Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 43512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
“No.”
She doesn’t look up. “You think someone wants the north pasture.”
“I think someone wants leverage.”
She sits back on her heels. “We’ve said no to developers every year. Even when the numbers made Daddy swallow hard. Even when the roof needed replacing. Even when the co-op offered us a loan that felt like a trap.”
“That’s motive.”
She nods slowly. “And we had that water rights dispute with the Keenes three years back.”
“Keenes have tools and ego.”
“And the Stroud group sent a rep last spring.”
“Strouds have cash and patience.”
She blows out a breath. “This list is not comforting.”
“No one said it would be.”
We work in parallel for a few minutes—me bracing the new post, her stretching the wire. The physical rhythm helps. It’s harder for your emotions to drag you under when your hands are busy keeping something upright.
“You left for the city fast,” I say before I can talk myself out of it. “After…”
Her shoulders go still.
I’m not trying to pick at the past for sport. I’m trying to understand the timeline. The pressure points. The shape of anything that could tie our personal history to the current threat.
But I can hear the edge in my own voice.
She sets her pliers down carefully. “I left because I needed to,” she says. “Not because I wanted to punish you.”
I nod once. “I wasn’t asking for a confession.”
“Good.” She meets my eyes, chin high. “Because you don’t get to audit my survival strategies now that you’ve decided to come home again.”
That one lands.
Fair shot.
I respect it. “Alright,” I say. “Then answer this instead.”
She raises a brow.
“Who’s got the most to gain from your dad being forced to sell in the next sixty days?”
She thinks, visibly. The strategist in her is as real as the ranch girl.
“Anyone who wants the rodeo grounds tied into that expansion corridor. That north pasture has the cleanest access to the highway. And we’re sitting on land that isn’t just valuable—it's symbolic. The last big family spread still refusing to be bought.”
“Symbolic is a trigger word for egomaniacs.”
“That’s Texas,” she says dryly.
I snort.
She flips the wire tensioner and tests it again. It holds.
Then she stands.
I’m already upright, but she’s close now—close enough that the sun catches the tiny freckles across her nose and my brain goes profoundly unhelpful.
There’s still a smudge of grease at her temple from where she pushed hair back with dirty fingers. The urge to wipe it away is overwhelming.
I don’t touch her.
I want to.
Want is a dangerous animal.
“You slept okay?” she asks, voice casual.
I hesitate a beat too long.
Her eyes narrow. “You didn’t?”
“I slept,” I breathe out.
“That’s not what I asked.”
I almost smile. This version of her is the same as the old one—sharp as a tack, soft underneath when she chooses to be.
“I’m fine,” I say.
She hums like she doesn’t buy it.
Then she steps even closer and reaches up with the rag in her hand.
Before I can ask what she’s doing, she wipes the grease off my cheek.
I freeze.
It’s nothing.
It’s everything.
Her fingers graze my skin for half a second. A half-second too long. Her breath hitches. Mine does too. We stare at each other like we’re both remembering a life where this kind of touch wasn’t loaded with land mines.
“This is a bad idea,” she whispers.
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
I keep my voice level. “We’re already in it.”
“Don’t make it harder.”
I step back—barely—giving her the space she’s asking for without saying it outright.
“Copy that,” I say.
She looks relieved. She also looks disappointed. That’s the kind of contradiction that makes a man lose religion.
A truck crunches over gravel in the distance—one of the hands arriving early. The spell breaks like a thin sheet of ice.
Delaney clears her throat and turns toward the tool kit. “Alright,” she says briskly. “Let’s finish this before the town files a formal petition for our wedding venue.”
I pick up the staple gun. “Deal.”
But as we work, my gaze keeps sliding to her profile, and the question stays anchored in my head like a hook I can’t shake: If someone is willing to hurt this ranch to get what they want…
how far will they go once they realize Delaney Coleman is the real leverage point?
I glance toward the house, toward the barn, toward every stretch of land that belongs to the Colemans and now—by proximity, by promise, by some old rope swing vow that never fully died—belongs to me too.
I will find who is responsible.
And I will end this before Delaney ever has to learn what it looks like when the war in my head decides to fight for something worth keeping.
SEVEN
DELANEY
Old secrets in this town settle like sediment in the creek—out of sight, but still shaping how the water runs.
I spend most of the afternoon at Daddy’s desk, the big oak one in his office that smells like pencil shavings and lemon oil, flipping through file drawers that go back farther than I do. Nash is out walking the north fence with Rafe, checking for more “accidents.” My job, apparently, is paperwork archaeology.