THE CORBIN BROTHERS: The Complete 5-Books Series

by Lexie Ray

  "I'm with you on that one." I was already fighting that battle on one front, trying to keep my brothers both misled and appeased. For perhaps the first time in my entire life, I was thankful that I did kind of tend to go unnoticed within my own family. It made things easier. Everyone — family and ranch hands included — had the right to two scheduled days off per week. None of us usually utilized those weekends, too intent on working the ranch, providing an extra set of hands or eyes even if we could’ve been off taking a break. But I started redeeming mine every single week, devoting those two days to securing supplies or services, doing everything with my own two hands that I could to minimize gossip in town and foot traffic on Dax Malone’s land.

  I went over there before first light and after sunset, slipped away during lunch and overstayed. I discovered that as long as I wasn’t assigned duties in the pasture abutting the river, Chance really didn’t notice where I was or wasn’t. And with Peyton watching her father’s movements and gradually making contacts with his same clients, informing them about the services she was offering, we were surprised to find that we were actually the owners of a promising new business venture.

  “I don’t know how else to get the word out, though,” she was saying, sitting in the little office we’d both built and agreed would be too cheesy to paint. It was just large enough to comfortably house a side table that functioned as a desk, and a set of chairs.

  “What do you mean?” I guzzled some water. I’d just finished fencing in an area we’d cleared for a corral. Next up was a small shed with a roof that would contain some stables for the horses we’d be seeing.

  “It’s not like we can take an ad out or anything,” Peyton said. “No social media campaigns like your family’s dude ranch is doing.”

  I felt momentarily sorry for Avery, but it passed fairly quickly. He was the one who’d wanted the dude ranch in the first place. He could deal with everything that came along with it.

  “Well, once you make contact with everyone in your father’s ledger and we start seeing our first clients, I’d imagine it’s going to be more of a word of mouth operation,” I said.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I wiped my forehead free from sweat and looked at Peyton, who sounded distracted, her hair waving in the battery-powered fan we’d trucked out here.

  “Something wrong?” I asked as she stared at me.

  “Pretty hot out there,” she said, sounding like she still wasn’t completely present in the moment.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, cocking my head at her. “Super hot.” I looked down and remembered I’d stripped off my shirt under the heat of sun while I worked.

  I laughed, and it snapped her out of whatever daze my bare torso had put her in. “What?”

  “Are you mesmerized by my bulging muscles?” I joked, making my pecs pop. My muscles didn’t bulge, but they were there. It came from the hard work on the ranch and the occasional pushup. I didn’t go overboard in the gym or with protein shakes or whatever. I used my body every single day. It just came with the territory.

  “Anyone would be,” Peyton said, joining in my laughter. “Make those things dance again. I liked that.”

  It was funny to be the one lusted after for a change. Peyton was always so effortlessly sexy and exotic that I felt it was a given that I’d by drooling after her all the time. Rare was the opportunity to swap spots with her.

  “You know what I’ve been thinking?” she asked, smirking.

  “I can only guess.”

  “I think it’s time we christened this project properly.”

  She stood up and pushed me down into one of the chairs before straddling my lap, grinding her front against mine. I reached around her and directed the fan our way so we could have at least a little air circulation. The heat around us, though, quickly became secondary to the heat building within us and between us. Peyton licked the salty sweat from my chest, and I tangled my fingers in her hair and tilted her head back so I could access the individual droplets dotting her neck and throat. We responded to each other so readily that I almost wanted to question it … only I’d learned long ago not to ask questions when good things happened. Peyton and I were good together. All we had to do right now was sit back and enjoy ourselves without having to worry about definitions and expectations and the talk of the town. We were doing a surprisingly good job keeping our association a secret from everyone else — almost as good a job as we were doing distracting ourselves from trying to name whatever our relationship might be.

  Peyton abruptly switched tacks, unzipping my pants and freeing my erection and halting her grinding in favor of turning around to face the opposite way. I was treated to an exquisite view of her ass as she slipped out of her shorts and carefully settled onto my lap, sinking my cock into her ready body. The heat outside was nothing compared to the heat inside of her, and I held on as tight to her as I could while she squirmed, getting comfortable, testing the waters until she found just what she was looking for.

  “Oh,” she mewled. “Right there.”

  I thrust upward, nuzzling her neck, cupping a breast in my hand, dragging my fingers over her taut stomach, running along her inner thigh until I reached her pussy, leveraging my fingers against it until she cried out even louder and I knew I’d grazed her clit.

  The friction was almost as unbearable as the heat. The angle and position, her legs clenched tightly closed, transformed every stroke I made into liquid fire, a sultry play on something we’d done dozens of times.

  It didn’t matter how many times we did this. Each time was new and special and important in its own right. We didn’t have to figure out what we were to each other or put a label on this. It was as natural as breathing, the sun coming up and going down every day, the wind in the trees. But goddammit, I loved her. I loved her so much that I didn’t care if she never found it in her heart to love me. That was fine. I’d just love her enough for the both of us.

