Cover

Dedication

To New Orleans, because there’s no place else like it on this earth.

Thank you.

One

A perfect barn was like a perfect woman: suspicious.

LJ Delisle didn’t have much experience with perfection, which was why he was giving a little side-eye to the stable’s immaculate floor. As he explored up the aisle, brass name plaques glinted at him from the stall doors. The horses themselves were glossy and muscular but so manicured there was no sign that they’d ever broken a sweat.

He stopped to pet one’s velvety nose. “You been juicin’, hmm? Don’t lie to me now.” The gelding whickered, blowing speckles of snot all over his white job-interview shirt.

LJ chuckled. Well, the horses seemed normal enough, even if the stable was straight out of a magazine shoot. He left his new friend and stuck his head into the tack room. “Anybody here?”

No answer from the racks of saddles.

Probably he was just uncomfortable because this was so different from where he grew up. There was nowhere as beautiful as New Orleans, and few places as screwed up. The crumbling brick sidewalks he loved were edged by jagged potholes and scattered with glass from windows broken by burglars and vandals. The red sizzle of boiling crawfish spiced the air, and humidity squatted heavy over the ever-threatening river. Mud backed up into the streets with every hard rain, a reminder of the sharp edge between civilization and chaos.

To LJ, flaws felt like home.

He continued down the barn aisle, reminding himself not to get his back up when this caliber of facility was exactly what he’d come to Montana to find. Along with a fresh start and a chance to train horses his way. Besides, getting out of the Deep South was just about the only choice for a black man who wanted to break into the exclusive club of the horse-showing circuit.

Now he just needed to find the person who was supposed to be interviewing him and convince them the spritz of horse snot on his shirt only increased his qualifications as a trainer.

He reached the exit on the far side of the barn, and his strides stuttered as he saw the horse outside in the arena.

“Glory hallelujah,” he muttered.

The Lawler Ranch quarter horses looked classy in their stalls, but in movement they were the difference between a Dumpster full of sheet music and a song. The stallion outside was all muscle, his tail as dark as the long braid of the woman riding him. He was giving her hell, trying to buck, but instead of fighting him, she funneled all that energy into grace. The horse’s hooves floated over the ground as it transitioned to a half pass as seamlessly as an Olympian.