I set the spreadsheet back down.
"Theoretically," I say.
"Based on the operational data from the last quarter that the previous owner sent over, yes."
I look at him for a moment. He looks back, steady, waiting. In the early morning light coming through the kitchen window he looks younger than I expected, a burned-out billionaire, look.
There are faint lines at the corners of his eyes and a tiredness that sits just beneath the surface, but the bone structure underneath all that exhaustion is unfairly good.
Strong jaw, dark hair that's slightly disheveled from what I suspect was an actual night of sleep for once in his life.
The reading glasses didn't help either, which is an irritating thing to notice at five-fifteen in the morning before I've finished my first cup of coffee.
He's broad through the shoulders in a way his button-down doesn't bother hiding, and he carries himself like a man who has never once walked into a room and wondered if he belonged there.
It is deeply inconvenient.
There's something almost impressively calm about the way he holds his ground, like he's had a lot of practice sitting across from people who think he's wrong and not flinching about it.
It doesn't make him less wrong.
"Remy," I say, "runs the morning feed on a pattern he's built around how those specific horses behave at specific times of day.
It took him eight months to figure out that pattern. It's not in any data from last quarter." I tap the spreadsheet lightly.
"Silas checks the south pasture first because the fence line near the creek has a soft spot that gets worse after irrigation. That's not in your columns either."
Beckett is quiet for a second. "I didn't know that."
"No," I say. "You didn't."
He pulls the spreadsheet toward him slowly, uncaps a pen, and writes something in the margin. I lean slightly and read it upside down.
It says:Ask before optimizing.
I straighten up and take a long drink of my coffee.
I take another slow sip of coffee, mostly to hide the fact that my mouth is trying to betray me.
I don't smile until I've turned back toward the window.
Maisie finds me at the horse barn at half past seven.
I hear her before I see her, the clomping of those turquoise boots on the barn's wooden floor announcing her arrival the same way Rowdy's tail announces his.
She rounds the corner with her hair in two lopsided braids that I suspect she did herself, wearing a t-shirt with a horse on it and jeans that already have something smeared on the knee. She looks like she was born here. It's a little disarming how naturally she fits.
"Good morning," she says, very formally, like we're meeting at a business lunch.
"Morning." I keep working, checking the water levels in the nearest stall. "You're up early."
"Dad says we're ranch people now." She says it with complete seriousness. "Ranch people get up early."
"Your dad said that."
"He also made a chart."
I glance over at her. "A chart."