  I came with a groan — I couldn’t rightly keep myself from it — and forced myself to keep going, to push through as I softened, keeping my hand hard against her, and then Peyton collapsed backward, gasping as I brought her to my plane of existence, my hand aching, smelling of salt and something more secret and essential than that, both of us hotter than we’d ever been in our lives but unable to give a single fuck about it.

  “Well, that’s that,” Peyton panted. “People will be lined up down the road waiting for our expert services. That was a good luck christening. Our business is going to take off immediately, so you better get that shed up.”

  “And you better finish calling that list of people and getting our system set up,” I said, giving her a sloppy kiss I knew she’d pretend to hate, wiping it off dramatically.

  But business wasn’t good. Not at first.

  Through much flirting and cajoling, Peyton was at least able to get a few horses in for grooming sessions. She grumbled throughout, braiding the manes with a ribbon for a special touch as I trimmed the hooves.

  “They could do this themselves if they weren’t so damn lazy,” she said.

  “Hey, business is business,” I replied, glancing up at her. “This is how it starts. A trickle. Soon, it’ll be a flood — you’ll see.”

  But that was just optimism — or naïveté. Whole weeks passed without a horse even coming in for a good grooming. It was hard to stave off despair, the thought that this was all just a stupid waste of time. The only positive I found from it was spending time with Peyton.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t do such a good job grooming them,” she suggested, poking around at the laptop we brought to our office.

  “That would be bad business,” I said, looking up from my phone at her. We had open hours when anyone could walk in, but we also took appointments. I’d have to talk to her about seeing if she could staff the open hours herself and call me if anything came in. I was too afraid I’d start being missed around the ranch.

  “Well, we might get some repeat customers if you didn’t do th
e hoof trimming properly,” she tried.

  “Peyton, I couldn’t willfully do a bad job on our clients.”

  “I know,” she sighed. “I’m just frustrated. And bored.”

  And that’s when we usually had sex, tempted by the idea that perhaps a walk-in client would happen up the path, unsure whether we were there or not. It was a pretty fantasy — and one that made the hookup sexier — but no one ever came.

  Until the day they did.

  A truck and trailer crept up to the office, and Peyton and I nearly pushed each other out of the way to greet them.

  “You need a good grooming?” Peyton asked.

  “No, it’s bee stings,” the panicked owner said. “I was out riding him, and we upset a nest or something. I didn’t get so many stings, myself, but he did. You’re closer to me than the vet. Please tell me you can help.”

  I opened and closed my mouth. Our plan for the rehab facility was horses that had experienced traumas, horses in need of lessons on relearning how to wear a saddle and carry a rider, horses that had been injured and needed help getting back up to full strength. Bee stings were really something the vet should take care of.

  “We can help,” Peyton said firmly. “Let’s take a look at him.”

  The horse had indeed taken the brunt of the swarm’s fury, and a few bee carcasses littered the bottom of the trailer, bereft of their stingers. The creature was remarkably calm, though, until I touched one of the many swellings on its body. It rolled its eyes back at me and stomped in warning, snorting several times.

  “Okay, okay,” Peyton soothed. “Those hurt. Ouch. How about we get out of this trailer, huh?”

  There had to be several dozen welts along the horse’s coat that I could see in the sunlight.

  “These have to come out,” Peyton said, continuing in the singsong voice that calmed the horse. “It’ll be so gentle you won’t even notice. Emmett, could you get some ice and the aloe vera plant by the door of my cottage?”

  “Sure,” I said, scrambling to comply. I wasn’t sure what the plant looked like, but it was thankfully the only potted plant by her door. I threw as many trays of ice as she had in her freezer into a shopping bag and dashed back down to the office.

  “It’s the strangest thing,” the owner said, agape as Peyton worked over the horse. “I tried to get some of these stingers out myself but panicked when he panicked. He bucked and kicked and was just impossible. But he’s just as calm as he can be, now.”

  Peyton flicked the stingers away from a grouping of welts, then held her hand out. “Ice, please.”

  She dabbed it over the welts, then worked backward to tend to the other sting sites. Then, she broke off several limbs from her plant, slit them open with a fingernail, and wiped the electric green goo on each and every welt.

  “What you’ll be watching for, now,” she said in that same tone, but directing her attention on the owner, “is signs of allergic reaction. Tongue swelling. Listlessness. Things like that. Then you need to get him to the vet immediately. Good news is, nothing so far. He’s a good boy. Just had a little scare.”

  “Thank you so much,” the owner gushed. “I couldn’t imagine going all the way to town with him like he was, stressed out like that.”

  Peyton gave a half shrug. “Well, tell people who need help that we know our shit. Stuff. Excuse me.”

  “You can say whatever you want as far as I’m concerned,” the owner said as we helped him load the horse back in the trailer. “You saved him.”

  “That was amazing,” I said, watching the truck and trailer make its way back to the road. “Where did you learn how to do that?”

  “It’s happened to me before,” she said. “Just experience. You can’t be afraid, or the horse will feel it. Calm works every time.”

  Word got around so swiftly that I considered it a small miracle that we didn’t hear anything from either of our families. I supposed it was a blessing that they rarely got into town to hear the gossip. But the bee incident was the first indication to people that Peyton and I were serious about our operation.

