Maggie tilts her chin, pushing up the back of the slate-colored ponytail beanie framing her black bun. All the better to lock eyes with the cowboy looking down at her. He’s leaning against the door of a red barn, looking like an ad for Marlboro cigarettes. Or sex. A hand-lettered sign on a weathered board hangs overhead. PINEY BOTTOMS RANCH, SHERIDAN, WY. She likes the one even better that’s just visible inside the barn above the window into the office. WYOMING: WYNOT?
“Nice belt buckle,” he says, using it to pull her to him with a jerk.
She catches herself with her hands around his waist. Her chest bumps a little below his, through the bulky Carhartt jackets they’re both wearing. Her legs are longer, but he’s still got a few inches on her. “Got it off a deadbeat bull rider.” In truth, the buckle was part of Hank’s haul when he won the bull riding championship at the 2002 Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo.
He displays two killer dimples. “I hope you didn’t catch anything.”
“Just him.” Her stomach flip-flops, its usual response to the damn hollows in his cheeks. “But you wouldn’t believe how long it took to reel him in.”
A single snowflake falls on the cowboy’s nose, then another on her own. The snow tickles hers. Melts on his. She sneezes.
He lifts a faded navy-blue bandana to wipe his cheek. “Nice. I think you missed some of my face with that. But not much.”
“So you don’t want to kiss me?”
The cowboy—Hank Sibley—growls deep in his throat. “Like hell I don’t.”
His lips are cushiony and warm despite the cold air, like the bed they’d heated up that morning. Maggie melts into the kiss, merging their respective ChapStick flavors—cherry for her, spearmint for him—and drops a hand to his muscular buns.
“Get a room.” A much shorter man with twinkling dark eyes and the dark skin and hair of his Mexican heritage doesn’t break stride as he heads past them into the barn. Gene Soboleski, Polish last name courtesy of his adoptive parents.
Hank and Gene have been partners in their Double S Bucking Stock business for nearly two decades. Friends longer, from their early days riding bulls for beer and gas money through their later success that seeded the purchase of Sassafrass, the original broodmare for their bucking broncos. But Gene’s only recently become Maggie’s stepbrother, thanks to the union of her mother and his birth father, after her lifetime as an only child. Not only that, the marriage came with a stepsister, too: her best friend, Michele, back in Giddings, Texas, where Maggie’s industrial and homestead salvage business, Flown the Coop, lies in tatters.
Hank talks against Maggie’s lips. “Get a life. Or a woman of your own.”
Maggie releases Hank after one more long, slow kiss. She isn’t stopping on Gene’s account. But she doesn’t want to scandalize Andy, Double S’s Amish hand, at least not this early in the morning. The top hand, Paco, she’s not so worried about. Number one, because he’s on vacation. Number two, because he’d probably yell “Let ’er buck” and slap Hank on the ass.
She murmurs into Hank’s neck. “Take me for a quick ride before it snows.”
“I thought I already did, music girl.”
Maggie has mixed emotions about the nickname. Hank had called her that when he first met her, fifteen years before, in her old life. But it’s outdated now. Junker girl, more like.
Gene walks back by carrying a bale of hay. “La la la. Don’t hear you.”
She sticks her tongue out at Hank. “Not that kind of ride. I want to ride my horse.”
“That pregnant Percheron, big as an elephant, stubborn as a mule?”
Gene rounds the corner out of the barn. His voice is tinny in the cold. “First you’ll have to catch her. Miss Houdini has done it again.”
Maggie runs to join him. There are horses everywhere in the paddocks, the ones leaving later in the week for the Prairie Rim Circuit Finals Rodeo in Duncan, Oklahoma. But the big black mare is nowhere to be seen, her solo paddock empty. “Lily’s out?”
“Yep. That damn mare’s a pain in the ass.”
Behind them, Hank says, “She’s your horse, all right, Maggie. Every time I turn around, she’s run off again.”
Maggie shoots him a slit-eye look. “Funny.”
To Gene, Hank says, “We’ll find her.”
“Better do it fast. This is supposed to be our first good storm of the season.”
As if in response, a gust of wind from the north blows in. Maggie raises the collar on her jacket. Poor Lily. She’s due in a month. Most horses gravitate toward a herd. But not her. The mare is a loner, which makes her harder to find and harder to catch. Maggie shivers. These are no conditions for Lily to be out alone in.
