Page 22 of May's Cowboy Roman
“Hey, Dawson. The farrier's here for the ropers. Want him in pen three or four?”
“Four. The footing's better.”
Jace glanced at me. No reaction. Just acknowledgment. Then back to Dawson.
“Also — that buckskin's been head-shy again this morning. Spooked at the lead rope twice.”
Dawson's pen stilled, just for a second.
“Roman knows?”
“He's with it now.”
“Fine. Log it.”
“You got it.” Jace wrote something on his clipboard. Then looked at me again. He tapped his clipboard against his thigh. “I’ve heard you’ve been asking around about paperwork. Whatever's on paper for these animals, that's what we work from. When the paperwork's good, the system works. When it's not, people get hurt.”
Then he was gone, his boots heavy on the metal steps.
I looked back at the screen. Three horses. Same supplier. Same age. Same height. One already pulled for behavioral issues, a second head-shy this morning, the third unaccounted for in my notes. The paperwork said they were sound. Roman said they weren't. And the animals were proving him right, one small reaction at a time.
I thanked Dawson and stood.
“Ms. Grable.” His voice caught me at the door. “Roman doesn't talk much. To anyone.” He paused and slid his pen back behind his ear. “If he's talking to you, there's a reason.”
I walked out into the morning warmth, my head spinning while trying to make sense of everything I’d learned. The sun pressed down hard, and the construction noise filled the distance like static. I sat in my car with the engine off and the windows down.
Roman hadn't given me a story. He'd given me his trust. And that mattered more than anything I'd come here chasing.
I started the car and pulled out of the lot. Three horses. Matched records that didn't quite fit. A system that worked as long as no one looked too closely. Until now, no one had.
The rodeo opened in just over a week. I'd need every hour of it. I wasn't going to rush this. Not this time. But I wasn't walking away from it either.
CHAPTER 9
ROMAN
The grounds had been humming since before dawn.
I'd been up since four, checking feed schedules and running my hands down legs that needed to be sound by the weekend. The first official Mustang Mountain rodeo was only a few days away. Months of planning had resulted in this. Now every bit of it was bearing down on us, and every seam felt ready to split. Everything felt like it might.
I worked through the holding pens methodically. Ropers first. They were calm, predictable animals that did their jobs without drama. Then the barrel horses boarding temporarily in the east stalls. Then the broncs. My broncs. The ones I'd spent weeks conditioning, testing, evaluating. I knew their rhythms by now. Knew which ones needed space in the morning and which ones settled faster with a hand on their neck.
Days had passed since I'd told Rachel everything, and something had been building between us in the time since that I didn't have a name for yet. Solid and real, it was something I hadn't let myself have in a long time. She'd been careful with what I'd given her — hadn't published anything, hadn't tipped her hand. Just kept gathering, quietly, the way she did everything else.
I trusted her. That was the part that still surprised me when I turned it over. When had I started? And how would it end?
I was thinking about that when I stopped in front of the sorrel in pen six. I'd flagged this horse a week ago. It was the third animal from the same supplier as the clay mare and the buckskin. On paper, it looked sound. In practice, something lived behind its eyes that didn't belong in an arena full of noise and bodies. I'd recommended pulling it. Slade had listened on the mare but pushed back on this one. He said they couldn't lose another bronc without cutting the event short.
I stood at the rail and watched.
The sorrel paced the back wall of the pen in tight circles, head high, ears pinned flat. When one of the hands entered with a feed bucket, the horse didn't just spook, it charged. Two strides, fast and committed, teeth bared.
The hand dropped the bucket and threw himself sideways over the rail. He hit the dirt on the other side hard, rolled, and came up white-faced with his hands shaking.
I was already moving. “You hurt?”
He shook his head. “Fucker came at me. No warning.”
