CHAPTER 1
SLADE
The storm had blown through overnight, leaving the ridge wrapped in a hard, bright cold that would sink straight into a man’s bones if he stood around long enough. I’d been up since before sunrise, same as every day, checking fence lines and counting cattle, trying to get ahead of the mess the wind liked to make this time of year.
By midmorning, the sky was clear, the kind of sharp blue that only showed up a few times each winter. I took advantage of it, loaded new wire into the truck bed, and headed up toward the north boundary.
That stretch of land was older than anything else on the ranch… older than the buildings, older than the roads, older than the Kincaid name itself, if I believed my grandfather’s stories. I’d spent half my life riding it, working it, memorizing every curve and cedar tree. So when something didn’t look right, I felt it before I saw it.
I hopped out of the truck and scanned the ridge. The storm had knocked down a good section of fence overnight. Nothing new there. But the ground… there was something about the ground that felt off. I moved toward the disturbed snow and crouched, brushing away the frost with my glove.
Metal glinted underneath. It was a survey marker. An ancient one. Older than anything that should’ve been sitting on my family’s land. I brushed it clean with the back of my hand, and the engraving came into view.
H.M. Below it, someone had engraved a date that didn’t line up with any Kincaid history.
My stomach sank. “Well, hell.”
I wasn’t a man who panicked easily, but this? This felt like the start of a headache that wasn’t going to fade on its own. I stood and looked out across the ridge, letting the cold steady me. The land had always felt like an extension of my body… solid, known, and loyal. But today, it felt like it was keeping secrets.
I didn’t have time for secrets. Or for whatever fight this was going to start between my family and the Hollisters. Neither needed much of a spark to set off generations of bad blood, especially when I was trying to get all of us to work together on bringing the rodeo back to town.
I’d just grabbed the roll of wire from the truck bed when a pair of headlights crept up the road. It wasn’t a ranch truck, and I didn’t recognize it as belonging to one of my neighbors.
“Perfect.” I sighed. First the mysterious marker and now an uninvited guest.
The small SUV stopped on the side of the road, parked at an angle that suggested the driver wasn’t used to mountain roads or snowbanks. Then the door swung open, and a woman climbed out. Her coat was too thin, her boots not nearly sturdy enough to be traipsing around uneven ground, and her expression way too determined for her own good.
Morgan Carter. She was Mustang Mountain’s new town planner. I hadn’t had to work with her yet, but I’d heard the rumors. She wasn’t from around here. Folks said she was a city girl whose daddy pulled some strings to get her a job a few levels above her pay grade. She seemed hellbent on proving herself, and my buddy Dawson said she was more stubborn than every mule within a hundred miles combined.
She trudged toward me, her boots sinking deeper and deeper into the snow with every step.
“Slade Kincaid!” she called, her breath puffing out in clouds. “We need to talk.”
I resisted the urge to close my eyes and count to ten. “Based on you driving all the way out here, I figured you might say that.”
She stopped in front of me and thrust out her hand. “I’m Morgan Carter, the new town planner, and we have a problem.”
Before I could reach for her hand, she slipped on a patch of ice, her arms flailing as she tilted backward. I grabbed her arm without thinking. “Careful, ma’am.”
She straightened, trying to pretend she hadn’t almost fallen into a snowbank. “I’m fine.”
“Sure you are.” I waited until she seemed steady before I let go. Her coat brushed my chest as I steadied her, and for half a second, the cold vanished. I was too aware of her warmth and of how easily she fit against me. My reaction pissed me off almost as much as her being here did.
Instead of thanking me, she shot me a glare that should’ve knocked me flat on my ass. “I got a call this morning. Someone reported unauthorized structures on publicly questionable land.”
“Publicly questionable land,” I repeated. “Is that what Mayor Nelson called it?”
“That’s what he wrote on the form.” She blew a chunk of dark brown hair out of her face. “We need to review the northern boundary. Officially. Which means I need access to the ridge.”
“This is my ridge.”
“So it seems, but that’s what the paperwork is trying to determine.”
I stared at her for a long second. She shifted her weight but didn’t back down.
“Look,” she said, softening enough to take some sting out of the words, “I’m not here to stir up trouble.”
“That’s exactly what you’re here to do.”
