What he'd picked up on was me.
I stood in the pen with the lead rope slack in my hand and my chest doing something I didn't have a name for, and I knew — the way I always knew with horses, that gut-level certainty that bypassed thinking — that I'd handled it wrong.
Not the kiss itself. The kiss had been inevitable. A conclusion my body had been building toward since that first night I’d stopped to help her with her car. But the timing was off. So was the intent. I'd used it to derail her instead of answering her question.
She'd stood there with her evidence laid out clean and organized and instead of meeting it head-on I'd put my mouth on hers and hoped that would be enough to knock her off course. It wasn't. Rachel Grable didn't get knocked off course.
I unclipped the buckskin and let him back into the group pen. Watched him trot toward the far fence, head up, ears forward, already forgetting me. Good. At least one of us could move on.
I drove home. Stood in my kitchen with my hands braced on the counter and watched the light through the window above the sink turn orange and then purple and then dark.
Then I got back in my truck.
The cabin sat at the edge of Ruby Nelson's property, backed by cottonwoods, lit by a single porch light that turned the whole front of it gold. Rachel's car was parked on the gravel. Light glowed from behind the curtains in the front window.
I killed the engine and sat there. What was I going to say? I shouldn't have kissed you? That was true. I'm sorry? Also true, but incomplete. I wasn't sorry about the kiss. I was sorry I'd used it like a tool instead of saying what I meant. And what I meant was the part I didn't want to think about too much.
I got out of the truck before I could keep stalling. Crossed the gravel. Knocked twice, then stood there with my hat in my hands like some kind of idiot who'd never shown up uninvited at a woman's door before.
The lock turned. The door opened. Rachel stood in the frame in a loose t-shirt and the same worn jeans from earlier, her hair down around her shoulders. She looked at me like she wasn’t surprised to see me. Without the wariness I probably deserved. Just that same direct attention she'd given me since the first night on the road — direct, patient, completely unafraid of whatever she might find.
“Roman.”
“I shouldn't have done that.”
She leaned her shoulder against the doorframe. Crossed her arms. Not defensive. Waiting.
“Earlier,” I said. “At the pens. That wasn't—” I turned my hat in my hands. “That wasn't fair to you.”
“Which part?”
“The part where I kissed you to shut you up instead of giving you an answer.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. She wasn’t smiling, but she was close. “You drove out here to tell me that.”
“Yeah.”
“At nine thirty at night.”
“Yeah.”
She studied me. The porch light caught her hair and turned the dark blonde into something warmer. Her arms stayed crossed but her shoulders had dropped, and I could see the pulse in her throat.
“You're not trying to stop me,” she said.
I didn't answer.
“You keep showing up. You keep warning me off. But you're not actually trying to stop me.” Her chin lifted. “You're trying to protect me from whatever I'm walking into.”
The words landed somewhere behind my ribs. I looked past her at the warm light of the cabin, the leather journal open on the kitchen table, her handwriting visible even from the door. It was evidence of a woman who didn't stop working just because someone told her to.
I'd come out here to apologize and back away. That wasn't what was about to happen.
“The supplier,” I said. “The one who sent the clay mare. And the buckskin. And at least two others I haven't been able to confirm yet.”
Rachel went still.
“It’s not just Mustang Mountain.” I brought my eyes back to hers. “It’s not just this rodeo. It’s a network. Three years deep, multiple states, paperwork that holds up if no one looks past the first page.”
