Chapter 3 Jack
Jack
The Blackwood Fall Rodeo was controlled chaos.
I'd seen enough operations—military and civilian—to recognize the difference between chaos that worked and chaos that was about to collapse. This was the first kind. Loud, messy, constantly shifting, but underneath it all, someone had a plan. Someone was holding the strings.
It took me about ten minutes to figure out who.
Maggie Blackwood moved through the rodeo grounds like a general commanding a battlefield. She didn't raise her voice. Didn't need to. People just... oriented toward her. Asked her questions. Followed her directions. She solved problems before most folks even noticed there was a problem to solve.
She was impressive as hell.
She was also beautiful. So painfully beautiful.
Not in a fragile, ornamental way. In a way that hit low and stayed there like a full-body ache.
Long legs in worn jeans that knew how to move through hard days.
Sun-warmed skin. A body built for work and endurance, strong without needing to prove it.
Her hair pulled back like she didn't give a damn what anyone thought—which only made it worse.
Made you want to be the reason it came loose.
Her mouth was expressive, sharp when she was focused, soft when she smiled—like those smiles were earned, not handed out.
Seeing her here, in her own territory, only sharpened the damage.
The authority. The competence. The way the world seemed to rearrange itself around her.
Watching her command space like that did something primal to me—made me want to strip away the control just to see what she looked like when she lost it.
Like I’d done in that motel room last week.
And the worst part?
She had no idea how thoroughly she'd already undone me.
I'd spent one night with her and it had been living in my head ever since.
And standing here, watching her run this place like it was an extension of her body, I had the uneasy, unmistakable sense that one night hadn't been nearly enough.
She was also exhausted. I could see it in the tension around her eyes, the set of her shoulders, the way she kept moving like stopping might mean falling down.
Most people wouldn't clock it—she hid it well, buried under competence and sharp humor.
But I'd spent years learning to read people in situations where misreading them could get you killed.
Maggie Blackwood was running on fumes and willpower.
And she had no idea I was watching.
Sully pressed against my leg, a familiar weight that grounded me whenever my thoughts started to drift. He’d been alert since we arrived—new place, new people, new smells to catalog. But he wasn't anxious. Just watchful. Taking it all in the way he'd been trained to do.
"Easy, Sul," I murmured, reaching down to scratch behind his ears. "We're just getting the lay of the land."
He looked up at me with those steady brown eyes, and I could almost hear Brad's voice in my head: Dog's smarter than you, Remington.
Brad had always been right about that.
Staff Sergeant Brad Emerson. My best friend. My brother in everything but blood. The man who'd trained Sully from an eight-week-old pup into one of the finest working dogs I'd ever seen—and then hadn't come home from our last deployment.
The ambush had been fast and brutal. We'd been clearing a compound in a village whose name I still couldn't say without my chest going tight. Brad took point because he always took point. Said he didn't trust anyone else to do it right.
He was wrong that day.
An IED took him before any of us could react. One second, he was there, hand signal steady. The next second, he getting catapulted fifty feet away before smacking into some rubble hard enough that I could still hear the snap of his spine.
Sully had stayed by what was left of him until I had to physically carry him away.
When I rotated home three months later, I'd gone straight to Brad's parents' house in Oklahoma. They were good people—quiet, kind, devastated in the way that only parents who outlived their children can be. They'd asked if I wanted any of Brad's things. I'd said no to everything except the dog.
Sully was the last promise I'd made to a dying man. Take care of him, Jack. He's a good boy, he’d said between ragged breaths, blood running out of his mouth.
Four years later, I was still keeping that promise.
The dog went everywhere with me. Every ranch, every job, every state I'd drifted through trying to outrun grief that didn't have the decency to stay behind. Sully never complained. Never judged. Just stayed beside me, the same way he'd stayed beside Brad.
Some days, that loyalty was the only thing that kept me moving.
"Jack."
Owen Blackwood's voice cut through my thoughts. "Come on over. Want you to meet the family."
