Then into his face.
“You hired me.”
“I haven’t hired anybody.”
“Then consider this the interview.”
Before he could answer, she slipped through the gate and latched it behind her.
Diablo noticed immediately.
His head shot up.
His ears pinned flat.
Men along the fence instinctively stepped backward.
Jedediah’s pulse began to hammer.
“Clara.”
She ignored him.
No whip.
No rope.
No crop.
Nothing in her hands.
She walked twenty feet into the enclosure and stopped.
Then she lowered her gaze.
Diablo snorted.
Stamped.
She waited.
One minute passed.
Then another.
Jedediah gripped the top rail.
Every part of him screamed to open the gate.
To drag her out.
To prevent another body from hitting the dirt while somebody stood nearby saying they had thought the horse was ready.
Then Diablo charged.
“GET OUT!”
Jedediah lunged toward the gate.
Clara did not move.
The stallion thundered toward her.
Ten feet.
Six.
Three.
Then stopped.
Dust exploded around Clara’s skirts.
Diablo stood inches from her, trembling violently, nostrils flared.
Nobody breathed.
Clara slowly raised one empty hand.
Jedediah’s knuckles whitened around the fence.
“Don’t.”
Her fingers moved closer.
Diablo jerked his head.
Clara stopped.
Waited.
Then the impossible happened.
The stallion lowered his head.
One inch.
Then another.
Until his black muzzle touched Clara’s trembling palm.
The ranch went silent.
Jedediah stared at the horse no trainer had willingly touched in months.
Clara whispered something.
Only Diablo heard the first words.
Jedediah, standing closest to the fence, heard the rest.
“You’re not angry, are you?”
She looked toward him.
“You’re just waiting for someone to stop hurting you.”
And for the first time in six years, Jedediah Cross had no idea whether she was talking about the horse.
Cross Ranch had once been the pride of the valley.
Jedediah’s father, Amos Cross, had built it from sixty scrub acres into an empire of breeding stock, cattle contracts, and horses sought after from San Antonio to Santa Fe.
The Cross name meant quality.
Strength.
Discipline.
Then Thomas died.
Jedediah’s younger brother had been twenty-four.
Laughing that morning.
Whistling while he tightened his boots.
The newly broken chestnut mare waiting outside had been nervous, but the trainer had assured everyone she was safe.
At least, that was how Jedediah remembered it.
Thomas mounted.
The mare stood still for three seconds.
Then she exploded.
She reared, twisted, and threw herself sideways.
Thomas struck the packed earth headfirst.
Jedediah had reached him first.
He still remembered kneeling in the dirt.
Still remembered Thomas trying to breathe.
Still remembered the trainer repeating the same sentence.
“I don’t understand.
She was ready.”
Thomas died before sunset.
Their father became an old man almost overnight.
Jedediah became something harder.
And every trainer who stepped onto Cross land afterward had been judged against one dead brother.
None survived the comparison.
Until Clara.
She lasted the afternoon.
Then the next morning.
Then three days.
By the fifth day, half the ranch hands had quietly begun wagering on how long she would remain.
Clara never asked.
She simply worked.
She spent hours sitting outside Diablo’s corral reading a battered book.
Sometimes she spoke to him.
Sometimes she did not.
