Page 45 of The Wrangler and the Tenderfoot

He let me go. I walked out, squinting against the glare of the new day, the sweat already breaking on my brow.

By the time I got back to the cabin, she was up, sitting on the porch, reading the label on the jar of preserves she’d bought yesterday. She didn’t look up when I sat beside her, just handed the jar over.

I took it. “You sleep okay?”

She smiled, tired but honest. “Best I have in years.”

I turned the jar in my hand, looking at the ingredients, pretending to study it while I found the words.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said.

She closed her book, set it on the step, and faced me.

I took her hand, felt the bones of it, the quick pulse in her wrist. “I’m yours,” I said. “In a way that isn’t normal, not even for me.”

She swallowed, not scared, but listening.

I told her everything. About the bond. About what it meant, what it cost, the parts a person couldn’t come back from.

She didn’t say anything for a long time.

Finally she looked at me, and for once, all the shields were down. “I’m in,” she said. “Whatever it is.” A pause. “My name’s not Cardin,” she said. “It’s Benson. Jennie Benson. Since we’re being honest.”

With a laugh, I kissed her, and she held on, tight.

Chapter 22: Jennie

The driveway at the main Maddox house was jammed when I pulled in Monday afternoon, three dusty trucks, two ancient ranch SUVs, and a station wagon that had no business still being on the road. I parked on the grass rather than block anyone in.

Midge was on the porch smoking a cigar. “Come on in, sugar,” she said, but then led me around the house. We went in the back door, through the mudroom, and into the kitchen.

Inside, the cool hit first, a shock of AC perfumed with bread, onions, and the slow-cooked rapture of something involving a pork shoulder. Midge had been at it since before dawn, judging by the line of dirty mixing bowls and the industrial stand mixer hogging the counter. The kitchen was the color of faded sunshine. It was chaotic, but every moving piece had its orbit. Sloane was at the sink, slicing jalapeños into coins with a speed that said she’d done it many times before. Tess was at the stove, stirring a pot and looking and determined. Ash leaned against the fridge, chewing a piece of celery and loading everyone’s glass with something that smelled aggressively citrus.

“Don’t just stand there, city mouse,” Midge barked. “You drink whiskey, or are you one of them closet IPA people?”

I said, “Both,” and made my way to the island.

Ash beamed. “Love a girl with standards.” She splashed two fingers of brown into a jelly jar, added a rock of ice, and shoved it down the counter hard enough to catch me square in the palm.

Sloane flicked a glance my way, knife never stopping. “You’re late.”

“Fashionably,” I said, and she snorted.

Tess didn’t speak, but she gave me a nervous smile.

Midge slammed a tray of bread onto the stovetop and wiped her hands on her apron. “Dinner in ten. Cards after.” She leaned in, voice dropping. “But I hear the only game you’re good at is poker, Ms. Cardin.”

That caught Ash’s attention. “Oh, is that true? I could get behind that.”

Sloane finished the jalapeños, tossed the knife into the sink, and began herding everyone to the big table in the dining room. . The Maddoxes didn’t have a dining room so much as a repurposed hayloft, ringed with shelves holding jars of preserves, old taxidermy, and a collection of Texas Tech memorabilia that had to be ironic. They set the table family style, Calder at the end, Sloane and Ash at his right, Midge and Tess across, me on the near side with a view of the door.

Reid came in from the yard just as Midge was setting the last dish down. He washed his hands at the mudroom sink, then took the seat to my left without ceremony, and didn't say anything, which I was starting to understand was his version of a greeting.

They’d gone to work on the food. Pork roast, two kinds of beans, four kinds of bread, three things that might have once been vegetables but were now mostly cheese and breadcrumbs. The air was thick with steam and spice.

Calder raised a glass. “To old friends and new ones,” he said, eyes on me.

Reid drank without ceremony. His eyes found mine for exactly one second, then moved off somewhere to the middle distance. I took that as a good sign.