She looked at me. Dead serious. Negotiations were not over. "Clay. If I give you my horse—" The stuffed horse. "—and my most favorite hair ribbon—" The limp purple ribbon trailing from her ringlets. "—and also I have a lollipop in my pocket that only has a little bit of fluff on it... will you teach me to ride a bull?"
I was done. Absolutely, completely done. I laughed so hard something broke loose in my chest—something I didn't know had been locked down. Maisie grinned up at me from under my hat, delighted she'd made me laugh, already working on her next angle because this kid was a born negotiator.
Maggie was watching from Jack's side, and the look on her face—soft, surprised, like she was seeing something new—hit me in a way I wasn't ready for.
"You're a natural," she said quietly.
I didn't know what to do with that, so I shifted Maisie on my hip. "Come on, princess. Let's go find your mommy."
"She was prolly really worried. She's a worry-bug." Maisie leaned her head against my shoulder with the boneless trust of a child who'd decided you were safe. "She loves me the most. More than all the stars. That's a lot of stars, Clay."
"Yeah. That's a lot of stars."
We made our way toward the police tent—me, Maisie on my hip, Momma beside us with that quiet alertness she got when one of her children was doing something she found interesting. She hadn't said much since I'd come back from the ride. Hadn't needed to. I could feel her cataloguing every interaction, filing it away in whatever vast maternal database she maintained on her children's emotional development.
I was choosing not to think about it.
We were twenty feet away when the door burst open.
She came out running. Blonde hair, lighter than Maisie's, falling around a face that was tear-streaked and desperate and?—
Beautiful.
The word landed like a rifle shot. Clean. Final. Devastating.
Not the way the women in the stands were beautiful—done up, deliberate. This was quieter and more dangerous. The kind of beautiful that wasn't trying, that existed in the line of her jaw and the way her whole body oriented toward her daughter like a compass finding north. There was strength in the way she moved, even through the tears—the strength of a woman who'd been carrying weight for a long time and had built the muscle to bear it.
"Mommy!" Maisie exploded off my hip with a shriek that could shatter glass. I barely set her down before she was running, pink boots pounding the dirt.
The woman dropped to her knees and caught her daughter like the world had just handed back the only thing that mattered. She pulled Maisie in tight, one shaking hand on the back of her head, the other wrapped around her small body, and held on with a fierceness that made my throat close.
I stood there and watched this woman hold her child like she was the most precious thing in the universe, and something rearranged itself inside my chest with a slow, grinding shift I was entirely unprepared for.
"Oh my God, baby—I looked everywhere?—"
"Mommy, don't cry! Clay found me and he's arealcowboy and he rided a bull and hewonand Miss Louisa gave me snacks?—"
Then she stood. And she looked at me.
Her eyes were blue. The kind of blue that didn't seem real—that you'd accuse someone of faking until you saw them up close and realised no, that was just the color God had picked, and He'dbeen showing off. Red-rimmed and wet, and they hit me like a physical thing.
"You found her?" she said. "You're Clay?"
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
I was Clay Blackwood. I had been charming women since before I could shave. I had literally never, in thirty-one years, been speechless in front of a beautiful woman.
"I—yeah." Sandpaper voice. I cleared my throat. Scratched the back of my head. "That's—I found her. Near the stock pens. She was—I mean, she's fine. She's great. She's—" I gestured at Maisie, who was perfectly visible and did not require gesturing at. "She's right there."
Smooth, Blackwood. Really smooth.
Callie's voice steadied beneath the tears. "She's everything. She's my whole world. Thank you—I don't even know how to?—"
"You don't owe me anything." I wanted to say something else. Something smooth, something that would make her smile instead of cry, something that would give me a reason to keep standing here. But my brain had left the building along with my ability to form sentences.
She held my gaze for a beat. Two. Then she nodded, soft and final.
