Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
IF YOU TRY TO PROTECT HER BY SENDING HER AWAY, YOU'LL LOSE HER SURE AS SUNRISE.
WYATT
The stock trailer's gate drops with a metallic clang that echoes across the auction yard, and I'm moving to guide our cattle down the ramp. Grandpa works his truck while Billy helps him with the sorting, all of us working around each other because we know our jobs and when to stay out of someone else’s way.
The Brush Livestock Auction spreads out in front of us—steel pens packed with cattle, ranchers in beat-up Wranglers checking on their stock, auctioneers testing mics that squeal loud enough to wake the dead.
Buyers with clipboards move between the pens, sizing up the animals.
The whole place smells like hay, manure, and diesel—exactly like it should.
The two days since we returned from Oregon have been a whirlwind of activity that's turned our quiet ranch into something resembling a campaign headquarters.
Kinsley's been working nonstop on this thing. She's all over the place—checking on the electricians at the venue, holed up at the cottage on her laptop talking to politicians and celebrities, then running up to the main house for meetings with Mom that go past midnight.
Watching her handle all this—the media calls, the catering mess, half the politicians in Colorado—is something else. Never seen anything sexier in my life.
Grandpa, however, is about ready to lose his mind with all the commotion happening on his normally quiet-ish ranch. When I offered to haul cattle to auction with him this morning, the relief in his weathered face was worth the early wake-up call.
Not to mention, Kinsley and Mom were grateful to get him out of their way. He somehow manages to be right in the middle of the kitchen when they’re trying to work.
Billy climbed into Grandpa's truck without being asked, understanding that sometimes a man needs the quiet company of someone who knows when to talk and when to just let the road noise fill the silence.
Our cattle flow down the ramps with minimal fuss—one-hundred-and-twenty head of yearling steers that should bring decent money. They're quality stock, well-muscled and healthy.
"Easy there, boys," I murmur to a particularly jumpy steer, guiding him toward the assigned pen with steady pressure from my position. The animal settles once he's with the group, finding comfort in the herd.
A rumble catches my attention at the entrance, where a stock trailer that's way too clean pulls in between the beat-up ranch trucks. Gritstone Ranch gleams in gold letters against forest green—not a speck of honest dirt on it.
Ford climbs out of the cab like he owns the place, when we all know the Whitmore’s own him. Creased jeans, spotless hat, everything about him screaming money while the rest of us look like we actually work for a living.
My hands curl into fists. Between Brittney’s texts to Kinsley and this sorry excuse for a man sending his own daughter anonymous threats, I’ve had enough. I’m putting an end to it, right here, right now.
"Dang it," Grandpa mutters under his breath, following my gaze. "Thought we might have a peaceful morning."
Ford's cattle move down his ramp—quality stock, though I hate to admit it. They flow with the kind of ease that speaks of good handling and careful breeding, each one representing the Whitmore's deep pockets and selective breeding program.
Billy appears at my elbow, quiet as always but alert to the tension that's suddenly charged the air around us. "Want me to finish up here?" he asks, nodding toward our own cattle.
"Yeah, thanks." I start across the yard, my boots crunching on gravel mixed with dried mud and straw.
Ford's organizing his paperwork with an auction official when I approach. He glances up as I stop beside his trailer, and something flickers across his expression—not surprise, exactly, but the kind of careful neutrality that comes from expecting trouble.
"Halloway." He nods once, then turns back to his clipboard. "Surprised to see you here."
"Hard to stay away from good cattle and better company," I say, letting my gaze travel over the Gritstone Ranch stock.
Ford signs with jagged strokes, then looks up at me with those cold green eyes. “Something you need, or you just here to make small talk?"
"Someone's been sending threatening texts to Kinsley." I keep my voice level, conversational, like we're discussing the weather instead of his daughter's safety. "Anonymous messages telling her she doesn't belong, warning her away from my family. Threatening her."
Ford's pen stops moving across the paper, but he doesn't look up. For a long moment, the only sounds are cattle lowing in the distance and the auctioneer's voice testing his microphone with rapid-fire nonsense syllables.
"That so?" he says finally, his tone carefully neutral.
"You know anything about that?"
