Wilder (Boone Ranch #1)

Chapter 1

Wilder

It stayed stuck in the air well past the time the fireflies came out to flit around out in the pasture. Their flashes of light speckling the dark and lingering like tiny ghosts until the morning haze chased them away along with the last bits of heat from the day before.

There was only ever a small lull before daybreak; only ever enough time to start the morning chores before sweat started trailing down your back and your clothes began sticking.

But in those final few minutes before that familiar sliver of gold grazed along the border of the horizon and touched land, it was heaven.

I wasn’t the kind of man that took the time to stop and gawk at the view, though.

Not when time standing still meant money lost and every minute on a ranch counted.

Pretty skies didn’t herd the horses out from the paddocks or fix the fences knocked down by hot foals finally let out of their stalls for the day.

It didn’t help put feed in the trough or groom the stables.

Ranch life left no room for sentimentalism.

Something always needed to be done, someone was always demanding attention, and letting yourself get distracted from the work piling up would only make it stack that much faster.

You learned quick that out here the land and the animals who lived on it didn’t owe anyone a damn thing. Simple as that.

I’d seen plenty of greenhorns come and go over the years, bright-eyed and eager to please with some romantic notion that living on a ranch and taking care of horses was a lot like those Hallmark movies my mama liked to pull up while whittling away on her knitting needles during afternoon rain storms.

A week in had most dreamers cursing out those same pretty hills they were once sending photos back home to their folks about. A month in gave them time to reflect on the tough labor that bore permanent calluses and cricks to your joints.

Four months was usually the limit and had them heading out just as fast as they’d come, with their bag slung over their shoulder and a taxi from the city kicking up dust along the way while blowing through the drive heading back to the main road.

That’s just how it went around here.

Well, for most of them, anyway.

I’d gotten lucky over the years hanging on to a few stragglers.

“Come on,” I said to one of them, tossing a half-filled water bottle across the way from me. “Up you go.”

It was caught in a steady hand, the cap popped off instantly as the rest of what was left in the bottle was guzzled down the thirsty throat of one of my younger ranch hands.

His bronze skin was bathed in sweat, streaked with dirt and grime from us trying to wrestle one of our geldings out of the round pen and back through one of the gates leading out to pasture.

A bitch on any normal day, worse during a heat wave like this one.

Sweat coated my skin in a sticky film, making everything feel tight. I probably also looked just as filthy but had half a mind to keep a hat securely tucked over my brow since early this morning, keeping most of my face shrouded in a light shadow.

Not the best of ways to make myself look more presentable, but then who was I trying to impress around here?

“Thought it was supposed to rain this morning,” Ryder muttered from where he was sitting on the ground, crushing the plastic bottle in his hand after finishing it. “What happened to this shit breaking?”

“Didn’t hear anything about that,” I replied.

Truth be told, I’d barely paid any mind to what was scrolling on the TV this morning when fixing up a breakfast for my mama right as light was beginning to filter in through the kitchen window.

Not that it really mattered. Rain or shine, you were walking through mud or shit regardless of what was happening outside.

Made no difference if it was more wet than usual, just made it more annoying to keep from tracking in past the mudroom when kicking your boots off for the day.

Chores still had to get done regardless, and so did training. Horsekeeping wasn’t just for the sunny days.

“Maybe tomorrow,” I offered.

He groaned at me before taking my hand when I held it out to him, rolling up to his feet with a small bounce. A liveliness returned to him after rolling his shoulders back a few times and then tilting his head around until his neck let out a healthy crack.

Ryder threw me a grin instantly. “Got that gelding to run seventeen full laps before he flipped shit. I’d say that’s a win.”

I brought my hand down onto his shoulder to clap it. “Told you he’d come around eventually.”

“Funny, Dallas said the same thing.”

I let my hand drop back down to my side. “Maybe you should listen to us more often. Would’ve saved us all the trouble of having to listen to your bitching and moaning if you were more patient.”

He laughed, sinking down to a fighting stance and bouncing on his toes before sending a one-two punch my way, the breeze of it blowing past me. My water bottle crinkled in his tight fist. “Yeah, yeah. Heard you loud and clear, boss.”

“Glad to hear it.”

When he stood straight again, we headed back for the main arena.

The doors of it were still propped open from when we were last in there, no signs of anyone else taking a horse or two around the indoor ring for a quick training session, or anyone in general for that matter.

With no watch on my wrist, it was hard to tell the time, but judging by how high the sun was overhead, it had to be around mid-afternoon. Three at the latest.

Where the hell was Sully?

By now, he would’ve been done running inventory on any tack needing to be replaced and repaired and come this way with a bag of feed to throw out for our chickens who tended to wander this way after noon hit.

As my ranch manager and unofficial business partner, I knew that man like the back of my hand. He wasn’t one to stray from his schedule no matter what kind of mess got in his way.

On any normal day, at least.

Right now, our chickens were pecking aimlessly at the substrate darkening the hard ground coming out of the arena doors, kicked up from Ryder and I leading our new rescue out into the round pen for a few laps to wear down his anxious energy—baby steps we’d been painstakingly taking to avoid another hoof to the chest incident.

One of the chickens let out a sorrowful trill as we passed by, a couple of them breaking off from the group to follow after us. Probably hoping we had some extra feed stuffed in our pockets to give out as a snack along the way.

“You think they’ll follow us all the way back to the bunkhouse?” Ryder asked.

“Probably.”

I’d feel bad if our hens weren’t already so round to begin with.

Teddy, our veterinarian, had told me plenty of times to knock off giving them extra food throughout the day, warning me I’d end up with a dozen coop-bound chickens if I wasn’t careful, or worse, a couple of hens with joint and liver problems.

