I kissed him.
Not softly. Not the tentative, testing kisses of our first night in the lounge. I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him toward me and kissed him like I was drowning and he was air. He made a low sound against my mouth, surprise, then heat, and his hand came up to cup my jaw, angling my head, deepening the kiss until I could feel it everywhere.
For about ten seconds, the world went away.
No embezzlement. No insurance crisis. Just Graham’s mouth on mine and his hand in my hair and the solid, grounding weight of a man who made me feel safe in a way I hadn’t felt since I was two years old and too young to know what safe meant.
Then Sandra’s voice echoed in my head.Two of the shell company accounts have already been emptied and closed. The money is gone.
I pulled back.
Graham’s eyes were hazy, his breath uneven. “Rose?—”
“I can’t.” I pressed my palm flat against his chest, half holding him there, half pushing him away. I could feel his heart slamming under my hand. “I can’t do this right now.”
“Okay.” His voice was rough, but steady. He didn’t push. Didn’t try to pull me back. Just stayed where he was, one hand still cradling my jaw, waiting.
That was almost worse. If he’d pushed, I could have fought. If he’d been selfish about it, I could have been angry. But Graham just knelt there in my horse’s stall with hay on his jeans and his heart hammering against my palm and gave me space I hadn’t asked for.
“It’s not about you,” I said, and hated how much it sounded like a line.
“I know.”
“It’s about—” I pulled my hand away from his chest and pressed it against my own sternum, where I could feel myself fracturing. “I don’t have room. In my head. For this and everything else. And if I let myself feel this, feel you, I’ll fall apart. And I can’t fall apart right now because there’s no one else to hold this place together.”
Graham was quiet for a long moment. Then he leaned forward and pressed his lips to my forehead. Soft, brief, the kind of kiss that asked for nothing.
“I’m here,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready. And if you’re never ready, I’m still here.”
He stood. Brushed hay off his knees. And then, instead of walking out, he stopped in the stall doorway and turned back.
“Rose. The Taylor firing.”
His tone made my shoulders tighten. “What about it?”
“Denise was crying one minute and building a case the next. Access logs, timestamps, every system he touched. She had the whole plan ready before the tears were dry.” He paused. “She didn’t need to think about it. She didn’t ask questions or check records. She just had the steps ready.”
I stared at him. “Because she was upset and wanted to help?—”
“Aye. That’s one explanation. But Rose—” He chose his words like a man walking across ice he wasn’t sure would hold. “The vendors. The shell companies. Taylor’s name is on all of it, but Taylor didn’t start working here until June. Some of those companies were registered months before he arrived.”
The barn went very quiet.
“What are you saying?” My voice came out flat.
Graham held my eyes. “I’m saying someone set the table before Taylor sat down to eat.”
The implication hit me hard.
“No.” The word was out before I’d finished thinking it. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Rose—”
“Don’t you dare.” I stood up so fast Starlight shifted sideways. “You’ve been here three weeks. You don’t know her. You don’t know what she’s done for me, what she’s been through?—”
“I know what I’m seeing, Rose. The timing, the patterns?—”
“You’re seeing what you want to see.” My hands were shaking. Not from the kiss anymore, from something hotter and uglier. “Denise has been here for five years. She was here when I had nothing. When the ranch was barely surviving. When I couldn’t make payroll and she deferred her own salary for three months so I could keep the lights on.”
