by Lexie Ray
“You don’t need your phone.”
“I just wanted to make sure no one called me.”
“It’s the middle of the night. Who would call you? Stop looking for it.”
“In case there was an emergency.”
“Let’s just have sex again and forget about it.”
That made me pause. “Really?”
“Yeah.” She smiled and flashed me. “Because sex is fun.”
“Because sex is fun.”
And it was. I was constantly having fun with Peyton even as we planned our business venture together. I looked forward to spending time with her, to talking about horses, and, yes, to having sex. There was always that.
I wondered one day if the sex part was too big a facet in our partnership. What happened when our passion for each other cooled? I was realistic. I knew that, at some point, a woman like Peyton would get tired of a man like me. She loved excitement, and I was kind of a one-trick pony. She was inventive, and I was dedicated. It was a matter of time until she decided she was done having sex with me and wanted to move on to someone else. It was hard to assess how I would handle that. Could our working relationship outlast our sexual relationship? Or would our dream suffer if we weren’t together like that?
But as the weeks passed, I never had to fully explore my worries. We had sex regularly, and it was always good. Unfailingly good. Made me question every experience I’d had leading up to Peyton.
“What?” she asked one stolen afternoon as I stared at her, both of us spread out, limbs carelessly tangled, in her bed. The sweat on our skin hadn’t even dried from our latest coupling, though our chests had finally stopped heaving.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. She didn’t want to hear this. I knew she didn’t. And as loath as she was to hear it, I was equally loath to admit anything that had been swirling around in my overstimulated brain of late.
“Emmett, you just had your dick in me,” she reasoned, rolling her eyes at me. “You can tell me what’s going through your mind.”
“It’s stupid.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” She extricated her arms and legs from mine and rolled over on her belly, kicking her feet in the air behind her. “Talk to me. I like listening to you talk — almost as much as I like you fucking me.”
“One day you’re going to stop making me blush with all of those shocking statements,” I warned, “and that’ll be a sad day for you.”
“But it’s not today, thank God,” she teased, pinching my flushed cheek. “Now speak.”
“I just … I really like having sex with you.”
“That’s not a secret, Emmett,” she said. “I just told you the same thing. We’ve known this for quite a while now.”
“I like having sex with you, and I like you.”
Peyton was slower to respond to that statement. “Well, you ought to like the people you fuck. It makes everything work better.”
“Peyton … you’re making this difficult and you know it,” I said. “Don’t you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”
“No,” she said, the very picture of innocence. “You’re going to have to find the words to explain it to me.”
“I like you,” I said, feeling like a juvenile. “We have a good thing going. We’re going to have a really good thing going once we get the project off the ground. I have … feelings … of a romantic nature … for you.” Christ, it was like pulling teeth.
“You don’t have feelings for me,” Peyton said easily, relaxing again on the bed. She’d held herself still for the duration of my tortured speech, but now she kicked her feet in the air again, one after the other.
I blinked at her, confused. “But I just said I do.”
“You said you do,” she agreed. “But you don’t.”
“I don’t?”
“You don’t.”
I sat on that for a full moment before trying again. “I’m a little confused, then.”
“You just think you have feelings for me,” she explained. “They’re not real.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because it happens all the time,” she said, and there was that little sting in my chest again, that reminder that Peyton had sex with enough people to realize the truth in these things. That I was just a notch on a belt somewhere. The next one. And that there’d be another after me.
“Okay,” I said.
“Don’t tell me I’ve gone and hurt your feelings,” she said, putting her hand over my heart.
“Just the feelings I don’t have for you.”
She laughed at that. “You’re pouting.”
“I am not. I don’t pout.”
“I’m just trying to save you heartache now, when we can still talk with clear minds about this thing that’s happening between us,” she said. “You don’t have feelings for me. We’re friends, and we’re fucking, and we’re business partners. That’s all it is.”
“That simple, huh?”
“Exactly.” She looked at me, her eyes hard. “It is that simple because I say it’s that simple.”
“It might be simple for you, but it’s a lot more complicated for me.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” She was irritated now, the first time I’d rubbed her the wrong way since she crossed paths with Avery at my trailer. “Explain yourself.”
“I don’t think I need to.”
“If we can’t behave like adults, then maybe we should stop fucking around with each other,” she said. “I thought it would be fun. And it was, wasn’t it? Fun?”
“I guess.”
“I’ve gotten zero complaints from you up until now, so don’t pretend that you haven’t been having fun,” she warned. “If you can’t get over this ridiculous notion pinging around in your brain, then it might be a good idea to step back and reassess the situation.”
“Okay.” I sat up and looked at her. “I think it’s ridiculous that you’re so eager to dismiss what I know in my heart to be true.”
“And what’s that?”
“That I do have feelings for you.”
“I can dismiss it because people who have sex with me profess their love for me all the time,” she said, exasperated. “Don’t you dare look away from me right now, Emmett Corbin. When I talk about my job, the one that puts food in my mouth, you’re not allowed to recoil from it like it’s a venomous snake. If you had a problem with what I do, you should’ve spoken up sooner than right now.”