Too bad none of my staff cared to listen to the old man no matter how many times he preached at them when he came around. Plenty of them offered to take a chicken or two back to the bunkhouse to keep as pets to spoil rotten and out of Teddy’s eyesight when he came back for his monthly check-ins.

I told them all to take a few of the barn cats in instead and, of course, had been met with blank stares and even fatter chickens come the next month.

The next time I saw him, I’d told Teddy my job was wrangling horses, not staff. After that, he’d given up and forced Sully to order a lower calorie chicken feed.

And that was that.

“I’ll go see what Hazel’s got for scraps. She made us all those blueberry pancakes this morning ‘cause the fruit was going bad. Bet she’s still got some left over.”

I gave him a swift clap on the back. “Have at it. Good work today.”

He saluted me with two fingers before taking off in a slow jog. “Come on, girls.”

They waddled after him, disappearing around the corner when he took it to head back to the bunkhouse.

Hazel’s face was going to light up the second she saw a set of helping hands come waltzing through her kitchen.

Didn’t matter what task Ryder was there for, he’d be roped into helping her prep for dinner the second he came back in from tossing whatever scraps she handed him out the back door to the chickens.

Despite his complaining, Ryder liked the work. Any work, really; didn’t matter what it was. He just tended to bitch while doing it. A classic workhorse with a loud mouth. All muscle with no mute button.

He’d been just as rowdy when I first got him, opposite to the horses I tended to throw his way.

He’d come here eager to show off like most greenhorns, raring to prove himself above the rest of that year’s seasonal group and hadn’t quit like I thought when he’d first come barreling off that city bus.

It’d been five years since then. Five whole years of back breaking work and tears shed over what we did here with no signs of him slowing down any time soon.

I liked ranch hands like that. Made them malleable and adaptable. Quick on their feet and tough when push came to shove. Perfect for rehabbing the abused horses we tended to take in among the breeding ones we usually went to auction for.

I’d started Moonlit Sanctuaries as a side project—had never meant to grow it past the few horses I’d happened upon while expanding our breeding program back almost a decade ago.

My soft heart couldn’t take seeing them up for the slaughterhouse when they’d been dragged off those trailers.

Rib lines and old scars visibly notched into their coats, even from twenty feet back and a crowd of people in the way.

They’d haunted me into taking out my first business loan and opening up what I thought would be a small, simple operation.

Now nine years later, that was half of what we did at the ranch. Breeding and rehabbing. Two sides of the same coin, I suppose. But important work, nonetheless. Both required a special amount of care that few people knew how to handle.

Back in those early days, my father had been skeptical, cautious in encouraging me to continue down that path when we had so much going on with our breeding programs already.

That same year, he’d come to know my passion—seen it first hand, and realized that it was not just some passing interest when I’d gotten one of the worst cases of neglect either of us had seen to trust me enough to take out for a ride in the pasture.

One of my proudest moments and something even I hadn’t known was in me until it’d struck me like lightning.

After that, the rest was history.

Coming up to the stables, I took a detour inside to check if Sully had gotten stuck tallying away our tack.

Wouldn’t be the first time that happened and probably wouldn’t be the last. He tended to get too caught up in the details sometimes.

Let it bog him down instead of moving on and calling it a day to get elbows deep into something else.

That was why the two of us worked, though. I kept the bigger picture in mind while he focused on the nitty gritty.

Before my father had passed, he’d been the old man’s protégé—his right hand in everything, especially the technical stuff. I’d been lucky enough to inherit him, along with the deed to the ranch, in the will. Or so Sully liked to joke.

I tended to see it as stepping into my father’s shoes and continuing his legacy. Almost like the old man never left to begin with. A tall order to fill.

Most days I tried not to think about it.

The cool breeze from the fans overhead felt nice against my sweat-slicked skin when I stepped in past the stable doors, cooling me instantly.

Inside here, the temperature dropped a good ten degrees both from the shade and the crossover air flow.

It was still humid as all hell, but made it much easier to breathe in when the sun wasn’t slowly baking you through your clothes.

A few horses were still hanging out in their stalls, their heads lazily popping out to watch me walk down the center aisle as I headed for the back office.

Back here, it was much quieter. A forgotten corner not many wandered to when coming around to tend to the horses.

My father had built it that way, wanting a separate space away from the chaos of running a large, multi-million dollar business where he could sit down and crunch numbers until his fingers dented.

As a kid, I’d often find him bent over stacks of paperwork, curses lingering on his lips while his pen scratched feverishly over the only legal pad he kept tucked in his desk.

I still could remember those faded yellow pages filled with numbers that were much too big for my little head to wrap around but had piqued my curiosity anyway.

Now, decades later, I understood why he’d often abandon his work the second I pushed that creaking door open to check on him, scooping me up and throwing my gangly little body over one of his strong shoulders, taking me out to the paddocks as I laughed and squealed the whole way there.

My chest still ached at those memories.

An entire year had gone by with my old man in the ground and still, it felt like just yesterday my mama was clutching onto my arm, squeezing onto it for dear life while final prayers were being read at his burial site.

Sunny days like the one that day sometimes still stung. Occasionally, I found myself wishing it had rained instead. Weather like that was far and few down in this part of Texas and would’ve made for an easier pill to swallow.

But then, that was life, wasn’t it?

Readjusting my hat back on my brow line just a bit, I grabbed onto the handle of the office door and swung it open, the hinges creaking in that familiar way of theirs.

The lights weren’t on and there were no signs of a stray clipboard or pen with a half-filled out sheet abandoned on top of the empty desk.

Where in the hell was Sully?