Damn it.
She gets under my skin in a way nothing else ever has. Every instinct I have is pulling in opposite directions—hold on, let go, protect the ranch, protect her—and I don’t know which one I’ll regret more.
The old Gage Hollis would’ve never let a woman come between him and his ranch—but somewhere along the way, Sloane Carter walked in and rearranged the whole damn structure.
“Damn it.” I turn the light off in the office and head into the main house for the rest of the day. The work that the guys are doing pours into the next day, and the day is even hotter than it was yesterday.
Sloane’s sedan is back to being parked on the property, and she didn’t come into my bed last night. I didn’t expect her to, but after sleeping beside each other for a month, it feels strange not to be now.
I miss her, and I hate that I miss her.
I don’t see her for the day, which means she’s hiding out in the main house or her bedroom. It’s fine by me as I keep busy with chores and push the guys to do things we often neglect or prolong as a yearly or monthly task.
Who cares if it was just done? Do it again.
I go back into the office and shut myself inside. I swear, I’ve never spent more time in this office than I have now, but for some reason, I always return to the will and allthe paperwork. Monty provided a whole folder, and I still haven’t gone through all of it.
With everyone distracted, it seems like a good time as any to get through the rest of it.
I open the folder and start sifting through it, paper sliding beneath my fingers. Ledgers and land documentation—things I’ve dug through more times than I can count—back when I was hunting for a loophole to get Sloane to leave.
That was before. Now, I’m scanning every line for a reason to keep her—any excuse that lets me undo what I already set in motion.
It’s a mess, isn’t it—me, all of this.
I told her to go make a deal with Horizon if she wanted, then turned around and started looking for ways to fix it anyway.
I’m a ticking time bomb—not just with my temper, but all of it—every thought wound too tight.
Emotionally, I can barely manage a damn thing. I barely understand myself half the time, and to make matters worse, I tell her one thing and then I go ahead and do another.
I’m not trying to be confusing, but she cracked open something in my head I worked damn hard to keep sealed, and now it’s a jumbled mess I can’t shove back down.
My hand stops at a letter in Uncle Sam’s handwriting. It has my name and Sloane’s written across the front. I narrow my eyes, a prickle of unease crawling up my spine.
Why is this the first time I’m stumbling across this? The letter is light in my hands, deceptively so, and as I reach out for the letter opener to unseal it, Jesse comes barging in.
“Sorry to interrupt, but we got some bad news down by the pasture,” he says breathlessly. I sigh deeply, already bracing for how much worse this day is about to get.
I toss the letter and the opener on the desk, the unanswered weight of it lingering as I rush out after him. We reach the end of the property where Mason is standing, grimacing as we get closer to the fence.
It’s clipped again, only in a different spot, straight down the middle.
“As soon as we noticed, we gathered all the cattle back inside. Just lucky none of them noticed it,” Jesse adds as I groan, forcing myself not to lash out at them because, really, they handled it right.
They did exactly as they were supposed to, and everything could be a lot worse, but this is the second time this fence has been clipped.
I look to them both. “Good work, guys. Did you see anything?” I ask, hoping maybe they spotted anything or anyone near the property today.
Yesterday, it was fine. Today, it feels deliberate.
Mason shakes his head. “No, but maybe Miss Carter’s fancy security cameras may help,” he suggests as I look up at the camera nestled at the edge of the house. I hum and shake my head, eyes still on the camera.
“I’ll be damned. She just keeps on saving this place,” I mutter, making my way up the hill, stopping to look back at them like the truth just landed heavier than I expected.
“Repair that, please,” I tell them, nicer this time. If I can find out who did this, then maybe—just maybe—I can put a stop to everything before it costs me more than land.
I walk back into the office and turn on the computer, searching for the recordings facing the pasture. I rewind back to the early morning, and then I see it—the time stamp locked at two in the morning.