“It’s only October. Is this weather unusual?” She heads back for the barn, following Hank, Gene following her.
Both men guffaw.
Hank swats her on the tush as she passes him to enter the dark, cavernous interior. “What would Pretty-shield say?”
Maggie had been reading and rereading the book about the Crow medicine woman, which Hank had bought her on a trip through the Montana reservation. She’s gone her whole life not knowing she is one-eighth Crow on her father’s side, until the previous month. As a Crow-come-lately, she’s making up for lost time.
“It’s not like a Ouija board. Or an almanac. It’s a biography.”
Gene says, “The October moon has a lot of different names with the Native Americans in the region, Maggie May. The Cheyenne call it the moon of the freeze on the stream’s edge. The Shoshone link it to rutting season. The Lakota named it for the wind that shakes off leaves, the Arapaho for falling leaves, and the Sioux for changing seasons. Seems like those last three all had the same idea.”
“I’m not hearing anything about snow, though.” Maggie tosses her head and feels her bun flop.
“Ah, but we are nearly on the face of the Bighorn Mountains.”
“So will it be safe for us to ride out in this?”
Hank dimples up. “This is nothing.”
“It’s still in the nineties in Giddings.”
“That’s hellfire hot to me. Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
For a moment, Maggie lets herself remember her darling house and cute shop, then shuts it down. It hurts to think about her murderous former bandmate going on a torching spree the month before. Besides her store and house—including all the priceless original artwork painted by Maggie’s deceased birth mother—the fires killed Maggie’s tenant and an old boyfriend, country star Gary Fuller, and nearly burned up Hank to boot. The fires lit off a conflagration of publicity that has been the last thing Maggie wants. She’s glad to have Hank’s family ranch, Piney Bottoms, as a refuge while she’s waiting on the insurance payout she needs to rebuild her business. She’s even more glad that she and Hank are finally together, after their years of crossed wires and missed opportunities. His recent almost-fiancée, Sheila, doesn’t share Maggie’s gratitude. “It’s okay. I know what you meant.”
“But now you look sad.”
“I was just thinking of all Gidget’s paintings I lost in the fire.” Maggie hadn’t known her birth mother while she was alive. An image flashes in her mind of her favorite, Front Porch Pickin’, which had depicted a guitarist both melancholy and joyful. “It was all I had of her. Sometimes it gets to me.”
“I know. I hate that for you.”
Maggie is lost in memories until a floppy-eared head bumps her knee. She bends to pet Louise, the short-legged union of a determined corgi and surely embarrassed border collie. But the dog’s nudge is a hit and run. Louise trots past her and up the stairs to the hayloft to hunt rats.
Suddenly Maggie realizes Hank is leading two geldings to the hitching post inside the mouth of the barn, when she hadn’t even realized he’d gone. She was more than lost in memories—she’d fallen into a mental black hole. She snaps herself out of her thoughts and moves to help him with them. The horses are lookers. A buckskin and a blue-roan with a graying muzzle. In the distance, she sees Andy in an animated conversation with another man, who she assumes is Amish because of his long beard and distinctive hat and dress.
Hank eyes her over the withers of the buckskin. “Thought I’d lost you there for a few minutes.”
He’s been worrying about her too much lately. Yes, she’s had a tough time. Is having a tough time. But inside, she chafes at herself that she’s showing weakness. Outside, she puts up a smoke screen. “Sorry. I should have had that second cup of coffee. Who’s that talking to Andy over there?”
Hank’s eyes flick to the bunkhouse then back to the buckskin. “That’s his father. Reggie Yoder.”
“They don’t look like they’re happy with each other.”
“Reggie is hard on Andy.”
Gene walks in with a brown-skinned young man whose long black hair is braided, jeans creased, and worn boots oiled. “Hank, this is Michael Short. He’s looking for a job.”
Hank strides toward Michael, arm out, and the two men shake.
“Nice to meet you, sir. I’d love to work on your fine ranch.”
“I’m sure Gene told you we’re not hiring full-timers right now, but that could change in the blink of an eye.”
“Yes, sir, he did.”
Gene nods. “You and Maggie better get going. I’m going to chat a little more with Michael while I give him a tour.”
