by Ali Parker
I peeled off the gloves and nodded, even though I was entirely uncertain if I was at all equipped to help with a horse giving birth. “What can I do? I don’t think there are any parasites in there, by the way.”
A slight frown tugged at her features until she spotted the bag of manure sitting there. I could’ve sworn there was a flicker of amusement in her eyes then, but she turned away before I could be sure.
“I’ll show you when we get there,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there as backup if you need me.”
I followed her around the side of the barn to the stables nearby. Puffs of dust came up around our feet when we left the path to trudge to a smaller building attached to one end of the stables. It smelled like copper and shit, and I soon realized why.
Kayla was standing in a puddle with the horse, her hand lovingly stroking her neck as she whispered. When she heard us walk in, she flashed me a smile. “Welcome to the birthing suite. Are you ready to do this?”
My eyes widened. “Me? I thought I was just helping.”
“You’ll be fine.” Haven waved me into the stall before backing away. “I’m going to get her some more fresh water. Be back in a minute.”
Nerves slammed into me when Kayla stepped away too. “I need to check on the baby who was born last night. Good luck.”
Before I could protest, she was gone too. I had the feeling I was being played somehow, but it just seemed cruel to let the horse suffer for it.
Both girls came back from time to time, giving me tips, and doing their own checks. They still left me pretty much in the dark about what to do though.
“Looks like it’s just you and me in this, girl,” I murmured to the horse when Haven left us alone again.
Delivering a baby horse was not fucking easy. She didn’t require me to do much as she adjusted her positions, but I was racked with worry. I kept checking my watch, wondering if it hadn’t taken too long already.
Haven shook her head when I asked, some unnamed emotion coming into her eyes before she left again. The mare’s tail flicked until suddenly she went down on her front legs.
“Haven!” I yelled. “I think something’s wrong.”
She ran into the stall less than a second later, making me wonder what she was doing so close by when she supposedly couldn’t be in here. Stopping just inside the door, she suddenly grinned. “No, she’s fine. You may want to stand back though. You’re about to witness your first birth.”
A few minutes later, what looked like an alien started emerging from the poor horse. I was transfixed as I watched the process, overwhelmed by the rush of emotion I felt when the baby stood up on wobbly legs just minutes after its birth.
Haven gave me a relieved smile, and it felt like the first genuine one I’d gotten from her all day. “Well done. You can leave now if you want to. I’m just going to check on the baby, but it all looks good here.”
“Leave?” The thought horrified me for some reason. “It’s been less than fifteen minutes. I can’t leave her yet.”
Watching new life coming into the world had made me forget everything I’d done up to that point. I didn’t want to stay just in case the veterinarian showed up or just to spend some time with Haven.
I simply couldn’t imagine leaving right then. She looked at me with something like shock shining in her eyes but then shrugged. “It’s your call. If you want to stay while I make sure she’s okay, you can.”
“I’ll stay,” I said firmly.
None of the gore of what had happened before the birth or even the placentas after scared me away. I stayed with Haven, mom, and foal until I was ushered out an indeterminate amount of time later.
Haven’s head tilted to the side as we walked to our cars after washing our hands. She looked up at me like she’d never seen me before. “You stayed.”
“Of course, I stayed.” I frowned. “Why do you look so surprised?”
She shook her head and stared straight ahead. “No reason. Thanks for helping out today.”
“Can I buy you dinner?” I asked, finally giving into the urge to take her hand.
She jumped when I touched her, then folded her arms firmly over her chest as if hiding her hands away from me was the only option available to her. “No, I can’t. Sorry.”
“You sure? I did all this for you and I’ll pay. That’s a pretty good deal.”
Kayla came up behind us then, and I saw Haven glance at her. They exchanged a meaningful look before Haven sighed. “Fine. You did do all the chores I asked you to, so I guess it’s only fair.”
It wasn’t quite as enthusiastic a response as I’d hoped for, but I’d take it.
Then I had a whole dinner to figure out why she was suddenly treating me like I was the enemy.
Chapter 15
HAVEN
Colton picked me up exactly ninety minutes after I got home. The last thing I wanted was to go on another date with him, but it didn’t seem fair to ice him out after all the bullshit assignments he’d done for us today.
Shoveling shit wasn’t our job but I’d specifically told my client this morning we had someone willing to help her out. The parasite thing had also been a pile of crap. None of those horses had parasites and I knew it.
It had been fun watching him do it when he was so clearly out of his depth though. I’d been surprised when he hadn’t questioned me or argued. Then I started to feel guilty about what I was putting him through. Which was why I’d eventually agreed to dinner.
If a guy was willing to do all that in the name of helping a girl out when he’d already slept with her, he couldn’t be all bad. I was also pretty sure we’d nearly given him a heart attack when we’d left him alone with Misty.
The old girl was a pro at having babies, but he didn’t know that. Kayla and I had hidden right outside just in case she needed our help, and we’d monitored her progress ourselves every time we went in there, but she’d done it like the champ she was.
