Page 13 of The Wrangler and the Tenderfoot

She leaned against the fence post. “You ever think about leaving this place?”

I didn’t have to think to answer. “Never.”

“Why?”

“The land here... it remembers you. If you leave, it pulls you back.”

She nodded, and I thought she understood exactly what I meant. Maybe she did.

I cleared my throat. “You want to see something cool?”

Her eyebrows went up above the sunglasses, but she nodded. I led her a little ways down the ridge, past a cluster of prickly pear, back onto Maddox land, to where the stone jutted out in a shelf. I crouched, brushed off the top and pointed at a pale spiral shape in the limestone.

She squinted. “What is that?”

Hell yes, this woman was more than a geologist. She should’ve known exactly what it was. “Fossilized shrimp,” I said. “At least, that’s what Buck says. Could be a worm, maybe. But shrimp sounds better.”

She bent low, squinted, and for a second, I expected the excited nerd-out geologists always did on TV. Instead, she frowned. “Looks like a swirl. A seashell, maybe. Or a trick of the light.”

I traced the outline with a finger. “It’s the only reason I passed fifth-grade science. Teacher made us bring in a fossil, but I didn’t have one. Found this instead, took some pictures and drew it. Got an A.”

She looked at me, then back at the stone. “I didn’t know there were fossils out here.”

Yeah, she definitely should’ve known that. “Lots of things buried,” I said. “Depends if you want to find them.”

She took a picture, then stood up. “You come here a lot?”

“When I need to think.” I realized how soft that sounded, so I added, “It’s quiet, and nobody bugs me.”

She nodded and let it go, but I couldn’t. Her story was falling apart already. We headed back to the horses, and as we mounted up, I caught the way her gaze lingered on the horizon, memorizing it.

On the ride down, I paid attention to how she moved. She kept the mare between us, but not in a way that said she feared me. It was caution directed at herself. My wolf mapped her at every turn, ten yards ahead, twelve behind, three feet off my left. The distance said something, but hell if I knew what.

We reached the main fence by nine-thirty. She logged the coordinates, checked her notes, and said, “Well, I need to get some soil samples.”

I stared at her for a second, then leaned toward her, resting on my pommel. “Why’d you really take this job, Jennie?”

She considered me. “Money. Curiosity. Maybe a little self-hate.”

“That’s honest,” I said.

She shrugged. “If I lied, you’d know.”

I believed her, but I didn’t say so. She was lying and I did know, meaning her statement was factual.

We didn’t talk much after that, both of us thinking. Why was she really here? She got off Jupiter and started collecting soil samples in little vials, storing them in her saddle bags. Once she'd made a million more notes, I led her back toward the Coleman ranch until we hit a spot she could safely make it on her own.

As we slowed to a stop, she looked at me and said, “You’re a good man, Reid. Even if you pretend not to be.”

After saying goodbye, I watched her ride off, her tracks fading into the scrub. My wolf tracked her until she was out of sight.

There were a lot of words for what this was, and I didn’t know any of them.

When I got back to the barn, the light had turned from gold to full white, the air heavy enough to flatten the shirts of anyone dumb enough to stand still. The horses were cooling off, flicking at the flies. Ghost sidestepped to the water trough, where Buck was leaning on the pump handle.

Buck eyed me as I walked Ghost into the shade. “You ride her hard, or put her away wet?”

He meant the horse, but Ash caught it from across the yard and nearly spit out her own coffee. “Pretty sure that’s not how it went, Buck,” she said. “I got twenty bucks says Reid spent the whole ride getting a geology lecture.”