Chapter 1
RiNo Arts District — Denver
Izzy: If I have to hear the word “rebrand” one more time, I’m setting this place on fire.
Caitlin: Please don’t burn down your gallery. It looks beautiful.
Izzy snorted, thumb hovering over her phone as she stood beneath the exposed brick archway that had once felt like the beginning of everything.
A couple walking past the doorway glanced in; the woman’s eyes did a quick, involuntary sweep from Izzy’s sharp cheekbones to her heels, the kind of fast female assessment she’d grown up with. Beautiful. Tailored. Trouble.
Industrial pendant lights glowed warm over polished concrete floors. Abstract canvases in jewel tones lined the walls. Wine glasses chimed. Laughter rose and fell like applause on cue. Beneath it all, the space smelled of expensive perfume and cold air from the overworked AC.
On the surface, opening night looked exactly the way it always had.
But it wasn’t hers anymore.
Izzy: He wants “approachable.”
Izzy: He wants “commercial.”
Izzy: He wants landscapes with cows.
Caitlin: You like cows.
Izzy: Not framed in gold leaf with a $12,000 price tag because some hedge fund manager thinks rustic sells.
She hit send hard enough that her thumb stung.
A laughing emoji popped up almost immediately, then:
Caitlin: You sound tired.
Tired.
That was one word for it. So was done.
Izzy leaned her shoulder against the brick and watched the new owner make his rounds like a politician at a fundraiser.
Marcus Halpern. Wealthy. Polished. Calculating.
He didn’t look at brushwork, composition, or the way a piece could reach in and twist a person open. He looked at the wall as if it were a spreadsheet with better lighting. Her nonna would’ve called him a man who knew every price tag and nothing about a soul.
Two weeks ago, he’d signed papers, bought controlling interest in the gallery, and shaken her hand with a smile that felt like a verdict. Promised expansion, growth. “Fresh energy.”
What he meant was that people who didn’t know a damn thing about art—or the artists who’d trusted her—were now in charge.
He’d already pulled two emerging painters off the walls, replacing them with a Western series he said would “sell better to second-home buyers.” Broad skies, generic mountains, glossy, over-saturated cows placed exactly where a designer would want them to balance a sofa.
He’d moved her office to the back, as if she were part of the inventory.
He paused in doorways to say things like, You’ve done a lovely job with atmosphere—as if she’d been arranging throw pillows instead of building careers.
Her jaw ached. She unclenched it and forced her shoulders down.
Izzy: He asked me today if I’d ever considered letting someone else handle acquisitions.
Izzy: “Freeing up your time,” he said.
Freeing up your time. Making you obsolete.
The dots blinked for a long moment before Caitlin replied.
Caitlin: Are you okay?
No. Not really.
Izzy lifted her gaze to the front windows. The gallery lights reflected like some glossy catalog version of her life. Beyond the glass, downtown Denver shimmered against the dark—steel and glass and relentless motion.
She should feel proud.
She’d fought like hell to build this place. Openings, fundraisers, donors, late nights, chasing artists who should’ve been seen.
Instead, it felt like watching someone gut a building from the inside, leaving the facade intact.
Caitlin: Come to Sylva for a bit.
The word Sylva blurred. She blinked hard.
Sylva. Mountains.
The courthouse museum where Caitlin worked.
She’d only been there once.
Long enough to help Caitlin disappear. Long enough to be pushed off a mountain by a man who’d decided she was in the way. Long enough to learn exactly how dangerous someone else’s world could be.
There’d been a trial. Cameras. Headlines. Testimony that sliced her open in slow, careful bites.
Evan Cole was behind bars now. She knew that. Logic said he was locked up; feeling safe was a matter of ghosts, and the ghosts in Denver were getting loud.
She and Caitlin texted every day, trading pictures, gossip, and small-town weather; best friends who now lived in different worlds but still narrated them to each other in real time.
But they hadn’t stood in the same room since the day Evan had been led out of a courtroom in handcuffs while cameras flashed outside.
