Chapter 2
Chapter two
No Vacancy for City Girls
Cash
She looks just like I remember, except older, shinier, and even more out of place.
Avery Blake, in a shiny silver SUV, with her smart mouth and perfect posture and shoes that probably cost more than a month of hay. And trailing behind her? A five-year-old with her curls bouncing and a spark of mischief in her eyes that’s all Avery.
Then there’s her best friend, loud as ever, already giving the place a once-over like she owns it.
But it’s Avery’s eyes that stop me cold, same stormy gray I remember, sharp as ever, but now with a guarded edge like she’s built fences around herself and dares anyone to climb them.
Her hair’s pulled back in that no-nonsense kind of way, but a few strands have escaped, brushing her cheek in the breeze. And damn if she doesn’t still look like trouble wrapped in a silk scarf and stubborn pride.
Of all the things I expected to show up on the ranch this week, she wasn’t one of them. And definitely not with a five-year-old and that loud-mouthed best friend in tow.
I cross my arms and let her get the first jab in. Figured she would. She always had a mouth on her, even back when we were kids tearing up these pastures, before she got too good for all of it. Before she left and never looked back.
She was a couple years younger than me, with her pigtails and scraped knees back then, smelling like saddle soap and bubble gum, always trailing grass stains and a laugh too loud for Sunday manners.
Now she’s all lipstick and city angles, like a magazine ad for “How to Piss Off a Rancher in Three Seconds or Less.”
I keep my face stone cold, but inside I’m a mess of memories and something damn close to resentment.
Her dad was good to me. Took me in at 14, when I needed it, taught me everything I know about running this land. When he passed, I figured I’d carry the torch. Make him proud. I’ve been busting my ass to keep this place breathing, fighting every busted fence and storm-wrecked roof.
Then Avery shows up like she’s the damn cavalry, like we’ve been waiting on her this whole time.
She didn’t come back when he got sick. Didn’t come back when the ranch started falling apart. I was the one who stayed. Ran errands to the clinic in Amarillo, made sure he had hot coffee with his meds every damn morning, kept the ranch running on fumes and prayers while he got weaker by the week.
I fed him when he couldn't hold a spoon, sat beside him when the pain got so bad he’d cuss at the walls just to stay conscious. And now that there’s a pile of money involved, here she is, waltzing in with her sunglasses and sarcasm, acting like she’s got a right to something she abandoned.
And damn it, she does have a right. That’s what stings the most. He trusted her with this place, maybe as a way to fix what broke between them, maybe as some last-ditch hope they’d both find purpose here. I hate it. I hate that he believed in her, even when she ran.
But I also hate that a part of me wants to honor what he saw in her, because I owed that man everything, and now I’m stuck proving it in the shadow of the woman who left us both.
She’s the boss’s daughter. He left her the land. And he left me stuck sharing it with her, for a whole year. Co-managers, the will says. Equal footing. Equal say.
I stare out over the pasture, fists clenched at my sides. The mesquites are brittle and brown, the wind cutting across the field like it’s trying to peel the paint off the barn.
I’ve held this place together with grit and baling wire. And now I’m supposed to babysit a city girl through cattle season?
Hell no.
Back in school, Avery used to challenge me for fun, daring me to race horses or out-rope her during branding week. She was fire and wild energy, all sharp elbows and too much heart for her own good. We weren’t friends, not really, but we weren’t enemies either.
Now? Now it’s like she’s back to finish a fight we never started.
And I’ll be damned if she’s going to win.
But dang it if she doesn't look like temptation with legs. I catch myself watching her walk across the yard, hips swaying like she knows she’s being watched, but doesn't care one way or another. That used to be confidence. Now? It's power, and she knows it.
The sunlight catches in her hair, turning it a warm chestnut I want to run my fingers through, even though I absolutely shouldn’t. My pulse ticks up, the heat climbing my neck as I tighten my grip on the porch rail.
Her blouse clings to her in a way that has no business being legal in this kind of heat. She's not trying to look good for me, hell, she probably didn’t think twice about what I’d think, but that only makes it worse.
I drag my gaze away and grip the paddock railing like it’s the only thing keeping me grounded. Because it is.
It’s not just that she’s pretty. She’s familiar. A wildfire memory come to life. And my body hasn’t gotten the memo that she’s trouble.
She bends over to talk to her daughter, and I look away fast, jaw tightening. No. Not going there. Not now. Maybe not ever.
She’s got big city all over her, but under that? There’s still the Avery I used to race on horseback, the one who beat every boy in the fourth-grade barrel run and then grinned like a devil when she saw my face.
That smile could still break a man. And I’m not in the mood to be broken.
But even as I think it, the past shoves its way in, uninvited and sharp around the edges.
The last time we spoke, it wasn’t quiet. Wasn’t calm. It was a back-alley kind of fight, words like fists, tempers like flint.
She’d come storming into the barn that day, her hair a mess from crying or fighting with her old man, never did find out which. Dust motes had danced in the slant of afternoon light through the high windows, the air thick with the scent of hay and horses.
The old red saddle pad had been half-fallen off its hook beside her when she stopped short in front of me.
“I’m leaving,” she’d said, breathless like the idea was both a threat and a lifeline.
I’d asked her why, my voice low and tight, already knowing the answer.
