by Lexie Ray
“I’ll talk to you soon,” she said, then kissed me quickly on the cheek before dashing to her car and motoring away. She had somewhere she needed to be just as badly as I did, and I had to wonder where it was. I didn’t like that feeling, but I had to remember she wasn’t mine. She never would be. No strings attached. I just needed my heart to listen to the words my ears had heard.
I checked my appearance in the mirror and then the display of my phone to confirm the time before slipping it in my pocket. There was a text from Tucker.
“If you value your ass, you’ll get to the barn from wherever you are ASAP,” it read. “Chance is pissed.”
Pissed because I’d been missing. Fucking great. It made me dread being here even more, if possible. If I’d had my way, I would’ve spent all day with Peyton, going wherever it was she was going just so we could keep talking. Instead, I’d be spending the rest of the day — and probably a good deal of the night — here on the ranch.
Chance had a thunderous look on his face as I approached the barn, and I did a quick search in my head, as I’d been doing since I was a boy, to see what it was I might’ve done to piss him off. I could name quite a few things at the moment. I just wasn’t sure what he knew about, and I wasn’t about to give myself up. Had Avery told him who he’d run into outside of my trailer? I didn’t think my younger brother had the chance to. At least, I hoped he didn’t.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, his voice even but menacing, as I got within range of him not having to shout. I glanced around the barn, realizing that Tucker and a few of the Summers ranch hands were there, going over some papers. That was the only reason Chance wasn’t reaming my ass right now — we had an audience. I felt a rush of gratitude for the serendipity of having the bigger ranch. When it was just the five of us Corbins, before Paisley and her half of the ranch entered the scene, we normally wouldn’t see each other until nightfall, when our shifts more or less officially ended. Chance would’ve been free to yell at me all he liked, then. It was only because of the bigger ranch — and the larger number of people present to work it — that he was restraining himself. Thank God. He could really blow a gasket when he wanted to — and sometimes when he didn’t particularly want to. I chalked it up to the stress of leadership. He’d always been in charge of things, as the oldest of us, especially after our parents’ deaths. But Paisley had named him, in the merger of the two of our family ranches, CEO of the Corbin side of things, making all the responsibilities he’d already undertaken official.
I wondered if it was taking a toll on him.
“I’ve been around,” I offered.
“Around doing what?” He was so pissed. He cut his eyes toward Tucker and the other ranch hands, and I knew he was wishing them away so he could really light into me, so I wished them to stay even harder.
“Working, the same as you.” That was a flat-out lie, even if it had started out as something I viewed as work. I was still struggling through how to prove to my brothers that the horse venture would gain quick traction, especially with Peyton’s prowess on the subject, but I hadn’t necessarily been working on the ranch.
“You and I both know that’s bullshit, Emmett,” Chance said darkly. “You never were a good liar.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
He exhaled harshly — almost a laugh. “I want you to tell me the truth. What were you doing?”
“What does it matter? You don’t think I was working, even though that’s what I told you I was doing.”
“You’re scheduled to be out with the herd on the river,” he said. “You know that area’s one of our most problematic.”
“Only at night.”
“You were scheduled.” Chance was vehement, and I knew I had to tread carefully. He was stressed out about the ranch, about the recent cattle thefts, about something else happening to try and take our family’s ranch away, and we both knew that the ranch needed every available hand to work. For the first time, I felt guilty about all of my sneaking around. I hadn’t before. The horse operation was my dream, and I knew I was the only one who could make that happen, prove to my family and the rest of the ranch that this would help us. But what if all the attention I was paying it came at the cost of the existing ranch?
“I’m here now,” I said. “Even if I’ve been here the whole time. If you want to waste more time being mad at me, you can follow me on a horse out to the pasture.”
I made a move to walk around him toward the stable, my face tight with the knowledge that my horse still being in there was what had tipped Chance off that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be in the first place, but he stopped me.
