Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
TATE
Four cows. She's been here one day and I've already lost four cows to her property because I haven't fixed that goddamn fence.
Duchess leads the stragglers back through the gap without much fight.
She's my oldest girl, twelve years on this land, and she knows the whistle better than most people know their own names.
The other three follow her lead, hooves heavy on the packed earth, tails switching at flies that don't exist yet this time of year.
I dismount at the gap, loop Bucky's reins over the nearest post, and drag the wire back into position by hand.
Temporary fix. My gloves are in the truck, so the barbs dig into my palms through calluses thick enough that I barely register it.
Tomorrow I'll come back with the fencing pliers and do it right.
Tomorrow.
Because tonight my brain won't stop replaying auburn hair and bare feet in the grass.
Piper Langdon. Stuck her hand out over the fence line with a smile bright enough to short-circuit a power grid.
Blue eyes that telegraphed every single thought before she could catch them.
Freckles across her nose. A flannel slipping off one shoulder showing skin that's never seen a day of ranch work, smooth and golden in the late afternoon light.
And a mouth on her. Lord.
Your cattle are in my yard, and I'd appreciate it if you'd get them out.
I yank the wire tighter. A barb catches my thumb. Blood beads along the pad and I wipe it on my jeans without looking.
She doesn't know what she's talking about.
That creek has been part of my water rotation since my father ran this ranch.
Before that, my grandfather. We've been Rawlins on this land for three generations, and some woman from wherever she came from doesn't get to show up with a year lease and tell me where my cattle can drink.
Bucky nudges my shoulder with his nose. Impatient.
"Yeah," I mutter. "I know."
The ride back to the barn takes fifteen minutes along the upper fence line.
Sun's dropping fast, pulling the temperature down with it.
September in Montana means warm days that collapse into cold nights without warning, and by the time I unsaddle Bucky and turn him out into the paddock, my breath is visible.
Barn chores take another hour. Feed. Water.
Check the heifers in the south pen. One of them's been favoring her left front leg for two days, so I crouch in the straw and run my hands down the joint, checking for heat or swelling.
Nothing obvious. Probably stepped in a gopher hole. She'll work it out.
The house is dark when I walk up. Always is. I stopped leaving lights on three years ago when Rachel packed her Subaru and drove back to Billings, leaving a note on the kitchen table that said she loved me but couldn't love the silence.
Fair enough. The silence stayed. She didn't.
My boots come off at the door. Habit. Mom would've killed me if I tracked mud through her kitchen, and some lessons outlive the teacher. The kitchen's clean because I cleaned it this morning. Counters wiped, dishes done, one plate in the drying rack. One mug. One set of silverware.
Chili's in the slow cooker, been going since five a.m. The whole house smells like cumin and peppers. I ladle out a bowl, grab a beer from the fridge, and eat standing at the counter because sitting at the table for one is something I stopped doing a long time ago.
My phone buzzes against the counter.
Mom:
Happy Tuesday sweetheart. Sun's been gorgeous in Billings. Aunt Carol says hi. Call me this weekend?
Me:
Will do. Love you.
Short. She'll worry if I don't respond. She'll worry anyway.
She's been worrying since Dad died, since she moved to Billings to be near her sister, since I took over the ranch at twenty-two and never left.
Twelve years of worry from a hundred miles away.
She calls every Sunday. I answer every Sunday.
We talk about weather and cattle prices and whether the roof needs patching, and she never asks if I'm lonely because she already knows the answer.
The chili's good. Always is. My grandmother's recipe, passed down through two generations of Rawlins women to a man who eats it alone at his kitchen counter every Tuesday because routine is the only thing between him and the kind of quiet that starts feeling permanent.
I rinse the bowl. Put it in the drying rack next to this morning's plate.
The porch calls me out after dinner the way it always does. I drop into the rocker with a second beer, the wood creaking under my weight. From here I can see the fence line, the pasture, the dark shape of the cabin next door where a light glows in the kitchen window.
She left it on.