I straightened and followed, Sully falling into step at my heel without needing to be told. The Blackwoods were already gathering near the main barn—a familiar choreography, practiced and unspoken. They moved toward one another easily, bodies angling in, voices overlapping, a unit closing ranks.
I took it in automatically. The noise. The proximity. The way they occupied space together like they belonged there.
And then I saw her.
Maggie stood slightly apart from the group, arms crossed, her expression carefully neutral. The second Owen said my name, something in her went tight. So quick it would've been easy to miss—but I didn't.
Her fingers curled against her arms. Her shoulders set. Her breath caught for half a beat before she smoothed it away.
Like she was bracing herself.
And suddenly, whatever this was about to be, I knew it wasn't going to be simple.
I hadn't been sure what to expect when I'd taken this job.
Owen Blackwood's offer had come through a mutual contact—a buddy of mine from the service over in Wild Creek who had a family ranch of his own. I would’ve worked there had they needed me, but Emmett assured me the Blackwoods were good people.
Not to mention, it was good pay, a solid operation from my research, and there was room to grow.
What Emmett hadn't known was that the rancher's daughter was the woman I'd spent one unforgettable night with in a motel room while I was visiting on my way here.
The universe had a hell of a sense of humor.
"Everyone, this is Jack Remington," Owen said, and I stepped forward to shake hands with the family, one by one.
Wyatt's grip was firm, assessing. Liam's was controlled, precise.
Clay's came with a grin and a comment about Sully that was probably meant to be charming.
Hunter just nodded and went back to his beer.
Then I got to Maggie.
She took my hand like it might bite her. Her palm was warm, slightly calloused from work, and the contact sent a jolt of recognition through me that I was careful not to show.
"Ma'am," I said, keeping my voice neutral.
"Mr. Remington."
Her eyes were doing that thing they'd done at the bar—sharp, assessing, trying to figure out my angle. Except now there was panic underneath it. Carefully controlled panic, but panic nonetheless.
I let go of her hand before she could pull away first. Gave her that small dignity.
"Jack's going to be helping out with the horse operation," Owen said, either oblivious to the tension or choosing to ignore it. "Figured Maggie could show him around, get him oriented. She knows that side of things better than anyone."
Maggie's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "Of course. Happy to help."
I nodded. "Appreciate it."
For a second, our eyes met. Really met, not the careful surface contact we'd been maintaining. And I saw it all there—the memory of that night, the confusion about what it meant, the determination to pretend it hadn't happened.
I understood. I did. One-night stands weren't supposed to follow you home. They weren't supposed to show up at your family's ranch with a job offer and a dog and absolutely no intention of pretending the past didn't exist.
But I wasn't going to lie about what I felt, either. Not to her. Not to myself.
Maggie looked away first, and I wouldn’t have expected anything different. Only because since the moment our eyes met across that bar last week, I’d had a hard time looking away.
Owen clapped me on the shoulder and started talking about the operation—the cattle side, the expansion plans, the potential for growth.
I listened and nodded and filed the information away, but part of my attention stayed on Maggie.
Watching her interact with her family. Watching the way she moved through them—fixing Wyatt's collar before he walked off, exchanging a look with Ivy, dodging her mother's too-knowing gaze.
The rodeo continued around us, and I let myself settle into the rhythm of it. This was familiar territory—not rodeos specifically, but ranch life. The smells and sounds and constant motion of an operation that ran on hard work and stubborn optimism.
I'd grown up in this world. My family's place in Montana had been smaller than the Blackwood spread, but the bones were the same. Cattle and horses and land that demanded everything you had and gave back just enough to keep you coming.
I'd loved that ranch.
I'd lost it anyway.
The call had come when I was overseas, three months into a deployment that was supposed to be routine, but turned sideways. I’d just finished an op that cost two friends their lives. My commanding officer found me in the rubble, wearing an expression that told me everything before he said a word.
I still had my friends’ blood on my hands when his words registered. Small plane. Bad weather. Mechanical failure. No survivors.
Mom. Dad. Sarah.
Gone.