He looks up. "Why would I?"
"Not many people around town that I know who would do something like that. I figured you know a lot more who would."
Ford sets down his clipboard and turns to face me fully. "Whoever's sending those messages, it's not me." He stops himself, jaw working like he's chewing on words too bitter to swallow.
"What do you know about it?"
"Nothin'," he spits the word.
Something cold settles in my stomach. "Anything else you want to say?"
"You better keep her safe." The words come out controlled—carrying the weight of a man who doesn't make idle threats and expects immediate compliance.
My chin juts back as I look him in the eyes. I don’t know what to make of his warning. It’s an odd thing to say for a man who doesn’t have anything to do with his daughter.
When I walk back to our cattle, Billy and Grandpa are waiting by the pen. Both of them got their eyes fixed on me with that look that says they saw enough of whatever just happened to know it mattered. Perfect.
"Well?" Grandpa asks, his weathered hands wrapped around the top rail of the pen.
"He says he's not sending the texts to Kinsley.
" I don't have to explain what texts I'm talking about.
We're all aware. I lean against the fence beside him, watching our cattle mill around their temporary home.
"And I believe him." I shudder because those are words, I never thought I'd say about Ford.
"Hmm." Grandpa's grunt carries years of experience reading men and their motivations.
I turn to face him, needing a second opinion on something. "What if we're putting her in danger by letting her stay and fight?"
Grandpa's quiet for a long moment, studying the cattle.
"Son," he says finally, "that girl of yours didn't come to Colorado to hide in the shadows. She came to fight. You try to protect her by sending her away, you'll lose her sure as sunrise."
"But if something happens to her—"
"World's a dangerous place for people who stand up for themselves and others. Always has been. Question is, do you trust her to know her own mind?" Grandpa challenges me.
The answer comes without hesitation. "Yes."
"Then trust her to know her own fight, too."
Billy shifts uncomfortably beside us. "She terrifies me," he admits quietly.
Grandpa and I both turn to stare at him, then burst out laughing despite the tension of the morning. The kid's face turns red as his shirt.
"Not like that," Billy protests. "I mean, she makes me feel like I should be doing more, being more. Scary kind of woman."
"The best kind," Grandpa says with satisfaction.
Looking at Billy—kid's barely nineteen and still wet behind the ears—I can see he's being straight with me. That's what Kinsley does to folks. Makes you want to be better than you are.
Maybe the real question isn't whether she can handle the danger. Maybe it's whether I can handle watching her face it.
We turn our attention back to the cattle as the auction begins in earnest, the auctioneer's voice rising and falling in the hypnotic cadence that turns livestock into dollars.
Standing there, with the sights, the sounds, and the smells of my childhood, my mind drifts back to my life growing up on the ranch, then to the last several years on the rodeo circuit.
The people I’ve met. The connections I’ve made.
All those cowboys who will show up to Kinsley’s event because they trust me—because I’ve proved myself in their world.
Not my father’s world. Mine. I watch a buyer run his hand down the flank of one of our steers, nodding like he knows the story behind the brand.
Maybe rodeo wasn’t me running away after all.
Maybe it was just preparing me for this.
"You're thinking so loud it's drowning out the auction," Grandpa observes.
"True," I admit.
"About?"
I watch another of our steers sell, calculating prices and profits automatically while my mind works through thoughts I've never put into words before.
"Such as?"
I shrug, eyes still on the ring. “Just figuring maybe all that time on the road wasn’t wasted. Sure, seemed to help Kinsley and Mom with the guest list."
Grandpa nods slowly, and there's something in his expression I haven't seen before—not approval, exactly, but understanding.
"Could be you're right," he says. "Takes a man time to figure out what he's made of before he knows what he wants to build."
“Life’s busier now, splitting time between rodeo and the ranch,” I say, surprised at how true it feels. "It's better."
"Busy's good for a man," Grandpa says with something that might be pride. "Keeps him honest."
Billy’s been quiet, soaking it all in the way he does, and then he speaks, voice low. “World don’t hand you much.”
"No, it doesn't," I agree until Kinlsey’s face appears in my mind. “But somehow, I’ve got more than I deserve.”