Hank puts a hand on the blue-roan’s neck. “Nice to meet you, Michael.”
Gene escorts Michael back out of the barn.
To Maggie, Hank says, “You’ll take Don Juan. He was my mom’s last horse.” A shadow crosses his face. His mother’s riding days are over. She’s wheelchair-bound and has Alzheimer’s. She still lives at the ranch, with Hank and a live-in helper, although Hank still provides a great deal of her care. It’s a round-the-clock job bigger than any one person.
“So you’re not using me as a crash-test dummy on some up-and-comer—that’s good.”
The up-and-comers will get a road test at the rodeo that weekend. It will be Maggie’s first time seeing the Double S buckers in competition, and she’s looking forward to it. Like really, really looking forward to it, even though she was never much into rodeo before Hank.
“Last thing I’d ever want is to harm a single hair on your pretty head.” Hank hands her a brush and takes another to the buckskin’s coat. “Lily likes Don Juan best of all the riding horses. She likes sweet feed even better, so you’ll be carrying a feed bag full with you. I’ll take Tatonka here.” He bends to reach under the roan’s stomach, then catches himself with his hands on his knees, grimacing.
Maggie pauses, brush poised over Don Juan’s back. “What is it?”
“Another one of my damn headaches. They’re coming on fast with no warning.” He drops his brush and crouches on his boot heels, elbows on knees, head in hands.
Maggie tosses her brush into a bucket and hurries to him. Her fingers graze his shoulder. She knows he doesn’t want anyone in his space when a headache hits. “Where’s your prescription?”
Hank’s eyes are squeezed shut. “Back pocket.”
She pries the pill out of his tight jeans, retrieves a bottled water from a refrigerator that doubles as a holder of human drinks and of animal medications, and brings both back to him, first removing the pill from the wrapping he has trouble mastering when his head crashes. “Here.”
He opens his mouth for the pill, accepting it on his tongue. She puts the bottle to his lips. He drinks, swallows, grunts.
“You want a cold rag?”
“No.”
“Maybe I could help you into the office?”
He snaps at her. “Quit hovering.”
“What did I do?”
“Just leave me the hell alone.”
Normally Maggie has a smart comeback for any situation, but his volatile response short-circuits her system. She stands frozen for long seconds. Her eyes burn. Her breath comes out in little puffs of vapor cloud. His abrupt personality change stings. Feeling bad isn’t an excuse to act like a jerk, but now’s not the time to discuss it.
She picks up the brush he dropped and begins grooming Tatonka. When she’s finished, she continues with Don Juan. She’s unsure whether Hank will be able to ride, but she needs to do something. Slowly she curries their manes and tails, then picks their hooves. She scrapes botfly eggs off their legs. When the horses are both groomed to the nines and saddled, she gives them sweet-feed mash and hangs a bag of feed for Lily on Don Juan’s saddle horn. Half an hour has passed. She puts bridles on the horses. Snow begins to accumulate on the ground in the stable yard. Hank hasn’t moved. She’s run out of ways to stall with the horses.
“Hank?” she whispers.
He startles. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
“I musta dozed off.” He rolls his head, stretching his neck. “I’m feeling a little better. I think we caught it in time.”
“Amazing you can sleep in that position.”
He holds a hand up to her, and she takes it. “Thanks for helping me.”
“You didn’t seem to appreciate it much earlier.”
He puts a little weight into her hand as he lumbers to his feet. “What?”
“You weren’t all that nice.”
He looks confused, then he closes the blinds to his emotions with a snap, leaving only blankness. “I’m sorry. I was out of my head.”
She doesn’t know what worries her more, the fact that he’s being evasive and doesn’t seem to remember his behavior, or the pain and personality change. “Have you been to a doctor?”
“That’s how I get the magic pills.”
“I mean recently.”
He checks the cinch on his horse. “Yep. Every three months.”
“Wait, what? How long has this been going on?”
With his back to her and voice matter-of-fact, he says, “Nearly fifteen years.”
Maggie feels as confused as Hank had looked moments before. “Why am I just now learning about it?”
“You’ve seen me have headaches before.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Whining like a child isn’t the bull rider way.”
“Would you stop fiddling with that horse and talk to me?”
He turns and meets her eyes. “Let’s ride out. I’ll tell you on the way.”
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