I stand at the tailgate and look at the tweezers in my hand. There's a rust flake on the tip. My hands are still shaking, and it's got nothing to do with iron in the ground.
It takes me an hour to clear the wire off that shaft. Ruined a pair of gloves. Every strand I pull, I think about four inches of ragged skin and how fast my boots moved across that field. Faster than they needed to. Faster than a man moves for a coworker. For a manager. For anybody whose business isn't his own.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket.
Gabe
Tractor's down? Paige okay?
Old fence wire. Not on the maps. Shaft's wrapped but I've cleared it. She caught her arm. Driving herself to the clinic now.
Gabe
You check it?
Flushed and wrapped it. She needs stitches. Tell whoever's at the clinic she's coming.
Gabe
Will do. Thanks for looking out.
I pocket the phone. Stare at the cleared field. The stumps. The downed timber stacked neat from a week's worth of mornings that all started the same way. Seven fifteen. Hoofbeats. Coffee. Her.
A week ago I didn't know her name.
Now my hands shake when she bleeds.
That's all I need to know about how much trouble I'm in.
Chapter Four
PAIGE
Six stitches. A lecture from Deb at the clinic about rust in lacerations on a working ranch. And a drive home with one arm that gave me too much time to think about how fast a man who prefers solitude covered fifty yards of dead field.
Kidd's already heard. Of course Kidd's heard. By the time I get back to the ranch yard, he's leaning out of his truck window with a paper bag of Sal's sandwiches balanced on his knee.
"Rock Star!" He grins wide enough I can see it from across the lot. "Heard the field ate you."
"Field nibbled."
"Not how Gabe tells it." His grin gets worse, which I didn't think was possible. "Gabe says the new fella came across that stubble at a dead sprint."
Heat crawls up my neck. At twenty-nine, that's embarrassing.
"Gabe's a gossip."
"Gabe's a rancher. Same thing. Less honest about it." He shifts the sandwiches. "Need anything?"
"A time machine and a fence map from 1980."
"Fresh out. Tell your lumberjack the boys say hi!"
"He's not my lumberjack!"
Kidd's already pulling out, one hand waving out the window, cackling.
I drop the truck keys at the barn office, check on Serenity, and stand in the feed room for a solid two minutes staring at a bag of oats while my brain replays hands on my waist and the sound of his breathing against my knee.