“You’re good at what you do here, Emmett,” he said. “We need you. We need everyone to be pulling their fair share of work. It’s the only way this whole thing works.”
“I am pulling my fair share,” I said. “Most of the time, I’m doing a lot more than what’s expected of me. And if you’d just listen to me for once, this ranch would be even more secure in its business by diversifying.”
“You’re right,” Chance said, releasing my arm. “I don’t have time for this. The ranch needs you to get your head out of your ass. If you were off somewhere daydreaming about your goddamn horses instead of working, then you need to rethink your priorities. We can’t afford any deadweight around here. You know that as well as I do.”
“I’m not deadweight,” I said, walking past him, more stung than I thought I would be. “If I ever really stopped working on this ranch, every last one of you would feel it. I do things you don’t even realize get done, things that wouldn’t happen if not for me.”
“Just get to the pasture,” he said, disgusted, well beyond listening to me. “We’re short a man down there, and I don’t like the idea of that — not even with the sun still up.”
And I had ideas about bolstering the security in that problematic portion of the ranch, but I knew Chance wouldn’t care to listen to those, either. I led my horse outside by the halter, saddle tucked under my arm, just to get away from my oldest brother. Fine. He might’ve been right about me shirking my usual responsibilities. But every single time I tried to bring up the horses to him, he just wasn’t interested.
“Emmett, wait up.”
I turned to see Tucker jogging up to me, his tanned face shielded from even more sun damage by a baseball cap.
“Better not,” I said, fastening the straps and buckles to secure the saddle to Sugar. “If Chance thinks I’m out here screwing around, he’ll get even more pissed than he already is.”
“It’s about the horse deal, isn’t it?” Tucker studied me steadily until I sighed and gave up on getting my own horse ready for an afternoon and evening of ranching.
“You’ve been distracted,” he added. “I’ve been noticing, even if it took Chance this long to pick up on it.”
“So what if I’m distracted?” I asked, feeling defensive. Wasn’t an attack from one of my brothers enough? Why did Tucker feel like he had to join the fray?
“Chance is right. You can’t afford to be distracted. None of us can. Not with the way things have been around here.”
The way things have been — he was talking about the cattle thefts, Avery getting shot when he went to try and break one of the incidents up.
“Cattle thefts are one thing,” I said. “You all wouldn’t be tied up in so many knots if you were open to a different kind of business.”
“Cattle is what we do, Emmett,” Tucker reasoned, crossing his beefy arms over his chest. “It’s what this ranch was created for. What our family was about.”
“There have been significant changes to this ranch since our parents died.”
“They were necessary changes. The ranch wouldn’t have survived otherwise.”
“Do you think we needed Hadley and Hunter’s clinic to survive?”
Tucker shrugged. “A little extra money doesn’t hurt.”
“Uh-huh.” I was nowhere near convinced. �
�What about all the capital we’re using for the barracks for the dude ranch, and everything Avery and Paisley are doing to get that off the ground?”
“What about it?”
“It’s expensive, is what I’m saying. A distraction.”
“If it had been Avery without Paisley, Chance probably wouldn’t have allowed it,” he said. “You’re right. It’s not very fair. But Paisley backed him, and she’s the other CEO of this place. Equal standing with Chance. Kind of a princess. Gets what she wants.”
“What am I going to have to do to get what I want?” I demanded. “Is there a wealthy daughter somewhere I can marry? A woman I could bring onto the ranch to convince you all that a horse operation would be just the thing this place needs to survive?”
Even as the words left my mouth, hot and angry, I thought of Peyton. She would be that woman who would convince my brothers that my ideas were solid. My face turned hot at the images of our time spent together this morning, not all or even a majority of it about horses. But with her storied past — something of town legend, really — would any of my brothers even give her the time of day, let alone a chance to persuade them that offering horse breeding services for people in the area would be a boon to the ranch?
“All I’m telling you is that there’s a time and a place for you to bring your ideas to Chance, and it’s just not right now,” Tucker said, cutting through my worries.
