Why I look like I want to murder someone over a simple compliment.
I hold her gaze.
Let her see exactly what I'm thinking.
Let her see the possessive rage, the jealousy, the barely controlled need to drag her away from this table and make sure every man here knows she's not available.
Not for Ford. Not for anyone.
Because she's mine.
Her breath catches.
I see it.
The way her lips part slightly, the way her pupils dilate, the way her pulse jumps visibly in her throat.
She feels it too.
This thing between us.
This inevitability.
Then Dakota says something about her upcoming rodeo, asking Grace if she'll be the on-call vet like last year, and the conversation shifts.
The tension breaks.
People go back to eating, talking, and laughing.
But I don't look away.
And neither does Grace.
After dinner, I volunteer for barn duty.
It's a bullshit excuse.
The prospects handle evening chores.
Ford's probably out there right now, mucking stalls and trying to figure out what he did wrong, why the Prez sent him away from the table.
He'll figure it out eventually.
Or he won't.
Either way, he's done talking to Grace.
But I need to move, need to do something with the rage simmering under my skin, need to be anywhere except that porch where people are having coffee and dessert and I have to watch Grace smile and be polite to men who don't deserve to breathe her air.
The barn is quiet except for the soft sounds of horses shifting in their stalls.
Most of them are out in the pasture enjoying the cool evening, but a few are inside—the older ones, the ones recovering from injuries, the pregnant mare Spur's been watching like a hawk.
The smell is familiar: hay and leather and horse, mixed with the faint scent of the saddle soap someone used recently.
I grab a pitchfork from the wall and start mucking stalls just to have something to do with my hands.
Physical work. Something concrete.
