Chapter Fifteen
The first time Beckett came to Harlow Creek without asking to see me, I watched him from the loft window for twenty-three minutes. Not because I was spying. Because Tessa had said, “Either stop staring or go down there,” and I had decided spitefully that staring was free.
He parked his truck beside the gravel drive instead of pulling all the way to the barn.
It was a small thing. At Halvorsen Ranch, Beckett had never walked anywhere he could drive.
Time was money, distance was inefficiency, and mud was something the staff handled.
At Harlow Creek, he got out in boots already dirty at the toes.
No suit jacket. No phone in his hand. He carried two rolls of woven wire over one shoulder. Tessa looked up from the stall door she was rehanging.
“That your husband?”
“Technically.”
“He looks useful.”
“Don’t encourage him.”
“I encourage all free labor. It’s one of my core values.”
Below us, Luis walked out to meet him. They talked for less than a minute. Then Luis pointed toward the east paddock. Beckett nodded. No glance at the house.
No glance at the office. No performative search for me. He just followed Luis toward the section of fence we’d been trying to finish before the ground froze. I hated how much that interested me. For the last month, Beckett had been learning the shape of an apology that did not require an audience.
He had signed the permanent water easement.
He had revised the postnuptial agreement with all three of my changes without negotiation.
He had stopped calling unless the reason concerned the breeding records I was consulting on.
He had begun sending those requests through email, with an actual scope and deadline, as if I were a professional whose time had boundaries.
And now he was fixing fence.
“You know what would be easier?” Tessa asked.
I kept watching him stretch wire between posts.
“What?”
“If he were secretly terrible.”
“He was publicly terrible.”
“Different thing.”
I looked at her. She set down the screwdriver.
“If he was sleeping with somebody, stealing from you, hitting you, gambling the ranch away, you’d have a clean answer.”
“He didn’t have to do any of those things to make me lonely.”
“I do.”
The softness in her voice irritated me more than an argument would have. I looked back outside. Beckett was holding a post steady while Luis tamped earth around it.
“Loneliness counts,” Tessa said.
I nodded.
“But effort counts too.”
I swallowed.
“I know.”
That was becoming the most exhausting sentence in my vocabulary.
At noon I went down because I had a delivery to sign for and because I could not reasonably remain in the loft forever without becoming a Victorian ghost. Beckett was near the gate, pulling his gloves off with his teeth.
He saw me. For half a second, something familiar crossed his face.
Relief. Want. The reflex to come toward me. Then he stopped himself.
“Morning,” he said.
“It’s noon.”
“Then I have failed at both ranching and time.”
I almost smiled. That made me angry.
“Why are you here?”
“Luis needed help with the east fence.”
“Luis did not call you.”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
He glanced toward the field.
“I asked him last week if there was work you needed done that wasn’t something I could use as an excuse to be around you.”
I stared at him.
“That’s a very specific category.”
“I’ve had to become specific lately.”
“And he gave you fencing.”
“He gave me a list.”
Of course he had. I would murder Luis later.
“You don’t have to do that.”
He accepted that.
“You’re paying me for consulting work. You signed the easement. You changed the legal agreement. You don’t owe me manual labor too.”
Beckett’s expression shifted. Not wounded. Careful.
“I’m not working off a debt.”
“Then what are you doing?”
He looked toward the barn before answering.
“Learning what your life looks like when it isn’t organized around mine.”
That landed too close to bone.
“You can learn that from a distance.”
“Then tell me to go.”
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. Beckett waited. That was new too.
He had always been good at silence when silence served his purpose. In negotiations. Auctions. Boardrooms. He could let another man talk himself into giving away ten percent.
But marital silence had been different. It had been absence disguised as peace. Now he stood in front of me and waited for an answer he might not like.
“Finish the fence,” I said.
His eyes warmed.
“Okay.”
“That isn’t an invitation to dinner.”
He gave a small nod.
“Or to come inside.”
His mouth twitched.
“And don’t let Luis put you on the tractor.”
“Why?”
“Because you drive it like you’re trying to negotiate with it.”
His mouth twitched.
“That’s fair.”
I signed for the feed delivery and went back to work.
For the next three hours, he did not come looking for me.
At four twenty, the temperature dropped hard enough that the water trough nearest the north paddock began crusting over at the edges.
I was carrying a bucket of beet pulp when I heard shouting. Not panic.
Horse panic. There was a difference, and I knew it before my brain translated the words.
“Gate! Gate!”
I dropped the bucket. Poppy came through the open service gate at a dead run. She had spent the last two weeks learning that humans did not always mean pressure, pain, or confinement. Now something had spooked her near the equipment shed, and forty acres of open ranch lay beyond the drive.
“Don’t chase her!” I shouted.
Luis froze mid-stride. Tessa stopped near the barn. Poppy skidded on gravel, eyes white, nostrils wide. She had three directions. Two led to fencing.
One led to County Road 11. A pickup came around the bend in the distance. My heart stopped. I moved slowly into the drive.
“Easy, girl.”
Poppy jerked her head. The pickup kept coming. Too fast. I raised both arms.
“Stop!”
The driver either didn’t see me or didn’t understand. Poppy wheeled toward the road. And Beckett moved. Not at her. Across her.
He ran to his truck, yanked open the driver’s door, and backed it sideways across the driveway entrance. The pickup driver finally braked, horn blaring. Poppy reared.
“Everybody still!” I shouted.
The world narrowed. Horse. Distance. Breath. Pressure.
Release. I turned my body slightly away from Poppy and lowered my eyes.
“Easy.”
She blew hard. Behind her, nobody moved. Even the pickup driver had stopped leaning on the horn. I took one step backward toward the paddock. Poppy’s ears flicked.
Another step. She followed. Not because she trusted me completely. Because in that moment, I was the least frightening option. Sometimes that was enough.
Ten minutes later, the gate latched behind her. I leaned against the post, shaking. Luis exhaled a string of Spanish under his breath. Tessa sat directly on the frozen ground. Beckett was still by his truck.
He had gone pale. I walked toward him.
“You blocked the road.”
“Seemed useful.”
“You could’ve gotten hit.”
“So could she.”
“You don’t even like Poppy.”
“Poppy doesn’t like me. That’s different.”
I laughed. One broken sound. His eyes closed for a second. When they opened, he looked wrecked. Not because of the mare.
Because I had laughed with him. That frightened me more than Poppy getting loose.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome.”
He looked down at his gloves.
“I’ll go.”
“Beckett.”
He stopped. I hated what I was about to do.
“There’s stew in the office kitchenette.”
He did not move.
“Is that dinner?”
“It’s food. At five. In a room with other people.”
“Understood.”
“Luis will be there.”
“Good.”
“Tessa too.”
“Even better. She scares me.”
“She should.”
His smile was small.
“Five o’clock.”
The stew was too salty because Tessa believed measuring spoons were government oppression. Luis ate two bowls. Beckett ate three. Nobody mentioned my marriage. Nobody mentioned the radio.
Nobody mentioned the postnup. We talked about Poppy, frozen pipes, an upcoming tack auction, and whether Otis had learned how to open his stall latch or had simply trained us to think he had. At five forty-five, Beckett stood.
“Thanks for the food.”
“You earned it,” Tessa said.
He looked at me.
“Goodnight, Mara.”
“Goodnight.”
He left. No attempt to touch me. No pause in the doorway. No question about tomorrow. Tessa waited until his headlights disappeared.
Then she pointed her spoon at me.
“That,” she said, “was disgustingly mature.”
“Whose?”
“Both of you. I hated it.”
Outside, snow softened the ruts in the driveway without erasing them.