5. Travis
TRAVIS
I checked the north pasture gate twice before I admitted the latch had nothing to do with why I'd stopped there.
The fence was solid, the hinges were fine, and the cattle in the pasture were doing exactly what cattle were supposed to do on a warm Sunday morning.
I should've been thinking about a weak section of fence near the creek or whether I had enough mineral ordered for next week.
Instead, I leaned against my truck with one boot in the dirt, remembering the way Kaycee Harper had grabbed the front of my shirt and kissed me like she'd already made up her mind.
I'd kissed plenty of women. Mustang Mountain had apparently kept a running count, judging by the jokes people still made whenever my name came up.
Most of those kisses hadn't followed me into the next morning, and none of them had made me stand around staring at a perfectly good gate because I was too busy wondering when I'd get another one.
My phone buzzed against the truck console as I climbed back inside. I reached for it faster than usual.
Kaycee: Any chance you're home this afternoon?
A grin pulled at my mouth before I could stop it.
Me: Depends. You bringing another folder?
Kaycee: Several.
I laughed under my breath.
Me: Then I guess I don't have a choice.
Kaycee: You never do.
I started the truck. Apparently, I was getting company, and apparently, I was happier about it than a grown man had a right to be over a woman showing up with financial records.
Kaycee pulled into the yard a little after four, when most of the day's work was finished and the sun had dropped enough to take the worst edge off the heat.
She'd traded the button-downs from the rodeo office for jeans and a plain blue T-shirt. Nothing fancy. Nothing that should've made it hard to remember she was here to work, but it did anyway.
She climbed out with a canvas bag over one shoulder. “Before you say anything, I consolidated.”
I took the bag from her. “I'm proud of you.”
“You should be. It took restraint.”
We headed toward the house, gravel crunching under our boots. The yard was quieter than it had been during her first visit, with the ranch hands gone for the day and the cattle settled farther out in the pasture.
“So what exactly are we looking for?” I asked.
“There was a reference in the county index to an older record connected to the acreage you lease. I'm hoping something in your original paperwork tells me what it is.”
“That sounds vague.”
“It is vague. That's why I'm here.”
I opened the back door and glanced over my shoulder. “And here I thought you just missed me.”
Her mouth curved. “I can multitask.”
My attention stayed on that smile a second too long. Knowing what it felt like against my mouth didn’t help. I held the door wider and let her pass.
The kitchen looked about the same as it did most Sundays, coffee mug still in the sink, skillet drying next to the stove. Kaycee took in the room without saying anything, but I'd already learned what that particular look meant.
“You're doing it again.”
She set her folder on the table. “Doing what?”
“Looking around like you're surprised I know how to live indoors.”
Her laugh came easy. “I was going to say it's clean.”
“Same thing.”
“I didn't say I expected dirty.” She pulled out a chair and opened the folder. “Maybe slightly less organized.”
“You've seen my filing cabinet.”
“True. That should've prepared me.”
I went into the small office off the kitchen and came back with the oldest Kincaid lease file I had, along with a cardboard box of paperwork that had been passed down with the ranch records.
Kaycee looked at the faded brewery logo on the side and smiled.
I caught it before she could say anything. “Don't.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The beer box I expected the first time.”
“You've been holding onto that joke for days.”
“It was worth the wait.”
I set the box on the table her and pulled out the chair across from her. The paperwork inside wasn't organized nearly as well as my current records, mostly because half of it had belonged to people who'd been dead long enough that nobody remembered why they'd saved it.
Kaycee worked through every page, making small stacks across the table. Watching her concentrate was different from watching her at the rodeo. She pushed her glasses higher when they slipped down her nose and read every handwritten note twice before moving on.
I lasted about fifteen minutes before my stomach reminded me I'd eaten breakfast before sunrise.
“Did you eat lunch?” I asked.
“I had a cinnamon roll.”
“That doesn't count.” I got up and opened the refrigerator. “I've got burgers.”
“Is food included with every forensic audit, or am I getting special treatment?”
“Don't put it on the invoice.”
She smiled and went back to the papers while I heated the cast-iron skillet.
It shouldn't have felt strange having her at my kitchen table. Plenty of people had sat there over the years, but most of them hadn't spent Sunday afternoon digging through property records while I cooked dinner.
The way Kaycee fit into the room felt different. I didn't know what to do with that yet.
“Your mom kept these, didn't she?”
I looked over. Kaycee had one of the old cattle ledgers open in front of her. My mother's handwriting ran across the page in the neat blue script I hadn't seen in a while.
“Yeah. She handled most of the books.”
“I thought I recognized her handwriting from some of the older records.”
I shaped another burger patty and set it next to the first. “She made me learn the basics when I was a kid. Said if I planned on running cattle someday, I'd better understand where the money went too.”
“That explains the filing cabinet.”
I gave her a look. “You really were expecting the beer box.”
“A little.”
I shook my head and put the burgers into the skillet. The meat hit the hot iron with a hiss, and the smell filled the kitchen.
“She liked things done right,” I said. “Didn't matter if it was a tax form, a fence repair, or cleaning out a stock tank. If you were doing the job, you finished it.”
Kaycee closed the ledger and gave me her full attention. “You said things got rough after she died.”
She didn't push or lean forward like she was trying to get a confession out of me, and she didn't soften her voice like she thought I might break. That made it easier to answer.
