Forgotten by My Billionaire Rancher Husband

1. Clara

— ? —

Clara

The dust cloud behind us could probably be seen from three counties over, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was the thunder of hooves beneath me, the roar of the crowd in my ears, and the man riding beside me like we’d been born doing this together.

“Left! Go left!” Quin’s voice cut through the chaos, and I was already moving before he finished the word.

That was the thing about us. When everything else in our lives got complicated, this never did.

Riding together, competing together, moving like two halves of the same whole.

My horse, Cinnamon, responded to the shift in my weight and veered around the barrel so close I could feel the wood brush my stirrup.

“That’s my girl,” I breathed, and I wasn’t sure if I meant the horse or myself.

The Fleming Ranch Festival couples’ rodeo wasn’t exactly the Kentucky Derby.

It was a local tradition, something the ranchers and their families looked forward to every year, a chance to show off and eat too much barbecue and pretend we were all just regular folks for a day.

But the competition was real. The bragging rights lasted all year.

And this year, Quin and I were going to win.

“Coming up on your right!” Quin shouted.

I glanced over and saw Jake Mercer pushing his horse way too close to our line. His wife, Darla, was a good rider, but Jake had always been a sore loser, and right now he was trying to cut us off before the final stretch.

Not today, buddy.

I leaned into Cinnamon and asked for more speed. She gave it to me like she’d been waiting for permission. But Jake was already too close, his horse’s flank nearly brushing mine, and for a split second I thought he might actually clip us.

Then Quin was there.

He angled his horse between us like a shield, forcing Jake to either pull back or risk a collision that would disqualify him. Jake’s face went red with fury, but he had no choice. He yanked his reins and fell back, and by the time he recovered, we were three lengths ahead.

“Dirty move, Mercer!” someone yelled from the crowd.

But I was already past it, already focused on the finish line, already feeling Quin’s presence beside me like a warm hand on my back.

We crossed the line at the exact same moment, our horses neck and neck, the crowd erupting into cheers that made my chest feel like it might burst. I pulled Cinnamon to a stop and she pranced beneath me, proud of herself, as she should be.

“Mommy! Daddy!” Katie’s voice cut through everything else.

I turned in my saddle and found her in the stands, standing on the bench seat, waving that little flag she’d made out of paper and crayons and way too much glitter.

Naomi had her hands ready to catch Katie if she toppled over, but my daughter had her father’s stubbornness.

She wasn’t going anywhere except wherever she wanted to go.

“We won!” Katie screamed, even though the official announcement hadn’t come yet.

But she was right. I knew it in my bones before the judges confirmed it. I could feel it in the way the other competitors had already slowed down, conceding without words. In the way the crowd was chanting our name.

Fleming. Fleming. Fleming.

Quin pulled his horse up beside mine and reached over, his hand finding my thigh and squeezing. Heat shot straight up my leg. His palm was big, calloused, familiar, and it stayed there, thumb stroking once along the inner seam of my riding pants like he couldn’t help himself.

“You were incredible out there,” he said, low enough that only I could hear.

I looked at him, and for a moment the past few months of missed dinners and distracted conversations and falling asleep next to a man who felt a million miles away just melted.

This was my Quin. The one who used to race me through these fields when we were teenagers, before he had a billion dollars and a thousand employees and a phone that never stopped ringing.

The one who looked at me like the rest of the world was just background noise he couldn’t be bothered to decode.

“We were incredible,” I corrected him. “Team effort.”

His grin was slow and devastating, the way it always had been. “Team effort,” he agreed. “But you took that left turn so tight I thought you were going to become part of the barrel.”

“Thought about it. Decided I liked having legs.”

He laughed, that deep rumble that I fell in love with when I was seventeen years old, and I felt something loosen in my chest.

The medal ceremony was a blur of handshakes and congratulations and Katie somehow getting glitter all over Quin’s shirt when she launched herself into his arms. Naomi took about a hundred photos and cried at least twice, which she blamed on the dust even though we all knew better.

The Mercers congratulated us through gritted teeth, which was almost as satisfying as winning itself.

But through all of it, I kept catching Quin’s eye.

Kept feeling the heat of his gaze on me like a physical touch.

Kept remembering what it used to be like when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.

