Page 1 of Forbidden Rancher's Return
Calla
The mare nuzzles my pocket before I get the stall open.
"Patience." I scratch behind her ear, and she leans into it with her whole neck. "You act like I've never fed you a day in your life."
She stamps once. Dramatic about it.
I laugh and push the gate wide. The morning is cold and clean and mine. Coffee is still warm in my stomach. Frost on the upper pasture catching the first light.
The whole ridge smelling like wet cedar and spring thaw, the kind of morning that makes a woman feel like the thing she built is worth every blister and early alarm.
The barn doors stand open.
They never stand open unless someone is already inside.
I hear the scrape of a blade against twine before I reach the threshold. A horse snorts. Then I see him. Shoulder-deep in a hay bale like he belongs here.
Rowan Cade is in my barn.
Not at the edge of it. Not waiting to be invited. In it, pulling hay apart with hands I haven't seen in eight years but would recognize anywhere.
The ridge air hits me all at once. Feed dust on my boots. My hair half-pinned. The whole morning still smelling like routine until ten seconds ago.
Now it smells like change.
Something in my chest loosens at the sight of him here. In this barn. With these horses.
I kill it fast.
My skin is hot. Sharp and embarrassing, like my body never got the message that I'm older now. That I'm in charge. That I don't do this anymore.
His shirt is dark with sweat along the spine. His forearms flex as he cuts through baling twine with a pocketknife. Worn handle, small nick near the hinge.
He used it once under the oak by the stream. A crooked carving, two letters, a promise neither of us understood yet.
He folds it shut.
The click lands somewhere behind my ribs.
Rowan turns his head.
His gaze finds mine and locks. He looks at me the way a man looks at something he's been searching for and just found exactly where he left it.
My throat goes dry.
My feet stay planted.
Eight years of this farm, and the only time I feel unsteady is when one man walks back into the place that made us both.
"You're here."
My voice comes out flatter than I want.
Rowan's eyes move over me once. Work jeans. Flannel. Hands gripping the door frame harder than they need to.
He doesn't smile. He doesn't soften.
"I'm working."
