Chapter 5
ROMAN
The list was short. I needed coffee, batteries, a roll of duct tape, and the new pair of work gloves Ruby ordered for me because the pair in my truck had finally split across the palm. I could be in and out in three minutes if I kept my head down and didn’t get pulled into a conversation.
But I should've known better than to walk into Nelson's Mercantile expecting anything to be simple. When had anything in this damn town been easy?
The bell over the door announced me. Ruby glanced up from behind the register with the smile she reserved for people she considered projects.
I gave her a nod, grabbed a basket I didn't need, and headed for the back aisle where she kept the cans of plain ground coffee mixed in between all those fancy flavored versions and the seasonal candles that smelled like someone had set fire to a pie.
I heard Rachel's voice before I saw her.
She was at the far end of the counter, leaning against it with her weight on one elbow, casual enough to look like she belonged there, focused enough that someone could see the gears turning if they knew what to look for.
Her hair was down today, floating loosely around her shoulders and making me wonder how it might feel twisted around my hands.
She'd traded the jacket from the other night for a flannel shirt she’d rolled up at the cuffs.
She looked like she'd been in town a month instead of a few days. Hell, she looked like she fit in better than I did, and I’d lived in Mustang Mountain my whole damn life.
Ruby was wiping the counter in slow arcs. That meant she was listening carefully while pretending not to.
“It just seemed unusual that the supplier wouldn't send paperwork with the animal.” Rachel's tone was intentionally conversational. Like she was digging and didn’t want anyone to know it.
“Slade mentioned recertification, but when I checked the stock registry for the event, there's no vet sign-off listed for three of the horses that came in with that last shipment.”
My hand stopped in mid-air as I reached for a can of coffee.
“Well, honey, I wouldn't know the first thing about rodeo stock paperwork.” Ruby's voice was warm and dismissive, a tone that usually worked on people who didn't know her. “You'd have to ask Dawson. He handles the logistics.”
“I did ask Dawson.” Rachel straightened. “He said Roman would know more about the condition the horses arrived in.”
Fuck him. Dawson was good at his job right up until a question made him uncomfortable, and then he deflected like a man born to it.
I set the basket on the shelf and walked toward the counter.
Rachel saw me coming when I was about ten feet out. Her eyes tracked to me the way they had that first night on the road. She didn’t flinch at the sight of my scar. Just stood there, like she was prepared to wait me out.
“Roman.” She said my name like she'd been expecting me.
“Rachel.”
I stopped at the counter, close enough that Ruby's brows arched. That meant I had about thirty seconds before she kicked into matchmaker mode like I’d seen her with a bunch of the guys around here. I turned toward her instead of Rachel. “Do you have those work gloves I asked you to order?”
“They’re in the back, sweetheart. Let me grab them.”
“I'll get them.” I leaned over and whispered to Rachel, “Come with me.”
It wasn't a request, and I didn't frame it like one. Rachel's chin lifted like she was going to argue, but something in my expression must have landed, because she picked up her coffee cup and followed me.
The back hallway was narrow, lined with shelving units and boxes Ruby hadn't gotten to yet. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, but I barely heard it. I walked far enough that we were past the doorway, past where sound carried easily to the main floor, and stopped.
Rachel stopped three feet behind me, holding her coffee in one hand. The other was tucked into her front pocket. She didn't look nervous. She looked like she'd been waiting for this.
“What are you doing?” I kept my voice low.
“Having coffee. Asking questions.” One shoulder lifted. “It's what I do.”
I took a step her direction. “You're asking Ruby about stock certification paperwork for rodeo horses.”
“I'm asking anyone who will talk to me since you won’t. Ruby just happened to be standing there.”
“Ruby happens to be standing everywhere in this town. That's by design.” I crossed my arms and crowded closer. “What are you actually after?”
Rachel took a sip of her coffee and watched me over the rim like I'd just confirmed something she'd already suspected. “I'm writing about the rodeo. Slade knows that. Dawson knows that. The stock angle is part of the story.”
“The stock angle.”
“Three horses arrived without vet clearance documentation. One of them got pulled from the lineup. That's not nothing.”
She was right. It wasn't nothing. And the fact that she'd gone from watching me work the mare yesterday to pulling registry records today told me she could move faster than I'd given her credit for.
“It's also not a story,” I said. “It's a logistics gap. Paperwork gets delayed. Suppliers run behind.”
“You really think that’s all there is to this?” She tossed the question out between us, and it hung there, suspended in space, waiting for me to answer.
“If you keep pulling on this thread in public, in Ruby's store, where every word gets recycled through this town inside an hour…” I dropped my arms. “You'll make problems for people who don't deserve them.”
Rachel’s eyes narrowed. “Which people?”
“The ones trying to build something here.” I held her gaze. “Slade. Dawson. The guys who've put hundreds of hours into making this work.”
She tilted her head. “Are you one of the people trying to build something?”
The question caught me off guard. I'd walked back here to shut this down. Not for her to read me like a fucking book. But she was doing it anyway. Standing in a buzzing hallway with cooling coffee in her hand, she stared at me like the answer she wanted wouldn’t be found in the registry forms or in Dawson's careful evasions or in anything that could be filed and double-checked. It was on me.
