There are faint scratches and a few rusty and sun-bleached patches. A little dullness along the edges.
But somehow, that only makes it better.
The body is all rounded curves and thick steel, built back when trucks were meant to work instead of look pretty.
The front fenders swell out like broad shoulders, framing a wide chrome grille with horizontal bars that catch the light. The hood slopes forward, the old Chevrolet script badge still mounted along the side like a small piece of history. Whitewall tires hug the pavement beneath dark steel wheels.
I reach out, brushing my fingers across the cool metal of the hood.
It feels sturdy.
Reliable.
Like something built to last generations.
“She’s a beauty,” I admit.
Harleigh beams. “I know.”
She leans against the driver’s door. “I fell in love with her when I was little.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“My grandfather used to sit me in his lap while he worked around the ranch and let me steer. And my sister Matty taught me how to drive in it.”
I can picture it instantly.
Little Harleigh with pigtails and dusty boots, gripping a giant steering wheel while an old rancher laughs beside her.
“She looks like she’s carried a lot of miles,” I say.
“Oh, she has.”
The cab is small and rounded, curved glass reflecting the cottonwood trees overhead. Through the window, I can see a worn, cracked leather bench seat. Behind the cab, the pickup bed stretches, and I imagine it full of hay bales.
For a moment, I’m not standing in a luxury resort parking lot. I’m back at the Silver Spur Ranch with my grandfather. Driving fence lines. Checking cattle. Living a life that felt simpler than the one I run now.
“It’s not what I’d expect a recent college grad girl to be driving,” I say.
Harleigh laughs. “I’m not your normal girl.”
She shrugs out of her blazer.
And suddenly, my attention shifts.
Underneath it, she’s wearing a body-hugging dress that fits her like it was designed specifically to torture men with weak self-control.
She bends slightly to toss the blazer through the open driver’s window.
My gaze drops.
The curve of her hips.
The length of her legs.
The way the dress hugs every inch of her waist and thighs.
I jerk my eyes back up.