She was right. Every word of it was right. I was being a huge dick. I just couldn’t dispel the fact that I liked her even now, even when she was reaming my ass with a self-righteous fury.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t mean to disparage you for what you do. I admire you.”
“Oh, spare me the bullshit, please,” she said. “We’re sitting here naked in bed. You don’t need to bullshit me.”
“I’m not. I’m serious. But I’m also serious about how I feel.”
“Emmett …”
“Hear me out.” I traced the shape of her spine down her back with the very tips of my fingers, making her shudder. “What would be so bad about me having feelings for you? Don’t you have any kind of affection for me?”
“Affection, sure,” she said. “Affection, respect, admiration, jealousy …”
“Jealousy?”
“But not the kind of feelings you’re talking about.” She studied me. “You’re only having those feelings because we’re fucking on the regular. Because you think we’re girlfriend and boyfriend or something.”
“We have a relationship. You can’t deny that.”
“Sure. A partnership. But not that trite little relationship you’re thinking about.”
Her truth cut so deep. She was blunt to a fault, but I knew I needed to listen to her. Falling in love with someone like Peyton … it was the stupidest thing in the world to do. I knew better. Anyone knew better. And here I was, naked in bed with her, fighting, and knowing there wasn’t a single place i
n the world I’d rather be. That had to mean something, didn’t it?
“I don’t mean to stomp on what you think you feel,” Peyton said, kissing my nose. “You can feel whatever you want. I’m just telling you that it would be easier for you, easier for this, if, in the long run, you decided you didn’t really have feelings for me. It wouldn’t be as messy. Think about the business. The horse rehab project.”
“I know. I’m thinking about it.” But I was thinking about her, too, about the hurts she must’ve endured to uncover this caliber of truth.
“It just isn’t a good idea, Emmett.”
“I know. I get it.”
Something simmered in her mind for a few long moments. “Would it be easier for you if we stopped having sex? I’m not saying that I want to stop — I don’t. I like having sex with you. It’s good exercise. It’s fun. I enjoy myself. But if you thought it would be easier for you to reconcile your feelings you might or might not actually have toward me if sex weren’t a part of the equation, I would respect and support that.”
“I don’t want to stop having sex with you,” I said. “If that makes me a pig, so be it.”
“Am I a pig because I enjoy sex? Because I earn money from it? No. Sex is healthy. It’s natural. And when you find someone your body responds to, you hold on to them for as long as you’re allowed to. As long as you’re able to.”
An uncomfortable notion crossed my mind. “Should I be paying you for sex?”
Peyton studied me, her brows drawn together, the skin between them creased. “Are you trying to insult me?”
“No,” I said quickly. “Absolutely not. I just want … I want to do right by you. I care about you, feelings and love and all of that be damned. Friends can care about each other. I care about you, and I don’t want to take advantage of you. I don’t want anyone to take advantage of you.”
“I don’t want you to pay me for sex,” Peyton said after a while, a long stretch of silence when she just looked deeply into my eyes. “Is that confusing? I don’t want this to be a business transaction. I like relaxing with you and just fucking. Is that a problem?”
“Hell, no. I love it.”
“I bet things will get clearer for you later on,” she said, patting my forehead. “Now, get dressed. We’ve spent enough time fucking and fighting. It’s time to work.”
We were at Peyton’s cottage in the middle of the day because she had reliable intelligence saying that her father would be out of town for an industry convention. It was actually something I’d been interested in attending, but that was an impossible with my schedule at the ranch — and the venture with Peyton. We were going to raid Dax Malone’s office to get intel on his operation to see if there was anything we could glean for ours. It was basically going to be a successful attempt at what I’d tried all that time ago — talking to the old man face to face like two polite human beings wanting to help each other and the things we cared about. Dax Malone didn’t operate on that wavelength, though, so we had to stick with this alternative.
“The office is in the house,” Peyton said. “It’s not a bad walk. Here. We can even take bottles of water.”
“We have to stay hydrated,” I said with a wink, taking the bottle of water she offered me and zipping my jeans. I was surprised to feel less heartache than earlier. Maybe Peyton was right. Maybe I would unravel all of this I’d packed in my chest about her, given time. But then again, I knew what was in my heart. Peyton had, whether she realized it or not, basically simply given me the go ahead to love her in secret. My secret. The one she didn’t have to keep for me.
Dax Malone’s house was so big that he could’ve housed Peyton and a dozen other illegitimate children, but he lived in the sprawling motherfucker by himself. It went to show the quality of his character, I supposed. Peyton had a copy of the key she’d made some time ago and let us in, disarming the sophisticated house alarm. “So I can go in and put out a fire if he’s ever not home,” she explained to my raised eyebrows. “The man’s vain about his possessions.”
