Page 7 of Branded By the Cowboy

For a second, I forget why I’m here. Forget my name. Forget how to breathe. I might be drooling. It’s hard to say with the wind.

All I know is that this man—this stranger who’s about to become my husband—is looking at me like he’s sizing up a wildfire.

And God help me, now I’ve seen him, I want toburn. With him.

I square my shoulders and walk toward him like I’ve done this a hundred times. Like I’m not shaking inside. “Angus Sutton?”

He nods, slow and silent. He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t blink. “You Luna?”

“Yeah.”

He jerks his head toward the truck. “Truck’s warm.”

Wow. Somebody stop us before we combust from all this verbal foreplay.

Although it’s not romantic—-not a meet-cute, not flowers or fireworks—something about the way he says it,“Truck’s warm”lands differently. As if warmth is a gift and it matters that I’m cold.

It’s so simple. So plain. But it hits me straight in the chest.

This strange man with the steady eyes and the quiet mouth. I want the safety he offers without saying it out loud. The way he makes space for me without flinching.

I slide into the passenger seat, duffel bag on my lap, and Angus pulls away from the curb without another word.

The silence stretches for ten miles, give or take.

He doesn’t ask about my trip. I don’t ask why his jaw looks like it’s carved from disappointment and old ghosts.

This is what I wanted. Isn’t it?

The road winds between hills shaking off the winter. Snow melts into muddy streams, and the first stubborn shoots of green claw their way into the sun. We pass a closed diner, a church with a crooked sign, and a feed store with a light still glowing behind the blinds.

When he finally speaks, his voice is rough.

“You ever lived on a ranch before?”

“I worked at a guest ranch in Bozeman for a few years. It wasn’t all hayrides and marshmallows. I did real work. Fence repairs. Mucking stalls. Hauling water in a snowstorm when the pipes froze solid. One time, I spent four hours chasing a steer through knee-deep mud after it busted through a pasture gate in the middle of a thunderstorm.”

That earns the smallest grunt of acknowledgment from him. It might be a laugh, but it’s hard to tell.

“I liked it,” I add. “The rhythm. The work. It was simple and honest. No one cared where you came from, just whether you showed up and pulled your weight.”

I glance at him. He’s still watching the road—but something about the silence says he heard every word.

“When Marlie told me what you were looking for, it didn’t sound crazy to me,” I say. “It sounded… doable.”

He’s quiet for a second. Then: “Huh.”

A beat. Another flick of a glance. “You ride?”

“Nope.”

“Willing to learn?”

“Sure,” I say. “As long as you give me a helmet, a life insurance policy, and maybe a prayer circle.”

His mouth twitches. For a man carved out of granite, that’s basically a full-blown grin.

The ranch comes into view, and something in me exhales as if a part of me has been waiting to see this place my whole life.

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