“This place isn’t mine,” she’d snapped, eyes glittering. “It never was. It was always about what he wanted, what you needed. I was just the kid who couldn’t handle the ranch, remember? He didn’t ask me what I wanted, didn’t believe in me the way he believed in you. Not once…
Just handed over my future like it was part of the estate inventory, like I should be grateful for a legacy I never asked for. It’s his, it’s yours, it’s everyone else’s but mine.”
And I’d said the one thing I knew would hurt, “Then go. If you don’t belong here, don’t come back.”
The way her face had crumpled, I still see it in dreams sometimes. She turned without another word, boots crunching over hay, and vanished like the end of summer.
I didn’t chase her.
Maybe I should’ve. But I was eighteen, angry, and damn proud. Now I’m thirty-two and none of that’s changed, except the way my chest tightens every time I see her.
She left. And I stayed. I bled for this place. Earned every callus and scar. And now she’s back with keys to the kingdom and a smile like she’s not the ghost of everything I never said.
So yeah, maybe I’m bitter.
But I’ve earned the right to be.
And I’m not just going to stand by while she plays rancher for the summer and tears up everything I’ve built. She can keep her city shoes and her smart comebacks. This place isn’t a playground. It’s blood and sweat and dirt, and she’s going to learn that the hard way.
First thing tomorrow, I’m loading her into the side-by-side and showing her just how deep in over her head she is. Cattle records, irrigation issues, busted fencing, a tractor that stalls if you even look at it wrong, I’ll bury her in it.
Let her see what it really means to run a ranch.
She wants to play cowboy? Fine. But I’ll be damned if she lasts longer than a month.
Because if she does, if she actually proves herself out here, then everything shifts.
The hands might start respecting her. The town might rally behind her.
Hell, I might start seeing her differently.
And that scares me more than anything. Because this place has been mine in every way that matters…
and I don’t know who I am if I’m not the one holding it together.
And if she does? Well… then I’ll have to come up with a new plan to make her quit.
Because if she doesn’t last the full year, if she walks away early, I get it all according to the paperwork. The ranch. The land. The legacy. Her father put it in black and white, right there in the will, like he knew this showdown was inevitable. Like he wanted to settle the score for good.
It should feel like a gift. But all I feel is hollow.
I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out why he did it, why he’d bind us together like this, two people who couldn’t agree on what day it was, much less how to run a ranch.
Part of me wonders if he thought forcing us to work side by side would finally make us see each other, or maybe even heal old wounds.
Or maybe he just didn’t trust either of us enough to carry this place on our own.
Maybe this was his way of giving us both one last shot, to prove ourselves. To him. To each other. To the damn dirt under our boots.
Truth is, Avery’s dad was more of a father to me than my own ever managed to be. Mine was a mean drunk with a meaner belt.
I still remember the first time her dad tossed me the keys to the feed truck like I actually belonged here.
I was fourteen, nervous as hell, and he just grinned and said, “You break it, you fix it.” No yelling, no threats, just trust. That one moment stuck.
Because when a man like him looked at you like you were worth betting on, you rose to meet it.
He gave me a future, and now, he’s made it dependent on the one person who walked away from both of us.
Thing is, I saw some of it. The way he looked past her ideas. The way he shut her down, always assuming she couldn’t hack it here. I hated it. Hated how it hollowed her out in ways I didn’t have the words to fix.
Watching her shrink under his expectations lit something in me I couldn’t explain back then, maybe because I knew exactly how it felt to be dismissed by your old man.
But I didn’t say anything. I just kept showing up. Kept learning the ropes while she drifted further from the place that should’ve felt like home.
But, starting tomorrow, the gloves come off.
Tonight, I’ll be up late reviewing fencing reports, stacking the task list with every backbreaking chore I can think of.
I’ll even make sure the irrigation system 'accidentally' needs a reset, again. When the sun rises, she’s going to be knee-deep in ranch life, the kind that doesn’t care how polished your boots are or how quick your comebacks hit.
She wants to prove she belongs here? Then she’s going to earn every damn inch. I’ll assign her to muck stalls in the heat of the afternoon, have her fix the fence line where the snakes sun themselves, and conveniently forget to warn her about the bull that hates anything in nail polish.
I'll schedule early mornings and late nights, maybe throw in a surprise visit from the feed supplier who only talks in riddles and drives like he's in a demolition derby. She’ll be up to her eyes in mud, sweat, and manure before the weekend.
This isn’t personal, I tell myself.
Except, it kind of is. Because if she thinks she can waltz in here with her city smirk and erase all the years I spent building something real, she’s got another thing coming.
Let her try to impress the staff, charm the ranch hands, smile her way through a branding day. It won’t work.
At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
But some stubborn part of me, buried deep under years of resentment and pride, almost wants her to succeed. I think about the way she used to brush dirt off her jeans with one hand and flip off the boys with the other, daring anyone to say she didn’t belong.
I remember her chasing a runaway calf barefoot across the pasture, wild and laughing, like the land answered only to her.
That girl had grit. And maybe some part of me wants to believe she still does.
Maybe because he believed she could. Maybe because I remember the girl who used to ride circles around the rest of us, fearless and free.
And maybe… just maybe… I’m not ready to let go of that girl yet.
It’s not just a ranch.
It’s mine. It's my hard work and years of experience that keep this place running.
I gave up college for this land, turned down job offers and spent more nights than I can count sleeping in the barn to make sure a calving heifer made it through the night. I missed birthdays, buried good horses, and weathered droughts with nothing but stubbornness and spit holding it all together.
And hell, if she plans to stick around, then she better be damn sure she is ready for war.