And he did have a crap ton of possessions. Trophies from shows, expensively framed photos of him hobnobbing with people I recognized from newspapers and magazines, dusty but costly furniture cramming every square inch of floor space. The man didn’t understand the concept of negative space, didn’t let any of his walls or rich carpets breathe. It made me feel like I was having trouble breathing, that all of his materialism was choking the air out of the room.
“Through here,” Peyton said, and I finally had to sit down at the sight of the clutter that was Dax Malone’s office. There were piles of papers and books stacked from floor to ceiling, covering every available surface, folders bristling with receipts and spreadsheets and memos. There wasn’t a clear path to the desk chair. Hell, I wasn’t even sure there was a desk chair to be had.
“You okay?” Peyton asked, looking at me with curiosity.
“Is your father a hoarder or what? There’s just so much stuff.”
“Oh, he never throws anything away,” she confirmed. “Just sit there, on that bench. Shove those papers over. I won’t be but a few minutes. I think I remember where I last saw it.”
I didn’t ask what “it” was. I was just relieved that I didn’t have to dive into that clutter with Peyton.
“I still don’t understand how we’re going to break into the market,” I called over my shoulder as Peyton moved past me. “Other than the Corbin-Summers Ranch, I’m not sure which ranches in the area still use horses. Definitely not Bud Billings’ operation.”
“He barely has a ranch, by definition,” she said, sounding a bit far away as things crashed and thumped on the floor.
“You okay?”
“Perfect.”
I brooded on the Billings operation, sitting there, waiting for Peyton to come up with a plan for our clandestine horsing project. Old Bud was a piece of shit who had tormented both my family after our parents had died and Paisley after her father had died, leaving her complete control of the ranch she’d grown up on. He was a successful son of a bitch. No one could fault him that. But the way he went about it was all wrong, conducting his operation in a way that didn’t jive with the other ranchers trying to make a living doing it the right way. The cattle were injected with a cocktail of medications that no one was quite sure about, and even if he had one of the biggest parcels of land in the state, it wasn’t devoted to letting the cattle roam and graze like the rest of the people still looking to adhere to the ways things were supposed to be done. Instead, Billings had constructed an enormous feeding operation, keeping the cattle stationary in tiny pens, their heads tied to the feeders so all they did was stand around and gorge themselves and mess themselves. They said you could smell it a mile away, though none of us were particularly eager to get within a mile of Bud Billings or his operation.
He only wanted to make it bigger, and the only way he could do that was to get ahold of the land currently occupied by the Corbin-Summers Ranch.
It was a tense relationship.
My shoulders jerked, startled, as Peyton dropped a heavy tome on the table in front of me.
“Found it,” she said, triumphant.
“What is this ‘it’ you’ve found?” I asked, passing my hand over the black, dusty cover.
“The key we need to break into the market.” She smiled a wolf’s smile. “My father’s address book. All of the contacts he’s made throughout his career in the business. People he’s done business with or associated with, for one reason or another.”
I swallowed, my mouth dry. “And just how are we going to use this to launch our own project?”
“We’re going to steal all these clients for ourselves,” she said, grinning. “Well, technically, it isn’t stealing. We’re not going to do any breeding — not at first, at least, right?”
“That’s right.”
“We’re offering a different set of services than my father does, for the most part. We’re going to see if these people need any of thos
e services. We have a ready-made database of clients, right here in this book.”
“I love the way your mind works.” It was actually a little frightening. Effective, but frightening.
“Well, don’t sit around just loving me,” she teased, making me blush. “Let’s get the hell out of here and start building our business.”
Nothing was that easy, of course. There were real considerations, like how much we should tell people about our business, where it should even be located. After a couple of scouting expeditions on properties both familiar to us and unknown, we settled on a small, out of the way parcel on Dax Malone’s place.
There was wild, and then there was wild. This untamed patch of land behind a screen of tangled trees on Dax Malone's horse farm was the latter wild, tough and foreboding and stubbornly against development.
"Here?" I asked, surveying the terrain with dread. "Are you sure?"
"I mean, or we could set up shop right at the entrance to the drive," Peyton said, shooting me a withering gaze. "I figured this was better for that little bit of discretion we discussed was a necessity for this project."
"Discretion, sure. But this is more like oblivion. Exile."
I just couldn't understand how we were going to manage all the way out here. A makeshift path trundled this far, but it was more of an overgrown rut than a traditional road.
"I'm telling you, this is the best option," she said crossly. "No one ever comes back here."
"And no one ever will." Not even the wind seemed to be able to reach the trees, and the heat radiating from the sun reflected off the dead grass, baking us twice.
"I would love to hear your idea for a superior alternative," Peyton said, stopping in her tracks and making me bump into her noisily, sending birds scattering from the tree in loud squawks of complaint.
"This is going to be just fine," I said, trying harder to convince myself of that fact than to appease Peyton. “We'll get a tractor in here to see what we can do with the grass, take a look at what's in the underbrush, maybe set up some corrals or a little office or barn."
"That's the spirit," she said, still looking at me like I would renege on our deal at any moment. "But everything needs to be done quietly. Discreetly."
