Chapter 2
TAYA
I notice him.
He’s at the far end of the bar, tucked into the corner as if he put himself there on purpose.
There’s a glass of bourbon in front of him, barely touched for a while but then emptied in a hurry.
He’s not scrolling through his phone or talking to anyone. He’s not watching the band the way everyone else is, with that loose Friday-night attention that says the week is finally over.
He’s watching the room.
That’s what alerts me. It’s not his face, even though objectively it’s a damn good-looking one in that contained, I-know-exactly-what-I’m-doing way that I have learned, at some cost, to be suspicious of—it’s the watching, like he’s cataloging.
I recognize it because I do it myself.
In courtrooms.
I lean toward Joy. “The man at the end of the bar. Dark hair, corner seat. Do you know him?”
Joy swivels with zero subtlety. I love her for it and also want to put my hand on her face and redirect it.
“Nope.” She swivels back.
I turn to Aria.
She shakes her head. “Haven’t seen him. Could be a tourist.”
I arch an eyebrow. “He’s not a tourist.”
Aria arches an eyebrow. “Barely six months in and you can already tell?”
“He’s too still,” I explain. “Tourists move differently.”
They both stared at me as if I spoke in an alien language. I shrug and pick up my drink. “Occupational habit.”
Aria grins. “Sure.”
Joy chuckles. “The fact that he’s hot as hell…nuh-huh, that didn’t even cross your retina.”
I tilt my head back and laugh. They join me.
I file the stranger away in the part of my brain that doesn’t stop working just because it’s Friday night.
Joy orders a second round of drinks, and the band starts playing something that makes the whole dance floor move.
Six months in Wildflower Canyon, and I’ve learned who belongs where. It’s a small town, where a new face lands like a stone in still water, and the ripples reach everyone before the weekend’s out.
By the end of the night, Moxy will know his name, his drink order, and probably his credit score.
Right now, I don’t know anything about him, and I find that I’m paying attention to it more than I should.
New man in town.
Watching.
Not from here.
Let it go, Taya.
File closed, pending more information.
I turn back to my friends and let the noise of the cowboy bar, far away from the swanky cocktail lounges of Aspen, pull me back in.
“Clara Whitman is in love with you.” Aria props her chin on her hand. “Thanks for taking her on as a client.”
Aria sent Clara to me.
I pat her on her shoulder. “No, thank you for helping me get business.”
Joy picks up her beer. “Who is Clara Whitman?”
Aria owns a ranch attached to Kincaid Farms, one of the largest operations in these parts, and even though Joy is a Kincaid, she’s definitely not a rancher.
She has a clothes boutique on Main Street: Bringing You Joy.
Unless you want to go all the way to Aspen, Joy’s place is where you can find high-quality jeans, leather jackets, and dresses sexy enough to stop a man mid-sentence—her words, not mine.
“Remember the woman I told you about? Who lost her husband in that equipment accident a while ago?” Aria reminds her sister-in-law.
Joy nods vaguely.
“Clara owns Silverbell Ranch,” I continue. “Fifteen hundred acres, up in the north valley. Her husband Deke died eighteen months ago. Since then, she’s been running the place alone with two kids, a part-time foreman, a mortgage, and a water rights claim that’s been in her family since 1948.”
Aria shakes her head in disgust. “And one of those high-falutin’ corporations wants to take those rights away from her.”
In places like Wildflower Canyon—and there are hundreds of them across the West—there’s a war being fought in slow motion.
On one side, working ranch land: hard, unglamorous, not nearly as profitable as the labor demands.
On the other hand, the same land valued by outside money that wants to turn it into the next Jackson Hole or Bozeman—luxury resorts, private airstrips, and ski chalets for people who think a Stetson is a fashion choice.
The ranchers who’ve held on are those who understand that the fight isn’t just economic, it’s existential.
This is their way of life that they’re protecting.
As Duke likes to say, “I’ll be damned if they’ll replace American meat with crap grown in Brazil and put a parking lot on my ranch. Fuck that.”
Men like Mav Kincaid and Duke Wilder, who owns the massive Wilder Ranch, have been on the front lines of the fight—working with lawmakers, anchoring the community, making sure small operations like Clara Whitman’s have enough ground to stand on so they don’t have to sell their family’s legacy.
