Chapter 4
Wilder
Leaning my arms over the rail of the back paddock’s fence, I folded them on top of one another and let my weight sink into the frame. It creaked slightly, old and worn from the rain and cold weather making the pickets a little more brittle each year.
Replacing it would be a pain but one long overdue, like many things that were out this way.
A job for another day, though.
Part of the problem with having a property as big as this one was that not many people found their way out toward the back of it. There wasn’t much point when we had closer paddocks near the stables, easier access to the main pasture, or the indoor riding arena, for whatever we needed.
Especially to train.
Rain or shine, that building had everything a rider could ask for—space for plenty of horses to run it at a time, soft footing, and controlled conditions. It was as efficient as it was practical, and one of the many reasons my father decided to invest in building it in the first place.
A costly upfront purchase that had more than doubled its value within the first five years of us owning it. He’d never been the type to waste money on frivolous things trying to make this property some kind of lavish vacation spot.
Our investment was in the horses and their care, not making this a place for the rich and privileged to come around for a long weekend and check horse riding and ranch life off on their bucket list.
Texas had plenty of dude ranches in business for that very reason and we weren’t one of them.
Distant footfalls of hooves pounding against hard ground dragged my gaze across the paddock until I spotted the faint outline of a rider and their horse figure-eighting around a few oddly shaped structures. Hard to see in the dense fog this early in the morning but unmistakable, nonetheless.
The morning out here was quiet this early, soft and peaceful before the sun broke past the horizon and woke the birds and chickens up for the day. Orange was just beginning to bleed into dark midnight when I’d left my home and started up toward the stables for morning chores.
Finding one of the stalls open and empty had me stopping dead in my tracks until I remembered which filly was usually in it. That had turned me right around and driven me into coming up this way, already knowing what I’d find even without seeing it first.
Front hooves skidded against the dirt while taking a sharp turn around one of the structures on the left hand side of the paddock, both rider and horse lowering just enough to make the turn and keep their weight distributed properly.
A loud huff of air expelled out of flared nostrils right before an explosion of speed had them racing back to the other side to take the next one.
Around and around they went, weaving seamlessly through the makeshift course in perfectly synchronized motion; locked in a tight rhythm.
“Atta girl,” Asher called.
Affection bloomed in my chest. Settled deep in a place I didn’t often acknowledge.
I exhaled slowly, watching as the warmth of my breath clouded the air in front of me, mingling with the low-hanging fog that still clung stubbornly in the cooler air. The sun was just beginning to burn through it, casting long beams of light along the ground leading up the path.
Realistically, I should be calling him in.
Should be telling him to get back to the stables and start clearing out the troughs before I filled them with fresh feed. Or having him begin letting the horses out to pasture so we could get a head start on cleaning out the stalls before Dallas and Ryder made their way down from the bunkhouse.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I stayed put, arms crossed over the top rail of the fence, my boots planted firmly in the dirt as I watched them take another turn.
There was something about watching a good rider and their horse move together—something that made it damn near impossible to look away from no matter how much my inner clock nagged at me, reminding me of the work piling up.
He’d turned her into a damn fine horse. Gave her the confidence to be comfortable getting saddled up and ridden without flinching away from every wandering hand that happened to pass over her hindquarters.
He didn’t rush her, didn’t break her. Just got down to her level and met her where she needed; as he did with every tough case we gotten since he’d been hired. Nine weeks was all it took to get her out here racing around barrels like she’d been bred for competition.
Like she was meant for it.
Since then, they’d been inseparable.
As soon as winter hit, I’d had a hard time getting Asher to not spend every spare second with her.
Didn’t matter how cold it got; didn’t matter if the ground was half frozen or if the morning fog clung thick enough to blot out the fence line.
If he wasn’t in the bunkhouse or handling his daily chores, he was tending to her, riding her, reinforcing every lesson until they were second nature.
A breathless laugh echoed over to me as Asher tugged back on the reins to slow them down, her canter turning into a slow trot while breaking away from the course and heading toward me where the gate was.
I hitched a leg up on the lowest rung of the fence, the stretch helping ease the ache in my back that had settled there sometime this morning—right alongside the frost that clung to the outside of the kitchen window while I’d put on a fresh pot of coffee.
I liked to think I was too young to be moaning and groaning about joint pain. Too young for the kind of deep-set stiffness that made a man move slower and wake up feeling like he’d aged ten years overnight.
That was supposed to be reserved for people like Teddy who shuffled around half bent over after a full day’s worth of exams on our animals, rubbing at his lower back like it had personally betrayed him.
Then again, the winter months always did make things harder.
The days stretched longer than normal—ironic, considering how early the sun liked to set. But the cold had a way of dragging everything out, slowing even the simplest tasks.
Didn’t matter how many years you spent working out in it. You felt winter the second it rolled in across the untouched acres out past the property.
In your hands, your back, your damn knees.
In the slower mornings and in the way your body protested bending down to muck stalls or hauling feed out of storage in the biting cold.
It made getting up before dawn just that much more miserable, and by the time noon rolled around and the sun finally started burning off the morning frost, the damage was already done.
I preferred to bake in the heat over this any day.
March couldn’t come soon enough.
I rolled my shoulders as Asher tugged the filly into stopping right as he reached me. He blinked once, twice, at me before his lips parted in surprise.
“You’re up early,” I said.
His face pinched slightly, just visible enough in the faint light for me to catch. “I swear I was going to get those troughs cleaned out before you dragged the feed from storage.”
“Hm.” I had no doubt about that.
Even as distracted as Asher was lately, he never skimped out on chores.
Not if it meant pushing that burden onto someone else’s plate.
He was a fair player on our team, eager to pitch in his share and then some.
Valuable in more ways than his unexplainable talent for working his magic on abused animals.
“Sorry,” he said, swinging a leg over the saddle to drop down onto the ground. His boots hit the dirt with a solid thump, and almost immediately, his hand went to the filly’s reins, fingers tracing along the leather, holding them in a tight grip. “I swear I was going to.”
My lip twitched involuntarily.
The thing about having someone as charming as Asher around was that it didn’t just affect the animals.
That sincerity of his, the way he looked at you with those wide, open eyes and meant every damn word that came out of his mouth—it was disarming.
Endearing in a way that made it damn near impossible to be too hard on him, even when I should be.
Instead of watching the way those brown pools of his glinted slightly in the light while he stared up at me, I should be telling him off for cutting his sleep short.
Should remind him that work came before pleasure and that the morning chores weren’t going to do themselves no matter how good he got at multitasking.
But instead of doing any of that, I just exhaled once more, watching as he rubbed the filly’s neck in that practiced way they’d both grown familiar with.
Goddamn it.
“Next time,” I said, my voice even. “The troughs come first.”
His shoulders relaxed slightly, that telltale grin flickering at the corner of his mouth. “Got it.”
Shaking my head, I pushed off the fence. “Good. Now, go get her cooled down and meet me by the stables. Plenty left to do before sunrise.”
“Yes, sir.”
My stomach kicked up with that all-too-familiar flutter—a sudden and unwelcome surge that reminded me I wasn’t as immune to him as I’d pretended. It rose up unexpectedly like it always did, a quick burst of warmth that spread through my body and made it hard to breathe through.
I’d learned to recognize it over the last few months and, more importantly, stamp down just as fast as it came on.
I forced my gaze away from him, unwilling to let him see even a hint of how badly my cheeks burned when I turned and headed back down the path toward the stables.
Sir.
That was new.