PROLOGUE
1999 — Jackson County Fair
The livestock barn at the Jackson County Fair smelled like hay, leather, manure, and sweat.
Clara loved it.
The sketchbook under her arm felt like another limb, as necessary as breathing since she’d come to Jackson County to paint the mountains.
She moved slowly down the aisle between the stalls, pausing every few feet to admire a horse or scribble a line of charcoal across the page.
“Pretty little thing, isn’t she?”
Clara turned.
Wade Hollis stood in the next aisle over, one hand hooked in the pocket of his jeans, smile already in place.
He was older than most of the men at the fair. Broad-shouldered. Expensive boots. The kind of man who carried himself like everything in the county belonged to him.
Including, apparently, her.
“She is,” Clara said, glancing back at the mare in the stall. “Beautiful mover.”
“Wasn’t talking about the horse.”
He didn’t look at her like a woman.
He looked at her like a deed he meant to sign—checking the lines, deciding if she’d be worth the price.
Her stomach dropped.
She gave him a thin smile and stepped to the side, meaning to go around him.
He moved too.
Blocking the aisle.
Down the aisle, a girl brushing a bay gelding went still. She didn’t look up. She just… stopped.
“I should get back,” she said.
“You should stay.”
His gaze slid over her in a way that made her skin crawl. Not admiration. Ownership.
Clara tightened her grip on the sketchbook.
“Excuse me.”
He reached out and took hold of her arm.
Like he had every right in the world.
His fingers wrapped around the bare skin above her elbow, thumb rubbing once, slowly, against the inside of her arm. Revulsion flashed through her so hard she almost jerked.
“Mr. Hollis,” she said, voice flat, “take your hand off me.”
“Wade.”
