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ChapterOne
Grant
Moira Raylan was her name. She was twenty-nine, had a master’s degree in environmental engineering, and had an impressive, but exceedingly long résumé.
I scanned her résumé for what had to be the third time since I sat down at my desk, reading over what should have been a lifetime of career history crammed into only seven short years. Most recently, she’d worked as a contract engineer for a major petroleum company somewhere in Texas.
Apparently, this candidate didn’t like to stay in one place for long, which I completely understood.
I sighed heavily, running my hands through my hair before pulling up the draft email I’d been working on earlier in the day. I attached her résumé to the email, jotted a quick note to my lawyer asking if he could reach out to her about the job, and hit send.
I leaned back in my chair, turning my head to look out the window of the snug office located on the second story of the sprawling farmhouse I bought a year ago. I’d spent the last five years rebuilding this place from the ground up, trying to return the house, and the property, to its former glory.
It’d sat derelict for over two decades. The property, which included over five thousand acres of grazing land and undeveloped pine forest, had been tied up in a battle between several interested parties who wanted to scoop it up for housing developments.
Then a city-slicker with a background in tech development came along with a cash offer and a promise to the good people of Hot Springs, Montana, that this place would be a ranch again.
Look at me now, stuck in my office on one of the nicest days of the goddamn year, looking for someone to be a buffer between me and the fucking Environmental Protection Agency.
“You better save my ass, Moira Raylan,” I griped as I rose from my chair and walked over to the window, which overlooked the two new barns that’d been built this past spring. A few farmhands walked between the barns, everyone going about their business in the soft afternoon sunlight. If Moira accepted the position, she would be here by Monday, which was three days away. If she declined, well… I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to do.
She was the most experienced by far. She could tell me exactly what I needed to do to remedy the issue the EPA had against my property, which involved roughly a hundred acres of undeveloped grazing land that butted up to a protected greenbelt.
Miss Raylan had been working with, and sometimes against, oil tycoons for the majority of her career. She could handle a few grubby, tree-hugging environmentalists, right?
If the kid she was bringing along didn’t get in the way.
That was the only thing on her cover letter I focused on. She was a single mom to a son, something she made very, very clear when she applied for the contract. Where she went, he went.
I pursed my lips and turned from the window, glancing around my seldom used office once more, before heading out of the house altogether.
* * *
George Niemons, the lead rancher and my good friend, was exactly where I’d expected him to be. Curses flew as he held onto the unbroken stallion—a new addition to the ranch—for dear life. The horse, an Arabian with a deep auburn coat that looked like molten metal in the sun, was giving him absolute hell.
George had his teeth clenched and bared, his muscled arms straining as the stallion leapt and bucked and did everything in its power to get George off his back, but George was a master at his craft.
I leaned against the paddock, watching George with interest. I’d met the man several years ago, but I only recently found out he was forty. I would have guessed he was younger than myself, looking more like a young man entering his thirties than a man who’s lived on God’s green earth for four decades. At only three years older than myself, George was a good-looking man with dark brown hair, blue eyes, and perpetually suntanned skin.
He was also blunt, to the point, and I didn’t think he ever smiled at anyone, not even his mother. If he had a sense of humor, I wouldn’t know.
But he was damn good at his job.
“Youfuckingbrute!” George shouted, just as the stallion calmed down and began to trot around the paddock, shaking its long neck and grunting with frustration. “Yeah, I’m mad, too,” George continued, taking a risk by raising one hand to wipe the sweat from his brow. He caught my eye and nodded in greeting.
I’d seen George break a few horses over the past year. I’d also seen him get thrown across the paddock and nearly trampled. Both situations were glorious in their own right.
“I hate this horse,” George said as he patted the horse’s neck and directed it over to where I was leaning against the paddock.
“I think the feeling is mutual,” I replied, smirking as the horse whinnied in agreement. “He’s beautiful, I’ll give him that.” I reached out and ran my hand down the horse’s nose, which he seemed to enjoy.
“He’ll make a good stud,” George said as he clutched the railing of the paddock and climbed off the horse. George whistled to a couple of farmhands standing a few yards away who had been watching the match between George and the stallion.
The two farmhands, who were local kids fresh out of high school and looking for summer jobs, walked along the paddock until it met with the fence that surrounded the entirety of the horse pasture, which seemed to go on for miles. They opened the gate, and the horse took off like a rocket without looking back at us.
“Bastard,” George muttered, wiping blood from his lip. “He threw his head back and knocked me right in the face.”
“What’re you naming him?”