She didn’t regret a second of it. Helping Caitlin had blown her life apart and, in its own brutal way, probably saved it. Every quiet morning, Caitlin woke up safe in Sylva existed because Izzy had walked into someone else’s nightmare for her.
Her phone buzzed again, jarring her. Another notification slid over Caitlin’s message.
Unknown number.
She almost dismissed it.
Then the name resolved on her screen.
Sheriff Burke Scott.
Her shoulders tightened, then eased.
She answered on the second ring. “Moreno.”
His voice came through steady and grounded in a way nothing in this room felt.
“You in a place you can talk?”
Izzy stepped away from the archway and into the hallway that led toward the back offices. The music and curated laughter dulled with each step.
“Depends,” she said. “Am I in trouble?”
A low huff of amusement. “No.”
“I need a favor,” Burke said.
Something in his tone softened—less sheriff, more brother, more friend. It was the same voice he’d used the night they’d gotten Caitlin out, when he’d trusted Izzy with things he couldn’t put in a report.
Izzy’s grip on her phone eased. “What kind of favor?”
“Caitlin’s birthday is next week.”
Her throat went tight. Burke didn’t have to say her name twice to get her undivided attention.
“Okay,” she said, already smiling. “Now I’m listening.”
“I want to do something for her,” Burke said. “Not big. Just… right. And she’d kill me if she knew I called you.”
Izzy’s chuckle caught a little at the edges. “So this is a covert operation.”
“Something like that.”
“What do you need?”
“You here?” he said. “Before she knows about it. I don’t want her catching a whiff of this and getting anxious, so I’m not telling her anything. No cover story. I want her completely surprised.”
Izzy pictured Caitlin’s face—the shock, the way her eyes would go bright, the laugh that always came half a second after.
Her chest ached in a different way.
“I want her to have something good she doesn’t see coming for once.”
That did her in.
“Tell me what hotel to book and I’ll catch the next flight,” Izzy said.
“Hotel?” Burke sounded almost offended. “No. You’re not staying in a hotel.”
She smiled despite herself. “Then where am I staying?”
“You can stay with Grant.”
She blinked. “Your brother Grant?”
“That’s the one.”
She exhaled slowly. “The cowboy.”
“He’d love that description.”
“Caitlin’s used it,” she said. “More than once.”
“I’m sure she has.”
Izzy shifted her weight, already picturing it—land, horses, early mornings, a man who didn’t care about gallery openings or donor lists or anything that came with them.
Not her world. Not even close.
“And I wouldn’t want to put him out,” she said.
“You won’t.”
“Burke.”
“Iz.”
She huffed a quiet laugh. “Look, if I stay in town, I can keep my head down. Hotel, in and out. Easy.”
“Sylva’s not Denver,” he said. “You stay in town, people notice.”
“I don’t think I’m that interesting.”
“You stand out a little.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you won’t make it from your car to the front desk without somebody texting Caitlin that her glamorous Italian best friend checked into the inn.”
She narrowed her eyes even though he couldn’t see her. “Is that an insult or a compliment?”
“Definitely a compliment,” he said, dry as anything. “But it also means word gets around. Fast.”
She leaned her shoulder against the wall, thinking it through. Small town. No anonymity. Caitlin finding out before they were ready.
“So Grant’s my hiding place,” she said.
“Exactly.”
“He’s going to love that.”
“He’ll live,” Burke said. “I’ll talk to him.”
Through the open doorway, the edge of the gallery came into view. Marcus Halpern stood near one of her favorite sculptors, gesturing with his champagne flute, explaining profit margins as if he were talking about countertops and square footage.
Something in her finally, quietly, snapped.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Simply… done.
A few days in Sylva. Caitlin’s birthday. Burke’s calm, solid voice instead of Marcus’s buzzwords.
Not just for Caitlin. For her.
Not running away—only stepping out before what she loved here became unrecognizable.
“How soon?” she asked.
“As soon as you can manage,” he said. “Text me your flight. I’ll handle everything on this end. She won’t know a thing.”
Izzy didn’t need to think about it.
