Branded by the Wylde Mountain Cowboy (Wylde Mountain Ranch #2)

1. Chapter 1

Brynn

I’ve been on a lot of ranches. Good ones, bad ones, one in Oklahoma that had a barn held together with zip ties and prayers. I’ve walked onto properties where the fencing was so loose you could skip rope with it. I’ve shaken hands with owners who couldn’t tell a cutting horse from a couch cushion.

This is not one of those ranches.

The Wylde Mountain Ranch sits against the mountains like it grew there. Sixteen thousand acres stretching out under a sky so big it makes my chest tight, and I’m not a woman who gets emotional about real estate. I get emotional about horses. Real estate is just where you keep them.

But this real estate is something.

My truck crunches up the gravel drive and I park near the main barn and sit for a second with the engine running.

I do this on every new property. Thirty seconds.

Read the land. Read the fences. Read the energy of the place before you step into it, because a ranch tells you what it is before anyone opens their mouth.

This one says: someone loves me. Someone has loved me for a long time.

The fencing is tight. The barn is massive and well-maintained, painted not because it needs it but because someone cares about what it looks like. Even the gravel is raked.

I turn off the engine. I check my teeth in the rearview mirror because I ate a granola bar somewhere around Billings and I’m not meeting my new employers with oats in my smile.

I’m five-foot-four on a good day, which means first impressions are all I’ve got before people start looking over my head. Literally.

The front door of the main house opens and a woman comes out. Sandy hair in a braid, jeans, boots. She’s waving before I’m out of the truck, and her smile is the kind that makes you exhale.

Elise Wylde. Owner. The woman who hired me.

Also the woman I spent six months with on a cutting horse operation outside Amarillo, back when she was Elise Carter and still figuring out that ranch life was in her blood.

We’ve been friends since she watched me tell a ranch owner his training methods were an insult to the horses and then restructure his entire program in two weeks.

“Brynn!” She crosses the yard and pulls me into a hug that smells like hay and coffee and contains the warmth of a woman who is genuinely happy to see you. “You made it. How was the drive?”

“Long.” I hug her back. She’s different from Amarillo. Settled. The restless energy I remember has been replaced by something grounded and sure. This is a woman who found her place. “Beautiful, though. Your valley is stunning.”

“Wait until you see it from the ridge.” She’s already turning, already walking toward the barn. She moves like a woman with a list and not enough hours. “Come on. I’ll show you what you’re working with.”

I grab my notebook from the passenger seat. I carry a notebook on every new property. It’s not for show. By the end of the first day, it’ll be full of diagrams and feeding notes and observations about every horse on the string. My notebooks are where programs are born.

Elise walks me through the barn. And it’s a barn worth walking through. Twenty stalls, all clean, all properly bedded. Cross ties in good condition. Wash rack with hot water. Tack room that’s organized with precision. The feed room is stocked and labeled and temperature-controlled.

I’m writing so fast my handwriting goes sideways.

“The string is twelve horses,” Elise says, stopping at a stall where a bay mare is watching us with intelligent eyes. “This is Birdie. She’s our matriarch. Twenty years old, retired from work, but she still runs the herd.”

I put my hand out. Birdie lips my fingers, decides I’m acceptable, and goes back to her hay. I like her immediately. There’s a calmness in her eye that tells me this horse has seen everything and isn’t worried about any of it.

“She’s beautiful,” I say. And I mean it the way horse people mean it. Not the color or the conformation. The mind. The steadiness. A horse that holds a barn together from the inside.

“She picked me on my first day,” Elise says. There’s something fond in her voice. A history. “Raiford put me on her as a test.”

“Did you pass?”

“I married the man. So I’d say yes.”

I laugh. Elise hasn’t changed. She still talks about land and horses with the love of someone who understands what they have. She was like this in Amarillo too, but back then she was searching for the place that fit. Looks like she found it.

We walk the rest of the barn. I meet the string one by one. Two quarter horses with good bone. A paint that’s flashy but sharp-eyed. A young gelding in the corner stall who pins his ears when we walk past, which tells me he’s scared, not mean. I make a note.

“That’s Rebel,” Elise says. “He came to us about six months ago. Auction rescue. He’s been a project.”

“Who’s been working with him?”

“Beckett.”

The name lands in the air between us like a coin dropped on a table. Elise says it with the careful tone of a woman who knows what she’s about to deliver.

