Chapter 14 Mud, Sweat and Heels
Her heels dug into the gravel in the ranch yard, each step a sharp, angry punctuation mark to the thoughts storming in her head. Cornered. That was the word. Her own father, grinning like a spectator at a rodeo, had let his temporary, unwelcome foreman corner her with an impossible, insulting challenge. It wasn’t a negotiation; it was a public humiliation designed to prove she was nothing more than a city girl playing dress-up, a tourist in her own life. The dry Arizona air felt thick and suffocating, but she was determined to push forward.
She marched past the main barn, her gaze fixed on the corrugated steel walls of the feed shed, her one sanctuary of order on this chaotic ranch. That was her territory, a place where logic and systems reigned. The one place everyone seemed to agree was allowed to be under her supervision. As she neared it, her phone buzzed in the pocket of her designer jeans, a lifeline to the world where she made sense. She snatched it out. The caller ID read: Chloe.
“Tell me you have something good for me,” Sierra said, forgoing any greeting.
“Um, not on the ledger entry,” Chloe’s voice came through, crisp and efficient even with the bad news. “I’ve gone through every supplier invoice from the last eighteen months. I’ve cross-referenced bank statements. That twenty-thousand-dollar expense to ‘Agri-Solutions LLC’ doesn’t exist anywhere but in your father’s handwritten ledger. The company itself is a ghost. No website, no state registration I can find, no phone number. It’s a dead end.”
Sierra squeezed her eyes shut, a fresh spike of frustration piercing through her anger. Another secret, another puzzle in this sprawling mess her father called a legacy. “Fine. Table that for now. I have a new priority for you.”
She could almost hear Chloe’s fingers poised over her keyboard. “Go ahead.”
“I need research. I want everything you can find on niche markets for cull cattle.”
Silence. Then, “Could you spell that first word for me?”
“C-U-L-L. Cull,” Sierra repeated, the word tasting like ash in her mouth. “It’s what they call the rejects. The old, the sick, the ones that won’t breed or won’t grow. The bottom of the barrel.” She was practically quoting Ryder, and the thought made her stomach clench.
“And… you want to find a niche market for them?” Chloe’s voice was laced with a careful, professional brand of disbelief. “For what, exactly?”
“For a new premium brand,” Sierra said, the words a bitter parody of her original plan. “Quinn Ranch Reserve. We’re starting with the best of the worst.”
Another beat of silence. Then, with the practiced neutrality of a top-tier assistant facing a truly insane request, Chloe said, “Yeah, right, okay. Niche markets for cull cattle. I’ll do what I can.”
As Sierra was about to end the call, her eyes snagged on a section of the corral adjacent to the barn. Three of the thick wooden rails were askew, one splintered completely, hanging loose from its post. It looked like one of their animals had gotten spooked and made a break for it. It was another small bit of decay, another tear in the fabric of the ranch she was supposed to be stitching back together.
“I have to go,” she said abruptly, ending the call.
She shoved the phone back in her pocket and detoured into the feed shed. The scent of sweet grain, molasses, and dry alfalfa enveloped her. Luis had followed her instructions perfectly. Sacks were stacked on pallets, labeled, and dated. The new inventory clipboard hung on a hook by the door, her own neat handwriting a testament to her efforts. From it, she would be able to transfer all of the data to her tablet and have a digital record of everything used by the ranch. For a moment, she felt a sliver of control. This, she could do. This made sense. But as she turned to leave, her gaze fell on a pair of leather work gloves tossed on a workbench, next to a heavy-duty hammer and a coffee can full of nails and fencing staples.
A hot, reckless wave of defiance surged through her. Working smarter on the land, Ryder had said, his voice dripping with condescension. He and her father thought she was useless for anything beyond a spreadsheet. They saw her designer clothes, her manicured nails, her city polish, and dismissed her. They thought she couldn’t get her hands dirty.
Fine.
She snatched up the gloves. They were stiff and smelled of sweat and leather, and were still too big, the fingers comically long on her own. She grabbed the hammer and scooped up the can of nails. Marching back out into the blinding sun, she felt a ridiculous, potent sense of purpose. She would fix the damned fence. How hard could it be?
Fifteen minutes later, she knew exactly how hard it could be. Her silk Dolce & Gabbana blouse was sticking to her back with sweat, a dark smudge of dirt blooming across one shoulder. The ridiculously expensive, artfully distressed jeans she wore had earned a new, entirely authentic tear across the knee when she’d knelt in the dirt. Her heeled boots, more suited for a SoHo stroll than a dusty corral, kept sinking into the soft ground, throwing her off balance.
The splintered rail was heavy and awkward. After another ten-minute struggle, she managed to wrestle it back into a semblance of its original position. Now for the hard part. She held a thick nail against the wood with one gloved hand and swung the heavy hammer with the other.
She missed.
The hammer head struck the post with a dull thud, jarring her arm to the shoulder. She tried again, choking up on the handle, focusing with all her might. This time, she connected with the nail, but at an angle. It bent into a useless shape. She swore under her breath, prying it out with the hammer’s claw.
Her entire body hummed with a furious, impotent energy. She was failing. She was a caricature, the exact person Ryder believed her to be. Gritting her teeth, she positioned another nail. She took a deep breath, swung hard, and this time the hammer glanced off the head of the nail and smashed squarely into her thumb.
“Shit!”
A bolt of white-hot pain shot up her arm. She cried out, dropping the hammer and yanking off the glove. Her thumbnail was already turning a sickening shade of bluish-purple. Tears of pain and frustration pricked at her eyes.
“You’re fighting it.”