Page 3 of The Wrangler and the Tenderfoot

"Is that a compliment?"

"More than you think. You always patrol with a rifle?” she asked, nodding at the .308.

I looked down at it. “Coyote problem. And sometimes, other things, like the boars.” I let her make of that what she wanted. “In case you haven’t noticed, this is Texas.”

She snorted. “I did,” she said. There was a brief silence, filled only by the cicadas and the low wind through the trees. I could feel my wolf under my skin, not agitated, not on edge, just alert, the way I get when I meet something I’m not sure I can win against. There was no threat in her, but there was a kind of presence I didn’t expect from anyone on the Coleman payroll.

“If you need anything, or run into anything you can’t handle, let me give you my number.”

She pulled out her phone and typed the number in as I rattled it off. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

We hit a patch of shade, and I leaned a little, shifting Ghost's gait. Jennie caught herself on my arm and stayed there, holding tight. "Sorry, " she said. "I haven't ridden regularly in years."

"Don't worry. I've got you."

She waited, then laughed. "You're not big on words, are you?"

I shrugged. "Most words don't do much. Actions speak louder and all that."

She lapsed back into silence, which was fine by me. Halfway to the Coleman gate, she spoke again. "Back to that wolf. I’m not convinced it was a dog."

I needed to convince her she’d seen a dog. "It could’ve been a wolf, but he would’ve wandered pretty far from their territories." I didn’t like lying to this woman for some reason.

"They're endangered, right?"

"Er, I think so in other areas of the States, but around here we just don’t have them." Just not the one she saw. There being only a few of us made me endangered, right?

She squinted at the horizon. "My grandpa told me stories about wolves in the Hill Country. Said they were monsters."

She was a little too close for comfort. "Most monsters are just hungry."

She went quiet after that. Guess she was thinking about it. Me too, damn, we needed to change the subject. We topped the last hill, and the Coleman house appeared. Big, ugly, all stucco and fake pillars, with a flagpole taller than the barn. Someone was waiting by the gate, arms crossed.

"Looks like you're expected," I said.

She gave a half-smile. "That's Bill, the ranch manager. Hates me."

I recognized him now. "Can't blame him. You're a disruptor." As soon as we got close enough to say hello, Bill turned and walked away. He was a real asshole all right.

She laughed but didn't argue, which I took to mean I was right. When I swung down to open the gate, she let out a long breath and watched me.

I helped her down slowly, careful of the ankle. She braced on Ghost's shoulder and didn't let go for a good ten seconds. "Thanks, Reid, " she said, steadying herself.

"Anytime, Jennie."

She smiled, then limped to the house without looking back.

I watched her go, an odd, unsettled feeling rising in my gut at her leaving, then mounted up and headed for the creek. There were still pigs to count, and the sun wasn't getting any cooler.

A few seconds later, I got a text.

This is Jennie. Just in case.

Chapter 2: Jennie

The Coleman house was an architectural lie straight out of real estate brochures. Old Texas ranch on the outside, subdivided McMansion on the inside, with just enough original beams left exposed to get it featured in a local charity calendar. My room was the smallest of the three spare rooms. It was two shades of beige, smelled of dryer sheets, and contained exactly three pieces of furniture. The bed, a chest of drawers, and a low-slung, solid wood desk. In the closet, someone had left a plastic-wrapped tuxedo from a rental place in Fredericksburg, which I took as a kind of warning. Why hadn't it been returned?

Who was paying the late fees? I didn't want to know.