THE CORBIN BROTHERS: The Complete 5-Books Series

by Lexie Ray

  “People talk to you about … horses?” I found myself asking.

  “You’re talking with me about horses, aren’t you?”

  “I mean, after they … you know.” I swallowed hard. “This is different. There isn’t any …”

  “You know?” she mocked. “You mean there isn’t any sex? There can be. I’d be willing. I’m always willing.”

  “That isn’t what this is.”

  “Maybe not. Not yet, anyway.”

  Peyton glanced down at her phone and smiled before showing me the timer that had expired again. My shoulders sagged. This was getting ridiculously expensive. And we had still somehow managed to completely avoid anything I actually wanted to talk about.

  “What can I say?” Peyton batted her silken eyelashes at me. “Time seems to fly when I’m with you. That’ll be twenty more dollars to you, if you want to hear more.”

  “I think I’ve heard about all I want to hear,” I said, suddenly intent on cutting my losses and running. If Peyton really knew anything about horses, she wasn’t being very forthcoming. Of course, I was occupying her precious time. No one had dared to approach the table while we were talking, making her lose out on any other business. She was looking to squeeze out whatever cash she could from me, probably. She’d said it herself. That was how she made her living.

  “Oh, come on, Corbin,” she said, eyes dancing mischievously. “I thought we were getting along just fine.”

  “I have places I need to be.”

  “I know that we can have a nice time.” And just like that, pressure on my crotch, making my cock jump even as my shoulders did, startled. Peyton lifted her eyebrows at me, making fun of what was probably my expression of utter shock, and she put more pressure on me through my jeans, using the bottom of her boot. She was fondling me in public, right where anyone could see if they just looked the right way, and it both titillated and scandalized me. Jesus, if anyone saw … the fallout would be tremendous.

  “Twenty dollars,” she cooed at me, and I realized what she was proposing. We’d go on like this, her boot at the juncture of my legs, talking about nothing things until I messed myself from her careful probing. My fingers constricted and flexed and were on their way to my wallet before I came back to myself and stood up so suddenly my beer clattered against the table, slopping sour-smelling suds everywhere before Peyton quickly righted it. She lifted her eyes slowly to meet mine, her grin widening as she lingered over my crotch and the obvious evidence of her influence in that area.

  “I have to go,” I said, hating just how unsure of myself I sounded. “Thanks for nothing.”

  “Don’t be a sore loser. We were having fun.”

  But it wasn’t fun. It wasn’t even a novelty anymore, shooting the shit with one of the most infamous people in town. I’d had faith that Peyton would have some kind of insight that would help propel me in the direction I wanted to go, but I’d been wrong. I’d nearly been sixty dollars’ worth of wrong, but I’d stopped it at forty. That was at least some consolation, even if we had just wasted half an hour. At least nothing else had happened.

  I swiftly settled my tab and left through the back, unwilling to endure the stares and whistles I was certain to get if I made my way through the front and past all the other patrons. They all knew what Peyton was. I was the one who’d tried to see something different in her.

  The air in the alley was just as stuffy as the air had been inside of the bar. I needed wind on my face. I needed somewhere else to be. Peyton had crawled underneath my skin and made herself at home there. I was uncomfortable, hot and bothered, disappointed in her and in myself.

  "Hey, Corbin."

  I whirled around. "It's fucking Emmett."

  Peyton smirked at me as she let the door close to the bar behind her. "I know it is. I just liked the way you looked when you were all worked up about your name."

  She approached me, sinuous, dangerous, a completely foreign experience, until I could practically taste the perfume she'd chosen — a citrus that melded well with the hot night. She tilted her head upward, and I felt like I didn't have a choice. I kissed Peyton Crow and wondered how much more money it would cost me.

  The worry of money and prices quickly melted away. She tasted like fruit even if she hadn't been eating any at the bar, something related to pineapple and another item I couldn't figure out.

