4. Chapter 4
Rebel
By lunch, I’ve already changed her schedule twice, moving her off main-barn rotation and onto feed verification like that was the plan all along.
Not enough to look deliberate or give Wade and Cassie anything obvious to question, just enough to keep Montana Vega useful without letting the day hand me too many chances to have her directly in front of me.
That is the plan: keep her occupied, and keep whatever is left over from last night small enough to burn itself out.
It takes more effort than I want to admit.
I stand at the whiteboard in the office with a dry-erase marker in my hand and adjust the afternoon rotation for the south aisle.
I review which mares need checking, their current feeding schedule and what time we’re expecting our bedding delivery.
Necessary work, all of it, but none that requires her at my shoulder and none that forces me to hear that sharpened voice of hers and remember exactly what it sounded like when it dropped in the dark.
Behind me, I hear people shuffling in and out of the office. A radio crackles near the break nook, then clicks off. The ranch runs the way it always does, on timing, pressure, and the understanding that everyone leaves their attitudes at the door when there’s actual work in front of them.
That includes me.
Wade steps into the doorway, glances at the board, then at me. “You moved Vega off the main barn rotation.”
I recap the marker without looking at him. “I moved everybody where I need them.”
“Mm.”
I know that sound. It’s Wade’s version of a raised eyebrow.
I turn, set the marker on the tray, and lean one hip against the edge of the desk. “She’s new, so I want her on lower-risk tasks until I see how she’s getting along.”
It’s a reasonable explanation. Better than the truth, which is that the second she steps too close, my body remembers things my judgment would prefer stowed away.
Wade studies me for one beat too long. “Funny,” he says. “You don’t usually ease people in.”
“I do when their mistakes can cost me six figures.”
He folds his arms. “That about the horses, or the employee?”
I let the silence sit for a second before I ask, “Do you want something, Wade?”
His mouth twitches once, almost a smile. “Just making sure the new hire actually gets trained and not strategically exiled to a grain cart.”
“She’ll get trained.”
“From a distance, apparently.”
The irritation hits fast because it’s spot-on. I push off the desk. “The distance is temporary.”
That part, at least, is true.
The smartest thing I can do is keep her at the edges until she becomes what she was supposed to be from the beginning: an employee with a useful set of hands and no claim on my attention once the workday ends.
I step into the hallway and glance through the open barn doors toward the side lot, where two of the guys are unloading bedding. Montana’s down there with a clipboard in one hand, arguing with the delivery driver over counts like she’s been here longer than a morning.
Even from this distance, my attention finds her first before I can make it settle anywhere else.
I turn away before she can look up.
The decision holds for maybe twenty minutes.
I’m halfway through reviewing a feed variance sheet with Wade when raised voices carry in from the side lot again, one of them Montana’s. Wade glances toward the open office window.
“So much for keeping her on the sidelines,” he says.
I ignore that and step outside.
The delivery truck is still backed up at the loading area, rear doors open, one driver on the lift gate with a handheld scanner and the other beside a stack of wrapped bedding bundles. Montana’s at the tail end of the trailer with the clipboard braced against one hip, not flustered, only irritated.
“The count is off,” she says, tapping the page. “And you swapped part of the order after the paperwork printed.”
The driver gives her a thin, patient smile and glances past her shoulder, already looking for the man in charge to overrule her. “Our sheet says it’s right.”
“Then your sheet is wrong.”
I stop three paces short of the truck. One of the grooms shifts his weight, waiting for me to step in. Montana glances at me quickly, but she doesn’t turn and she doesn’t back off.
The driver sighs. “Ma’am, the invoice ...”
She reaches past the top bundle and points to the manufacturer stamp.
“These aren’t from the same lot, and those shavings aren’t what you billed us for.
” Then she flips the clipboard page and keeps her tone level.
“You can correct the invoice now, or you can reload the wrong pallets and come back with what was actually ordered. I’m not signing for this version. ”
For the first time, the driver actually looks where she is pointing.
Wade, now beside me, lets out a quiet breath through his nose. “Well, hell.”
The driver’s expression tightens. “You the receiving manager?”
She finally turns then, not toward him. Toward me.
There is no plea in the look, no performance either, just a direct handoff of the moment, as if she is saying: I found the problem. Decide whether you trust me.
I hold her gaze for a second, then look at the mismatched pallets. “Correct the invoice,” I say.
The driver opens his mouth, thinks better of it, and nods.
Montana turns back to the clipboard and starts listing adjustments while the men around her reorganize themselves around the fact that she was right.
This isn’t luck. She sees detail fast and trusts what she sees before anyone else validates it, and what makes that dangerous is the respect that follows close behind it, unwelcome and immediate.
Which is exactly why I should’ve sent her back to the bedding count and kept the rest of the afternoon structured tightly enough to avoid another collision.
I don’t.
I bring her with us to the south barn because I let efficiency win out over caution, and the ranch has a habit of punishing that immediately.
Larkspur's already restless by the time we reach her stall.
She's a glossy bay with too much breeding value and not enough patience, the kind of mare who can cost a man real money if he misreads the line between stress and readiness.
Wade is on my left with the chart board in hand.
Cassie's checking the water bucket. Montana stops just outside the stall front, not crowding in, not pretending she belongs in the center of the conversation.
