Page 3 of Wilder

Back in those early days, my father had been skeptical, cautious in encouraging me to continue down that path when we had so much going on with our breeding programs already. That same year, he’d come to know my passion—seen it first hand, and realized that it was not just some passing interest when I’d gotten one of the worst cases of neglect either of us had seen to trust me enough to take out for a ride in the pasture.

One of my proudest moments and something even I hadn’t known was in me until it’d struck me like lightning.

After that, the rest was history.

Coming up to the stables, I took a detour inside to check if Sully had gotten stuck tallying away our tack. Wouldn’t be the first time that happened and probably wouldn’t be the last. He tended to get too caught up in the details sometimes. Let it bog him down instead of moving on and calling it a day to get elbows deep into something else.

That was why the two of us worked, though. I kept the bigger picture in mind while he focused on the nitty gritty.

Before my father had passed, he’d been the old man’s protégé—his right hand in everything, especially the technical stuff. I’d been lucky enough to inherit him, along with the deed to the ranch, in the will. Or so Sully liked to joke.

I tended to see it as stepping into my father’s shoes and continuing his legacy. Almost like the old man never left to begin with. A tall order to fill.

Most days I tried not to think about it.

The cool breeze from the fans overhead felt nice against my sweat-slicked skin when I stepped in past the stable doors, cooling me instantly. Inside here, the temperature dropped a good ten degrees both from the shade and the crossover air flow. It was still humid as all hell, but made it much easier to breathe in when the sun wasn’t slowly baking you through your clothes.

A few horses were still hanging out in their stalls, their heads lazily popping out to watch me walk down the center aisle as I headed for the back office.

Back here, it was much quieter. A forgotten corner not many wandered to when coming around to tend to the horses. My father had built it that way, wanting a separate space away from the chaos of running a large, multi-million dollar business where he could sit down and crunch numbers until his fingers dented.

As a kid, I’d often find him bent over stacks of paperwork, curses lingering on his lips while his pen scratched feverishly over the only legal pad he kept tucked in his desk. I still could remember those faded yellow pages filled with numbers that were much too big for my little head to wrap around but had piqued my curiosity anyway.

Now, decades later, I understood why he’d often abandon his work the second I pushed that creaking door open to check on him, scooping me up and throwing my gangly little body over one of his strong shoulders, taking me out to the paddocks as I laughed and squealed the whole way there.

My chest still ached at those memories.

An entire year had gone by with my old man in the ground and still, it felt like just yesterday my mama was clutching onto my arm, squeezing onto it for dear life while final prayers were being read at his burial site.

Sunny days like the one that day sometimes still stung. Occasionally, I found myself wishing it had rained instead. Weather like that was far and few down in this part of Texas and would’ve made for an easier pill to swallow.

But then, that was life, wasn’t it?

Readjusting my hat back on my brow line just a bit, I grabbed onto the handle of the office door and swung it open, the hinges creaking in that familiar way of theirs. The lights weren’t on and there were no signs of a stray clipboard or pen with a half-filled out sheet abandoned on top of the empty desk.

Where in the hell was Sully?

CHAPTER 2

Wilder

A dull thud outside of the stables, loud enough to hear inside of this little cubical, had me swinging the door shut and yanking on the handle to keep the jam in place before heading out the back entryway.

Heat hit me instantly as soon as I cleared the awning of the building, the afternoon sun warming me again and forcing me to pull the brim of my hat back down over my brow. Across the way, pieces of hay littered the ground right outside of the ranch’s feed storage as a large bale slowly rolled toward me.

I kicked my foot out to stop it, catching it right before it managed to hit the side of the stables. Something like this wouldn’t be making any kind of dent in the steel we’d used to reinforce the outside of the building, but spooking the horses still in their stalls was a kind of chaos I wasn’t in the mood to be dealing with today.

I’d had enough of that wrangling that gelding with Ryder earlier.

“The hell?” I muttered, letting my leg drop back down to the ground.

Coming around the other side of it, another bale was forcefully shoved and dropped down from the top stock, hitting the ground with the same dull thud as the first one. Stray pieces of hay rained down in a slow flutter in a way I imagined snow did up in the northern states, coating the ground in a fine layer. The bale rolled a few feet before wobbling twice and then slamming on its side against the dirt.

I raised my brow high enough to graze my hairline.

The feed was usually taken care of by late morning. We had plenty of it out already in the racks by the pasture for grazing and more than enough stuffed into the stall feeders inside the stables. Two more bales being pulled out did nothing but create clutter and a mess to pick up later, even if it was meant for prepping early for tomorrow.

The dew that tended to collect on things during the first few hours of the morning would have those bales moldy in two days. We had plenty of mouths to feed but not enough for two entire bales to be taken out at a time. Wasting food wasn’t something we did around here, animal or human.