Page 88 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

But here it’s just noise. Dust, bad jokes, clipboards, and planning forms.

Mine.

Sammy jerks his head toward a folding table near the announcer’s booth. “Come on. I wanted to show you something on the vendor placement if you don’t mind, before Randy from the kettle corn trailer tries to start a blood feud over electrical hookups again.”

“That’s a thing?”

“In this town? Everything’s a thing.”

“Then yes.” I chuckle. “Show me the forms. I’ll see what I can do.”

I settle at the table with him, dropping my folder beside a stack of papers already fighting for their lives in the wind.

He anchors half of them with a stapler, one with a rock, and one with what appears to be pure force of will.

For the next forty minutes, I’m in my element.

Rental fees. Booth assignments. Livestock transport notes. Electrical usage. Equipment deposits. Timing breakdowns. Insurance riders. Supply requests.

It’s bliss.

Sammy runs the event like a war campaign, but his paperwork is less organized than he thinks it is, which means within twenty minutes I’ve sorted his vendor list into categories, flagged duplicate charges, and made a clear note about missing confirmation signatures.

He stares at my page for a long second.

Then says, “You single?”

I look up.

He squints at the paper again. “Actually, no. Don’t answer that. Not my business.”

“Appreciated.”

“I was gonna say you ought to marry whoever invented formulas in spreadsheets.”

I laugh, because I think he’s joking. I’m pretty sure he’s messing around…

Around us, the rodeo grounds keep moving.

Willy shouts something obscene from near the chute gates and gets yelled at by two separate people. Emmett hauls feed sacks like he’s trying to prove a point to the universe. Red barely moves, but somehow everything around him settles a little anyway.

I make notes, cross-reference deposit amounts, check dates. And then I freeze.

My eyes catch on a vendor invoice. A consulting charge.

Not large enough to make anyone blink. Tucked inside an event operations bundle alongside portable fencing, temporary power rentals, and sanitation service.

The kind of line item most people would skim right past because it sounds boring enough to be legitimate.

My stomach tightens anyway.

I look closer. The company name sits there in neat black print.

Barrow Agricultural Consulting.

The sounds around me dull. My thumb presses hard into the edge of the paper, because I know that name. I know it from Ironwood. From when I spotted something that seemed off.

I stare at the invoice like it might rearrange itself if I glare hard enough.