And the worst part — the part that made my hand flex once at my side — was that part of me wanted to give it to her.
“You’d better get back out there before Ruby starts getting ideas.” I walked past her toward the storage shelf, close enough that I could feel the heat drifting off her without making contact.
Behind me, she didn't move.
I pulled the gloves off the third shelf and made myself focus on the label until my breathing settled.
Rachel was still standing in the hallway when I turned back. Just holding her ground in the buzzing quiet with her coffee in her hand and an expression that said she'd noted every second of my hesitation.
She'd asked the question for a reason. And I hadn't answered it for a reason. We both knew that. The honest answer was complicated, and the dishonest one would've been transparent to a woman like her.
So I took a step forward instead. “You need to stop.”
She didn't move. Her spine stayed against the shelving unit behind her, the coffee cup loose in her hand, and she watched me close the distance without giving any ground.
“Stop what, specifically?” Her voice stayed even. “Asking questions? Doing my job? Making you uncomfortable?”
“All three.”
“You haven't been honest with me since I met you. You worked with that mare like she mattered more than anything else, then told Slade to pull her, knowing he wouldn't, and walked away. Now you're standing in a back hallway telling me to back off a story you won't explain.”
My jaw tightened, tugging at my scar the way it always did when my control started to slip. Most people had to look away when that happened. But not Rachel.
Her gaze stayed glued on mine like my scar wasn’t a distraction. That threw me worse than her pity would have.
“I'm not the story,” I said.
“Then why do you keep showing up in it?”
“Because you keep pointing your questions in my direction. And I'm telling you, clearly, that what you think you're finding isn't what you think it is.”
I took another step toward her. My body moved on its own and closed the gap until the scent of her coffee filled my nose. Underneath it, I could just make out something fresh and light and citrusy. Maybe her soap. Whatever the fuck it was, I liked it too damn much for my own good.
“Then tell me what it is.”
“No.”
Her chin lifted. Just that fraction of an inch that turned her face toward mine instead of away from it. We were close enough now that I could see the flecks in her brown eyes and pick up on the slight catch in her breath.
“You know what I see when someone tells me to stop looking?” she asked. “I see something worth finding.”
“What you'll find is a mess. Not a conspiracy. Not an exposé about corrupt rodeo officials.” I planted my hand on the shelf next to her head. I hadn’t planned to crowd her, but I needed something solid to hold because the rest of me was getting sucked in by her presence, and I hadn't figured out how to make it stop.
“You’ll find people stretched too thin, making calls they shouldn't have to make, because the money ran out months before the deadline did.”
Her breath had gone shallow. I could see it in the slight rise of her chest, and the pulse at the side of her throat. But her eyes never left mine.
“So there is something wrong,” she said.
“I didn't say that.”
“You just described it in detail.”
My fingers tightened on the shelf. The wood creaked under them.
The air between us had gone still in a way I hadn't given it permission to.
I was aware of every inch of the space — the buzzing light, the dust on the boxes behind her, her mouth half a foot from mine, and her body hadn't retreated a single inch.
She wasn't afraid of me.
That was the problem. That had been the problem since the night we met. Since she'd stood in the dark with a dead battery and looked at my face like it was just a face, like I was a man she planned to understand whether I cooperated or not.
My gaze dropped to her mouth. I let it linger for half a second, maybe even less before I stepped back.
The distance opened between us, and I pulled my hand off the shelf and flexed my fingers at my side. I forced my breath to settle, then forced the rest of it back down into the place where I kept things I didn't want to deal with. The last thing I needed was Rachel Grable. The actual last thing.
“If you keep digging in public,” I said, my voice rougher than intended. “The people who get hurt won't be the ones who made the bad calls. It'll be the ones standing too close when it comes apart.”
Something flickered in her eyes. Not retreat. Recognition. She'd heard what I hadn't said. “Is that a threat?”
“It's a fact.” I took another step back. Reset my shoulders. “The rodeo story is the story. Write that. The town needs the coverage, the event needs the attention, Slade and Dawson deserve the spotlight for what they’ve built. Leave the paperwork alone.”
She didn't say yes, but she also didn't say no. Just studied me with that same focus, her mind turning something over behind those beautiful brown eyes. Then she walked past me, close enough that her shoulder brushed my arm, and disappeared through the doorway back into the store.
I stood in the hallway for a long time. Longer than I should have. Long enough for the fluorescent buzz to fill the silence she'd left and settle into something that felt like a verdict.
Through the gap in the doorway I watched her set her coffee cup on Ruby's counter. Watched her smile at something Ruby said. Watched her tuck her hair behind one ear and pull the leather journal from her bag, flipping to a page already covered in handwriting.
She wasn't going to stop.
I'd known that before I followed her back here.
Known it on the roadside the other night when she'd asked my name and filed it away like a starting point rather than a detail.
Known it this morning when Dawson sent her in my direction.
He was too careful to answer her himself and too smart not to notice her questions were landing close to something real.
And now I'd stood too close, said too much, and given her exactly what she'd come for. Confirmation that the gap between what the rodeo showed and what was happening behind it was worth her time.
I was already in this. Had been since I fixed her battery and let her see my face without looking away. The question wasn't whether Rachel Grable would find what she was looking for.
It was what I'd do when she did.