When he’d back me into a stall after a ride and kiss me until my knees gave out.

When we’d come home dusty and laughing and fall into bed still wearing half our clothes.

“Mom,” Quin said, passing Katie back to Naomi, “can you watch her for another hour or so? Clara and I need to get cleaned up.”

Naomi’s eyebrows rose about an inch, but she took Katie without comment. “Take your time. We’ll get some cotton candy.”

“Ice cream!” Katie demanded.

“Cotton candy first, then we’ll discuss ice cream.”

I watched them walk away, my daughter’s little hand in her grandmother’s bigger one, and felt a wave of gratitude. This family. Even when things got hard, even when I felt invisible in my own home, there were moments like this that reminded me why I stayed.

“Clara.”

Quin’s voice was rougher now, lower. I turned back to him and felt my stomach drop at the look in his eyes. Focused entirely on me. The kind of look that used to mean I wouldn’t be walking straight afterward.

“Dressing room,” he said.

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

The private dressing room behind the stables was really just an old tack room that had been converted for the festival.

Dusty shelves, a cracked mirror, a vanity table that had seen better decades.

It smelled of leather and hay and the faint sweetness of saddle soap.

But it had a lock on the door, and right now that was all that mattered.

Quin closed the door behind us and turned the lock with a click that echoed in the small space. For a moment we just stood there, looking at each other, the adrenaline from the race still pumping through our veins. My heart was hammering. His chest rose and fell like he’d been running.

“You have dust in your hair,” he said.

“You have glitter on your face.”

“Katie’s doing.”

“Obviously.”

He crossed the distance between us, and then his hands were in my hair and his mouth was on mine and I couldn’t remember why I’d ever felt lonely because this was everything, this was all I needed, this man who kissed me like I was oxygen and he’d been drowning.

His tongue slid against mine, and I made a sound I didn’t recognize as my own. His fingers tightened in my hair, tilting my head so he could take the kiss deeper, and I grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt and pulled him against me until there was no space left.

“God, Clara,” he breathed against my lips. “Watching you out there. The way you ride. The way you move.” His mouth dragged down my jaw, found the spot beneath my ear that always wrecked me. “Do you have any idea what it does to me? Seeing you like that. In control. Untouchable. Mine.”

“Less talking,” I said, pulling at his shirt, my voice already wrecked. “More doing.”

He laughed into my mouth, a dark, pleased sound, and boosted me up onto the vanity table in one smooth motion.

The mirror rattled behind me but neither of us cared.

My thighs spread around his hips like they’d been waiting for the invitation.

He was already hard, thick and insistent against the seam of my riding pants, and I rolled against him without thinking, chasing the friction.

“Fuck,” he hissed, gripping my hips hard enough to bruise. “Do that again.”

I did, slowly. Watching his jaw go tight.

His hands found the zipper at the back of my riding vest and tugged it down while I worked on the buttons of his shirt, our fingers clumsy with urgency.

The vest hit the floor. His shirt followed, and I ran my palms across his chest, down over the ridges of his stomach.

He’d gotten broader over the years, the rangy teenager I’d fallen for filling out into a man who could throw hay bales like they weighed nothing.

Warm skin. A scatter of dark hair. The old scar on his ribs from a fall when we were twenty. I leaned in and put my mouth on it.

He made a low, broken sound and caught my face, kissing me again while his other hand shoved my tank top up. His palm closed over my breast through the thin sports bra, thumb finding my nipple, already tight, and rubbing until I gasped into his mouth.

“We don’t have much time,” I said, even as I arched into his hand.

“Then we’d better not waste it.”

He pulled the tank over my head, then the bra, and for a second he just looked. My bare skin. His hands. The dust still streaked across my collarbone. His expression went almost pained.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, and the rawness in his voice made my throat tight.

“Quin…”

“I mean it.” His thumb traced my cheekbone, then dragged down, over my mouth, my throat, between my breasts. Leaving a trail of heat. “Five years married and I still can’t believe you’re mine.”

I kissed his palm because I didn’t have words for what I was feeling. This impossible mix of love and longing and something that felt dangerously close to grief. For all the dinners he’d missed lately. For all the moments I’d felt alone in a house that should have felt full.