by Talty, Jen
“I did accept one into the bull-riding school,” Georgia Moon said. “But Luke and JW had worked with him in the past.”
“Not everyone who was employed by Robert Brothers was a bad person.” JD heard movement in the house. His heart pulsed in excitement as Annette glided down the steps. He’d been hoping she’d join them on the porch for a nightcap.
“Are you sure that horse was Patch?” Luke asked.
“About as sure as I can be without a tag,” JD admitted. “But there was a mark where a tag should have been, and the moment you take Patch from the rest of the wild horses, he’s tame.”
“Well, not exactly,” Annette said as she stepped through the screen door.
He shifted on the large double rocking chair, making room, and thankfully, Annette chose to plant her cute little butt next to his.
“Both Coco and Patch, if that’s what we’re calling him now, behave erratically.” She filled her wine glass before settling in next to JD. “We both thought it was out of fear and based on Ron and Larry’s presence. But I think it’s out of pain. I just can’t figure out the source.”
“There’s no horseshoes to hide anything in,” JD said.
“Doesn’t mean something isn’t wedged somewhere that’s causing a problem.” Luke adjusted his hat and sat up a little taller. “But it all seems too coincidental that these horses go bonkers at the precisely the right time. How does that happen?”
“Jockeys have used shocking devices to get their horses to run faster,” Georgia Moon said.
“But those are well hidden under equipment,” JD added.
“Well, I’d bet my first paycheck that those two horses are being injured somehow, and that’s why they’re so confused and don’t know how to behave.” Annette lifted her glass and swirled the red liquid.
JD became mesmerized by the movement. He stared at her plump lips as she took a long sip. Annette was the whole package. Smart. Sweet. Kind. Sexy. She was great with animals and people.
And she was a fabulous mother.
Everything came naturally to her, and he didn’t think there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do if she set her mind to it.
“I struggle with the idea that Ron would have anything to do with harming any animal.” Georgia Moon stood.
“I think we all do, but I saw this with my own two eyes, and I believe every word Annette says.” JD looped his arm over the back of the double rocker. “But until we know more, I want to go into tomorrow with business as usual. Once I get Heather and the doctor settled in my barn, I’ll take Annette back down to the main corral and continue the orientation.”
“What are you going to tell Ron about the missing mustangs?” Luke asked as he took Georgia Moon’s hand.
“We decided to tell him that we transported them to the vet hospital for observation,” Annette said.
“Hopefully, Heather and the doc will know something by the afternoon.”
“Alrighty then. Georgia Moon and I are going to head home. We’ll touch base tomorrow.” Luke took Georgia Moon by the hand and meandered off toward their Jeep.
“Are you ready?” JB asked.
“You go ahead. I want to talk to Annette for a bit.”
“I’ll leave the light on.” JB waved as he descended down the porch steps. “Don’t forget I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ll be gone for a week.”
“Don’t get anyone pregnant.” JD had been saying that to his brother for years, only he actually wondered if his little brother really did have a kid out there somewhere, considering all the sexual partners he’d had over the years. JB wasn’t a bad person, not by any means. He treated all women with respect, and he cared for every single lady he dated.
But he was still a ladies’ man, and for whatever reason, good girls wanted to tame him into being a one-man woman.
Never going to happen.
“I just stocked up on condoms. No worries,” JB said. “Don’t stay out all night.”
JD’s cheeks heated. He quickly removed his hand from the backside of the seat and fiddled with the wine glass. A long awkward silence filled the Idaho night air.
“Did Tony go down okay?” he asked, finally breaking the tension.
“He did. Daycare really tuckers him out which is good and bad news.”
“It’s good because he goes right to sleep, but bad because you don’t get to spend as much time with him as you’d like.” He had no idea what that might be like, since he’d been a father for all of three days. But he did know those three days had been the most difficult and yet the most precious of his entire life.
“Exactly. I know I’m going to love getting back to work, but I miss him terribly.”
“At lunchtime you should go see him. Most parents do that on the ranch.”
She sipped her wine, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet up under her butt. “I will start doing that once he’s more accustomed to the routine. Otherwise, I might make the separation anxiety worse.”
“That makes sense.” Nothing about his daughter’s birth had been normal or made sense. And her short life served as a constant reminder to JD that love hurt more than the worst kind of physical pain anyone could bring forth on another person. His heart still ached every night before he went to bed, and every morning he woke with a start and a gasp.
“Do you think Kitty and JW will have kids right away?” Annette asked.
“I know JW wants them, and he’s not getting any younger. Kitty does too, but I don’t think she’s in as much of a rush. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if they came back from this honeymoon with a bun in the oven.”
“I know Luke wants them, but he’s afraid.”
“So is Georgia Moon,” JD admitted. It had been a long time since he’d felt this comfortable with another human outside of his family to have an in-depth conversation with. It both terrified and exhilarated him. “But I suspect they are afraid for different reasons.”
