Chapter 6 Jack
Jack
Maggie told me about the Driscoll trip like she was assigning a chore.
"There's a mare outside Driscoll I want to evaluate. Ninety minutes each way. I need someone with breeding experience. Be ready at seven."
No eye contact. No discussion. Just a directive delivered over her shoulder while she was already walking somewhere else, clipboard in hand, ponytail swinging like a metronome counting down the seconds until she was out of range.
I watched her go.
Six days I'd been at Blackwood Ranch. Six days of working beside this woman, learning the rhythm of her, and she still treated direct conversation with me like a timed event. Get in, deliver information, get out before anything caught fire.
I'd have found it insulting if it weren't so transparent.
Maggie wasn't avoiding me because she didn't want me around.
She was avoiding me because she did—and the wanting was making her reckless in ways she couldn't control.
I'd seen it in the barn during the storm, when she'd let me put my hands on her shoulders and hadn't pulled away.
The way her breath had changed. The way her whole body had leaned into the contact before her brain caught up and slammed the brakes.
One touch. That's all it had taken to crack the professional facade she'd been building for four days.
And now she wanted to put us in a truck cab together for three hours.
I smiled to myself and went to get ready.
She was already behind the wheel when I got to the truck at seven, engine running, coffee in the cupholder, a folder of papers on the bench seat between us like a barricade. Sully jumped into the back seat of the crew cab and circled twice before lying down with his head on his paws.
"Morning," I said, climbing in.
"Seat belt."
"Good morning to you, too, Maggie."
She shot me a look that could've peeled paint, then pulled out of the yard before I'd finished buckling. The woman drove the way she did everything—fast, decisive, like the road owed her something and she was here to collect.
The first twenty minutes were all business. She ran through the mare's pedigree like a briefing—dam lines, sire history, temperament reports from the seller, conformation photos she'd studied. She was thorough. Clinical. Completely in control.
I let her have it. Asked questions where they were useful, made notes where they mattered, kept my tone the same way I kept my body—present but not pressing.
She'd come off the leash when she was ready. She always did.
It happened somewhere around mile thirty, when the pedigree talk ran dry and the silence filled the cab like something physical. Maggie shifted in her seat. Adjusted the mirror that didn't need adjusting. Took a sip of coffee she'd already finished.
"So," she said. "The breeding programs you've built before. Tell me about them."
"Which part?"
"All of it. Start to finish. I want to know what works and what doesn't."
This was real. Not small talk, not deflection—genuine curiosity from a woman who'd been dreaming about a horse program for years and finally had someone to talk to who understood the details.
So I talked.
I told her about the first program—a small outfit in New Mexico, a rancher named Cal Vasquez who'd had twelve mediocre mares and more ambition than budget.
We'd started with foundation work: honest assessment of existing stock, culling the sentimentality, identifying two mares with the genetics worth investing in.
Brought in a stud from a ranch outside Amarillo whose temperament line ran so clean you could trace the calm back four generations.
"The mistake most people make," I said, "is breeding for flash.
Big movers, showy bloodlines, the kind of horse that wins ribbons.
But if you're building a working program—ranch horses, stock horses, horses that need to think as much as they need to move—temperament is everything.
A beautiful horse that can't keep its head in a crisis is worthless. "
"A beautiful horse that can't keep its head in a crisis," Maggie repeated, something wry in her voice. "There's a metaphor in there somewhere."
"Take it however you want."
She almost smiled. I saw it—the twitch at the corner of her mouth, the softening around her eyes—before she pulled it back. But it had been there. A crack in the wall.
"What about the second program?" she asked.
"Wyoming. Bigger operation, more money, less patience. The owner wanted results in eighteen months. I told him genetics don't care about your timeline."
She chuckled once. "How'd that go over?"
"About how you'd expect. We argued for three months. Then his first crop of foals hit the ground, and he stopped arguing."
She glanced over at me quickly, genuinely interested. “Because they were good?"
"Because they were exactly what I'd promised—calm, smart, built for the work. Took two years to see the full picture, but by the end, he had a waitlist for his yearlings."
