by Lexie Ray
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. That 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.”
We all did. Avery didn’t want to be here — at least, he used to not want to be here. He hadn’t wanted to marry Paisley Summers, either, but that move had saved both of our families’ ranches.
“So what changed?” I asked. “Was it the honeymoon that made you change your mind about things?”
“Yeah, our long-delayed honeymoon,” he said, laughing. “I don’t know. It seems like everything’s been a honeymoon since getting shot. I couldn’t work, so we traveled. Got to know each other better.”
“Made business plans,” I said, only a little bit jealous. Okay, fine. I was stupid jealous. It was ugly to be this jealous of my brother. But Paisley, as the CEO of the Summers side of the Corbin-Summers Ranch, had a lot more pull than, say, Tucker or me, and Avery enjoyed a certain privilege being married to the CEO. When he had proposed a dude ranch as a way to bring in extra money — and appreciation and awareness campaign for ranching, in general, the right way it was supposed to be done — Paisley had thought it was a great idea and pushed it through with Chance.
“The planning with the dude ranch is insane right now,” Avery said, his eyes widening. “I mean, I kind of thought it would be a lot more straightforward than this. You know? If you build it, they will come? That kind of idea.”
“Not so much, right?” I said, forced to laugh at him. He was seriously such an idiot sometimes that it would almost have been adorable, if he hadn’t been a grown man and married. “Marketing to do, packages to plan, social media campaigns to organize …”
He shuddered. “You sound just like Paisley. You haven’t been talking to her, have you? She’s trying — and succeeding — to light a fire under my ass for this thing.”
“Well, the barracks will be ready to go soon,” I reasoned. “It would be stupid for them to be complete and then just to stand there, vacant, taking up room on the property that could’ve been used for something else.”
“Fuck, man, now you sound just like Chance.” Avery looked a little spooked. “I mean it. What you said right now is the last conversation I had with them. An executive meeting, Paisley called it. Jesus.”
There was a time he would’ve been bemused — irked, even — to make a statement like that, but I noticed he looked vaguely pleased with himself, like he’d hitched his wagon to something pretty great. I loved my brother, but I did feel like Paisley was a little out of his league. She was so motivated, and he was just … Avery. I wasn’t sure how they worked together, but they did. For a little while, though, we’d all doubted whether they would. But something seemed to have changed after that night Avery had gotten shot. It had shaken them both up, shown them just what could’ve been lost.
And somehow led Avery to his big revelation about a dude ranch, probably the second time he
single-handedly saved this place.
Maybe I’d get my chance to help this place in a visible way like Avery or even Hunter by teaming up with Peyton on the horse rehab project. The thought of Peyton made me sweat even harder than I already was in the morning sun.
“So what are you doing over on this side of the ranch?” I asked, shifting my weight from foot to foot. And what could I do to get him to go away? I left that thought hanging unsaid between us. I didn’t want to be rude. That wasn’t really my nature. Being rude to try to drive him away would be so out of character for me that it would pique his curiosity and he’d insist on hanging around to figure out what was making me act like such a weirdo.
“Can’t I come back over to the Corbin side every once in a while?” he joked. “This was my home, too, same as the rest of you.”
“You’ve joined the dark side, now,” I joked back, hoping that grinning and laughing would help conceal just how manic and anxious I was feeling right now. “You might as well have changed your last name to Summers at the wedding.”
“Very funny,” Avery said. “I had that meeting with Chance and Paisley, which was up at the house, in the laundry room — super embarrassing — and I decided to come out here for nostalgia’s sake and take a gander at the old trailer. You don’t mind, do you? This place brings back lots of memories for me.”
“Lots of memories? You were living here just a few months ago.”
“Recent memories, then.”
“It’s not that clean,” I said, trailing off, hesitant to let him stay any longer. By some grace of a merciful god, Peyton was running late, or else she and my brother would’ve already had the pleasure of crossing paths — to my chagrin.
“Oh, please,” Avery scoffed. “That place was a shit hole when I lived here. I’m sure it’s ten times better now.”
He stepped inside the trailer, and I had no choice but to follow him in.
“I had to use an entire box of disinfectant wipes on this place when I moved in,” I grumbled good-naturedly, still doing everything in my power to conceal my panic.
“Good thing, too,” he replied. “This was a bachelor pad if there ever was one. Lucky trailer, though.”
“Lucky how?”
“Well, right after I moved out here, I got married,” he said. “Maybe you’ll be the next of us to put a ring on it.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said, flushing in spite of myself at the thought of Peyton. God, I was such a dumbass that I couldn’t stand myself sometimes. Why would the idea of being the next to marry make me blush like some kind of lunatic? Did I think that Peyton would want to marry me? The idea was as laughable as Avery thinking his trailer was magic or something.
“At the very least, may this trailer get you laid.” Avery waved his arms around, looking like he was attempting some kind of wish or prophecy. “A night of pleasure for Emmett from the bachelor pad.”
As if on some kind of horribly timed cue, the crunch of car tires on gravel made the both of us look to my open door.
“Who’s that?” Avery asked, but I knew who it was. Peyton Crow, here to see me, in my lucky bachelor pad. I wished I could run away and hide somewhere, and ran through myriad possibilities for what I could do to deal with this situation. I could cold cock Avery and lock him in the bathroom. When he came to, eventually, I could let him out and tell him he fainted, hopefully sending Peyton off before that, our business concluded. Or I could play dumb when Peyton stepped out of the car and send her away in shame and scorn — except I couldn’t do that. I’d waited and waited as long as I could, and I’d told her to meet me here. I just hadn’t counted on Avery being here for the party, too.