I scan the mare once, then again. Her ears are active, and her head tosses now and then. She doesn’t look comfortable, but that’s not unusual given the weather shift and the noise from the earlier delivery. I hold out a hand, and Cassie passes me the chart.
“Her temperature was normal an hour ago,” she says. “She skipped half her grain, though.”
“That's not ideal,” Wade mutters.
“No,” I say. “But it's not enough to pull the window yet.”
Larkspur stamps once, then drags the side of her muzzle against the stall door. We're close to the line, but close is not the same as over it. If we miss this breeding window because somebody mistakes nerves for a stop sign, it creates a delay that I don’t have room for.
“She needs another hour,” I say. “Keep her quiet, cool her if she keeps working herself up, and we’ll reassess before the vet check.”
“Actually,” Montana says from behind me, “I’d look at her again before you wait on it.”
The aisle stills, Cassie goes very quiet, and Wade stops with the chart board half-lifted like he’s waiting to see whether I’m about to get challenged in my own barn.
I turn.
She's standing with one hand resting lightly on the half-door of the neighboring stall, expression calm.
“Look at what?” I ask.
She nods toward Larkspur. “She’s not settling the way she should.” Her gaze flicks back to the mare. “I could be wrong. I’d just feel like we need to take another look.”
The annoyance comes fast, mainly because she did it here, in a way that invites everyone in the aisle to start measuring my read against hers.
Larkspur takes the choice away from me by slamming the stall door a second later. The metal rings through the aisle. Cassie winces.
I turn back to the mare and make myself look again, this time without the schedule already arguing in my head.
I turn halfway back toward Montana. “How long have you been watching her?”
“Since Cassie checked the bucket,” she says. “She was restless then. Now she’s carrying it everywhere.”
The description is annoyingly precise.
I look at Larkspur once more, then at Wade. “Move the timeline up. Call Rhodes and tell him I want the check done now.”
Cassie's already moving as Wade nods once and heads for the office.
Cassie takes Larkspur’s lead, talking low and steady, and for a minute the aisle settles into the organized urgency I actually trust.
I'm still too close to the stall, pretending to watch the mare, when Montana reaches for the latch on the neighboring door. She's probably trying to clear space for Cassie. At the same moment, the younger colt inside shies at the crack of the hose hitting concrete.
The colt slams a shoulder into the door, and the metal bar whips back harder than it should. Montana turns too late, one hand still on the latch.
I get to her before the thought finishes forming.
One hand catches her upper arm, while the other closes around her waist. The momentum causes her to hit hard against me, fingers catching in the front of my shirt on instinct. For a second, everything slows.
The shape of her against me is wrong for this place and familiar in all the worst ways.
I remember theInn’s door at her back, her mouth against mine, and the exact line of her waist under my hand when she stopped pretending she meant to leave.
She lifts her head fast, shock showing cleanly on her face before she covers it. I can see the pulse jumping at the base of her throat. Mine is doing its own version of the same.
“You all right?” I ask.
Her eyes drop once to my hand at her side, then come back to my face. “Yeah,” she says. “I’m fine.”
The words are steady enough to pass, but the edge under them is familiar now.
I let go at once.
Too fast, if the look she gives me means anything.
Cassie says, “Well, that could’ve been really bad,” in the dry tone of somebody already saving this for later.
Montana steps back and smooths one hand down the front of her jeans, quick and absent, as if she's brushing off dust. I turn to the colt’s stall and reset the latch with more force than it requires.
“Watch yourselves,” I say to no one in particular.
I spend the next three hours proving I can put the moment back where it belongs. Rhodes confirms Larkspur needed the earlier adjustment, saving her breeding window. Montana disappears back into the mechanics of the afternoon, while I make a deliberate point of not looking for her.
By the time dusk starts thinning the light beyond the office windows, I have the shape of the rule back where it belongs.
There will be no more slipups, no proximity that isn’t strictly necessary, and no private conversations.
Montana Vega can be an employee or she can be a problem, but she won’t be both.
I sign the last transport correction and shove the folder toward the center of the desk. Wade glances at it, then at me. “You look like you’re trying to win an argument with yourself.”
“Yeah, but I’m the one winning.”
He huffs a laugh. “Sure, okay.”
Before I can answer, the office phone rings.
Not the main line ... the internal barn line.
Wade reaches for it first, listens for two seconds, then straightens in a way I do not like at all. He holds the receiver out. “It's the foaling barn.”
I take it. “Ashford.”
The night attendant on the other end is breathing too fast. “Maren thinks Juniper’s starting hard and wrong. She’s restless, lying down and getting back up, and the presentation feels off. Cassie’s at dinner, Rhodes is twenty minutes out, and ...”
I am already moving. “Get her into the large stall and clear the aisle.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hang up and grab my jacket off the chair.
Wade is on his feet. “Who do you want with you?”
The answer should be easy … Cassie once she gets back, or one of the senior night hands. Anyone will do, except for the woman I’ve spent the last several hours trying to keep at a distance. I’m fooling myself.
“Get Montana,” I say.
Wade’s eyes narrow just slightly.
I don’t explain, partly because I don’t need to. Juniper is high-strung, the presentation may be bad, and when pressure hits the horses hard, Montana sees things faster than anyone else in the barn.
Partly because the minute I start explaining, I’ll hear too much of the truth in it.
I am halfway to the foaling barn before I hear Wade behind me calling her name.