“I don’t think there’s ever going to be a time or a place,” I said. “In fact, I’m quite certain there’s never going to be either of those things. If not now, then when? If not here, then where? This is my ranch, just as much as it belongs to the rest of you. It seems like everyone’s getting to wax theoretical about what they’d like to see get done here — but I don’t get to be one of those lucky few. Jesus, sometimes I even think you all would love to see all of the horses go, auctioned off to the highest bidders or just shipped away so you all didn’t have to worry about riding them or seeing they got fed and groomed.”
Tucker’s silence exasperated and shocked me more than it should have.
“Chance has knocked around the idea of fully modernizing a couple of times,” he said cautiously. “Horses require money, Emmett. You know that better than anyone.”
“ATVs wouldn’t be cheap, either,” I said bitterly, hating that my suspicions were true. “They require gas and oil and maintenance that none of us are familiar with. You think Mom and Dad would’ve signed on for something like that? Think of how it would put the herd on edge.”
“If Mom and Dad were still alive,” Tucker replied, his tone of voice much calmer than mine, “they would be living in the exact world we’re living in right now. Forced to make tough decisions for the good of the ranch.”
“And how many tough decisions would they make before they decided it was time to finally throw in the towel?” I asked.
Tucker shook his head. “This kind of talk isn’t like you. I’d expect something like this out of Avery, maybe, but not you. You love this place.”
“I do love this place, but I hate seeing it struggle,” I said. “Especially when I have so many ideas about how to help it not only survive, but thrive.”
“Your ideas require a lot of money without a guarantee on a good return,” he reminded me. “That’s the only reason we’re not implementing them right now. We don’t have a lot of money to devote to any of your projects.”
“Except for the dude ranch,” I said, not bothering to hide my irritation.
“Yes, we’re doing the dude ranch, and it’s Paisley’s idea to push,” Tucker said. “It was the only way Avery has engaged with this place for his entire life. We had to make that decision. And you know what? It might not even work out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Can you imagine having a bunch of rich city assholes from Dallas or Chicago or Los Angeles or New York here, eager for an authentic ranching experience, staying in the barracks, awaken by gunfire?”
I swallowed hard, understanding instantly what Tucker was implying, what the reality really was around here. “We won’t be able to get the dude ranch off the ground if we can’t secure the herd.”
“Exactly,” Tucker said, grave. “And that’s why everyone needs to be pulling their weight around here. It has to be a safe place for everyone, Emmett. And you have to stay aware of your surroundings at all times. Help us make this place a success.”
“I have been,” I said. “I’ve always been helping.”
“I know you have. It’s just that we need your complete focus now.”
“I’m focused.” I hated feeling like this, like I was letting people down just because I had a dream about something different. I knew I shouldn’t have been gone for so long today, but Peyton had been totally worth it.
“Go easy on Chance, too,” Tucker said. “This is what he’s dealing with at every waking moment — the what-ifs of this place.”
“I got it,” I said. “I’m going now.”
The sun was just setting as I made my way to the far pasture, the problem one, the place where cattle just kept disappearing. By the time I got there, letting Sugar walk instead of trot, it was well into evening, then night.
It was good to be in the night air, even if I wasn’t alone. The darkness afforded a little privacy from the rest of the ranch hands scheduled to accompany the herd, but if I turned away from them and stared out over the pasture, it was easy to find the solitude I craved. It was strange — or maybe it wasn’t. I’d come out here with the idea of being alone, welcoming the darkness as a place I could stare out into and escape judgment, but here I was, wondering what Peyton was doing, thinking about just how nice it would be if she were astride a horse, beside me, just looking out at the things we couldn’t quite make out in the night. Even better would be if she were seated in the same saddle as I was, pressed up against me, her body warm against mine. What would we talk about? Horses? The things we wanted to do? The dreams we had? Maybe we wouldn’t talk at all, and that would be almost better than any words we could’ve said, any ideas we could’ve given voice to. We’d just sit and breathe together, waiting in the night for something to happen, the herd at our backs, watching.
