Chapter 8
RACHEL
I woke to his arm draped across my waist and his breath warm against the back of my neck. I’d fallen asleep while he held me last night. I hadn’t expected him to stay, but I’d hoped he would. What did that say about me? About him?
Gray light filtered through the thin cabin curtains. It was still early, and I didn’t dare move. I didn't want to break whatever this was, this pocket of time where nothing had consequences and no one needed answers.
His hand rested flat against my stomach, wide palm and rough fingers, and I could feel the calluses even through the cotton sheet bunched between us.
Those hands had gentled a terrified horse yesterday.
Had pinned my wrists above my head last night.
Had held my face like I was something worth being careful with.
I wasn't the kind of woman who confused sex with feelings. I'd been around long enough to know the difference between a man who wanted me in the dark and a man who'd still be there when the sun came up.
And Roman was still here.
His breathing shifted into a deeper inhale, and the arm around me tightened just barely. His mouth pressed against the curve of my shoulder. Not quite a kiss, but with Roman it seemed like more.
“You're thinking too loud,” he said, his voice sounding like gravel and sleep.
“It’s an occupational hazard.”
He exhaled against my skin and his lips curved. Not quite a smile, but close enough.
I rolled over to face him. His eyes were open, dark in the half-light, watching me with that same unreadable focus he gave everything. The scar pulled when he shifted his jaw. I traced it with my gaze and didn't look away.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“I'll make it.”
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood without a shred of self-consciousness.
Seeing his bare skin in the dim light confirmed what I’d felt with my hands.
He was built like a mountain with a broad back and muscles earned from working the land.
His skin puckered in a few places, the landscape of old damage mapped across his shoulders.
He pulled his jeans on from the floor and walked barefoot to the kitchen.
I stayed in bed another minute and let the sheets hold the heat of him. Let myself feel the ache between my thighs and the tenderness at my hip where his fingers had gripped hard enough to bruise.
This wasn't casual. I knew it. He knew it. Neither of us had said it, and that was fine. Some things didn't need words to be true.
I pulled his shirt on over my shoulders.
It was too big, but the soft flannel smelled like hay and soap, then I padded out to the kitchen.
He stood at the stove cracking eggs into a cast-iron pan he must have found in a cabinet I hadn't opened since arriving.
Coffee already dripped into the pot, filling the small space with a comforting scent.
He glanced over his shoulder. His eyes dropped to his shirt on my body, the hem hitting mid-thigh, and something shifted in his expression. It wasn’t heat, but something more settled than that. Like a quiet claim. Then he turned back to the eggs.
I poured coffee into two mugs. My hip brushed his as I reached past him to set his down on the counter. He didn't move away, and I didn't either.
“Do you cook for all the journalists you sleep with?” I teased.
“Just the ones who don't know where their own pans are.”
I smiled into my mug. That was a fair point, and I was enjoying getting to see his sense of humor.
We ate at the small table with our knees touching underneath it. The eggs were simple but good. He'd toasted some bread in the pan with butter, and I watched him scoop his eggs onto his toast and take one bite at a time.
My notebook still sprawled out on the floor where it had fallen last night, pages open, notes visible. He'd seen them. I'd seen him see them. Neither of us mentioned it.
“About last night… you said the horses came from that supplier.” I wanted to follow the story and needed him to know that as much as I’d enjoyed what happened between us, I wouldn’t let it distract me.
He set his fork down and took a long drink of coffee. “What about them?”
“You said three years. Five events. What I can't figure out is how the paperwork looked clean enough to pass.”
His thumb moved along the edge of his mug. Back and forth. “Because it wasn't wrong enough to raise questions. Health certificates, vet signatures. They existed. They just might not have always belonged to the animals they were attached to.”
“Someone swapped records.”
“Matched close enough. Similar age, similar coloring. Nobody checks teeth at intake if the paper looks right.”
I turned that over. A shell game with documentation, moving clean records from legitimate animals onto others. Simple. Effective. Easy to slip through if no one was looking too closely.
“And you noticed because—”
“Because the horses told me.” He met my eyes. “A horse that's been handled right doesn't flinch when you reach for its face. It doesn't matter what the certificate says.” He paused for a beat to let that sink in. “And that kind of handling doesn't happen overnight.”
“So the clay mare—”
“Doesn't match her paperwork. Not even close.” He stood, took his plate to the sink, and ran water over it with his back to me. “That's all I'm giving you right now.”
I didn't push further. He'd handed me more in two minutes than anyone else in this town had in a week, and the shape of the thing was becoming clearer — not a single bad horse, but something looser and messier. Gaps where things didn't line up the way they should.
He dried his hands on a dish towel and turned, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. “I need to get back and check on that mare before the hands show up.”
“Okay.”
He didn't move.
I stood from the table with my coffee still in hand and crossed to where he stood. His eyes tracked my face, his jaw tight.
His hand came up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers lingered at my jaw. “Rachel.”
“Yeah.”
His mouth opened, closed. He shook his head and kissed my forehead instead, long and firm.
Then he grabbed his t-shirt from the back of the chair, pulled on his boots, and walked to the door.
He paused with his hand on the frame and looked back at me standing in his flannel with coffee cooling in my hands and my notes scattered on the floor.
“Be careful today?”
“I will.”
He nodded, then ducked through the doorway and was gone.
