“I’m an asshole.” She treated him to a mulish look.

He chuckled. “Also a lady.”

Her face went scarlet, from the roots of her hair, down to the collar of her tank top. “You didn’t hire a lady to work on your ranch, Gabe Dalton. You hired an expert with horses. That’s how I expect you to treat me.”

Very interesting.

And obviously the exact right track to take with her. Because he hadn’t seen her flustered, not once. Not any of the times they had interacted away from the ranch, and certainly not since she had set foot onto the ranch today, her first day as an employee. She’d been all piss and vinegar.

But suddenly, she was flustered, and that was a damned interesting thing.

She moved on to Gus’s other foot, her motions jerky, filled with irritation.

“Are you making commentary on how I treat my staff?”

“Just on how you should treat me,” she said. “I’m not a fragile flower. I’ve done every single chore at Get Out of Dodge that my brothers have done, at least once. If not more. I was raised by my father, just the same as they were, and the same things were expected of me. I’m not here to be treated differently. I’m here to be treated the way I deserve to be, based on my skill level.”

“Me lifting a saddle for you is not underestimating you. It’s just polite.”

“To you. Not to me.”

She continued on checking hooves, a strand of dark hair falling in her face, her slender arms rippling with muscle every time she moved them. She was small-built, slim, but definitely fit. Obviously someone who was used to working hard, and with her hands.

When she was through, she got a brush and pushed her hand through the strap and began to work it vigorously over Gus’s back. “So you’re going back to the rodeo?” she asked.

“Yep,” he said. “Skipping this year, obviously, but afterward I’m getting back in.”

“Why are you skipping this year?”

He shook his head. “A whole lot of things. McKenna came a bit ago and that changed things. Now my dad has me working on the ranch. It’s just not a great time to be gone for eight months.”

His half sister was only the beginning of the different changes that had taken place in his family recently. His dad was getting older, and he wasn’t able to work the land the way that he once had.

Hank had retired from the rodeo some fifteen years ago, and that had been hard enough for him. But he’d been the old man of the circuit at that point and he hadn’t been winning. Then he’d come home and found his wife ready to walk out the door, and that had been the beginning of something more than toxic fights.

The toxic fighting had been the status quo for his parents. His mother faithful while his father wandered the country being a bastard, and then the inevitable explosion when it all came out into the open.