But if Burke’s timing was right, Caitlin was still at work.
Which meant Izzy could still pull this off before anyone in Sylva started talking.
Or before dark.
The Blue Ridge Mountains rose ahead in layered blues and soft spring haze. Unlike Denver, where winter still clung stubbornly to the city streets, the valleys here were already waking up. Fresh green shimmered along the hillsides, dogwoods blooming beneath trees leafing out.
By the time she turned onto Scott Valley Road, she was ready to admit the car had been a spectacular mistake.
It was the kind of decision made by a woman in mild emotional collapse—wearing excellent sunglasses and needing at least one thing in her life to look like she had it together.
She slowed as the road curved—and then she saw it.
A massive timber entrance arched over the drive, thick beams weathered to a deep, rich brown.
BRIDLEPATH FARM was burned clean into the wood.
Izzy blinked.
“Oh.”
This wasn’t a farm.
This was money.
Real money.
She rolled forward, gravel crunching under the tires as the property opened around her.
Blackboard fencing stretched in perfect lines across manicured paddocks. To her right, a wide, glassy pond caught the afternoon light, horses moving along its edge in quiet, lazy arcs. To her left, a cluster of sleek mares grazed with their foals—long legs, delicate heads, the babies flicking their tails as they stayed close. She clocked the way the foals moved, the straightness of a colt’s legs and the easy swing of a mare’s walk—old habits of assessment kicking in before she could remind herself she’d sworn off this world.
Further in, the main barn came into view.
And that—that was not okay.
It was enormous. Immaculate. A long, high structure with multiple cupolas lining the roofline, each topped with a weather vane that caught the breeze. The siding was spotless, the white trim sharp, the entire place looking less like a working barn and more like something out of an equestrian magazine spread.
Round pens. Turnouts. Equipment that looked expensive even from a distance.
Everything was precise. Intentional. Controlled.
Of course, Caitlin hadn’t mentioned that Burke’s brother ran something that felt like a private facility for Olympic-level riders.
Izzy let out a quiet breath.
“Okay,” she murmured. “Noted.”
Then she saw the rest of it.
Up on a gentle rise beyond the pastures sat the main house—a large white farmhouse with a porch that stretched the full length of it, a row of weathered rockers angled toward the view, as if whoever lived there expected to sit still long enough to take it in.
Off to one side, set apart from the gleaming operation, stood an older red barn. Weathered, a little faded, trimmed in white with a tin gambrel roof and a broad cross-buck door. It seemed like it had been there long before everything else was built.
Near the treeline, past the mare and foal pasture, sat a small cottage.
Stone. Moss. A narrow porch. A lantern hanging beside the door.
It could have been something out of a storybook.