  I broke the kiss as soon as my brains returned to my skull.

  "All I wanted was horses," I said. "Nothing more."

  "Uh-huh." She looked amused. "What about what I want?"

  I'd never considered the possibility that Peyton Crow actually wanted anyone she slept with. Or sought to sleep with. I didn't know. I was drunker than I usually was, fuzzy with promises and whispers. I'd told her. I'd told her all I wanted was to talk about horses. Fucking horses. That was it.

  And yet we were out here, in the alley behind the bar, which was the preferred location for a majority of her business transactions. What did she really want? Another handout? She couldn’t actually want to sleep with me, could she?

  “How much is the kiss going to cost me?” I asked, only half joking.

  “Depends on what you want with it,” she said. “The kiss was on me. How you choose to continue is up to you.”

  “I’m going home.” I ached with exhaustion, all the way down to my bones, as if I’d put in a full day at the ranch. I hadn’t at all — I’d ridden Sugar for the first time in a long time, gotten shut down by Dax Malone, and been humiliated by his daughter. It was perhaps an emotionally tiring day, but nothing I should feel this physically tired for.

  “Emmett, wait.”

  I paused in the mouth of the alley, already on the way to my pickup truck along the street. I was done with this — done with Peyton’s games. I hated the way she made me feel, like I was helplessly attracted to her, drawn to her even as I had much more important things in mind, things I needed to do. She made me want her and know I could never be good enough to truly have her. It was perplexing and frustrating, and I was done.

  “You seem like an okay guy.” Peyton picked her way around the debris littering the alleyway, the broken bottles scattered like painful stars across the pavement, her boot heels scraping along the loose gravel. “I mean, as far as men go. You didn’t try to take advantage of me. You didn’t try and push to see how far you could get without paying. I … I did that.”

  I watched her warily, trying to guess what game she was playing now, not trusting that any of this would come from a genuine place. With her line of work, it was hard to imagine that Peyton Crow had a single genuine bone in her body.

  “The ideas I have for horses … they’re good ones,” she said. “Ones we should actually talk about. I can tell that it’s your passion, and it’s rare to find someone who truly has dreams and is doing something to actively pursue them.”

  Any minute now, I expected the punchline. Peyton was working on getting me vulnerable, backing me into a corner, and then she would launch her final attack on me. Everyone would probably come pouring out of the bar to watch it happen, and I’d be unable to show my face in this town for the rest of my life. Perfect. This was about how I expected today to end.

  “I don’t really think the bar is a good place to discuss the ideas I have for horsing operations, anyway,” Peyton said.

  “You prefer the alley?”

  “I prefer that maybe tomorrow or the next day, or I guess just whenever you’re free, we should really talk about it.” She cocked her head at me and smiled. “And I mean just talk. Bounce ideas off each other. No cash required.”

  “You told me your time was money,” I said, confused enough to let my guard down a little. “Why would you do anything for free?”

  “I don’t know, Emmett Corbin.” Peyton rubbed her nose playfully against mine. “Maybe I think you’re cute.”

  And, punchline.

  “I’m leaving,” I said, turning away again.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “Abo
ut the horses, I mean. And I like guys with long hair, so I guess I’m serious about you being cute.”

  “You don’t have to patronize me.”

  “I’m not.” She took me by the shoulder and pulled until I turned around, reluctant. “I have ideas — good ones. If you think you really want to make a go of it, to actually make a horsing operation that you can be proud of, if you’re really serious, then I want to talk about it.”

  “I told you. It’s only theoretical.”

  “Yeah, yeah, your ‘research.’” She didn’t curl her fingers into air quotes, but I could see them all the same in the way she pronounced it. “I told you once, and I’ll tell you again. I’m good at keeping secrets. Very good. It’s practically my job … well, part of it.”

  My face colored. “I really, really need to be going.”

  She sighed heavily, looked away briefly, then flashed her dark eyes back up at me, as if she’d come to a decision. “Rehab.”

