by Lexie Ray
This was getting embarrassing. What stories were all these witnesses concocting in their drunken minds now? Emmett Corbin, rejected by Peyton Crow, who would literally do anything to anyone. I’d never be able to show my face in public again, living out the rest of my years as a hermit on the ranch. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? All I’d have to do was forsake my dreams and everything I ever believed in.
No. I was done doing that. I was the only person who was going to start moving this forward, the only person who was going to fight for the things I was passionate about. No one else would.
“You also operate in horses,” I said. “I want to pick your brain about your father’s breeding operation. That’s all.”
She took her sweet time thinking about that, her eyes never leaving mine all the while.
“Twenty dollars for fifteen minutes,” she said finally.
“It’s not anything … sexual,” I said. “I only want to chat.”
“What did I just tell you? My time is money. You can take it or leave it. I don’t care if you talk about horses or your dick.”
I sat down abruptly, making the chair scrape noisily against the floor in my shame.
“Horses only,” I muttered, digging out a bill from my wallet and sliding it across the table to her. “Please.”
She scooped the bill out and folded it a couple of times before slipping it into her bra, her hand lingering over her breast, the corners of her mouth curling upward as I shifted in my seat.
“Are you sure you don’t see something you like, Corbin?” she asked. “Twenty dollars will get you hand stuff. All you have to do is step outside with me.”
“Horses only.”
“I can do two things at once.”
“Please.” As tempting as it sounded to take Peyton Crow outside and let her croon horse breeding secrets to me as she relieved some of my pressure, I wanted to focus. This was my business goal, and I was apparently investing in a consultant.
“You’re very boring, Corbin.”
“It’s Emmett, actually.”
“I know who you are.” Her dark eyes flashed with either mirth or loathing. “You’re all Corbins to me. To the whole town, too. Corbin stands for cattle, not horses.” I didn’t know if that was an insult or not. She delivered it so matter-of-factly.
“We use horses on the operation,” I said. “All of it.”
“Uh-huh,” she said flatly, clearly not interested. “What does that have to do with me?”
“Your father has a breeding operation,” I said. “All I want to know is what you know about it.”
“I know plenty,” she said. “How to tell when a mare is ready for breeding, how to test the stud, what kinds of pairs work, and what’s even better than a breeding operation if you’re looking to start dealing in horses instead of cattle. But if you want to know so badly everything about my father’s operation, why aren’t you asking him?”
“I’m asking you,” I said. “You’re the one I passed a twenty to, not your father.”
“He doesn’t give hand jobs, if that’s what you’re implying.”
I shuddered. “I’m not implying that at all.” That would be the stuff of nightmares, and an image that soured my stomach.
“So what? I don’t get why you’re asking me all this. If it’s my father’s operation, he’s the expert. Not me.”
“That’s not what I hear.”
“Oh yeah? What do you hear?” Peyton cut me off before I could even attempt to answer that loaded question. “People love to talk. It doesn’t mean they know anything.”
“I think you know horses,” I said. “A lot more than what you’re letting on. I’ll remind you again that you’re the one I paid to talk to me about the operation. Can I have my money back if you choose not to hold up your end of the agreement?”
She rolled her eyes extravagantly. “So dramatic.”
“This is important to me.”
Peyton checked her phone, showing me just how important I was to her. “What is it, then, exactly, that you want to know? I don’t have time to play games with you.”
“I want to know how to get started,” I said. “I want to know schematics, numbers. How much land do you need? How much barn space? What kind of resources do you actually expend? How many hands do you need? Could it be viable for the Corbin-Summers Ranch?”
“You really are looking to get in the horse business, aren’t you?”
“This is all just research,” I said, guarded. That would be the worst thing in the world — for this nasty bit of gossip to make it back to my brothers and everyone else on the ranch. The last thing I needed was for Chance and everyone else to be on my ass about going behind their backs — and against their wishes — to get a breeding operation up and going. It would be taken as an act of betrayal. I thought I’d been safe with my Dax Malone encounter. He was in such a constant foul mood that I doubted he’d tell anyone about his close encounter with me. I wasn’t so sure about his daughter. I suddenly didn’t feel so safe.
Peyton leaned very close to me. I could’ve rubbed noses with her if I’d been so inclined.
“This is a secret,” she whispered, almost smiling.
“No, it isn’t.” That was the best way to get the gossip really going. If this tiny town sensed a weakness in anyone — and secrets were an enormous weakness — the truth would eventually surface in all kinds of ugly ways.
“Don’t worry,” Peyton said. “Your secret is safe with me.”
“It really isn’t a secret.”
“Don’t you think I can keep secrets?” She snorted. “I keep this whole town’s secrets. You wouldn’t be able to imagine what men are liable to say after they’ve had their taste of me.”
“I … I guess not,” I said. “But this talk about horses … this is only to satisfy my curiosity.”
“Oh, the other ways I could satisfy you,” she sighed.
“But that’s not what this is,” I reminded her. “This is a talk about horses. Something we both have an interest in.”
“Yeah, I have an interest in them. Lots of knowledge. Lots of ideas.”