“Luke’s afraid that somehow he carries some sort of weird murdering gene and that either it’s been dormant in his body, or he’ll end up with a psycho for a kid.”
“I think that’s a reasonable fear considering what you both have been through, but it’s highly unlikely, and Georgia Moon will beat that fear out of him,” JD said with a chuckle. “Georgia Moon is afraid she’s not maternal. When JB and I were little, she dropped us both on our heads, and she never much enjoyed babysitting.”
“She’s great with Tony. She’ll make a wonderful mother.”
“I know she will, and eventually, I’m sure, she and Luke will figure that out.” JD polished off the last sip of his wine.
“What about you? Do you want to have kids? Get married? All that stuff?” Annette tucked a piece of her long brown hair behind her ear.
“Nope.” His chest tightened. It felt as though an elephant had sat right on the center and had no intention of getting up any time soon. He supposed one of the reasons he started spending more and more time in the office was because he got to spend less and less time with people. He didn’t have to interact all that often with creatures with heartbeats.
And numbers didn’t die.
He might not like the way the numbers were looking, but he fixed problems with numbers. He could balance a worksheet and have everything add up in the end.
And he didn’t get attached.
People, on the other hand, demanded things from him that he could no longer give to anyone, much less himself. Hell, he could barely give them to his family. Yet, here he sat, on the front porch of the old manager’s cabin with Annette, contemplating kissing her again.
“Just nope? No elaboration? No reasons why?”
No one ever discussed what happened. Maybe his family did amongst themselves, but the last time they all tried to bring it up, JD left the ranch, and he swore he’d leave for good if they ever brought it up again.
They never did.
At least to his face.
Now he suspected they had kept his private pain a secret s
ince Annette seemed to be clueless. He planned on keeping it that way.
“I could give you a million reasons why, but the bottom line is I just don’t want to.”
“That’s an honest answer,” she said. “But I can tell you, once you have a kid, there’s no going back.”
Unless they die in your arms three days after their mother takes her last breath in front of you.
4
“Hey, big brother, what brings you out here?” Annette twisted her hair into a braid, letting it cascade down her back. She adjusted her shades over her eyes and set her Stetson on the post by the entrance to the barn. Her side still ached from when Coco smashed his hooves into her ribs, but her body was going to be really sore from mucking the stalls.
“I thought I’d come over here and see how my favorite sister is handling her new job and how her new boss is treating her, because I can kick the shit out of him if you want me to.” Luke handed her a cold water and a bag of her favorite potato chips.
She laughed. “JD is fine, but feel free to go after Ron and Larry. They stopped taking JD aside to tell him what they think of me or to criticize the way I do things and now just do it in front of me. They are making me so jittery that I’ve made a couple of newbie mistakes, which is why I’ve resorted to hanging in the barn with the horses for a bit.”
“JD told me Ron’s been extra hard on you.” Luke dropped a small lunch bag on the table. “If it makes you feel any better Ron once told JW that he was making a mistake by letting Georgia Moon run the daily operations of the ranch.”
“I’m sure Georgia Moon didn’t take that too well.”
“JW took it worse and nearly fired Ron right there, but out of respect for Chuck, he gave Ron a second chance. Since then, Ron has, for the most part, done his job well, but I’ve always seen some jealousy there.”
“That’s what I thought, but JD says no way. That Ron started out as a sixteen-year-old ranch hand and never once expected anything from the Holland family.”
“Of course, that’s what he’s going to say to the family that was willed the property, but I know that Ron occasionally looked to the likes of Robert Brothers for employment.” Luke unwrapped a couple of turkey sandwiches, handing her one. “But he remained loyal when the shit hit the fan with Bella, and that counts for something in this family.”
She glanced over her shoulder. JD and Ron were still nowhere to be seen, which just made her damned nervous. She understood why JD thought it was necessary for them to go for a walk to have a discussion about the way she was being treated, but she didn’t like that they had gone out of sight, or that she’d been stuck here alone with Larry, who constantly gave her the stink eye.
Along with other ranch hands.
Though a few had been quite nice.
“Was he loyal or did Robert just not give him an opportunity to flip?” She waved half a sandwich in the air. “We both know how Robert works and what he did to Mark.”
“I think Robert took whatever intel Ron and Larry might have given him and then strung them both along, but I doubt Robert would have pulled either of them over. Robert always put Ron down in his abilities as a trainer, and in some ways, Robert was right. Ron isn’t the best, but he has great management skills. Up until a couple of years ago, Ron was the perfect employee.”
“So, what happened to change that?”
Luke shrugged. “I was so wrapped up in our mess that I have no idea, and when I pressed Georgia Moon on it last night, I didn’t get too far other than Ron doesn’t trust me because of what I did; therefore, he doesn’t trust you.”
“I think a lot of people don’t trust me.” She dropped the last couple of bits of her sandwich, her stomach churning in knots.
“I’m sorry. That has to do more with me than you. A lot of people around here don’t understand how JW could forgive me and why Georgia Moon would have anything to do with me.”
