Healing With The Cowboy (Wild Vista Ranch #7)

Chapter 1

Chapter one

Sloane

Ican't remember the last time I cried. I'm close now, sitting in the back of a rideshare, watching Texas dirt kick up behind the tires.

My windpipe is doing that thing where it narrows and burns, and I have to breathe through my nose to keep from breaking.

Ridiculous. I'm thirty-eight years old. Vice president of operations. I don't cry in strangers’ cars.

The driver takes a turn too fast, and my stomach lurches.

I grip the door handle and count my breaths.

Four in. Hold. Four out. It doesn't help.

Nothing helps except work. They took that away from me, swapping it for two weeks at some ranch in the middle of nowhere because I made the mistake of collapsing in front of witnesses.

If I'd just made it to the bathroom, if I'd just held on ten more minutes, I'd be in Seattle right now closing the Harmon deal instead of staring at mesquite trees and trying not to scream.

The car slows. A wooden sign appears through the dust: Wild Vista Ranch. Hand-carved letters, faded paint. My chest goes tight.

"This the place?" The driver's first words in forty minutes.

"Yes." My voice is steady. Professional. The same voice I used when I told the paramedics I was fine, when I assured my CEO I just needed water, when I lied to everyone including myself about the fact that my body had finally given up on me.

He parks near the main lodge. I settle up through the app and climb out. The heat hits me first, dry and absolute, the kind of heat that doesn't apologize. Then the smell: dust and sage and something else, something I don't have a name for but recognize in my bones.

I've been here before.

The thought arrives with the force of a core memory.

Spring break seventeen years ago, three days that I've spent nearly two decades trying not to think about.

I press my hand to my chest and force myself to breathe.

It's just a ranch. Just a place whose name I didn’t recognize.

Coincidence that they sent me here. Nothing more.

The gravel bites at my suitcase, resisting until I give it a frustrated tug as the rideshare pulls away. I stand there alone as the engine noise dies out, a grit in the air and a cold, sinking feeling in my gut that this trip is going to cost me more than I’m ready to pay.

The lodge sits fifty yards ahead. It’s stone and timber, wide porch, exactly like I remember except for solar panels on the roof now.

I start walking. My flats sink into the gravel with every step, and I'm hyper-aware of how wrong I look here. My jeans are new, and I’m wearing a cardigan.

I look like I'm headed to brunch, not a ranch.

Movement catches my eye. To my left, there's a round pen. A horse is inside, anxious and untamed by the looks of it, dancing sideways with its ears pinned. And a man.

I stop walking.

He works the horse with a lead rope, waiting for it to settle.

He’s tall and broad-shouldered. Sun-weathered by years, not vacations.

He's wearing a faded gray T-shirt and jeans that have seen actual work, boots dusty and broken in. His touch is light and patient as he leans in like he’s whispering to the horse.

He isn't fighting for control; he's just present, radiating the kind of stillness that says he’s exactly where he wants to be.

The horse drops its head, completely surrendered to him, and I realize I’m holding my breath.

It’s been a lifetime since I felt this kind of pull, this magnetic, terrifying draw.

He stops his whispering, his hand lingering one last time on the horse's coat, and then his gaze finds me. The world shrinks until it’s just the two of us and the heavy, electric silence of the ranch.

The world stops.

Not actually. I know that. But my heart doesn’t. My breath doesn’t. Everything in me goes still and silent and screaming all at once because it's him.

He’s older with lines around his eyes that weren't there before. Silver threads through his hair at the temples. But it’s unmistakably, impossibly him.

He goes still, too. The lead rope goes slack in his hand. He's staring at me across forty feet of ranch yard and seventeen years of silence, and I watch recognition hit him the same way it just hit me, like a freight train with no brakes.

Then he calls out my name.

"Sloane."

Not a question but a statement. Like he's been holding it in his mouth for nearly two decades, waiting for permission to say it out loud.

I can't breathe. Can't think. Can't do anything except stand there with my ridiculous flats and my heart trying to break through my ribs.