Another thing that had convinced me Colton couldn’t possibly be as bad as being responsible for that article made me think he was, was how caring he had been to Misty and her new baby. No guy who was nothing but a sick prick could’ve been that obviously affected by the birth.
I didn’t get dressed up for dinner again, though. A quick shower and a clean pair of jeans and shirt was as much effort as I went through. My hair was pulled back as usual instead of the loose, tumbling waves Kayla had helped me create last time, and my face was bare of any makeup.
And yet, when I opened my front door, his eyes still raked over me with as much appreciation and heat as when I’d been in that dress. He also wore jeans, but his were more faded than mine.
That lock of hair fell onto his forehead again, and the blue-brown of his eyes was warm. “Hey there.”
“Hi.” I managed to smile while wishing he wasn’t so damn attractive—or that he just wouldn’t look at me that way, like he wanted to fuck me and love me forever all at the same time. It was too disconcerting. “Ready to go?”
He chuckled, the sound as rich and easygoing as I remembered. Damn it.
“I think you stole my line, but yes, I’m ready to go.” He hooked his thumbs into his pockets when I closed my door and stepped out. “You?”
“Ready.”
The sky was streaked with reds and oranges, the sun a glowing ball of fire still some distance from the horizon. Warm night air washed over me, and I took a few deeper breaths of it to steel myself against having to get into a car with him again.
We walked toward it in companionable silence, which pretty much stuck until we were seated at a casual burger joint downtown. I flicked a hand at the interior of the restaurant before looking at him.
“No fancy, trendy place tonight, huh?”
His eyes searched mine. I just didn’t know what he was looking for. “I’m starving. Their portions are good here. Did you want to go to a fancy, trendy place instead?”
“Nope. This is fine.” I was much more relaxed here actually
. Plus, their portion sizes weren’t the only thing that was good there. The table size was pretty decent too, meaning that our legs weren’t all entwined again.
I was happy for it, but there was also a twinge of disappointment in my traitorous gut. “I like the bleu-cheese burger here.”
It was a useless piece of information for me to give him, but I needed to think of something other than how much I’d enjoyed touching him and being so close to him the other night. A bleu-cheese burger seemed as good of a distraction as any.
“I prefer the Big Boy myself,” he said offhandedly, then moved forward in his seat. When his gaze caught mine, he practically pinned me down with it. If I found it hard to breathe under the sudden intensity in his eyes, trying to avoid them was futile. “Are you going to tell me what’s up with you today?”
“I’m fine,” I repeated my earlier lie. “It’s just been a long week so far. Everything will be better again if I manage to get some proper sleep this weekend.”
“At least there’s only one more day to go before then.” The smile he gave me seemed genuine, which only confused me again. If he was just using me to get information for a story, why did he seem like he really gave a damn about whether I got some sleep or not? “You’d tell me if there was something else going on, right?”
“Right.” It was a straight-up lie, but it seemed poetic since everything he’d published about me had been exactly the same. “Thanks again for coming to help us out today. We really appreciate it.”
“I actually enjoyed it.” He grinned again, and both it and his voice were sincere. “The shoveling not so much, but the foaling was definitely interesting.”
“It looked like you really enjoyed that. I was wondering if I’d imagined it.” My words didn’t have the same bite that I’d been injecting into them all day. I was curious, and I sounded it.
Colton’s gaze grew inquisitive before he sighed and dragged a hand through his hair with a slight chuckle. “I’m trying so hard not to come across like I’m interviewing or cross-examining you, but I have so many questions.”
“I’m an open book.” Another lie. “Go ahead.”
His eyes moved slowly from one of mine to the other. “Why would you have imagined it? It was a magical moment and I enjoyed being a part of it.”
“You just didn’t strike me as that kind of guy,” I replied, honest again for once. Thank God.
All these lies were making my skin crawl.
“What kind of guy?” He pulled his head back slightly. “The kind who cares?”
Maybe he wasn’t all that terrible at his job. He was definitely intuitive. It made me wonder again why he would’ve written what he had. “Something like that.”
“What did I do to make you think I don’t care?” he asked, confusion in the way he furrowed his brow. “If this is about the other night, if you wanted me to stay, I just—”
“It’s not about that,” I said before he could elaborate about the single most humiliating thing I’d ever done. “It’s just that I haven’t met a lot of guys who have been so openly emotional about the birth of an animal. To be fair, I haven’t met a lot of girls who are so emotional about it either. Unless it’s their own pets, most people don’t really react much.”
The blue of his eyes turned an almost sapphire color, like the inside of a flame. “Do you want to know the truth?”
“What do you think?” I lifted my chin. “I didn’t come here to be lied to.”
Oh, irony. You devil, you.
Before I could berate myself too much about it, he nodded slowly without taking his eyes off mine. “I always wanted a family.”
My eyes opened so wide they nearly bugged out of my head. I choked on nothing but my next breath of air, and I reached for my water glass. “Excuse me?”