“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” my younger brother said as he leaned out the door of the trailer before I could stop him.
“If you’re a son of a bitch, that would make me one, too,” I reminded him mildly. “Not a very nice expression to remember Mom with.”
“You know it’s just an expression,” Avery said absently, watching Peyton unfold herself and stretch while getting out of her beat-up car. She looked nice — slick black leggings with a deep magenta tank top that complimented her figure. Complimenting that figure, though, wasn’t hard to do. Peyton could’ve worn a paper sack and done it fashionable justice.
Avery shook himself as if he had been dreaming — hell, I felt like I’d been dreaming, watching her move in her languid way — and gave me a shrewd look, raising his eyebrow.
“You expecting someone?”
“In fact, I am,” I said, clearing my throat and easing past him and into the sunlight. “Hey, Peyton.”
“I’m running a little late, looks like,” she said, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. “Avery Corbin? I didn’t believe my eyes, but it really is you. How’s it hanging?”
Avery beamed and stepped forward to give Peyton a one-armed hug. “It hangs well. How are you hanging?”
“Bummed out, actually,” she said, pouting prettily. “You never go to the bar anymore.”
He laughed. “You never gave me the time of day at the bar.”
“Still, it was nice seeing you,” she said, her teeth so white in the sun as she smiled. “And I gave you that nice ride once, remember?”
“I don’t remember a single nice thing about this alleged ride,” Avery said, cracking up as he raised his hands, like he was being arrested, or found out. “We’ll speak no more of this. We’re making my brother squirm in his boots.”
It was an accurate description, as much as I was trying not to. I understood all too well what Avery and Peyton’s association might’ve been at the bar. My brother hadn’t been a married man for very long, and I understood that there had been a rough patch, right after the wedding itself, that he’d spent in town, bellied up to the bar, trying to forget about Paisley Summers entirely. Still, though. Why did I hate this development in particular? It made me feel like I was in danger of losing breakfast, and Zoe had worked hard on those made-to-order omelets. I refused to let those go to waste.
Avery raised his eyebrow again at me as I stood in the open doorway to the trailer. “More to you than meets the eye, Emmett,” he said.
“See you around, Avery Corbin,” Peyton said, amused at the two of us, and he climbed in his truck and left, checking, I was sure, in his rearview to see if he could catch anything inappropriate happening between Peyton and me. I hadn’t given him an explanation as to why I was meeting with Peyton at the trailer, and he hadn’t asked. What did he assume? That I’d called her here to have sex with her? That we were colluding against our families to carve out a business of our own? I honestly couldn’t figure out which possibility worried me the most.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, wondering when my stomach would stop lurching. Would it have to wait until the dust Avery’s truck raised driving away settled again? Until a week passed without any of my brothers mentioning anything to me about Peyton Crow and my intentions with her?
“Emmett?” I looked at her, at the hand balanced on her hip, the other one working its way through her long, dark hair, ruffling it before tossing it over her shoulder. “Relax.”
“I really didn’t know he was going to be here,” I babbled, well aware that I already sounded like an idiot and was just digging myself a deeper hole to languish in. “He’s usually on the other side of the ranch. He married Paisley Summers, after all. He’s never over here.”
“I really, really don’t care,” Peyton said, walking over and giving me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. It was stupid of me, but that kiss was disappointed. It was possibly even less friendly than the hug she’d shared with my brother. Even as I thought that, I cringed at my own idiocy. Peyton wasn’t here for pleasure. It was purely business, purely horses.
“I just hope it’s not, um, awkward for you,” I said, showing her into the trailer and instantly regretting its inherent shabbiness. We should’ve met somewhere else — the house, maybe, or a little restaurant in town, or Peyton’s pla
ce. I realized that last option probably wasn’t viable. I imagined she stayed on her father’s property somewhere, and I couldn’t imagine it would end well for either of us if he found out we were meeting to talk about horsing operations — or anything else, for that matter. I just regretted this “bachelor pad” of a meeting spot. It didn’t feel appropriate, somehow, even if it was relatively private.
“I think it’s turning out to be more awkward for you than it could ever be for me,” Peyton said, ducking into the trailer. “Hey, this is nice.”
“I … it’s not awkward for me,” I said. “I just … I guess I didn’t know that you and Avery … knew each other.”
Peyton let her purse drop onto the bed. “Emmett, everyone in this town knows each other. It’s that kind of town, in case you missed it. Super small. Not very many people. Now, shut that door. You’re letting all the cold air out.”
I let the door close with no small amount of trepidation. “But you all seemed kind of friendly.”
“He was a regular at that bar before his wife snatched him up,” Peyton said with a shrug. “We saw each other there all the time. And he was a year behind me in school. We know each other. No reason not to be friendly.”
“Sure,” I said, not buying it. I didn’t buy a single word. “Whatever you say.”
“Oh my God, Emmett.” Her mouth dropped open and she openly gawked at me. “Are you serious right now?”
“I just can’t really cope with this, in this moment,” I decided out loud.
“I just told you that nothing happened between us,” she said. “Should I go into more detail? Do you want to ask him yourself?”
“I’m just surprised, that’s all,” I said. “Let’s talk about horses.”
“No. Uh-uh.” Peyton crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not talking business until we get this shit aired out.”
“There’s nothing to air out.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” she said, not the first one to tell me that. “I never slept with your brother. You know why?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to know why.”
