Rancho Romance

Romance de Rancho

I inherited a ranch I'd never seen from a grandmother I'd barely known.

"You're the new owner?" The foreman didn't bother hiding his skepticism.

"Apparently."

"Do you know anything about ranching?"

"I know how to order a steak."

"That's not funny."

"I wasn't joking."

His name was Joaquín, and he'd worked Rancho Esperanza since he was fifteen. He knew every animal, every fence post, every inch of land that was now, impossibly, mine.

"Your grandmother wanted you to have this place," he said. "She talked about you constantly."

"She never talked to me."

"Family is complicated." He handed me work gloves. "If you're staying, you're working."

"I'm not sure I'm staying."

"Then figure it out. But until you decide, make yourself useful."

I hated him. I hated the early mornings, the aching muscles, the endless chores. I hated how confident he was, how easily he commanded the workers, how the animals responded to him like he was their god.

"You're watching me again," he said.

"I'm learning."

"You're staring."

"Same thing."

Week three, I found letters in my grandmother's things. Letters she'd written to me but never sent.

Mija, I want you to know this land. I want you to love it like I do. But I was too proud to reach out, and now the years have passed...

I cried in the barn. Joaquín found me.

"She loved you," he said quietly. "She just didn't know how to show it."

"You knew her better than I did."

"Different isn't better. She regretted losing you."

"Teach me," I said the next morning. "Properly. Everything."

"Why the change?"

"Because this is her legacy. And I want to deserve it."

Something shifted in his eyes—respect, maybe, or something warmer.

"Okay. But you do what I say. No arguments."

"I make no promises."

"That's what I was afraid of."

He taught me to ride, to herd, to read the weather in the clouds. We worked side by side until my hands were calloused and my skin was brown from the sun.

"You're a natural," he admitted one evening.

"I had a good teacher."

"You had determination. I just pointed you in the right direction."

The kiss happened during a storm. We'd been checking fences when the sky opened, and we ran for the old barn, laughing and soaked.

"You look ridiculous," he said.

"So do you."

And then we weren't laughing anymore.

"This is complicated," he said afterward, hay in our hair.

"Why?"

"You're my boss."

"Technically."

"And you might still leave."

"What if I don't want to leave?" I turned to face him. "What if this place has become more than an inheritance?"

"Then we figure it out together."

I stayed. I learned everything my grandmother wanted me to know. Joaquín and I ran the ranch together—partners in work and in life.

"Your grandmother would be proud," he said on our wedding day.

"I think she sent you to me. Her last gift."

"A foreman?"

"A home."

Rancho romance—where land becomes legacy, and love grows from the earth itself.