Chapter 2
Chapter Two
CADE
Four thirty comes the same way it always does. Dark outside, coffee on the stove, boots by the door. The cattle don't care what day it is. Neither does the fence that came down in the southeast corner overnight.
Buck is saddled by the time the sky turns gray. Good horse. Doesn't need conversation. We ride the east line first because the heifers drift that direction when the temperature drops, and it dropped hard last night. First real frost of the season.
The herd is where they should be. Forty head of Angus, all accounted for. The old bull standing at the edge looking annoyed about the cold, which is his default expression about everything.
Southeast corner takes twenty minutes. Three posts leaning, wire snapped in two places, elk tracks confirming what I already knew. Pull the wire. Cut. Splice. Twist. Set the clip. Done.
By the time I'm heading back, the sun is clearing the ridge.
My eyes go to the cabin across the fence line before I can stop them.
Smoke from the chimney. Thin, uneven. She got the fireplace going. Must've found dry wood somewhere, maybe the stack under the eaves on the south side that the previous owner left. It's seasoned enough to catch, barely. Won't last more than a day or two.
Yesterday sits in my chest. Small. Annoying. Impossible to ignore.
Shelby Reeves. Dark hair in a knot, clothes wrong for the altitude, city boots that'll be ruined by the first rain. Sitting in mud with blood on her shirt, telling me she was handling it.
She doesn't want my help. Made that clear.
My brain heard her. The rest of me loaded a cord of split pine into the truck bed before sunrise anyway.
Her front yard at eight. Subaru still there, frost on the windshield. Smoke from the chimney but barely. She's burning through what little she has.
Five trips from the truck to her porch wall. Split pine, stacked tight. Enough for a week if she manages it right.
On the sixth trip, the front door opens.
She's wearing a flannel that's too big for her. Sleeves rolled past her wrists, hem hitting mid-thigh over leggings. Hair still in that knot. Dark circles under her eyes. She's holding a coffee mug with both hands, standing in the doorway with my bandana still wrapped around her knuckle.
"What are you doing?"
"Dropping off firewood."
"I didn't ask for firewood."
"Didn't say you did." I set the last armload on the stack. Straighten up. Brush the bark off my jacket.
Her jaw tightens. She looks at the pile against her wall. Enough split pine to fill half her living room. Then she looks back at me. "How much?"
"How much what?"
"How much do I owe you for the wood?"
"Nothing."
"I'm not taking free firewood from a stranger."
"We met yesterday. That makes us acquaintances."
Something flickers across her face. Could be irritation. Could be the ghost of a smile she killed before it got started. Hard to tell with her.
"I'll pay you or I'm not burning it."
Stubborn woman. "Twenty bucks."
"For a cord of split wood? That's worth at least a hundred."
"You know what split wood costs?"
"I know when someone's undercharging me."
Fair enough. "Twenty bucks. Neighbor rate."
She stares at me. Whatever she's calculating behind those tired eyes takes a while. Finally she takes a sip of her coffee, steps back from the doorway, and says the last thing I expected.
"You want some coffee? It's gas station instant. Tastes like regret."
The smart thing would be to say no. Go back to my property. Check the water trough in the north pasture. Stay in my lane.
"Sure."
Her kitchen is cold. No heat beyond the fireplace burning low. Groceries on the counter: canned soup, peanut butter, crackers, instant coffee. Not a lot of food for a woman planning to stay.
She pours hot water from a kettle into a mug. Hands it to me. The mug says WORLD'S BEST AUNT in chipped gold letters.
"Thrift store," she says, catching me looking at it. "Fifty cents."
"Good deal."
We stand in her kitchen drinking bad coffee while the fire pops in the next room. Neither of us sits. She leans against the counter. I lean against the doorframe. A solid six feet between us.
"You ride a horse to visit all your neighbors?" she asks.
"Don't have other neighbors. Property on the west side is BLM land. You're it."
"Lucky me."
"How long you planning to stay?"
The question lands harder than I meant it to. Her grip shifts on the mug. "I live here. This is my house."
