your jaw from clenching it.”
My lips twitch. “You know my looks now?”
The sound that escapes him is a dark laugh full of dirty promises. “I know the important ones. Like when you’re angry, when you’re nervous, and when you’re coming so hard you aren’t breathing.”
“No, you did not just say that.”
He grins. “I did. And hey, look, you’re flying.”
I don’t say anything for a moment, too focused on how right his hand feels wrapped around mine, how my nerves are still on edge, but the fear isn’t strangling me anymore.
The land below us is beautiful. I didn’t realize there were three winding rivers here or how far the ranch property extended toward the mountains.
“Wow,” I whisper. “This is pretty amazing. And huge.”
“That’s what she said.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Right up until you ruined it,” I say, shaking my head. “This is why we can’t have nice things.”
“There they are,” Isaac calls out when he spots the ranch foreman and one of the hands down below. I lean forward and the plane does too.
“Whoa there, spitfire. Look with your eyes, not the whole plane.”
My face heats but he gives my knee a quick squeeze. “I’ll take care of the landing. Gotta save something for next time.”
I do my best not to let him see that I’m excited by the possibility of a next time.
We reach the ridge quickly, the sun a sinking fireball behind us.
Below, Antonio’s truck kicks up a cloud of dust while Colter and Marcos wave us down.
Isaac lands smoothly, barely jolting the wheels as we taxi to a stop on the dirt.
Once I’ve released the harness, he helps me out and lowers me gently onto the ground.
The mustang’s a beautiful fawn-colored female, wild eyes full of fear and pain as we approach. Her front leg is bloodied but doesn’t appear to be broken from what I can tell. She’s in distress though, sides heaving from having exhausted herself trying to get out of a stretch of loose fence.
“She’s spooked but not beyond saving,” Antonio says, tension lining his weathered face. “We just need to get her free and in the trailer.”
“I’ll take left,” Isaac says, already moving into action, his voice low and firm.
I loop the lead rope around my arm and approach from the right, keeping my movements slow. “Hey, girl,” I murmur. “You’re okay. We’re not gonna hurt you. I promise.”
It’s like dancing, the way we move around her. Isaac mirrors me without needing a word. He’s in tune with the horse.
With me. With everything.
I soothe her and keep her calm while Isaac and the hands work to free her from the fence. Antonio stands by the open trailer door.
Once she’s free, together Isaac and I flank her, coiling her space in tighter, narrowing the gap between her and the trailer.
Colter and Marcos work to get her on a lead line.
The mare tosses her head, lets out a sharp breath—but then Isaac murmurs something I can’t hear, just this calm, gravel-deep whisper, and she… moves.
She steps into the trailer.
Just like that.
The second the gate swings shut behind her, I exhale. My legs shake and my pulse is racing, but Isaac turns and catches my eye.
His smile isn’t smug—it’s something warmer. Something that says we did this.
“That charm of yours works on all female mammals, I see.”
“Not bad for your first time,” he says, voice low and rough.
I give him a pointed look. “We both know it wasn’t my first time, cowboy.”
He grins wider, the kind of grin that makes my heart somersault. He stops just short of touching me, eyes tracing my face like he’s trying to memorize every inch.
“Hey, Isaac,” Antonio calls out from the other side of the truck. “We have company.”
We turn to see a massive black male mustang emerge from the wooded area across from us. He blows twice. Hard, loud aggravated breaths coming from him, eyes deadlocked on Isaac.
“Shit,” Isaac mutters under his breath. “I think I just took his girl.”
Where I come from, half the people who have horses got them by wrangling wild mustangs and breaking them. A practice that always broke my heart a little.
“You did,” I whisper, when I see the rest of the herd blending into the trees behind him. “And you took their leader.”