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My cell dings and I glance at the screen.

Mason: Why are you being weird?

Me: I'm not.

Mason: You're sitting in your truck and avoiding a woman you're paying three hundred thousand dollars. That's weird, Jagger, by any definition.

Me: I told you that I'm observing her. When you're paying, you can call the shots. Until then, mind your own business.

I climb out of the truck, walking fast toward my house instead of the barn, my pulse erratic and unfamiliar. Once I'm inside with the door shut behind me, I pull out my phone. I do the one thing I should've done the second Roy first mentioned her company name, but I didn't since I've been so busy securing our animals and repairing damage from the storm.

I search Cooper Equine Rehab. The website loads slower than I want it to, and my thumb hovers over the screen. A professional site with a logo of a horse mid-stride and a banner photo across the top that stops my heart cold in my chest.

Red hair. Bright green eyes lit up in the afternoon light of whatever pasture the photo was taken in. A smile with the exact same crooked edge to it that I watched cross a barroom floor eleven months ago like she owned the place.

Lainey Cooper. Founder and lead therapist, Cooper Equine Rehab.

I sit down hard on the arm of the couch, phone shaking slightly in my hand, scrolling through client testimonials and treatment philosophies. It all tells a story about a whole professional life she built three counties away. All while I was busy chasing strangers around a bar and searching for a name that never once turned up anything useful, because I never had the one piece of information that would've actually mattered.

Her last name.

It's the one detail I chased through every search engine and every mutual acquaintance I could think to ask. All this time, I could've had it if I'd just known to ask Roy.

A whole night I've turned over in my head a thousand times since, and somehow the most important details slipped right past me, such as her last name and what she does for a living.

I'll be damned.

My palms begin to sweat. I scroll back to the top and stare at her photo again, some part of me still expecting it to change and trick me. But it doesn't. It's her. It's absolutely, unmistakably her. She's standing in my own family's barn right now, thirty yards from where I'm sitting like a coward instead of walking straight up and demanding to know why she didn't leave me her phone number or wait for me to return.

"Pull it together," I mutter out loud to an empty living room, and it sounds exactly as stupid as it feels.

I set the phone down, drag both hands down my face, and force air into my lungs slower than I want to. Then I go to the window and try to see her, but she's not in my view.

I glance down at myself. I'm full of dirt, sweat, and cow hair.

Shower.

I strip my jacket off before I hit the bathroom. I crank the water hotter than normal, as if enough heat might burn off eleven months of bad decisions before I have to stand in front of her.

I don't know what I'm doing.

That's the plain truth of it, standing under water gone nearly scalding. I scrub dirt and cow hair and fence rust off my hands like it's the problem and not the fact that Lainey Cooper is standing in my family's barn, completely unaware I know exactly who she's working for.

Or does she know it's me?

I freeze, mid-shampoo.

No. She can't.

Surely she researched me.

Roy would have told her my name.

Shit. Does she know it's me or not?

I scrub my scalp and rinse, not feeling any calmer.

Do I walk in there and say her name? Demand answers in front of Roy's replacement crew and half my brothers and whoever else happens to be within earshot?