He shrugged. “I always wanted a family. I thought that by the time I got to my early thirties, I’d have been present for the birth of at least one of my own babies.”
I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing, but I believed with every part of myself that he was being truthful. Colton had many sides, as I was starting to learn.
But the one he was letting me see then seemed like the real him, the one he would show to family and maybe a few close friends. “I’m assuming you haven’t been present for the births of any of your own babies?”
“Nope.” A gleam of sadness entered his eyes. “I don’t have any children that I know of. Being part of a mother giving birth only solidified the fact that I haven’t done anything I thought I would’ve by now.”
I’d walked out of my house with absolutely no intention of ever letting him get to me again, yet I felt myself warming up as I listened to him talk. It was impossible not to.
“Why didn’t you have any children yet?” I asked. “You don’t have to tell me. I get that it’s deeply personal.”
“I brought it up.” He flashed me a self-deprecating smile. “I should’ve known it wasn’t just something to drop unexpectedly on a second date.”
“No, it’s fine. Really. I’m just trying to get to know you.” Something else that was true. “Unless you’re not comfortable talking about it. We can change the topic and I won’t ask about it again.”
He exhaled a long, slow breath before shaking his head. “No. We can talk about it. It’s something you deserve to know about anyway if we’re going to be seeing more of each other.”
I didn’t know about that yet, but I was willing to listen. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s probably not what you think, but no, it’s not good.” He paused when the waiter came by and we placed our orders. Then he rolled his head from one shoulder to the other like a fighter trying to warm up. “I was cheated on.”
“What?” I blinked rapidly.
“When I was in college, I had a girlfriend. She meant everything to me and I thought it was the same for her. I had our whole future planned out, but the only thing she had planned was when she was seeing her other boyfriend next. She was seeing him for an entire year before I found out.”
My stomach rolled in disgust. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you, but that’s not why I told you. It’s just the answer to your question. I haven’t had any kids because I haven’t been in a serious relationship since.”
“Do you still want them?” I asked after a short pause. “Kids.”
His eyes settled firmly on mine again. “I don’t know. That’s why I said it’s probably something I should tell you if we’re going to keep seeing each other.”
It dawned on me then that he was sharing the greatest humiliation in his life with me, and he was doing it for the sake of being honest about serious future prospects for our relationship. I definitely had some thinking to do.
“Do you want kids?” he asked.
Maybe not with you, was my first thought. But then I realized that I was being unfair again. He’d written one article and I still didn’t know why. I couldn’t hold it against him if I couldn’t even bring myself to ask him about it.
Also, he was the first person I’d ever met who made me feel like I wasn’t a walking disaster of a conversationalist. After what he’d just told me, he deserved an honest answer at the very least. “I don’t know. I think so, but it’s just not something I’ve spent much time thinking about.”
“How?” He didn’t frown and there was no judgment in his expression when he asked. “I can’t imagine not having spent a lot of time thinking about it. Not the last few years but before then.”
I gave my shoulders a small shrug, not ready to tell him about the deepest, darkest part of my history. “My family didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so I had to work really hard to keep my grades up. That was my whole focus. All I could really think about when it came to my future was staying on track, getting a scholarship, graduating, and being good enough at what I do to get a good job.”
“You definitely achieved what you set out to then.” He lifted his water glass and waited for me to clin
k mine against his. “To all your dreams coming true.
A moment passed between us when we touched our glasses together, our gazes locked on one another like we would never look away again. I didn’t even think about it when I reached across the table and took his free hand in mine.
“Yours will come true too, you know? You just have to figure out what they are again. That part was easy for me. No goals other than professional ones, and I kept far enough away from people that I never got hurt.”
He looked at me like he had a million questions, but he didn’t ask them. Turning his palm up to mine instead, he wrapped his fingers around mine and squeezed.
The waitress delivering our food snapped us out of whatever the hell that had been, and we went back to lighter topics after. Despite the fact that I still thought of C Stark as the enemy, I couldn’t quite think of Colton as that.
Our date ended up being as fun as the first one had been, but this time when he walked me to my door, I stopped him there. “I have to get some rest tonight.”
“Yeah. I thought as much.” His eyes came to mine, and my pulse spiked as I stared into those gorgeous swirls. “I’ll talk to you soon, okay? Thank you for agreeing to have dinner with me.”
“Thank you for taking me to dinner.” Against my better judgment and yet as if I was physically compelled to do it, I pushed up on my toes and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. “And yes, I will speak to you soon.”
I had to be crazy, but if he called again, I already knew I would answer. Even if Colton was C Stark and C Stark was the enemy, there was a lot more to him than what met the eye. And what met the eye was already impressive as hell. The more I got to know him though, the more I started to think that maybe what lay beyond what met the eye was even more so.
So why haven’t you asked him about the article?
It was the question that haunted me and it led me to closing the door in his face even when I didn’t really want him to leave.
Chapter 16