"Cash?" It comes out broken. Barely a whisper.

He ties the horse to a post and comes toward me, leaving the pen. The horse is forgotten, his eyes never leaving mine, and there's something in his gaze that's both familiar and devastating. Recognition. Heat. And underneath it all, something that looks dangerously like relief.

"You came back." His voice is lower than I remember. Rougher. Like he's spent seventeen years not saying the things he wanted to say and now doesn't know where to start.

I shake my head. Words stick in my throat. "I didn't know. When they sent me here, I didn't—" I can't finish. Can't explain that I've spent years not thinking about him, which is just another way of saying I've thought about nothing else.

He's closer now. Ten feet. Then five. Then near enough that I see the way his T-shirt pulls across his shoulders, the calluses on his hands, the pulse beating at the base of his throat. Close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his gaze.

He's taller than I remember. Or maybe I've just gotten smaller in my head, compressed under the weight of being someone I'm not.

"I know." He stops just out of reach, and I can feel the heat coming off him, smell the sweat and dust and something underneath that's just him. "Your name came through on the guest list three days ago. Corporate wellness program. I've been waiting to see if you'd actually show up."

"Waiting?" The word barely makes it out.

His mouth curves. Not quite a smile. "I thought I'd moved on. Then I saw your name and realized I'd been lying to myself the whole time."

My hands shake. I press them against my thighs, but he sees. His eyes track the movement, and something in his expression softens.

"You still work here?" I manage.

"Worked my way up to the wellness director. I run the corporate program." He pauses. "Which means for your stay, I'm your guide."

Oh God. The whole time. With him. In this place where I fell apart the first time and apparently came back to finish the job.

"Cash, I can't—" I start backing up. My flat sinks into a divot in the gravel, and I stumble.

He moves fast, hand shooting out to steady my elbow.

The contact is electric. His palm is warm, and my body remembers this.

Remembers him. Every nerve ending lights up like it's been waiting for this exact touch.

I pull away. He lets me go, hands dropping to his sides.

"This is a bad idea," I say. My voice is shaking now. "I should request someone else. I should—"

"Don’t." The command is a soft, unwavering weight in the air. He makes no move to block my path, keeping his posture open and his gaze locked on mine. "Please," he adds, the vulnerability cutting deeper than any demand. "Just stay."

I stop. Not because he asked. Because my body won't let me leave. Because years of running just hit a wall, and the wall is him.

"I don't know what you want from me," I whisper.

He's quiet. The sun beats down. A crow calls from somewhere in the distance. The horse in the pen snorts and paws the ground.

Then he says, "Six a.m. tomorrow. I'll bring coffee." His eyes hold mine. "Black, splash of milk. Same as before."

My throat closes. "That's not fair."

"No," he agrees. "It's not. But it's true." He takes one step back, giving me space I don't want and desperately need all at once. "I remember everything, Sloane. Every conversation. Every sunrise. Every promise you made that you didn't keep."

The words sit heavily in my stomach. I want to argue.

Want to tell him he's insane, that memories lie and people change and whatever we had is gone.

But I can't. Because I remember too. The way he laughed.

The way his hands felt in my hair. The way he looked at me like I was the answer to a question he'd been asking his whole life.

"Where do I go?" The question comes out small.

He gestures toward a path that winds past the barn. "Lodge is that way. Lucinda will get you checked in, show you to your cabin." He pauses. "Cabin 5. Best sunrise view on the property."

Cabin 5. The same cabin. Of course it is.

"Six a.m.," he says again. "Don't be late."

I nod. I can't speak. Can't do anything except turn and walk toward the lodge on shaking legs, my suitcase wheels catching on every rock and rut. I don't look back. If I look back, I'll break.

The lodge door opens before I reach it. A woman steps out, sixty-something, long black hair streaked with silver, wearing turquoise jewelry that catches the light.

"You must be Sloane." She walks down the steps to meet me, and her smile is warm but assessing. "I'm Lucinda. Welcome to Wild Vista Ranch." She takes my suitcase before I can protest. "Come on. Let's get you settled."

