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I lifted my gaze from the wrinkled piece of paper. All animosity, all intimidation that she’d been trying to exude was gone. Instead, she simply looked at me, silently pleading.
Sighing, I stuffed the note in my pocket and glanced over the fields to my right. The hands were out and about, going through morning chores as usual. The fields full of bright green grass, not yet scorched by the summer heat, swayed in the breeze. Everyone was waiting for me to show up so we could finish the last minute preparations.
Something that I might not actually be doing now.
“What’s your name?” I asked, looking back at her.
She tipped her hat lower over her eyes, hiding her relief as she glanced over my shoulder. “Briar.”
“Like the princess?” I asked, furrowing my brows.
She rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed. “No. Like me.”
“Well, aren’t you a golden ray of sunshine.”
Briar pursed her lips and lifted her brows, crossing her arms over her chest, but said nothing.
Chuckling to myself, I exhaled. “Show me what’s in that trailer.” I walked past her, my spurs ringing with each step. The warm summer gust danced over my body, flushing my skin warm, and mixed with the curiosity bubbling within me. I wanted to ask her so many things, too many things. I wanted to know what she was so afraid of, what she was running from. How she knew Rooney, and why he specifically mentioned the livestock officers I knew.
I heard her boots crunch over the gravel after me, jogging to catch up as I strode toward the back of the rusty trailer. The sound of a hoof kicking into the paneling of the trailer bounced loudly around me again; the container rattled as I neared the back and paused.
“Briar, how do you know Rooney?” I asked, voicing what seemed to be the tamest of my questions.
She quietly walked past me, pushed some strands of hair behind her ear. and paused at the latch holding the trailer closed. “He and my dad were friends.”
“Were?”
Her slender fingers snapped open the latch, then slid to the other side, unhooking the second lever, and guided the tailgate to the ground. “He died six months ago.”
“Rooney’s dead?” I gasped, my heart stopping in my chest as four hooves with black socks appeared beneath the divider inside the trailer.
“No, my dad is,” she answered softly, her voice cracking as she hoisted herself inside the trailer. Her steps were hesitant as she crept toward the animal that suddenly reared, a knotted, onyx mane tossing over the neck of a big, bay horse. She stopped as the creature bucked and kicked, denting the metal again.
“Woah,” I whispered. The horse tossed its head to the side, exposing the menacing white of its eye, and snorted loudly, kicking and bucking again. The entire trailer shuddered, and Briar placed a hand against the side to steady herself. The horse didn’t have a halter on or rope around its neck, and there was no way I was about to attempt to lead that beautifully massive beast out of this trailer. Who knows how she got that thing in there.
“How about this?” I started. “We’ve got a round pen farther down the road. I’ll go and open the gate. Think you can back the trailer up and we can just release that guy there instead of trying to fight him the entire way?”
She nodded, quickly climbing back out of the trailer, and the horse let out a shrill neigh. I watched him, the whites of his eyes snapping toward me again as she raised the tailgate. But it was the final snort, the tension that was pulled taut on his face, that broke my heart.
He wasn’t trying to be mean. He wasn’t trying to get out of there to come after someone. No, that horse was as scared as Briar was.
What had I just gotten myself involved in?
Chapter 2
CASSIDY
Briar stood beside me, both of us leaned up against the railing. She smelled like a river after freshly fallen rain, as stormy as the world that swirled behind her eyes. As terrified and chaotic as the horse that had yet to stop running circles around the round pen.
A few minutes before we’d released the horse, I’d quickly sent away the next top hand and Weston’s best friend, Cash, with instructions on the chores and preparations needed to be finished today. Here we were, at least an hour later—sixty minutes into simply watching the stallion stampeding like a cornered and crazed animal, and the ruts he was digging with his hooves were only getting deeper.
“What d’ya call him?” I asked, glancing away from the glistening bay with wounds and scars all across his body that left me with a sour taste in my mouth. And even more questions.
“I haven’t given him a name yet,” she muttered, tucking some ashy blonde hair that shone in the honey-hued sunlight behind her ear. My eyes traced down to the tip of the braid that brushed clear past her belt, dipping to the back of her thighs. Mmmmm….
“How old is he?”
“I don’t actually know. Maybe three or four.”
