Page 2 of Leather & Lies

“That’s right.” I keep my voice low, steady, letting him associate the sound with the stillness of my body. The morning air carries the scent of dew-damp grass and early autumn, crisp with the promise of coming frost. “Your last trainer did a number on you, didn’t he?”

Daddy’s leather jacket sits heavy on my shoulders as I take a careful step forward. The worn sheepskin collar still smells faintly of his cigarettes, even two months after the funeral. The same jacket he’d worn teaching me how to gentle my first colt, when he won big at poker, when he signed away pieces of our legacy one desperate night at a time. I’d begged him to let me help, to let me take more clients, but his pride wouldn’t bend.

The stallion snorts, muscles bunching as I draw closer. But he doesn’t retreat, and I read the question in the tilt of his head. Every instinct screams at him to run, to fight, to protect himself the only way he knows how. Something in him wants to trust, though, even if experience has taught him better.

I know the feeling.

My mother’s silver pendant rests cool against my collarbone as I take another measured step. On the fence post, my coffee steams in the chill air, two sugars dissolving in the dark liquid. The stallion’s breath mingles with the mist rising from the ground, and for a moment, the world shrinks to just us—predator and prey, until we figure out which is which.

“Your choice,” I murmur, extending my hand palm up. Not reaching, just offering. “But I think we both know you’re tired of running.”

He stretches his neck forward, nostrils flaring as he scents my palm. One more inch and?—

My phone shatters the silence with a shrill ring. The stallion rears backward, and I dive left to avoid the strike of his hooves.

Damn it.The phone keeps ringing as I regain my footing, and a month of progress disappears into the far corner of the round pen. When I pull the phone from my pocket, the name Tom Walker flashes on the screen—a man who’s known me since I was in pigtails, and the president of Sterling Bank.

My thumb hovers over ‘Decline.’ I can’t afford an interruption right now, not when I’m so close to a breakthrough.The Rowlands are counting on me to gentle this stallion, and if I don’t deliver, I don’t get paid. But I also can’t afford to ignore the fucking bank.

Tom’s calls are always the same—his compassionate voice adding one more debt to my father’s legacy while I smile and pretend my world isn’t crumbling beneath my boots. I don’t know how I’m going to feed the horses by the time the weekend rolls around, much less pay the ranch hands who help me keep the lights on.

Start selling off equipment, maybe. Or cattle.

Just once, I’d like some good news. I know this won’t be, but I swallow hard and accept the call anyway. “Tom. What can I do for you?”

His voice carries none of its usual warmth. “Shiloh. Meet me in my office. Now.”

Before I can respond, the line goes dead. In the corner of the pen, the stallion watches me with renewed wariness. Weeks of trust-building erased by a single moment of chaos. I know exactly how he feels.

Cold settles in my gut as I stare at the dark screen. The last time Tom used that tone was three months ago, when he called to tell me Daddy had a heart attack, and to meet him at the hospital.

I didn’t get there fast enough to say goodbye.

I grab my coffee from the fence post, hands shaking as I stride to my truck. Once I’m behind the wheel, my reflection catches in the rearview mirror—hay in my hair, dust on my cheeks, and a smear of dirt across my jaw that perfectly matches the stubborn line I inherited from my father.

“Shit.” I drag my fingers through my braid, dislodging bits of straw. There’s no time to change, but I can at least try to not look like I’ve been rolling in the dirt. The Foster pride might be bruised, but it isn’t dead.

A whinny draws my attention back to the round pen. The stallion paces the fence line, his fear transforming back into familiar aggression. A month of work, and one phone call has him ready to strike out again. I should’ve kept my damn phone on silent.

My hands clench the wheel as our ranch disappears in the rearview. Five hundred acres of legacy. Three generations of sweat and sacrifice. Everything Daddy spent his life building—and his nights gambling away, one card at a time.

Everything I could lose, if Tom’s tone means what I think it means.

The thirty-minute drive into town passes in a blur of autumn-touched trees and familiar landmarks. Old Man Pritchett’s crooked mailbox. The broken fence at Miller’s Creek that never quite gets fixed. The rusted tractor that’s been sitting in the Hendersons’ field since before I was born. Every sight reminds me of the community that’s watched me grow up, that’s now watching me struggle to keep my head above water.

Sterling Bank rises like a modern fortress among Salvation’s modest buildings—all gleaming glass and polished stone that somehow manages to look both impressive and completely out of place, as if someone dropped a piece of Helena into our small Montana ranching town.

I park right next to Tom’s reserved space. His cherry-red F-150 is missing. Odd, given that I’m here to see him. Unease settles low in my gut, but there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. Instead, I swing out of my truck, my dusty boots thudding against pavement, and brush myself off, as if a moment of trying to put myself in order could conceal that I’ve been hard at work all day.

When I enter the lobby, the receptionist’s eyes meet mine but she quickly looks away. Her fingers flutter over her keyboard, although I notice she isn’t actually typing anything.

“Go right in,” she says before I can speak. “He’s waiting for you in the conference room.”

Conference room. Not his office, where we’ve had a hundred conversations over coffee and cowboy cookies, and where he helped me sort through Daddy’s papers after the funeral. My boots echo too loudly on the marble floor as I make my way down the hallway, each step heavier than the last.

I pause at the conference room door, squaring my shoulders beneath Daddy’s jacket. Whatever’s waiting on the other side, I’ll face it like a Foster. Head high and spine straight, no matter how much it hurts.

The door swings open silently on expensive hinges.

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