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“Hmm. Do you have a resumé or anything I can look at? The Marshalls need ranch hands, but I’m looking for someone to work for me.”

“What do you do?” Caitlyn asked.

“I co-run a female-owned ranch supply company. We build and design machines that make ranch life easier.”

“No way. That sounds kinda perfect, actually. And you’d hire me?”

“If you show me what you can do. We’d even be willing to fund some of your education if you agree to work for us long enough.” She was spit-balling, but it made sense as she was saying it. More than anything else had, ever.

Caitlyn’s eyes got as big as Lily’s food bowl. The idea excited her, too.

“No shit?” She scrunched up her nose. “Sorry.”

Jill smiled. “No apologies. Are you interested? I’d just need to see where you’ve worked and have you list your skills out so I can match them—” she started.

“I-I don’t really write,” Caitlyn shot back. “I mean, I can’t. I’m dyslexic, so it comes out all garbled.” The young woman bit her bottom lip and moisture lined her eyes. “But I love working with gears and stuff. If you just let me try.”

Jill looked down at the camera in her hands. “Could you show me if you had a camera?”

“I have my phone that takes pretty decent pictures. I guess I could film some of what I do and talk through my methods, maybe take some stills of work I’ve done already?”

A smile erupted on Jill’s face as she nodded. She knew just what to do to make Steel Born sustainable and how to keep an influx of young—and female—engineering talent fostered and supported. They’d run an internship program that they’d announce at the CAF in a couple weeks. Take engineering and STEM students, with a preference for females or female-identifying students who didn’t have the same possibilities as their male counterparts. They could do the same with business students as the time came.

The idea came fully formed and desperate for execution. “Okay. Do that and bring it by next week and I’ll look it over. Until then, if you want temporary work, go next door, but tell them I’ve got you as soon as I get your digital resumé.”

Caitlyn nodded, her smile genuine and sweet. Jill would bet she hadn’t been given many yeses in her life. When the girl was out of sight, Jill let out a laugh, picked a piece of dry grass, and twirled it between her fingers. Meeting Caitlyn was a strike of good fortune, indeed. If she could get the young woman trained on the business side of things, maybe she could dispatch Jax to whatever path he was waiting to walk down.

You really want him to leave? her heart asked. No, she didn’t. But he was going to, and so was she; this wasn’t her home, even though it was starting to feel like it could be.

The puffy white clouds above her stayed pinned in place, dappling the lime and jade field with perfect cylindrical shadows. Thankfully, the winter winds were still a ways off.

She leaned back against the mower, grateful for the moment of respite. If she’d stayed with Henley Corp., she’d be on the road visiting places like this, appreciating the allure of small-town life. But she wouldn’t know it like she was starting to know Deer Creek. A night or two in each place, fancy restaurants, and then onto the next.

No spontaneous card games in Mae’s like she’d happened up on the night before when she snuck into town for a vanilla tart. No morning walks along Main Street where people were starting to wave and greet her by name. No curling up on the couch with her best friend while they watched a rom-com.

Beyond making her own way, beyond distancing herself from the rodeo and all that came with it, she wanted stability. Waking up in the same place, finding a coffee shop that got to know her order, maybe even meeting a set of friends she could talk into starting a book club with her—that was the life she craved. A life neither Liam nor her parents could have shared with her.

At one point, she’d thought she’d found that life in her nook of the city. But baristas came and went according to their school schedules, all her Alamo Heights neighbors had moved when the neighborhood gentrified, and she wasn’t sure she shouldn’t follow suit.

Waking up in the same place wasn’t worth it if the place changed and lost its uniqueness and culture more and more each month.

Maybe there was something to this Deer Creek thing. It’d hooked Maggie, a woman who knew both worlds and had sworn never to move back to the ranch or small town that had raised her. If they could both help other young women following in their stead, that would be the perfect gift back to the community that had supported them both.

The test was in the reception at the Texas Cattleman’s Association Fair. If her idea, as exciting as it was to her, didn’t get the same reception there, it would be harder to get it off the ground.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Jax offered, slamming shut the dilapidated shed door and fastening the lock. He’d put back together the toolbox she’d nabbed from Maggie’s shed, and she’d let him. There was no rule stating that a woman who forged her own path couldn’t accept help every now and then. Especially from a local handsome cowboy.

In fact, in the world she and Maggie dreamed up when they were new to San Antonio, they’d both hoped for a handsome cowboy to distract them on weekends. In Jill’s own world, though, a rodeo man was off-limits, and Jax? Well, you could take him out of the rodeo, but you couldn’t ride the rodeo out of him.

“Just thinking about a couple things.”

“Like?” he asked, sliding his feet out in front of him and joining her in the dirt. He popped his ball cap high on his head and focused his gaze on her.

She filled him in on her strange interaction with the girl who’d materialized on the property, giving her an answer to everything.

“That’s a helluva cool idea, Jill.”

“I think so. We’ll see what the CAF thinks, but it seems perfect.”