Stupid to notice. Stupid to care. But I do notice, and the light makes the whole east view look different. Warmer. Less empty.
Piper Langdon, standing in her yard with her bare feet and her attitude, telling me the creek is on her property.
She's right. Technically. The fence marks the boundary, and the creek sits on her side by a good thirty feet.
But that fence was put there by a landlord who never visited, and the previous owner, old Dale Mackey, didn't give a damn where my cattle drank as long as I kept the driveway plowed in winter.
Dale owned the place for six years before the quiet finally won.
Sold it, moved back to Missoula, and the new owner turned it into a rental without setting foot on the property once.
She won't last three.
Women like her never do. City women with clean boots and big plans. They come for the mountains and leave when the pipes freeze in January. When the power goes out for three days in a storm. When they realize that quiet isn't peace. Quiet is just another name for alone.
The light in her kitchen stays on.
My jaw tightens.
That shoulder. That bare, golden shoulder where the flannel slipped down while she stood there arguing with me about property lines. I saw it. She saw me see it. Something passed between us in that half-second, fast and unwelcome, before I shut it down and got back on my horse.
I take a long pull of beer and stare at the mountains until the stars start showing.
Five-thirty comes the way it always does. Dark, cold, unwelcome. My body doesn't care. It stopped caring about preferences around the time Dad had his stroke and I learned that cattle don't wait for you to feel ready.
Coffee first. Black, strong, in the same blue mug I've been using for a decade. Then boots, jacket, hat. The morning routine is a machine, and I'm the only moving part.
I'm halfway through the east pasture check when I see it.
The porch step.
Her cabin's porch step, the one that's been cracked since before Dale moved in. I noticed it yesterday, noticed her stepping around it carefully when she went back inside. One wrong foot and she'll go straight through the rotted wood. Ankle. Maybe knee.
I keep riding.
Get about forty yards past her property line before I pull Bucky up.
She's not my problem. Her porch isn't my problem. Her ankle isn't my problem.
That's what I tell myself while I'm tying Bucky to the fence post and pulling the tool bag off the saddle.
That's what I keep telling myself while I walk across her yard in the blue predawn dark with a hammer, a pry bar, and two lengths of treated lumber I had in the barn from last month's fence repair.
Her kitchen light is off. Bedroom curtain drawn. She's asleep.
Good.
The old step comes up easy. Rotted clear through, splintered at the supports. I measure by eye, cut the lumber with a hand saw I do my best to keep quiet, and nail the new boards into place. Takes twenty minutes. The new step is solid. Level. Won't crack under weight or weather for a good decade.
I gather my tools. Stand up. Look at the door.
Go home, Rawlins.
I go home.
The sun's coming up by the time I finish the east pasture check. Golden light spilling over the Bitterroots, catching the frost on the grass. Beautiful morning. I don't stop to admire it because I've seen ten thousand of them, and not one has ever fixed a fence or fed a cow.
But I keep looking east. Toward the cabin. Toward the porch with the new step she hasn't seen yet.
My phone buzzes.
Jace Callahan:
Truck's done. Come get it before I sell it to someone who actually changes their oil.
Me:
Be there by noon.
Callahan's Auto Repair is on Main Street, across from the McKenna Building. Jace is a good mechanic. Doesn't talk much, which I appreciate. Charges fair, which I appreciate more.
I'll pick up the truck. Grab supplies from Hilda's. Come back, fix the fence properly, move the cattle to the west rotation until this blows over.
That's the plan.
Plans don't account for women with blue eyes who argue about water rights in bare feet.
I mount up, turn Bucky toward the barn, and ride.
Behind me, the new porch step sits in the early light, solid and clean against the weathered boards around it. She'll see it when she steps outside with her morning coffee. She'll know someone was here.
She won't know who.
That's fine. Better, even. Because the alternative is admitting that I walked across her yard in the dark to fix something that isn't mine for a woman I met twelve hours ago.
The alternative is admitting that the light in her kitchen window is the first thing I've noticed on the east view in three years that made me want to keep looking.
I don't admit that.
I ride home.