Maggie was quiet for a moment, processing. When she spoke again, the clinical tone was gone. Something warmer had replaced it—engaged, almost excited, like she was letting herself imagine what was possible instead of cataloging what was practical.
"The proposal I'm putting together for Wyatt," she said. "I've got the financials. The mare evaluations. The market analysis. But what I don't have is someone who's actually built a program from the ground up and knows where the plans fall apart."
"They always fall apart somewhere."
"That's reassuring,” she grumbled.
"It should be. Plans that can't survive contact with reality aren't worth the paper. The good ones have flex built in." I watched the Texas landscape roll by, flat and gold and endless. "Your numbers are solid, Maggie. I've been looking at the bloodline data in your files."
She turned her head. "You've been looking at my files?"
"The ones in the barn office. The breeding line research. The Fort Worth catalog with your notes in the margins." I paused. "You've been building that database for years."
“That’s—" She stopped. Started again. "That's not part of your job description."
"No. It's not."
The silence that followed was different from the ones before. Heavier. She was working something out, and I let her do it without interference.
"Why?" she asked finally. "Why would you spend your own time looking at my research?"
"Because it's good work. And because the program you're envisioning is exactly the kind of thing I'd want to build.
" I kept my eyes on the road ahead, giving her the space to hear this without having to manage her expression.
"The Raven Spur stallion at Fort Worth—I pulled his full progeny report.
Twelve foals on the ground, eight of them working stock.
Temperament scores in the top ten percent across the board.
He's not flashy, but he'd throw foals that match everything in your projections. "
Maggie didn't respond for a long time.
When I finally glanced over, her hands were tight on the wheel, and her jaw was set in that way it got when she was trying not to feel something.
"Nobody does that," she said quietly.
"Does what?"
"Works on my thing. Without being asked. Without wanting credit or a say or—” She shook her head. "People work on Wyatt's vision. They work on Ivy's breeding program. They work on Daddy's legacy. Nobody just… quietly works on mine."
The rawness in her voice hit me somewhere I wasn't expecting. Not because she was fragile—Maggie Blackwood was the least fragile person I'd ever met. But because underneath all that strength was a woman who'd been putting herself last for so long, she'd stopped expecting anyone to notice.
"Get used to it," I said.
She let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "You can't just say things like that."
"You keep telling me that. I keep saying them anyway."
"It's a character flaw."
"One of many."
This time she did smile. Not the controlled, professional expression she wore like body armor.
A real one—brief, reluctant, like it had escaped before she could catch it.
It changed her whole face. Softened the sharp edges.
Made her look like the woman in Wild Creek who'd laughed at my tractor story and decided she wanted me before I'd finished my beer.
I wanted to see that smile every day for a very long time.
I filed that thought away in the place where I kept things that were true but not yet useful.
"Tell me about Montana," Maggie said.
The question came easy, tucked into the flow of conversation like she'd been waiting for the right current to carry it. Not pushing. Just… opening a door and seeing if I'd walk through.
"What do you want to know?"
"Whatever you want to tell me."
I thought about that for a mile or so. The road unwound ahead of us, straight and flat, the kind of driving that lets your mind unspool.
"My family's place was called Clearwater," I said. "Bitterroot Valley, south of Missoula. Dad built it from nothing—proposed to my mom on the front porch before the house was even finished. She said yes anyway. Said she'd rather have the man than the floor plan."
Maggie's expression shifted. Listening.
"My sister Sarah was the real horse person in the family," I said, and her name came out easier than I expected. "Better instincts than me by a mile. She could read a horse's mood from across a paddock. Dad used to joke that the mares trusted her more than they trusted him."
"How much older?"
"Younger. Two years. She never let me forget that she was better with animals despite the head start." I smiled, and it felt strange and familiar at the same time, like flexing a muscle I hadn't used in a while. "She'd have liked you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. She had a thing for women who didn't take shit from anyone. Said the world would be better off if more people had spines."
Maggie laughed—short, surprised, genuine. "I'd have liked her too."