I follow her inside. The lodge is cool and dim after the brightness outside, all exposed beams and leather furniture and windows that frame the hills like paintings. She leads me to the front desk and pulls out a folder.

"You're in Cabin 5. Private, quiet, about two hundred yards past the barn." She slides a key across the desk. "Daily activities start at six a.m. Cash will be your guide. Breakfast is in here at seven-thirty, dinner at six. Wellness activities throughout the day. Everything's mandatory."

Cabin 5. The number sits heavily in my memory, and I have to press my palm to the desk to keep standing.

They gave me the same cabin. The universe has a sick sense of humor, or maybe Lucinda knows more than she's letting on.

Either way, I'm not asking. Can't ask without admitting I remember, and I'm not ready to hand over that vulnerability.

I take the key. The brass is warm from her palm, worn smooth by seventeen years of guests who came and left and forgot this place existed.

I didn't forget. Couldn't, even if I tried.

"I met him." The words come out before I can stop them. "Cash. Outside."

Lucinda's expression doesn't change, but something flickers in her eyes. "Did you now?"

"We've met before. A long time ago."

"I figured." She hands me a hand-drawn, laminated map. "He's been different the last three days since your name came through." She pauses. "Whatever you're running from? It's faster than you are. Might as well stop here and face it."

I take the map. My hands are still shaking. "Thank you."

"Be kind to him," she says quietly. "And to yourself. You both deserve that much."

I nod and turn toward the door, pulling my suitcase behind me. Outside, the sun is lower now, turning the hills gold. I follow the path past the barn. The round pen is empty. Cash is gone.

Cabin 5 sits at the end of the path, exactly where the map says it is. It’s small, the wood siding weathered silver-gray. A rocking chair sits on the porch, and the windows face east toward the hills.

I know this cabin. This porch. This screen door.

This view from that rocking chair. I unlock the door and step inside.

It's been updated with a new mattress, new linens, and a small table with two chairs, but the layout is the same.

Bed against the far wall. Small kitchenette. Bathroom door to the left.

Out the window, the hills roll into the distance, mesquite and live oak and limestone outcroppings catching the late sun. There's the ridge where we watched the sunrise that last morning. Where he told me I could stay. Where I said I had to go back to real life.

My phone buzzes. One bar of service, barely functional, flickering like it can't decide whether to connect. One last email from Diane loads in fragments: Remember: the goal isn't to fix you. It's to remind you who you were before you forgot.

I stare at the words until they blur. The signal drops completely. No bars. No connection. Just silence pressing in from all sides.

I don't tap the Wi-Fi icon to reconnect.

The silence is immediate and enormous. No notifications. No emails. Just silence. And in that silence, the truth catches up.

I came here once before. Met someone. Felt something I've never felt since. Left anyway because I thought I had to choose between joy and achievement. I chose achievement. Built a career. Climbed the ladder. Collapsed on a conference room floor because my body finally called me on the lie.

And now I'm back.

I set my phone on the table and walk to the bathroom, stripping off my cardigan and flats. The tile is cool under my bare feet, and I run cold water, splashing my face. The woman in the mirror looks exhausted. Hollowed out. I don't recognize her.

Outside, the light is going golden-pink. I leave my feet bare and walk back to the window to press my forehead against the glass. It's still warm from the sun.

In the distance, I can see lights from the barn. Someone's still working. Probably him.

Six a.m. tomorrow. He'll knock on this door. He'll hand me coffee the way I like it. And then we'll see if it's too late to remember the me I was before I forgot.

I pull away from the window and walk to the porch.

The air has cooled, and somewhere a coyote calls.

I sit in the rocking chair and let it creak under my weight.

The sound is familiar. The same sound from that last morning when I sat here with my bags packed and my heart breaking, waiting for the ride that would take me away from him.

I close my eyes, breathing in sage and dust and the smell of a Texas night.

Tomorrow at six a.m., everything changes.

Or maybe it already has.