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"Staples," he said, to the top of her head. "Then it's staples."

"Staples."

Neither of them went and got any. The wire was done and the lesson was over, and neither of them moved. Her hands shifted under his, settling into a grip there was no more work for, and he felt her breathing go quick and shallow against his chest, and his own went right after it. A hundred and sixty empty acres in every direction, and the two of them stood in the middle of it holding one old tool for no reason either of them was willing to say out loud.

Her thumb moved under his. Half an inch of cold skin sliding against his palm, deliberate or not, and he would go to his grave not knowing which, and it went through him like the wire snapping.

Mason stepped back first.

One clean step, before the wanting made any decisions for him, and he got very busy with the toolbox while his palms went on reporting her hands to him like they'd been paid to.

"Like that," he said, to the fence. "That's tension."

She let go of the stretcher, flexed her hands, and did not look at him, and there was color coming up the side of her neck that had nothing to do with the cold. "Got it. Great tool. Good fence. Everybody involved with this fence is completely fine."

"Speak for yourself," Mason said, and headed down the line before she could look at him.

He'd touched a lot of women in his life and it had never once cost him anything. This had cost him something. He didn't have a name for what, and he worked the rest of the line and didn't find one, and when she peeled off his spare gloves at the truck he saw the raw stripe across both palms where they'd been sliding and burning her all morning, three sizes too big, and she caught him looking and closed her hands.

"They're fine."

"They're not fine."

"They're educational."

"So's a rattlesnake. Get in," Mason said. "Feed store."

She got in, and that was the whole vote, and two miles down the county road, going through her notebook with a pencil, she asked it without looking up.

"Question. Do you have a job? An actual one. Because you've been here every day this week, and either ranching runs itself or somewhere west of me there's a ranch quietly burning down."

"Shipped calves two weeks back. Winter feeds itself till it snows, mostly mornings." All true. "Jace manages the whole place and helps Dad with the mining contracts. I run the cattle, Owen runs the breeding program, Knox and my sister Ainsley have the horses between them. And everybody chips in on everything, is the truth of it."

"And your father's fine with the cattle side spending every morning or afternoon at my place?"

There it was, the question inside the question, riding shotgun between them, and the true answer had his father's voice in it and a no he'd said exactly once, to exactly one man.

"My father," he said, "has never once asked where I spend my afternoons."

Which was true too, and was not the answer, and she watched him a second with those eyes that missed nothing, and let it go, and outside the window her fence line ran along the county road, drawn and singing, years of somebody else's neglect coming back to plumb one afternoon at a time.

The feed store was supposed to be ten minutes, in and out, gloves that fit her and another spool of wire to replace what the south line had eaten, and they were loading the truck bed at the dock when Knox's rig pulled in two bays down.

His youngest brother got out working on a candy bar from some gas station, took in the scene at the leisurely rate he took in everything, Mason, the wire, Lauren checking items off a list against the tailgate, two coffees sweating on the rail, and arrived at the only conclusion the county was currently selling.

"Knox," Mason said.

"Mason." Knox nodded past him. "Miss Merritt."

"Lauren," she said. "You're the chili one."

Knox stopped chewing. "What'd he say about the chili?"

"Only good things."

"He tell you about the county fair in '19?"

"Knox," Mason said.