"You bought the place."
"I bought the place."
"Without seeing it first."
Her chin lifts. "The pictures were very convincing."
"There were pictures?"
"One. Of the fireplace. From an angle that made it look like a ski lodge." She glances at the peeling laminate, the water stain on the ceiling, the window with the cracked pane. "Turns out angles are powerful."
I don't laugh. But it's close.
"Power company said they'll send someone Thursday," she adds. "So two more days without electricity. The water works, though. Barely. Pressure's low."
"Pipes haven't been run in a while. Might need to bleed the lines."
"I bled the lines this morning. Watched a YouTube video before I lost service."
Something catches in my chest. She drove four hours to a cabin she'd never seen, sat in the dark without power, bled her own pipes from a tutorial, made instant coffee on a gas stove while it was twenty-eight degrees outside. All without asking anyone for help.
That's survival mode. And I've been around enough spooked animals to know what it looks like.
"What'd you do before you came here?" The question comes out before I think it through.
Her face goes flat. "Marketing."
"In Denver?"
"Does it matter?"
"Just making conversation."
"I'm not great at conversation."
"Me either."
That gets a real reaction. Not a smile exactly. More like the muscles around her mouth deciding whether to let one through. They don't. But they thought about it.
"So what do you do?" she asks. "Besides deliver unsolicited firewood and diagnose generators."
"I run cattle. About forty head on the property east of here. Do some work for my family's operation too." I take a sip of the coffee. She wasn't wrong about the taste. "Been on this land five years."
"Five years alone up here?"
"The cows don't seem to mind."
Her eyebrows lift. Almost. "That's a lot of quiet."
"That's the point."
She looks at me for a beat too long. Whatever she's seeing or deciding, I don't get the verdict. She pushes off the counter, crosses to the window, and stares out at the tree line.
"Your fence has gaps," I tell her, because someone has to. "South side especially. Coyotes will come right through."
"I know. I saw them this morning."
"The gaps?"
"The coyotes."
My gut drops. "How close?"
"Close enough to see their eyes." She says it steady. Flat. No fear in her voice, but there's a tightness in her shoulders that tells a different story.
"I'll check your fence line this afternoon."
"You don't have to do that."
"Your property borders mine. Coyotes on your land means coyotes near my calves." It's true. It's also an excuse and we both know it.
She turns from the window. Looks at me standing in her kitchen doorway with bad coffee in a thrift store mug. "You're gonna keep showing up, aren't you."
"Probably."
"Even if I tell you not to."
"Your fence needs fixing. That's just a fact."
She exhales through her nose. Sets her mug on the counter. Crosses her arms over her chest, which pulls the flannel tight enough that I notice things I've got no business noticing.
Curves. Real ones. Hips that fill out those leggings. A softness at her waist where the flannel gathers. Breasts pushing against the fabric every time she breathes. She's built solid, this woman. Built warm.
My eyes snap back to her face. If she caught me looking, she doesn't show it.
"Fine," she says. "Fix the fence. But I'm paying you."
"We can argue about that later."
"We're gonna argue about it now. I don't take charity."
"It's not charity. It's ranching." I set the mug on the counter beside hers. "Thanks for the coffee."
She follows me to the porch. Leans against the railing while I step down, avoiding the gap, and head for the truck.
"Hey."
I turn.
She pulls the bandana from her knuckle. Holds it out. "Yours."
The knuckle looks better. Scabbed over. She washed the bandana. Folded it into a neat square.
"Keep it," I say. "Case you need it again."
Her mouth opens. Closes. She stuffs the bandana into her flannel pocket without another word.
I get in the truck. Turn it around in her front yard. When I check the mirror, she's still on the porch, arms crossed, watching me leave.
The smart thing would be to fix her fence, keep my distance, and stop thinking about her hands wrapped around that mug. Her voice going soft for half a second before she catches it and pulls the edge back on. Those dark, careful eyes trying so hard to see the catch.
There's no catch. Some fences just need fixing.
But try telling her that.