Her nerves were already gone. Her patience had been spent on people who talked about art as if it were inventory.
“I’ll pack tonight,” she said.
She ended the call, slipped her phone into her pocket, and stood in the narrow hallway between the life she’d built and the exit sign.
For the first time all evening, she could breathe.
She looked down at herself—silk blouse, clean lines, heels that never touched anything uneven. This life made sense. Contained. Predictable. Thirty-one and already on her second reinvention. She was going to need boots—if they even still fit.
As she stared at the exit, a memory she’d spent years suppressing flickered to life.
Seventeen.
She remembered the smell of expensive saddle soap and the rhythmic thud-thud of hooves on manicured turf.
It hadn’t been a “farm” life; it had been an elite one.
Shiny wood, spotless tack, and riders in tailored coats that cost more than most people’s rent.
Everything had been as staged as the spaces she ran now.
Controlled. Beautiful. Meant to be seen.
She’d been good, too. Good enough to win. Good enough to stay. And good enough to fall hard for a trainer who had no business looking at her at all.
She’d left that girl behind a long time ago. Or at least, that’s what she told herself every time she slipped into “Isabella.” She’d done the work—therapy, time, distance. She’d scrubbed the grit from under her nails until she was shiny, hard, utterly untouchable.
I don’t do cowboy, she reminded herself, her mouth curving wryly. I don’t do dirt, and I certainly don’t do men who spend their lives with animals.
But a birthday surprise wasn’t a bad excuse for a break. And hiding out on Grant Scott’s land—with all the history and trouble that could mean—sounded a lot like mercy.
* * *
Bridlepath Farm — Sylva, North Carolina
Grant Scott slammed the tailgate shut harder than necessary.
“You volunteered me,” he said, turning toward Burke. “Again.”
Burke leaned against the barn aisle door with a coffee in one hand, looking entirely too relaxed for a man currently irritating the hell out of his younger brother.
“It’s three nights.”
“That’s not the point.”
Burke took another sip, as if this conversation wasn’t happening.
Grant dragged a hand beneath the brim of his hat and looked out toward the lower pasture where two colts were tearing across the fence line like tiny drunken athletes.
“I have a routine,” he muttered. “Horses in training. Clients showing up all week.” He looked back at Burke. “Now suddenly I’ve got some complete stranger from Denver staying at my house because you decided it.”
“She’s Caitlin’s best friend.”
“That doesn’t make her not a stranger.”
Burke’s mouth twitched.
Grant kept going before he could interrupt.
“And before you start, yes, the house is big enough. That’s beside the point.”
“Mm-hm.”
“I don’t need somebody wandering around here getting underfoot while I’m trying to work.”
Burke’s expression had gone suspiciously neutral now, which meant he was enjoying this.
Grant narrowed his eyes.
“And I’m not babysitting some high-maintenance city woman who probably doesn’t know the difference between a cow and a horse.”
Burke laughed outright at that.
“Oh, you’re gonna regret saying that.”
Grant ignored him.
“She’ll hate it here by day two anyway. No valet parking. No yoga brunch places. Dirt. Actual weather.”
Burke shook his head slowly over his coffee.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
Burke’s grin widened. “I’m excited to watch this unfold.”
Grant gave him a long, flat stare. “You know, you think being sheriff gives you carte blanche to decide everybody else’s life for them.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“You volunteered me without even asking.”
“You would’ve said no.”
“Correct.”
Burke smiled smugly. “And yet here we are.”
Grant muttered something under his breath and grabbed a lead rope off the fence.
“She’s pretty,” Burke added casually.
Grant didn’t even slow down. “Couldn’t care less what she looks like.”
“Sure.”
“I mean it.”
Burke looked entirely unconvinced.
Grant pointed at him without turning around. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That thing where you decide you know something I don’t.”
Burke’s grin only widened.
Grant shot him a final look of pure irritation, then turned and disappeared into the barn.
Burke watched him go, still smiling into his coffee.
“Yeah,” he murmured to himself. “This oughta be interesting.”