  We received more requests for grooming, then a request for additional training for a horse that tended to shy away from obstructions on the trail. Next came a lame horse that simply had a rock lodged beneath the shoe that had gone unnoticed. When the next gossip got around that I could shoe horses — a skill I’d picked up from an old farrier a couple of towns over once — more people came with their horses because we were more conveniently located.

  One day, though, we were really challenged. Peyton and I both winced at the horse as soon as we saw it, helping to lead it to one of our little stables. The stables were built to be tight so injured animals couldn’t move around too much in them, but we could tell that something was seriously wrong with the leg.

  “Is there anything you can do?” the owner asked, white-faced. “We’d be just devastated if we had to put her down.”

  “This horse has a broken leg,” I said after a quick examination. “You didn’t take her to the vet?”

  “The vet wanted to put her down,” the stricken owner said. “I just couldn’t. Call me sentimental.”

  “We’re going to have to look into this,” Peyton said. “You can leave the horse here. We’ll make sure she stays comfortable while we see what we can do for her.”

  The owner left, and Peyton and I looked at the horse.

  “Do you think we can really do anything for her?” I asked. “I can’t say this is my area of expertise. Or anyone’s.”

  “I can make a splint,” Peyton said after thinking for a while. “That should buy us some time to at least do some research.”

  But it was hours later, poring over articles and books in the office, when we came close to admitting defeat.

  “I’m not so sure I know what we would do in this kind of a situation,” I said. “It makes sense for a horse to rest in the case of an injury like that, but then wouldn’t some kind of light exercise be in order eventually? If it could even handle having a broken leg? What about pain management? It wouldn’t be good for it to be lying down all day, but that’s all I could tell you.”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, flipping through a couple of books we’d moved to the office before making a small grunt of frustration in the back of her throat. If I hadn’t been just about at wit’s end, I would’ve thought it was cute. Hell, I did think it was a little cute, but I was quite sure she wouldn’t appreciate that observation while we were trying to figure everything out.

  “Can’t we ask someone?” I suggested. “We could see if the vet knows anything about it.”

  “Hell, no,” she said. “If the vet knew we were up to something like this, all he’d do is show up with a shotgun to do the ‘humane thing.’ Humane. Huh. All it’s doing is keeping someone from feeling guilty for fucking up in the first place.”

  “Well, what about your father?” I said, treading as lightly as I could. “Do you think he might have any insight? I know you’re not super close with him …”

  “As an understatement,” she muttered. “He wouldn’t be a good source of information. He breeds horses. He doesn’t care one way or another about healing any of the sick or injured. All he’s looking to do is pair up the right matches for superior foals — horses with important lineages he can sell to idiots for a lot of money.”

  “But what if you posed it as a hypothetical?” I asked. I’d done the same thing, though it had gotten me nowhere fast. Maybe he’d treat his own daughter a little better. “Say you were just wondering if there was a way to let a horse recover from an injury like that. If it was possible.”

  “We’d be better off consulting Google. Or, I don’t know, God. Or something equally unreliable.”

  “I’d rather we try to glean at least some wisdom from someone who’s been in the business for 50-odd years,” I said. “You don’t think he’d tell you a single detail — not even a stray idea or musing?”

  “My father’s cagey,” Peyton said. />
  “I was wondering where you got that from,” I said playfully, and received a not-so-playful wallop on the shoulder. It stung for minutes after, and I rubbed the spot ruefully.

  “I probably won’t learn everything he has to know until I’m reading it in his will,” she said. “He hates competition.”

  “You’re not competition. You’re family.”

  “I am competition,” she corrected. “He just doesn’t know about it yet. Or at least he doesn’t have any proof.”

  “You can’t honestly think he suspects anything.”

  “He’s suspicious of everyone. He won’t tell me everything about the operation. Of course he suspects something. He suspects everything, all the time.”

  I guessed I hadn’t understood just how silly it was of me to show up at Dax’s operation at the beginning of all of this, looking to pick his brain about horses. I hadn’t grasped just how big of an asshole he was then, and I was only just beginning to get it now.

  “So even if you had a legitimate question about how something worked, or why he did one thing and not the other, he wouldn’t help you?” I asked.

  “Of course not.” Peyton looked at me like I was an idiot, and maybe I was. “He’d just do it himself. Probably wouldn’t even let me watch. I told you how things were. The moment I turned eighteen, I was on my own. I can’t honestly tell you whether or not I’m really going to inherit all of this once he’s gone. He’s just a son of a bitch. He doesn’t even like me.”

  Anyone else who would’ve given voice to those realities would’ve been in tears by now, but Peyton was as dry-eyed as I’d ever seen her. If the truth of her relationship with her father irked her, she made no outward sign of it. I had to think it stung a little bit, not knowing where you stood with the man who had a part in creating you. But maybe Peyton had pushed it from her mind long ago. It wasn’t my place to judge — or speculate.

  “But you have an idea,” I said. “Right?”

  “We need answers,” she said with a half shrug. “I know where we might get them.”