“Not take the rights, per se, but challenge them. There’s a difference, technically.” I pause. “Not much of one. The development corporation behind the challenge has investors, lawmakers, and a law firm that charges more per hour than Clara Whitman makes in a week.”
Joy’s eyes sparkle bright. “But she has you, and you’re better than all those motherfuckers!”
These women remind me of my grandmother.
Delia Morningstar raised me in Ignacio after my parents died in a car accident, and she never once wavered in her belief that I could do anything I set my heart to. When people told me I was being too ambitious—applying to Harvard Law, really?—she told them to mind their own business.
“You’re going to be just like Pearl Casias,” she’d say.
The famed Pearl grew up on the Southern Ute Reservation and went on to become the first female Tribal Chairman of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe—one of the first Native American women to attend Harvard Law School.
To Wíitsin, grandmother in Ute, Pearl wasn’t a legend. She was proof. And the fact that Pearl’s grandmother was also named Delia and had raised her just underscored the point in her book.
Wíitsin had more faith in me than I ever had in myself—that I could climb any mountain I set my heart to.
Since she passed, I’ve felt the absence of that like a missing floorboard, which you don’t notice until you step the wrong way. And Griffin didn’t help. What he did didn’t just end a relationship—it took a sledgehammer to my ability to trust people I thought I knew.
But sitting here with these women, whom I met at Wild Coffee one ordinary morning a week after I moved, I can feel something I’d stopped expecting to find again outside of Ignacio: the warmth of people who are simply and quietly in your corner.
“Well, I don’t know about being better than all of them,” I say. “Some of those guys are pretty good.”
“Yeah, but you’re Mac’s protégé.” Aria grins. “So you must be the best.”
I came to Wildflower Canyon because of two men.
Jack McCready, known to everyone here as Mac, part lawyer to half the ranchers in this valley and a full-time cowboy at heart.
And Elder Nokoni Red Clay, who had known my grandmother for forty years and understood, without my having to explain it, what it would mean for me to use my skills in a place worth fighting for.
I had already accepted a job in Chicago when Mac called.
My heart wasn’t in it, but survival has its own logic, and I had told myself that leaving Colorado was practical, not permanent.
I love these mountains. They’re in my blood.
But Aspen had become a place I needed to escape, and Chicago felt like a clean break.
Then Mac told me he was winding down—that he wanted someone to take over.
The wills, the community work, the water and land rights cases that nobody else in this valley had the expertise to handle.
At first, I said no. I didn’t think I was ready to be on my own, to carry all of it without a firm behind me.
Elder Nokoni asked me the crucial, life-changing question: “What would your Wíitsin want for you?”
So, I agreed to have a conversation with Mac about it. I made no promises.
I am so glad he used emotional blackmail to get me here, because it was the best decision I ever made. I didn’t know work could feel like this—like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Though when I first saw Mac’s office on Main Street, I was certain I wouldn’t take over his business.
The office smelled of old paper, better bourbon, and the dust of a disused place. He’d never used the office himself—Lulu, his niece, had handled the filing there until she left for university in California.
“Well, this is yours now.”
My gaze swept the room. “Mac, I haven’t said yes to anything.”
“You will.”
I rolled my eyes. “And what do you mean by mine?”
“I mean, I’m giving it to you. That’s your first task, by the way—write the contract for it, will you?”
I arched an eyebrow.
He grinned. “I own the building. I’m selling it to you.”
I raised both my eyebrows. The man had some gall. He wanted me to take over his business and pay for it….
“I don’t want any of this, Mac. I agreed to talk to you because Elder Nokoni—”
“Let’s say ten dollars,” he cuts me off.
That stopped me in my tracks. “What?” I croaked.
The building was in the ass-end of nowhere, but it sat right on Main Street, two doors down from the diner and across from the feed store. People spent their whole lives waiting for a piece of property like that to come up for sale, and when it did, it didn’t go for ten dollars.
“Fine. Fine.” He raised both hands, palms out. “Five dollars.”
“Mac, you can’t just…give this away?”
“Why the fuck not?”
“But—”
“But what?” He shook his head, then ran a finger over the desk and picked up some dust. “Nokoni says you’re the best water rights lawyer he’s ever met.”
“Elder Nokoni is being generous,” I said, chagrined.