Page 146 of Scent to the Feral Cowboys

The memory made my lips curve despite my frustration. She was so determined to keep her walls intact, even as cracks formed in their foundation.

I forced my attention back to the ledger, but immediately another memory surfaced.

Cooper and Boone trying to get Nelly on Ghost for the first time. They hadn’t succeeded.

"You want to try the saddle?" Cooper pressed, unable to help himself.

"No," Nelly said firmly. Then, after a moment: "But can I brush her?”

I watched from the doorway as Cooper showed her how to groom the mare.The way my pack mate’s hand pressed against Nelly’s, showing her how to skim the brush in the hair’s natural direction, made envy twist in my chest, wringing out my heart, pushing the blood from the organ.

The pencil in my hand snapped, bringing me back to the present. I stared down at the broken halves, annoyed at my lack of control. I dropped it carelessly, one busted end rolling off the desk.

I'd been a mess all week, breaking things, dropping things, losing my train of thought mid-sentence. I mean, I was always snapping pencils and pens, but it had reached a fever pitch now—all because a stubborn and stunning woman upended all mycareful planning, all my facts and figures, all the solutions I’d devised to complete our lives.

How many times had I imagined our Omega?How many times had I carefully constructed them in my mind, beginning with the golden ratio of features, then slowly modifying fractional shifts and details. The eyes a centimeter too far apart to be conventionally beautiful. A spattering of freckles that darkened in summer. Maybe their eyebrows were desperately in need of maintenance.

Whatever imaginary person I eventually painted in my mind always had one thing in common—they loved me, and my pack, without reservation or ego.

Had I ever pictured Nelly’s copper hair?

Had I ever pictured that wounded weariness in her gaze?

Had I ever imagined our Omega would be so full of unquenchable fire?

Like this afternoon just past lunch, when Boone discovered yet another giant patch of larkspur growing in the north pasture. Nelly was sitting on the sofa when he’d walked into the rambler, face grim. Our pack immediately pushed into gear; we couldn’t leave that poisonous shit around the cattle. We hadn’t expected Nelly to join us, hadn’t even offered it as a possibility. Yet she’d stood up from the sofa, donning a borrowed plaid button-down and dripped jeans, looking uncertain but determined. She’d walked swiftly toward the wall we hung our hats on, to the much smaller pair of boots—the ones that made our own boots looks so damn big—and shoved into them. She hadn’t cringed in discomfort; her feet were much better now.

“This is rough work, Nelly. We’ll be back in a bit,” Wyatt told her, and I wondered if he was full of fear at the idea of leaving her alone in the house. Would she run away again? My heart was in my throat. Her dangerous journey into the night was too recent to ignore.

"I want to help," she said, chin lifted in that defiant way she had, as if daring us to refuse her. I wasn’t too big of a man to admit that the way she looked right now would always get an automatic ‘yes,’ from me, regardless of the situation. I was wrapped around her Omega finger, no hope of unfurling.

We moved out as a unit, as a real pack, making our way to the UTVs. We took two, though the Polaris was technically made for six passengers, we were too big to fit more than two on the bench seats. Shovels and bags were already in the back of the vehicles. Cooper hummed as he drove me and Boone. I stared daggers at Wyatt and Wade’s back; they drew the lucky straw and were riding with Nelly.

When we arrived, everyone tumbled out and stared at the improbable crop of rich blue flowers.

“They’re so pretty,” Nelly breathed out, “It’s a shame to rip them out.”

“They’re as deadly as they are beautiful,” Wade said, handing her gloves that swallowed her smaller hands.

"Careful of the roots," Boone warned, getting closer to Nelly now. He pulled two hair ties from his pocket and slipped one over each hand, pulling them up to the glove’s edge to safeguard her wrists better. "Don't get the sap on your skin."

His fingers lingered longer than necessary on her wrists, tugging and repositioning the hairbands. Watching him touch her made me burn with jealousy.

I watched her throughout the afternoon, methodically digging alongside us, her pale skin flushing in the sun. Did she have any sunscreen on? Hell, did we own any sunscreen?I made a mental note to add it to my next purchase order.

She worked without complaint, even when I could see blisters forming on her palms. When Wyatt suggested she take a break, she gave him a withering look.

"I'm not delicate," she said, plunging her shovel back into the dirt with enough force to make her point. She rocked the handle up and down, pushing the blade’s point deeper before stepping on its top ridge and lifting the larkspur from its home.

Her blisters were bleeding by the time we finished. Wade took the shovel from her, driving it into the ground to stay upright on its own, and then he checked over her hands. My heart thumped when she didn’t pull away from my pack brother.

My mind traveled back to the ‘now’. To the makeshift office, to the tasks I was meant to be doing right now.

But nothing could capture my attention the way Nelly did. She was somehow the answer to every accounting issue, each error that kept me from balancing the books. She made me want to slough off my responsibility and give into the fact I was merely a figurehead now. Between Cooper’s inheritance, his portfolio manager, and that damn phone app which showed balance fluctuations and trade results in real time, there was nothing important left for me. I redundantly ran numbers. I processed inventory orders that were nearly always the same—I quickly wrote ‘add sunscreen to order’ when my thoughts were interrupted by my mental note from earlier—and I tried to make myself useful. I performed my trained tasks like a wind-up monkey with cymbals.

Crash.

Crash.