"We'd like to see her move under saddle," Maggie said. "And I want her vet records. Full panel."
"I can have those emailed by end of day."
"Good." Maggie shook his hand. "We'll be in touch."
Walking back to the truck, I held the door for her without thinking about it. She stopped, looked at the open door, looked at me, and seemed to wage a brief internal war about whether accepting a held door constituted some kind of surrender.
She got in. Didn't say thank you. Didn't say anything.
I closed the door, rounded the truck, and caught Walt watching from his porch with that same knowing smile.
Yeah. I wasn't fooling him either.
The drive home was different.
The professional barrier that Maggie had erected that morning was thinner now—worn down by three hours of conversation and the particular intimacy of shared expertise. She was looser behind the wheel. Talked with one hand when she got excited about a breeding theory. Let sentences trail off without rushing to fill them.
She was letting me see the woman behind the clipboard, and she either didn't realize it or had stopped caring.
"If Wyatt approves the proposal," she said, one wrist draped over the steering wheel, "and if we get the Fort Worth stallion, and if Juniper's vet panel comes back clean—that's three foundation animals. Two broodmares and a stud. Enough to start."
"You'd want to add a third mare within the first year," I said. "Genetic diversity. And it gives you a buffer if one doesn't take."
"I know. I've got my eye on a line out of Oklahoma, but that's phase two money, and we're not there yet." She tapped herthumb against the wheel, thinking. "The five-year plan has us at eight broodmares by year four, with selective outside breeding to keep the gene pool open."
"Eight's ambitious."
"Eight's necessary. Anything less and we're a hobby program. I'm not building a hobby."
"No," I said. "You're not."
She glanced at me. Held it a beat longer than she would have that morning. "You think it can work?"
"I think you've done the homework. I think the market's there. And I think you've got better instincts for this than anyone else on that ranch, including me." I watched the road. "What I think doesn't matter as much as what you think."
"It matters," she said, quiet enough that I almost missed it. "Your opinion matters to me. Professionally."
The "professionally" was tacked on like a lock on a door she'd already opened.
I let it sit.
Somewhere around the halfway mark, Sully shifted in the back seat. I heard the rustle of movement, felt the truck's weight adjust, and then watched in the rearview mirror as my dog—my reserved, slow-to-warm, trust-nobody dog—rested his big head on Maggie's shoulder from behind.
She startled. Just a flinch, then a breath, then her hand came up and found the spot behind his ear without looking—the same spot she'd scratched that first night in Wild Creek, like her fingers remembered the map of him.
"Hey, buddy," she murmured. "You doing okay back there?"
Sully's tail swept the back seat once. His eyes half-closed. Settled.
Maggie kept driving one-handed, her other hand resting on the dog's head, fingers working slow circles through his fur. She didn't seem to realize she was doing it.
Sully had decided about Maggie in Wild Creek. The rest of us were just catching up.
Something cracked open in my chest watching her—one hand on the wheel, one hand on my dog, the late afternoon light turning her hair to gold. Not a woman performing strength or competence or control. Just Maggie, unguarded, driving home from a day that had felt more like partnership than anything I'd experienced in years.
I wanted this. The truck cab and the shared work and the dog who'd chosen her. The arguments about pastern angles. The way she fought for her dream like it was a living thing she had to protect. The way she'd sat with my silence about Montana and hadn't tried to fill it with questions I wasn't ready to answer.
I wanted all of it. And I was done pretending that wanting was something I could manage or contain or file away for later consideration.