Knowledge I had. It was the ideas that I was really craving, the inspiration to spark the right thing to say to my brothers to get the operation established on the ranch. Something that would make them interested in the thing I’d been passionate about all this time.
“It’s your ideas I’d like to discuss,” I said. “I know what I need to know already, knowledge-wise.”
She studied me before throwing her head back and laughing. “So arrogant.”
“What? I take care of the horses on the ranch.”
“Anyone can keep a horse alive, Corbin,” she said, sounding like her father for the first time. “Your arrogance is that you think you can do it for a living. You don’t have a clue.”
“Then tell me. Tell me whatever you think I need to know about horses.”
“For your research purposes.” She knew I was full of shit. She knew just as well as I did.
“Yes. Research purposes only. Horses only.”
Peyton checked her phone. “Twenty bucks.”
“What? I just paid you.”
She smiled prettily. “Fifteen minutes ago you did.” She showed me the display of her phone, which had been counting down on a timer. “Fair’s fair, Corbin. This is what I do for a living.”
I snorted at her. “Dole out advice about horses priced at twenty bucks per fifteen minutes?”
“Take it or leave it. I don’t give away anything for free. Maybe you Corbins can afford to, but others aren’t so fortunate.”
“It’s Emmett,” I said, exasperated with being lumped in with my brothers like I was so often throughout my life. “Just Emmett. I’m a lot more than just a Corbin.”
Peyton’s dark eyes drifted downward and back up again, and I knew she saw right through me and always would. It was a penetrating and judgmental stare, one full of contempt.
“That’s the thing about p
rivileged people,” she said, her eyes not shining with amusement any longer. “They go through such lengths to convince themselves and others that they aren’t privileged after all. That they’re right down there in the mud with you. So they can take advantage of you.”
“I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
“Twenty bucks, then.”
I exhaled sharply and gave her another bill. Her demeanor instantly switched, smiling pleasantly. I’d bought that face, at least for the next fifteen minutes, and the feelings inside of me clashed and conflicted and swirled unpleasantly.
“You want my ideas,” Peyton said. “Because you have everything else you need to know.”
“I’m sure I don’t know everything there is to know,” I said, holding my hands up to stave off another disagreement — and try to keep our conversation on track so I wouldn’t waste any more time or money. “I’m just trying to figure out what it takes to run a breeding operation. Maybe sometime in the far-off future, it’s something I want to do with my time. Just not right now. This isn’t immediate.”
“Why not?”
“Why not what?”
“Why not right now?” I’d forgotten that she could see right through me, that she knew that this was much more than simple research. What could I say to her that would protect my interests and my privacy? I was sure I would already be tasked with explaining to my brothers tomorrow why I was seen in the company of the … well, the town prostitute.
Though putting it in those words sounded a little cheap right now. She was wily, but I had a tough time categorizing Peyton like that. She seemed deeper than that, somehow, though this was really the first time I’d interacted with her before. She’d been a grade behind me in school, and this town was so small that everyone remembered everyone else from getting our public educations. But even back then, Peyton had kept to herself. She was different from everyone — looked different, held herself differently, acted differently — and it made her stand out terribly. People wondered openly why she didn’t just go to school on the reservation, but it was more than an hour’s drive away, and she was living with her father, who fell into the same school district as me and the rest of my brothers.
I wasn’t so sure, now, that she would’ve done any better for herself at the school on the reservation. She was so otherworldly that I didn’t think she could fit in even if she tried. That probably was why she didn’t try, walking down the hallways of the high school, nearly floating instead of walking, not even aware of the stares that followed her wherever she went. I saw her walk like that sometimes through town, not so much as flinching at the honked horns and catcalls of passers-by. Peyton was self-possessed, and I was sitting here in front of her, tongue-tied, unable to plunge forward with finding out what I needed to know even though I was paying more than a dollar every single minute for the privilege of not speaking to her.
“Are you still there?” Peyton looked at me with barely contained amusement, studying me with eyes that sparkled deeply. “It seemed like you went somewhere very far away.”
“I’m still here.”
“If you’re having trouble gathering your thoughts, trouble focusing, I know an excellent remedy.” She grinned at me, showing all of her teeth. “Join me in the alley if you want it. Hand job. Five minutes tops, though I bet I could get you off quicker. You’d be amazed at how focused you’d be after that. Your mind would be razor sharp.”
“No, thank you,” I said, certain that the color of red my face was would make the rounds in town by tomorrow. Emmett Corbin, reduced to stammers and blushes and long periods of silence by Peyton Crow. Fantastic. Just fantastic.
“I was asking, before you went off into la-la land, why you don’t follow your dream now.” Peyton seemed like she relished watching me squirm on that one. I just didn’t trust her with my truth.
“I don’t even know if it’s a dream,” I lied. “It’s just something I’m interested in. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Because I know you know things about horses. Because of your father.”
“Because of my father,” she echoed, then snorted. “Maybe. But because of other things, too. Not just because of him. Because I wanted to learn.”
“What kinds of things?”