I stood in the quiet he'd left behind and finished my coffee. The cabin felt different without him in it… smaller, warmer, and marked by him in ways I couldn't undo.
He hadn't given me a story. He'd given me something even harder to ignore.
I showered, dressed, and drove to the rodeo grounds with his words turning over in my head like a stone I couldn't stop rubbing smooth. Matched close enough... And the quiet certainty underneath it. He wasn't guessing. He'd been seeing it for a long time.
The morning was already warm when I parked outside the main arena.
Construction crews worked the far fence line, and the smell of fresh-cut lumber and churned dirt hung in the air.
I found Dawson in the livestock office which was really only a converted shipping container with a window unit fighting a losing battle.
He sat behind a folding table covered in manila folders, a laptop open on top, and a pen tucked behind his ear.
He looked up when I knocked on the open door. His blue eyes immediately assessed me. Not unfriendly but not inviting either.
“Rachel Grable. The journalist.”
“That's me. Got a few minutes?”
He leaned back in his chair. “Depends on what for.”
“I'm trying to understand how entries work. How stock gets cleared for the lineup. Background for the piece.”
He studied me for a beat, then nodded toward the folding chair across from him. “Sit.”
I sat.
“Every animal that enters the grounds needs a health certificate issued within thirty days,” he said, pulling a folder from the stack without looking at it.
“A vet signs off on soundness, vaccinations, general temperament. A certificate travels with the animal, and we log it at intake — name, breed, age, markings, cert number.”
“And who does intake?”
“Handlers check the animal against the paperwork and do a visual confirmation. If the cert says bay gelding, fifteen hands, six years old, and a bay gelding that height and age comes off the trailer—” He shrugged. “It's matched.”
“No one checks teeth? Scars? Specific identifying marks?”
His pen tapped the table twice. “It's not a forensic operation, Ms. Grable. We're running a rodeo, not a crime lab. The assumption is the supplier's reputable and the documentation's legitimate.”
“And if it's not?”
He held my gaze. “Then you've got a problem you won't catch until the animal's already in the system.”
I thought about what Roman said. Nobody checks teeth at intake if the papewok looks good. Dawson was confirming the exact vulnerability Roman had pointed out.
“Can I see how the entries are organized?”
He hesitated, then turned the laptop toward me, angling it so I could see the spreadsheet. It was full of rows of animals, columns for breed, color, age, supplier, certificate number, and intake date.
I scanned without rushing, letting my eyes work the way they did on any document… looking for patterns, breaks, things that didn't belong.
There. Three entries from the same supplier. The clay mare, a buckskin gelding, and a sorrel I hadn't heard about yet. All logged within the same forty-eight-hour window. All listed as six-year-olds. All marked as fifteen hands.
Same age. Same height. Three different colors, but everything else lined up like it had been copied from a template.
“These three.” I pointed. “They’re all six. All fifteen hands.”
Dawson's jaw shifted. He looked at the screen, then at me. “That's not unusual for rodeo-grade stock from a single supplier. They source a type.”
“All three from the same outfit?”
“Yeah.”
“Funny thing is,” Dawson said, his eyes still on the screen, “Mustang Mountain’s always had messy horse records. Old brands, changed hands, family lines that don’t match what’s written down. Most of it’s harmless history.”
I looked at the spreadsheet again. “And when it’s not?”
He didn’t answer right away. “Then someone usually had a reason for writing it that way.”
“And the clay mare? Roman pulled her from the lineup.”
Something crossed his face. Not alarm. Recognition. “He recommended she be pulled. Slade made the call.”
The door behind me opened and Jace Walker filled the frame.
“Hey, Dawson. The farrier's here for the ropers. Want him in pen three or four?”
“Four. The footing's better.”
Jace glanced at me. No reaction. Just acknowledgment. Then back to Dawson.
“Also — that buckskin's been head-shy again this morning. Spooked at the lead rope twice.”
Dawson's pen stilled, just for a second.
“Roman knows?”
“He's with it now.”
“Fine. Log it.”
“You got it.” Jace wrote something on his clipboard.
Then looked at me again. He tapped his clipboard against his thigh.
“I’ve heard you’ve been asking around about paperwork.
Whatever's on paper for these animals, that's what we work from.
When the paperwork's good, the system works. When it's not, people get hurt.”
Then he was gone, his boots heavy on the metal steps.
I looked back at the screen. Three horses.
Same supplier. Same age. Same height. One already pulled for behavioral issues, a second head-shy this morning, the third unaccounted for in my notes.
The paperwork said they were sound. Roman said they weren't. And the animals were proving him right, one small reaction at a time.
I thanked Dawson and stood.
“Ms. Grable.” His voice caught me at the door. “Roman doesn't talk much. To anyone.” He paused and slid his pen back behind his ear. “If he's talking to you, there's a reason.”
I walked out into the morning warmth, my head spinning while trying to make sense of everything I’d learned. The sun pressed down hard, and the construction noise filled the distance like static. I sat in my car with the engine off and the windows down.
Roman hadn't given me a story. He'd given me his trust. And that mattered more than anything I'd come here chasing.
I started the car and pulled out of the lot. Three horses. Matched records that didn't quite fit. A system that worked as long as no one looked too closely. Until now, no one had.
The rodeo opened in just over a week. I'd need every hour of it. I wasn't going to rush this. Not this time. But I wasn't walking away from it either.