Name: Ashes of the heart
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)

Chapter 1 The Quite Man of Iron Creek

The ranch sprawled across the Montana plains like it had been carved into the bones of the earth itself. Miles of fencing cut across golden pastures where the breeze carried the scent of hay, manure, and early spring. The place was quiet, peaceful - until you stepped inside the man who owned it.

Cole Hart was a man built by silence. His presence was felt before he spoke - tall, broad-shouldered, with sun-darkened skin and a square jaw that looked like it had taken a punch or two in its time. His eyes were a cold blue, the kind that didn't let you in easy. The kind that held back years of storms.

He had the look of a man women whispered about behind coffee cups and wide-brimmed hats in town. The kind of man whose denim clung just right and whose hands knew the weight of a horse's reins and the sharp heat of whiskey at midnight. Hands that had built this ranch from the ground up with little more than stubbornness and a need to prove something.

But no one stayed long enough to know what he was proving.

Cole had been married once. Too young, too fast, to a woman too wild for the land. It ended ugly - a courthouse, a slammed door, and his little girl crying in the corner while he poured the last bottle of scotch down the sink and locked his heart behind steel.

Now, it was just him and Rosie.

Rosie Hart was nine going on forty - smart, sharp, with curls that never behaved and a sense of humor her mother never had time for. She was Cole's reason for breathing, the only softness left in him. When she laughed, he felt something uncoil inside him. Something old and tired, like a hound dog stretching after a long winter.

Every morning, she helped him feed the horses. She wore a too-big straw hat and boots caked in mud. She never complained.

"You're getting too tall for that pony," Cole said one morning, tossing a bale into the stall.

She grinned, gap-toothed and bright-eyed. "Then buy me a horse, Daddy."

He chuckled - a rare sound, rough with disuse. "That's how it starts. Next you'll want a truck and a boyfriend."

"Eww, gross." She wrinkled her nose. "Never. Boys are dumb."

"You say that now," he muttered, rubbing the sweat from his neck. The sky was already heating up, clouds high and wispy.

He didn't talk much about the past. Didn't let Rosie ask too many questions about her mother, either. It was better that way - at least, that's what he told himself. All that mattered now was protecting his girl, and that meant keeping outsiders out.

So when the letter arrived - a crisp white envelope from the county education board - Cole had nearly tossed it.

"Home school review. Recommendation: certified tutor visit and assess."

He'd cussed under his breath and thrown it into the junk drawer.

But he didn't have a choice. Rosie needed her education. And damn it all, he wasn't gonna fail her too.

Which was why, three days later, he found himself pacing the edge of his driveway, boots crunching gravel, heart hard and locked up tight, waiting for some stranger to come onto his land and step into their quiet life.

He didn't know her name. Didn't want to. She'd do her job and leave, like everyone else.

But the wind was already shifting

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Ashes of the heart

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