Page 42 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

Exactly the kind of thing that doesn’t stay contained.

Exactly the kind of thing that spreads.

“Who else knows?” I ask.

His throat works. “She told one of the other girls. I heard it from her this morning.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

He looks away toward the paddocks, toward the horses moving through their routines, because to him nothing in the world has shifted at all. “House staff talk.”

Of course they do.

A ranch this size doesn’t need a newspaper. It has hallways, kitchens, laundry rooms, truck cabs.

Women who see everything and don’t need permission to interpret it. Men who pretend not to listen and repeat it anyway.

Information here doesn’t move in straight lines. It circulates. Picks up shape. Gains edges.

One moment’s enough.

One open door at the wrong time.

One person walking past who shouldn’t have been there to see it.

And Annie goes from employee to story.

Shit.

My hand tightens around the glove I’m carrying.

It has nothing to do with Duke. That’s what I tell myself first, because it should be true. Duke’s a grown man. Annie’s a grown woman. This isn’t a matter of moral outrage or brotherly policing or any of the other easy explanations people reach for when they don’t want to look too closely at what’s actually bothering them.

What’s bothering me is simpler.

She’s new.

She’s already being watched.

She’s already found things in our books I don’t like the shape of.

And now, after one night, she’s vulnerable in a different way. Exposed. Tangled with one of us.

Tangled with the family that signs her paychecks, controls her housing, controls the structure of the place she works, sleeps, and walks through every day.

This is exactly the kind of thing people use. Exactly the kind of thing that turns into leverage.

Exactly the kind of thing I said wouldn’t happen under my roof.

“Go back to work,” I say.

Benji nods too fast. “Yes, sir.”

He heads toward the barn at a pace that borders on retreat. Good. Let him think better of offering me “helpful” information for the rest of the week.

I stay where I am a moment longer, scanning the yard without actually seeing any of it. Trucks, fencing, horses in the far paddock. Morning frost still clinging to the shaded line near the trees.

Everything in its place. Everything moving the way it should.