  I blinked a couple of times. “What?”

  “You heard me. Rehab.”

  “You’re going to rehab?” I was so confused.

  “No, idiot.”

  “You’re suggesting I should go to rehab?” I frowned. “I don’t go out drinking every night.”

  “I’m saying that it should be a horse rehab facility,” she said, exasperated. “That’s the idea I have. And that’s the knowledge I bring to the table.”

  I inhaled deeply, and it was as if I was breathing for the first time this evening. That simple statement had ignited all kinds of synapses in my brain, and I was thinking about how that would work, what we would need to learn or amass or do or commandeer in order to set something like that up.

  “Does your father do something like that, or anyone else in the area?” I asked. “What kind of knowledge, exactly, would you say you have about rehabbing horses? Is it something anyone can learn to do? Can I learn how to do it? Do you think it would work? What kinds of things are we prepared to do, here?”

  Peyton held her hands up to my rapid-fire questions. “Like I said. The bar’s not the place to discuss things like this, and neither is this alley. You stick around back here long enough and people really are going to think that you took your pleasure in me.”

  “Jesus.”

  She waved my quiet exclamation away. “Oh, people talk. They’re probably already talking. If you’re seen leaving too soon, they’ll say you don’t know how to handle yourself around a woman. That you’re a minute man.”

  “If this is supposed to be making me feel any better …”

  “You’re so sensitive,” she said, smiling like this discovery pleased her. “All I’m trying to say is that we should meet and really talk about this. Are you serious about wanting to do this horsing operation the right way, in a way that would be truly effective?”

  The only words that I could even think of right now were “horse rehab.” I couldn’t quite place why it made me so excited, but it did. Probably because it was something I’d never considered before, some possibility that had been outside the realm of my experience. This was exactly what I had wanted out of Dax Malone, and the fact that I was getting it instead from his daughter, Peyton Crow, was even stranger. But I had to temper my enthusiasm with caution.

  “You said you’re good at secrets.”

  “That’s right. I did say that. Glad it stuck with you.”

  “If my brothers find out that I’m going behind their backs, talking to people about horses instead of cattle, all four of them would probably gang up on me and beat my ass in for me.”

  “Well, I won’t tell your brothers about us discussing horses if you don’t tell my father we’re doing the same thing.” She raised her eyebrows at me. “You tried to go talk to him earlier today, didn’t you? Don’t lie to me. I can smell it from a mile away. He turned you down. You wouldn’t have approached me, otherwise.”

  “You think he’d be pissed if he found out you were talking to me?” I asked. “He seemed pretty hostile.”

  “He would never give away even a scrap of information if he thought it might give someone the leg up over him,” she said. “I’ve had to yank every bit of knowledge from that old fart like it was pulling teeth, but I know enough — and then some. Yeah. He’d hate it if he found out I was talking to you — especially since he turned you down first.”

  “I guess we both have secrets that need keeping, then,” I said.

  “I guess we do.” She stepped back and stuck her hand out. “I’ll keep yours if you keep mine.”

  I only hesitated a moment before putting my hand in hers and shaking it. She had a strong grip — stronger than any woman I’d ever shaken hands with.

  “It’s a deal.”

  I hoped I knew what I was getting myself into.

  Chapter 3

  For weeks, it was all I could think about, all I searched on Google when I got a spare moment, though those came fewer and farther between now that I was back to working full time on the ranch. I knew I would have to play hooky from the ranch in order to devote as much time as was necessary to the project with Peyton, and I thought about how I’d manage that, too. But my head was full of dreams, and for the first time in a long time, I was really excited about everything, launching myself out of bed every morning, running myself happily ragged.

  Peyton and I corresponded cautiously at first, and then constantly, both of us finally settling on a morning we could both carve out to meet in person. She’d come here, to my trailer. I’d be missing a scheduled assignment, but I didn’t think I’d be missed. There were too many moving parts on this ranch for one to draw any sort of extra scrutiny.