“All kinds,” she said with a matter-of-fact shrug. “I know about everything there is to know about horses.”
“Now who’s the arrogant one?”
“It’s not ego if it’s true, and I assure you that it’s true. I probably know more about horses than I do about fucking.”
She’d said it to shock me. I knew that. But I couldn’t help blurting out the first thing that popped into my mind, and it was a doozy.
“So then why do you fuck for a living instead of work with horses?”
Peyton glared at me for a full minute as I tried to conceal shock at my own question and avoid sinking down into my seat. What was wrong with me? I knew how to behave in front of people. Why had I thought that my question would’ve fallen anywhere along the spectrum of acceptable conversation with Peyton Crow? I could only chalk it up to her picking away at me this entire time — and me finally losing patience with it. That didn’t mean that I wasn’t embarrassed, though.
Then, Peyton threw her head back and laughed — really laughed, not the derisive snorts she’d been ripping this entire time. I recognized she was laughing at me, or perhaps what had jumped out of my mouth at her, but her mirth was so genuine that I found myself wanting to laugh along with her, even if it was at my own expense. People were casting furtive glances over to our table to try and discern just what was so funny, but Peyton didn’t seem to notice or care.
“Oh, Emmett Corbin,” she was able to say at last, wiping tears from her eyes, “you have a lot more of a backbone than I thought. Good for you. Good for you.”
“I don’t really know what made me say that,” I said, feeling awkward. To me, backbone didn’t mean that you were impolite. There hadn’t been a reason to throw Peyton’s statement back into her face no matter how crass she was acting.
“Oh, don’t be a prude,” she said. “It was funny. You’re a man of many surprises, I’m beginning to realize.”
She looked at me appraisingly, and I couldn’t help but squirm a little bit. Something about her made it impossible for me to focus, let alone keep my mouth from going dry. My beer had long since dried up, and I’d still been knocking it back against my teeth, trying to eke out the last drops.
“Don’t you want another one?” she asked, watching me realize for probably the fourth or fifth time that the bottle was empty. “Horses are thirsty work.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Better not have any more. Have to make it back out to the ranch when this is all over.”
“Doesn’t stop most of the people in here,” she said, her eyes roaming the bar with disgust. “Pigs, all of them. Present company tentatively excluded.”
But I was a pig, no different from the rest of the clientele. I struggled to remember the reason for my visit here, just where my last forty dollars had gone and to what purpose, but I couldn’t help but be intrigued by all of the various things Peyton had to offer. She was a beautiful woman, and she understood what it took to tantalize a person.
She lifted two fingers in the direction of the bar without looking away from me, and within twenty seconds, the bartender carted two cold bottles of beer to our table. It was the strangest thing. If you sat at one of the tables crammed into the bar space, it was with the understanding that every time you wanted a refill, you bellied back up to the bar, squeezing between patrons seated on the barstools. The bartender never just delivered your order to you. And even when sitting at the bar, it was completely common to wait fifteen minutes or more just trying to get the bartender’s attention, who refused to acknowledge someone’s thirst if he was immersed in a conversation with another customer.
Peyton seemed to enjoy something of a VIP status here.
“These are both going on your tab, by the way,” she
said, taking a long pull from her bottle. “Common courtesy to get a lady something to drink while you’re chatting with her. I have to keep this whistle wet.”
I shuddered involuntarily as she smiled and picked at the label a little.
“Um, I don’t mind buying you a drink,” I said hesitantly, picking my way forward cautiously. “But I don’t want this one. It’s like I told you. I’m going to be driving home, soon. It’s a long drive and an early morning for me.”
“Don’t make me drink alone,” she said. “I hate it.”
“You’re not alone. You’re in a room full of people drinking.” Red-faced ranchers blustering, gesticulating wildly, predicting the rain that remained so elusive, the cattle prices that were dropping, the sound of their businesses coming to an end. I’d come here for company, to forget some of the problems surrounding the ranch and my life there, but there were reminders everywhere of just what was at stake.
“You know what I mean,” Peyton said, pouting as she nudged the beer so close to me I had to grab the neck to keep it from slipping off the table and into my lap. “You’re not drunk. I can tell when a man becomes drunk. You’re not even tipsy. Maybe if you got a little more beer in your belly, you’ll be more honest with me, with what you need to know.”
But I didn’t want to be honest with Peyton. I didn’t trust her as far as I could spit, even as attracted as I was to her, fascinated with her mannerisms and her story. It dawned on me that I knew very little about her, which was atypical for us living in the same small town. She was accessible and inaccessible all at the same time. It was both frustrating and cloying.
“Who else taught you everything you know about horses?” I asked, taking the tiniest sip of beer to appease her. It did little to solve my dry mouth problems. I knew that I wouldn’t get rid of those until I found some way to escape Peyton’s presence.
“I picked up things here and there along the way,” she said, peeling the label from the beer bottle completely off and folding it into little rectangles. “People my father knew. People who worked at the outfit. People I slept with.”
There was always that element there. Peyton was what she was. There was no escaping that. When would I stop jerking in recognition of the facts?
