Page 9 of Craving Her Cowboy
Chapter 4
The next morning Gavin ran until his lungs burned and his thighs begged him to stop. The pre-dawn air hit sharp in his chest. He hit the perimeter of the new cabin site at a dead sprint, skidded to a stop, and let the wind off the ridge dry the sweat off his skin. For a moment, the world was nothing but the pounding in his ears, the thud of his shoes on dirt, the taste of iron in the back of his throat.
He bent over, hands on knees, dragging in air like he was drowning. He didn’t hear the steps behind him. Which pissed him off, because he was usually better than that.
Asha rounded the corner of the structure, walking straight toward him. She wore track pants and a worn USMC hoodie, her hair pulled back, eyes unblinking. She stopped dead when she saw him. He was sweat-soaked, shirtless, with his skin blotched red and white in the cold. He clocked the exact moment her gaze locked onto the right side of his body, the burn scars that ran from shoulder to just above his hip, warped and ugly in the half-light.
He reached for the balled-up tee on the ground, the old instinct to cover himself rising fast. Then he saw that she wasn’t flinching. No pity. Not calculated. But a simple, gentle look. The same neutral assessment she used for skittish horses and building cabins.
The adrenaline dumped from his system, replaced by something meaner and more brittle. “You need something?” he asked, voice raw from the run.
Asha cocked her head. “You always do PT this early?”
“Only when I want to get something done before the ranch gets busy.”
She nodded once, then scanned the build site. “Andy says concrete truck is showing up at eight. You want to double-check the foundation lines before?”
He shrugged. “Already checked them. Twice.” He peeled the shirt off the ground, shook it out, but didn’t put it on. Not out of pride, but because she hadn’t looked away.
Asha’s gaze returned to his face. She had a stare that could pin a snake to the ground. “You good with the pour?”
He felt the need to push back. “You think I can’t handle it?”
“No. I think you’re the only person who cares if the thing is off by a quarter inch.”
That almost made him laugh. Instead, he wiped the sweat from his neck and rolled his shoulders, letting the chill numb what the run hadn’t. “You here for something, or just running recon?”
Her mouth pulled to the side. “I wanted to see how much ground you’d cover before you realized I was here.”
He bristled, but only on the inside. “Congrats. You win.”
They stood there, the frame of the future bunkhouse between them, steam rising from his shoulders in the chill. If she was going to ask about the scars, she’d have done it already. He waited for the awkward silence, the careful shift to safer topics.
She didn’t move. If anything, she seemed even more solid, feet planted just wider than her hips, hands shoved in the front pouch of her hoodie.
Gavin exhaled. “You got something to say, Asha? Just say it.”
She looked down, then back up, and rolled her left sleeve above the elbow. A jagged white scar, narrow but deep, ran thelength of her forearm. It looked like it was made by glass, or maybe shrapnel.
She tapped it once, as if casually scratching an itch. “It happens,” she said. Then softer, “That’s why we’re all here, right?”
He wanted to say something clever, something that would reclaim the upper hand. Instead, he felt his posture change. Less guarded and defensive, more open. He thought about the note he’d seen in her tool bag yesterday. He tried it. The air felt less sharp. His hands, steadier.
After a few moments, their eyes met again. “I’m gonna head on back. See you at eight,” he said.
“Don’t be late,” she replied, turning and walking off in the other direction. He watched her disappear into the morning haze. For a long minute, he just stood there, breathing. One count at a time.
***
Gavin showed up at the build site before the sun had finished burning off the fog. Asha was already there, perched on the first rung of the scaffolding, baseball cap low over her brow, a stack of two-by-sixes at her feet. She glanced down at him, eyes shadowed but unmistakably alert.
“Morning,” she said, voice carrying with it the crispness of the air.
“Thought you’d have finished without me,” Gavin replied, but there was no bite to it.
“Where’s the fun in that?” she said. He could almost swear she smiled, but he had to be imagining it.
He set down his tool belt, checked the foundation lines one more time, and started hauling boards up onto the deck. They worked in unspoken rhythm, as if they’d been doing this for years. He’d call out a measurement, and she’d already havethe chalk snapped, line tight. When he reached for the framing square, her hand was already on it, holding it out like she’d read his mind.