“Your foreman,” I say.

“Our foreman. He’s been here over four years. Runs the day-to-day. The horses are his.” She pauses. Chooses her next words. “He’s very good at his job. And he’s not thrilled about the program.”

“Is he the type to never be thrilled about anything?”

Elise smiles. It’s the smile of a woman who has information she’s choosing not to share. “He has his moments. They’re just hard to spot.”

“Where is he?”

“In the barn. Always.”

She says this like it explains everything. And honestly, it kind of does. I’ve known men like this on every ranch I’ve worked. The barn is theirs. The horses are theirs. The routine is a religion and the woman with the clipboard is a heretic.

I’ve been the heretic before. I’m very good at it.

We walk deeper into the barn. Past the wash rack, past the feed room, into the back section where the larger stalls are. And there he is.

Beckett Cole is standing in a stall with a big gray gelding, running his hands down the horse’s front leg. Checking the tendon. His fingers move with the certainty of a man who’s done this ten thousand times and could do it ten thousand more without thinking.

He doesn’t look up.

I know he heard us coming. The barn is quiet and my boots aren’t subtle. He heard us and he chose to keep his hands on the horse and his eyes on the leg and his back to the woman who just drove eleven hours from Texas to rearrange his life.

This is a power move. I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen it from men twice his age on ranches half this size. The “I’m too busy and important to greet you” maneuver. It’s the ranch equivalent of leaving someone on read.

I take the time to look at him. Because he’s giving me the time, so I might as well use it.

He’s tall. Six-two, maybe six-three. Dark hair under a hat that’s been through weather.

Built from work, not vanity. His shoulders are wide and his forearms are tan and the veins on his hands stand up the way they do on men who use their hands for a living.

His jaw is the kind that exists specifically to be clenched, and right now it’s doing exactly that.

He’s handsome. Under the scowling and the dust and the attitude, he’s handsome in the way that mountains are handsome. Big and immovable and not trying to impress anyone.

I file this information in the part of my brain labeled “irrelevant” and walk forward.

“Beckett,” Elise says. Her voice has the bright, careful tone of a woman introducing a match to a stick of dynamite. “This is Brynn Hartley. Our new horse program director.”

He looks up.

His eyes are dark. Dark and flat and giving away nothing. They move across my face the way you’d scan a fence line for damage. Quick, thorough, and with zero warmth.

“Ma’am,” he says.

One word. The temperature of tap water.

I’ve been ma’amed before. I’ve been ma’amed by men who meant it as respect and men who meant it as dismissal and men who meant it as a question, like they weren’t sure I was old enough to qualify. Beckett Cole’s “ma’am” lands in the dismissal category with a side of “why are you in my barn?”

“Mr. Cole.” I extend my hand. He looks at it. Then he stands, wipes his palm on his jeans, and shakes it. His hand swallows mine. His grip is firm without being aggressive, which tells me he’s not trying to prove anything with the handshake. He’s saving the proving for later.

“Elise mentioned the program,” he says. Back to the horse. Back to the leg. Back to not looking at me.

“I’m sure she did.” I open my notebook. “I’d love to walk through the current setup with you. Your feeding schedule, your training rotation, turnout protocol. I’ll need to evaluate each horse individually over the next few days before I start making changes to the—”

“Changes.”

He says the word like I said “termites.”

“To the training program,” I finish. “The barn setup will need some adjustments too. I’ll want to reconfigure the round pen placement, add a second training area, and restructure the turnout schedule to—”

“The turnout schedule works fine.”

He’s still not looking at me. He’s looking at the horse’s leg like it’s the most interesting thing that’s ever existed.

“It works fine for general maintenance,” I say. “For a cutting horse program, we’ll need different conditioning intervals. More targeted turnout. Different groupings.”

Now he looks at me. Full eye contact. And his eyes aren’t flat anymore. They’re hot.

“You’ve been on this ranch for twenty minutes.”

“Twenty-three.”

“And you’re already talking about restructuring a system that’s been running for four years.”

“Your system is excellent for what it was designed to do. I’m designing something different.

” I keep my voice level. My mama taught me that volume is the first thing you lose when you’re right and the first thing you gain when you’re wrong.

I’m right. So I’m quiet. “I have full authority over the horse operation. Elise and Raiford signed off on that.”

The jaw does its thing. The clench. The tightening.

“Full authority,” he repeats.

“Full authority.”