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"Come on, boy, time to work and keep your yappin’ mouth shut." This came from Roy Taggart. He was in his late fifties and still as spry as Sawyer.
Roy used to have a problem—said I was too soft on the horses, that I’d get someone hurt with all my "gentle nonsense." But that changed the day I took on Ghost, a rank gelding that nobody could get a bridle on without a fight.
Ghost wasn’t just ornery—he was dangerous. He’d thrown three men, kicked a rail clean in half, and bloodied more than one nose. Hunt was close to washing his hands of the animal. But I saw something in Ghost’s eyes, something beyond the wild.
Ghost had been with us for ten days when I decided to take him on since everyone else had given up. I used to just be a ranch hand then, twenty-two, struggling to find my feet.
I walked into the round pen that morning, slow and steady, ignoring the murmurs from the boys leaning on the fence.
Ghost snorted and pawed the dirt, his muscles bunched tight as a spring. I didn’t reach for a rope, didn’t force a halter. I just stood there, breathing deep, letting him feel me, waiting for the moment his ears flicked forward. Finally, I got a twitch.
Then I moved—not toward him, but away. I turned my back and gave him the choice.
Roy scoffed, muttering, "Damn fool girl," under his breath.
But Ghost followed me. One step, then another. He took his time. By the time the sun was high, that big gray gelding had his nose in my palm, his breath warm and steady. When I slid the bridle over his head without a single fight, the fence line went quiet.
That’s when Roy tipped his hat back, squinted at me like he was seeing me for the first time, and grunted, "Well, I’ll be damned."
From that day on, he called me "the horse witch"—half teasing, half because he couldn’t call me a bitch. Hunt wouldn’t put up with that. But I knew his respect was genuine. In ranch country, it was your skill that got you deference, though it took longer to earn it, depending upon what you had between your legs.
I was just about to head to the stable when the ranch house door opened. “Elena, come on in, will you?” Hunt ordered.
I didn’t want to go in. I hadn’t been in since Nashpassed. I’d all but lived there for the last two months of his life because he fired every nurse or home help we hired. I’d slept in his room on a chair many nights, and sometimes, when I allowed Hunt to give me a break, I went back to the bunkhouse and collapsed.
Nash was an ornery man, and that didn’t change ‘cause he was dying; in fact, he dug his heels even more. He wanted Duke with him and pushed hard to make that happen, except to call his son himself ‘cause Duke didn’t take his father’s calls.
Hunt called Duke, who’d told him he was too busy to come around.
Nash had nagged me. “Call Duke. He’ll listen to you.”
The man was delirious. Duke would rather carve me up and sell my body parts as pig feed before he’d listen to me. Instead, I lied to Nash that Duke was on his way. When Nash became delirious with pain and morphine, I lied some more and told him Duke was just a few miles away. He forgot what I said, and knowing Duke was coming for him made him happy. I lied to a dying man until he took his last breath.
I lied and told him Duke had called, said he’d forgiven him for everything—that he was just caught in the snowstorm. Nash could look out the window and see the snow falling hard, relentless, and that made it easier for him to believe the story and stay in his feverish, make-believe world.
“Why?” I asked wearily.
“Boss wants to talk to you,” Hunt informed me withzero inflection, telling me nothing about what the fuck I was walking into, so I took off my hat and went up the short stairs to the porch of the ranch house.
He led me to Nash’s office.
The office smelled of old leather, cigar smoke, and dust—like time had settled in and refused to be moved. Heavy oak bookshelves lined the walls, filled with ranch ledgers, worn paperbacks, and a few bottles of whiskey tucked between them. The desk, a hulking beast of dark wood scarred from decades of hard living, sat in the center of the room like a throne.
I’d worked there when Nash hadn’t been able to. Took care of everything from paying bills to managing the inventory to…basically managing the ranchbusiness. Hunt could do the day-to-day, but ask him to look at an Excel sheet, and he was liable to throw you out of the window.
Duke looked as stiff as the chair he was sitting in, shoulders squared, jaw set tight. He was built like his father, but where Nash had been all fire and fury, Duke was cold steel. He didn’t fidget, didn’t look away, and didn’t offer so much as a nod in greeting.
Thank the Lord, Fiona wasn’t there! Her absence settled in my chest like a small mercy. I didn’t have the energy to see them together, not anymore.
“What exactly do you do here?” His voice was like a door slamming shut.
Hunt growled, “Duke, we talked about this.”
“I wantherto answer,” Duke demanded, hisnostrils flaring.
He looked good—too good, in a way that made it worse. Duke had always been handsome, but at thirty, he carried himself with the kind of authority that money and success carved into a man. He wasn’t a cowboy by action but by blood. Even in a suit, he looked rugged—like the land still had its claim on him whether he wanted it or not. Broad shoulders, sharp jaw, the same storm-dark eyes that once made me believe in forever.
At twenty, he’d been all restless energy and reckless kisses, a wildfire I could barely hold on to. At thirty, he was something else entirely—controlled, distant, untouchable. A man who built empires instead of fences, with no use for the girl I once was or the woman I’d become.