Lonely.
Maybe they were separated.
Which meant he still didn’t have a right to…Yeah, he should still keep driving. All the more reason not to get involved, to show up on her doorstep. Surprise! I’m alive.
Nope and double nope.
He sighed, staring at the empty corral and the memories it triggered. He’d stood in a similar circle of light twenty years ago, practicing the same skills with the same determination. Back when he’d been Rowan Wallace instead of Hammer, back when his biggest worry was whether he’d make the high school rodeo team.
Back when Sierra Blackwood had been the center of his universe.
The memory hit him without warning—their last night together, him battered and bleeding from his final confrontation with his stepfather, Sierra cleaning his wounds with gentle hands and fierce eyes.
“It’s going to be okay,” she’d whispered, pressing a cloth to the cut above his left eyebrow. “We’ll figure something out. We always do.”
“I chose the military,” he said softly now.
Saxon looked up at him. “We all did.”
He sighed. “I never regretted it until right now.”
Silence next to him.
He put the truck into Drive.
Saxon put his phone away. “Let’s stop and get some grub.”
Hammer nodded, but the thought hit him that he should keep driving. Should collect Mack and head back to Missoula and the Jude County Smokejumpers training ground—the uncomplicated life of fighting fires and avoiding emotional entanglements.
He had no right to invade the happiness Sierra had built without him.
Clearly, Rowan Wallace needed to stay dead.
Three
Why Rowan had walked into her head and sat down last night, Sierra didn’t know. But he spent the better part of the night there, alive and looking exactly like he had the day he’d promised to come back.
They’d been doing something silly—in the barn, him pushing her on the big swing. And oh, she’d leaned into it. Leaned into him.
So no wonder she woke just a little ragged, her soul battered. Grief, out for purchase again.
Now the morning air bit into her lungs, the sweet smell of sage grass and pine drifting down from the mountain, a haze hanging in the morning air, turning the world gray and quiet except for the steady sound of hoofbeats on pastureland and the creak of leather. She’d been on the back of her palomino, Honey, since dropping Huck off at school, needing to bring the cattle down for pregnancy checking before the weather turned. October in Colorado meant snow could hit any day, and pregnant cows needed different feed, different care, different everything.
“We’re missing six more cows, Sierra.” Jake Martin rode up beside her, his young face serious beneath the brim of his hat. Twenty-two years old and eager to prove himself, Jake had been working day labor for her since his high school graduation. Good kid, solid worker, reminded her of someone she didn’t want to think about.
Six. Sierra’s stomach dropped. These were her best breeding stock, the cows she’d been counting on to carry next year’s calf crop. Without them, she wouldn’t have enough calves to sell come spring. Without spring calf sales, she couldn’t make the bank payment.
“Could be they drifted to the north pasture,” called Tomás Ruiz from twenty yards away. Older than Jake, more experienced, Tomás had worked for Grandpa Elway before his death. “Grass is still good up there.”
“Maybe.” But Sierra’s gut told her differently. Cattle didn’t just disappear, especially not her best cows.
The dream flickered through her mind again, an old memory of Rowan, laughing, working with her grandfather, not unlike Tomás or Jake.
She could still see him perfectly—the way his sandy-brown hair caught the sunlight as it fell across his forehead, those impossibly blue eyes focused with quiet intensity as he worked with a difficult horse. He’d worn flannel shirts with the sleeves rolled up, revealing strong forearms that spoke of honest work, an interesting tattoo on his forearm that read, Trouble—that sounded right—and when he smiled…well, when he smiled, it transformed his whole face from serious to devastating. There had been something almost magnetic about the way he moved in the saddle, like he and the horse were extensions of each other, all fluid grace and controlled power.
Seeing him on a horse could simply undo her sad, pitiful teenage heart.
Stop.