“Thank God no one knows who we really are.” A sour bubble burst at the back of her throat. While most people wouldn’t blame her or her brother for their father’s transgressions, they would never look at them the same, and that was something she didn’t want for herself.
But especially for Tony.
“The buzz has died around Dad’s execution, so we don’t have anything to worry about when it comes to that.”
“Until they go to make the movie version.”
“No one will find us, don’t worry.” Luke lowered his glasses and raised a brow. “That chapter of our lives is really over.” He shoved his shades back up his nose and smiled.
She wanted to believe her brother, but a part of her would always be worried about someone figuring out her past and using it against her like Mark had. She figured in a couple of years, she’d probably be able to breathe easy, but until then, she’d remain guarded.
“Agreed, but moving on to the next phase of our lives, I have to deal with the fact that my new immediate boss and his assistant, for whatever reason, may be taking tame horses and sending them back out to the wild. Not to mention they could be hurting them as well, and in the process of pointing this out to the owners, I’ve pissed off half the people I have to work with.”
Luke chuckled. “You’ve done the exact opposite for JD. Georgia Moon said he told the office staff that he’d be working in the field for the next couple of weeks, so if they needed him in the office, they’d have to let him know ahead of time so he could arrange it. Normally, JD works the other way around and makes Ron and everyone else come to him on the hill.”
“Give me another hour. I’m sure I’ll piss him off too.” She touched her lips, remembering his tender kiss from the day before. It had taken her off guard. Even frightened her.
However, she liked it way more than she wanted to admit to herself, much less anyone else.
“But he has been great, and he’s been standing up for me when it comes to Ron,” she said. “And I appreciate him being here as a buffer while we wait to find out what happened with Coco and Patch.”
“I appreciate that too,” Luke said. “How long did he stay last night after JB left?”
She choked on a carrot.
Luke smiled like a big pig rolling in a pile of mud. “JB told me he walked back to his place alone and that he didn’t hear his brother come in.”
“Well, he didn’t spend the night if that’s what you’re asking.” She flicked her water bottle, sending sprinkles in her brother’s direction. “He stayed for about an hour, and we talked about the ranch, horses, business, and what to do today.”
“You’re sounding a little defensive,” Luke teased. “Kind of like when you first met that guy who took you to your senior prom.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re really going to bring him up now?”
“You were madly in love with him,” Luke said.
“I was not. I liked him a lot, but what does that have to do with JD? Because I barely know the man and until yesterday, JD hadn’t said more than a handful of sentences to me. I thought maybe he was avoiding me or something.”
Luke stuffed the trash into the bag, polished off his water, and wiped the sweat off his brow. “I’ve known JD a long time, and if he was avoiding you, it’s because he likes you.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. We’re not in middle school.”
Luke took off his glasses and set them on the table. He folded his arms and stared at her with the same brotherly love and affection he’d always had. Luke had been her rock, even when they lived two thousand miles apart. He was the only person she trusted completely. But whenever his right eye twitched and his face got all tight and serious, she knew the next few words would be intense.
“JD hides behind that big desk of his not because he likes numbers, but because he’s been hurt in ways most can’t understand.”
“What do you mean?” She did a quick scan of the area, noting that Ron and JD had emerged from the small barn where Ron’s office was located. Ron left in his pickup, and JD headed in her direction. Ho
w she wished she’d been a fly on that wall.
“Just like what happened to you isn’t my story to tell anyone, his isn’t my story to tell you. Besides, no one in this family has ever talked about it openly since it happened. JD prefers it that way.” Luke waggled his finger in her face. “And don’t go asking around, unless you want to find the one way to piss him off so much that he kicks your ass right off the ranch.”
“Wait a minute. You’re going to drop something like that on me and tell me I can’t be curious? And you could put me out of my misery?”
Luke nodded.
“Okay. But based on what you’ve said, I take it a woman broke his heart?” That had to be it, but a lot of people experienced that.
Oh shit.
Not a lot of people experienced the death of a loved one.
“Something like that,” Luke said. “He’s on his way over, and I best get back to work. Let me know as soon as you do what’s going on with the horses.”
“Will do.”
Luke adjusted his Stetson and stood, taking her in for a brotherly hug. “I only told you about his broken heart because in the last twenty-four hours, he’s been a completely different man. JB and Georgia Moon have noticed. I guess JW noticed it before he left for his honeymoon.” He tapped his index finger in the center of her chest. “I’ve noticed something in you change, and it’s not only you becoming your old more confident, spitfire self.”
“A lot has changed, for the good. However, don’t read things that aren’t there.”
“Oh, please. You and JD have the hots for each other, and it’s so obvious I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone on the ranch started taking bets on how long it takes for the two of you to hook up.”
She slapped her brother on the forearm. “That’s not funny, and JD is my boss.”
“I sleep with mine.” Luke winked. “JD is a good man. I approve.”