“I was mad for a long time.” I flipped one of the burgers and watched grease run toward the edge of the skillet. “At her for dying. At everybody else for still being around. Mostly at myself because there wasn't anything I could do about any of it.”
Kaycee stayed quiet.
“The drinking got worse. So did the fighting. Some of that was grief, but some of it was just me being an asshole.” I turned down the burner. “I spent enough years giving people reasons to expect the worst that I can't exactly complain because they remember.”
“But you've changed.”
“Mostly.”
Her mouth twitched. “That’s comforting.”
I laughed.
She rested her forearms on the table. “That doesn't mean they get to decide who you are forever.”
I looked at her across the kitchen. “You really believe that?”
“I believe people are allowed to update the evidence.”
That sounded exactly like something she would say. I turned back to the stove before she could see how much I liked hearing it. “You really can't turn that accountant brain off, can you?”
“Nope.”
“Good to know.”
We ate at the kitchen table with the paperwork pushed to one end. Kaycee stole fries off my plate after saying she didn't want any and informed me that stealing one didn't count. She'd taken three by the time we finished.
I gathered the plates and set them in the sink. “You want to sit outside for a while?”
Kaycee looked toward the stack on the table. “We still have half a box.”
“It'll be there in twenty minutes.”
“That sounds dangerously irresponsible.”
“You've been around me too long. I guess my bad influence is rubbing off on you.”
“Well, I’ve been warned.” Her voice held enough humor that I knew she wasn't thinking about Cody's version of the warning. Still, I liked that she followed me onto the porch instead of reaching for another file.
The temperature had finally started dropping. A few cattle grazed beyond the nearest fence, and the mountains were turning dark against the lighter evening sky, the kind of thing I barely noticed most days because it had always been there.
Kaycee settled into the chair next to mine and stretched her legs out.
“Do you like Bozeman?” I asked.
She glanced over. “I like my apartment. My friends. My work, especially because I can pick projects and work from almost anywhere.”
“But?”
“Sometimes I spend weeks digging through somebody else's life, figure out exactly where everything went wrong, hand them a report, and move on to the next thing.”
“That's the job.”
“I know.” The answer sounded different from the way she usually talked about her work.
“You don't like leaving?”
Kaycee rubbed her thumb along the side of her glass. “I'm good at it.”
I understood that better than I wanted to.
“You keep things simple too,” she said. “No messy relationships. No promises anybody can complain about later.”
“That's one way to put it.”
“Is it wrong?”
I looked at her. “No.”
She nodded once. “Then maybe we're not as different as you think.”
My mind rolled that around and we sat there until the sun dropped behind the mountains, then headed inside to finish the box. Kaycee made it through another handful of papers before she pulled out a thin yellowed sheet that had been folded behind one of the older lease maps.
“What’s this?” She flattened the page on the table, running one finger along a handwritten notation near the bottom.
See 1912 instrument — boundary adjustment.
I leaned over her shoulder. “Is that the north pasture?”
“Part of it, I think.”
“What does the rest say?”
“Not enough.” She traced the notation again. “But now I know what I need Morgan to pull.”
“Does it help me?”
Kaycee looked up at me. “I don't know yet.”
A week ago, that would've irritated me. Now I knew it meant exactly what she said. She wouldn't guess just to make me feel better.
Kaycee started gathering the papers, and I helped slide everything back into the box. When she reached for her canvas bag, I caught her hand instead.
Her eyes lifted to mine.
The kiss I'd been trying not to think about all day came back fast. I pulled her toward me.
She didn’t hesitate at all.
My mouth hit hers harder than it had the night before, and her hands immediately went to my shirt. I backed her against the kitchen counter, feeling her smile for half a second before the kiss deepened.
There was no audience this time. No volunteers pretending not to watch, no rodeo crowd a few yards away. Just the two of us.
My hand slipped beneath the hem of her shirt and settled against the warm skin at her waist. She pulled me closer, and the sound she made against my mouth almost chased away what good sense I had left.
I wanted to take her upstairs, but I pulled back before I let myself act on it.
Kaycee's hands stayed fisted in my shirt. “What’s wrong?”
I kept one hand at her waist. “I don’t want to make assumptions, but if this is headed upstairs, I'm not going to want you leaving right after.”
Her expression changed, surprise replacing the heat for a second. “Who said I was planning to?”
I closed my eyes. “You're not helping.”
“I wasn't trying to.”
That got a laugh out of me. I kissed her once more, slower this time, then stepped back far enough to make sure I stayed there.
Kaycee straightened her glasses and gave me a look that said she wasn't convinced by my decision. I wasn't either but sleeping with the woman who had the power to clear my name seemed like a bad idea. I ought to know since I’d followed through on so many of them in the past.
By the time we reached her car, most of the light had gone out of the sky. She put her bag in the passenger seat but didn't get in right away.
I rested one hand on the top of her open door. “Come to the rodeo dance tonight.”
Her eyebrows rose. “That almost sounded like you asking me out on a date.”
“Yeah.” I didn't add a joke. Didn't tell her it could be casual or give her a reason to pretend it wasn't what it was. For once, I just waited.
A slow smile spread across her face. “Okay.”
“Eight sound good?”
“I’ll meet you there.” Kaycee slid behind the wheel and pulled the door mostly closed, then lowered the window. “Travis?”
“Yeah?”
“Try not to overthink it.”
I laughed. “No promises.”