I had to shake my head at myself. It was like I was lovesick. Peyton and I had sex exactly one time, and we were in talks to become business partners. It wasn’t like we were getting married or anything — or even discussing becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. The thought was ludicrous, me sitting out here in the pasture, dreaming about Peyton Crow. The things that happened with her just … happened. There wasn’t an endgame in mind other than the horsing operation. Everything else — the way her legs had squeezed my ribs in the trailer, how my hair had mingled with hers, tangling in it, the way she squeezed her eyes closed when I touched her in just the right place — well, I supposed that everything else was just going to happen if it decided to happen. It was a strange feeling, being out of control of your entire life. That’s how I felt, at least. I didn’t know what I wanted to happen between Peyton and me. I liked the idea of her, the experience she obviously had with the same things I was interested in, and we seemed to fit well together. She challenged and pushed me, but I liked that. I just didn’t understand what was supposed to happen, how our relationship was going to mature, or what it was going to culminate in.
The thought of a future with Peyton … well, I just didn’t know what to think of that. I had to wonder if she was thinking about similar notions right now, a future with me. I could see us older, still together, a place of our own, apart from others, accepting horse rehab cases as we wanted to, content in each other, watching sunsets over pasture land.
I snorted at myself, at my naïveté, and felt sick at the same time. I was the only one thinking about this. It was late at night. Peyton was probably stationed at her table in the bar, waiting for drunks in need of comfort to drift her way. She would never be mine in that way. She had another business going, and it was the business of selling her body.
It was foolish to think that she’d ever want to leave that game for a lifetime with me. She had everything she could possibly want in the way of variation and entertainment. I’d never be anything but me for her.
Maybe it was the dark, or the illusion of being alone, but my imagination swirled and ballooned. If we could make the horse rehab project successful — and I meant living wage successful — then maybe Peyton would leave her other business. Maybe I could convince her that she didn’t have to do that anymore. That our business together would be enough to sustain her.
That I would be enough to sustain her.
I had, at least, the presence of mind to laugh at myself. It was so stupid, so typical. Here I was, in a privileged position, in love with someone I thought could use my aid, eager to assert my higher worth and scoop her out of her situation to have her as my own. It was a sappy love song, or an equally ridiculous romantic comedy, only there was nothing sappy or funny about it. This was my life, and these were my real feelings. I wished that I could somehow convince Peyton to stop selling herself and be with me.
I was really falling for her.
I wished I had a choice in the matter. I wished I could stand in front of some fork in my mind and choose the other path, the one that stayed far away from the idea of ever falling in love with Peyton Crow, but I was afraid it wasn’t that easy. My heart did whatever it wanted, apparently, and the thing it wanted most in the world right now was Peyton.
Not horses. Not for my brothers to take my ideas for the ranch seriously. And, no, not even for my parents to be back here with us, keeping our family from fracturing further, keeping the ranch on track, preserving that bit of legacy that had been entrusted to our care.
No, my heart wanted Peyton Crow more than anything in the world right now. If it weren’t beating inside of me, causing me all this grief, I would’ve laughed. It was such a stupid notion. Peyton was her own woman. She’d never consent to belong to anyone. The way she’d cut her eyes at me when I’d lost my shit over her and Avery showed me that. I was the lesser person in that situation. I should’ve been more understanding, should’ve accepted the reality that was Peyton working as a prostitute in a small town. She’d probably been with people I would squirm to know about, and now I’d been with her, too — just in a different situation. Why had she really slept with me? She’d said it was to get it out of my system, to throw back the curtain on everything that was making me awkward around her and unable to focus on the things we wanted to do. But did I really believe her? She’d been the one to follow me out into the alley at the bar the first time we sat down together, kissing me because she wanted to.
