Page 55

Even in those ridiculous shoes, she was fast. Not in the way that meant rushing — in the way that meant every step was the right step and there was no version of this that included standing still. The clipboard came up. She wrote. She walked. She turned. The smartwatch caught sun and flashed once.

And she looked tired.

Not the way people looked tired after a drive, which was rumpled and blinking. She looked tired the way a foundation looked tired — everything built on top of it, nothing holding it up. The shadows under her eyes were real and she’d done something with makeup that covered them well enough for a boardroom and not quite enough for morning light in a hayfield.

She hadn’t stopped moving since she’d gotten out of the car.

I let her work. I watched her pace the south end, turn at the corner, and start back along the west side. Her clothes would never survive a day out here. The clipboard was the only thing about her that looked like it knew where it was.

She finished the circuit and stopped at the northwest flag, the one I’d straightened with a rock. She looked at it. Looked at the ground. Wrote something on the clipboard.

Then she looked at me for the first time.

“Mr. Calloway.”

Her voice was precise. Full sentences, no wasted words, the kind of voice that filed the actionable thing first and the pleasantries after, except she hadn’t gotten to the pleasantries yet and I wasn’t sure she planned to.

“Call me Cash. Everybody does.”

“Cash.” She said it the way a clerk said the docket number. “Your west line is eight feet short of your flags.”

I looked at the flags. I looked at the line. I’d measured it four times with a tape that couldn’t agree with itself.

“I know,” I said.

I didn’t know.

She’d already turned back to her clipboard.

***

I gave it everything I had.

“So the arena sits here, and the chutes will go at the far end where the ground’s firmest.” I walked beside her, hands in my pockets, easy stride, the grin dialed to its most welcoming setting. “Parking’s the hay meadow, which Wyatt’s thrilled about, and the stock pens are already there from the sale. We’ve got creek access for water, natural drainage from the slope, and if you stand right here—” I stopped at the center of the field, near the tank, “—you can see the whole valley. It’s gorgeous in the evening. Brings a tear to the eye. Mine, specifically. Every time.”

She wrote on her clipboard.

“The chutes face east,” she said.

“Is that a problem?”

“Sun’s in the stock’s eyes in the morning. You want the arena running north-south if you can.”

I hadn’t thought about the sun.

I’d been thinking about the view.

She walked past me toward the south end of the field, where the old gate from the sale pens stood open on its hinges. I followed, still talking, still warm, still Cash.

“We can work with north. We’ll adjust the timing, run the rough stock after lunch when the light’s better—”

She stopped at the gate and pushed it. It swung inward, caught the ground, and stopped at a forty-five-degree angle. She pulled it back. Pushed again. Same result.

“This gate swings the wrong way,” she said.

“It swings fine.”

“It swings into the field. For livestock loading, that’s correct. For an event with foot traffic and emergency vehicles, it needs to swing out, or it needs to come off entirely.”