  That morning, though, after a night of anxious tossing and turning, I had to stop and laugh at myself. I was trying on shirt after shirt like I was nervous about my appearance. She knew what I looked like, and she’d still agreed to this meeting. Anything would be fine.

  But after that personal pep talk, when I heard the crunch of gravel outside the trailer, I jumped, tossing off the shirt I had been sure I’d decided on and pulling on the first one I’d tried. I shoved the rest of them in the chest of drawers, pushing my hip against them until I forced them shut, shirts bulging. That would have to do. I wasn’t going to make her wait.

  I bounded out of the trailer with a grin, ready and not ready at all to greet her, looking at where her car should be, and saw nothing. What the hell? I’d been certain that I’d heard her out there, even if she was a little early — though not by much. Was that how anxious I was about this meeting, that I’d hallucinated the sound of someone approaching the trailer? I shook my head at myself for not the first time that morning. It was like a first date, or something, only it wasn’t. This was a business meeting. No dating. Business only. Forget pleasure, how nice it would be to lay eyes on her again.

  “What’s up, Emmett?” Avery asked, clapping me on the back and making me jump. He chuckled at my surprise. “Don’t tell me I startled you. I thought for sure you heard me coming. Why else were you out here?”

  I couldn’t say that I was out here waiting for Peyton Crow. How else could I get rid of my younger brother as quickly as possible? Peyton should be here any moment, and I needed him gone.

  “I did hear you,” I said. “I just have a lot on my mind right now.”

  “It’s a crazy time for the ranch,” Avery sympathized. “Then again, it’s always fucking crazy around here.”

  “True.” I coughed, ran a hand through my hair, realized it was still down and quickly piled it on top of my head and secured it with the ever-present rubber band I kept around my wrist for just that purpose. I wore it down more in the winter, when it was actually nice to have something guarding my neck, but summers, it was always up. It was too hot, otherwise.

  I also thought it looked better up, and that’s probably the real reason I did it. Something in me wanted to look nice for Peyton. A part of myself that had thrilled instead of cowered when she’d kissed me in the alley because she wanted to. T
hat same part wanted to impress her today, even if this was a true business meeting, the day we’d hash out all of our ideas and hopes and expectations for a horse rehab project.

  I’d have been lying if part of me didn’t also hope for something more. It was idiotic. Peyton had offered me more — as much as I wanted and then some — and I had refused her. But that kernel of desire was still inside of me, begging for attention. I wasn’t sure what would extinguish it.

  “You really do have a lot on your mind,” Avery said, dragging me painfully back into the present.

  “Sorry, you’re right,” I said.

  “I was asking you — several times — how it felt being a part of things again,” he said. “You know. Now that you don’t have to wear the brace anymore. Now that you’re back in action.”

  “You know, it’s good,” I said, resisting the urge to check the time on my phone, or to see if I had a missed call or a text from Peyton I hadn’t noticed, informing me of her imminent arrival. “I guess I was a little bored, not doing anything.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Avery laughed. “I swear to God, getting shot was like the best thing to ever happen to me. No lie.”

  “You’re an idiot,” I said, one of the more common responses we all had for Avery. He was rotten in a way that only children who had been the babies of the family long enough to get comfortable could be. Then Hunter had come along and stolen all of his thunder, and I didn’t think Avery had ever completely forgiven him.

  “A happy idiot,” Avery agreed, grinning like a fool.

  “Tell me about things,” I said, trying my best to push Peyton from my mind, to focus on my brother, to show him the support and interest in his affairs that I wished everyone else would give me. Maybe, someday, the universe would see that I’d been making an effort and not getting a fair return in exchange. Maybe karma would even things out at some point. Hopefully.

  “Things are really good,” Avery confessed, sounding a little surprised himself. “I don’t know. You know how I was.”