The rough ride, p.9
The Rough Ride, page 9
“Yeah. But it’s a little growlier than usual.”
“I’m not scared of him.”
“Great. We got some stuff happening today. Elizabeth Colfax, the equestrian-therapy expert that we hired, is coming down to see the place today. We’ve got to spruce up her living quarters still. But...”
“Right. Well...that’s cool. I... I actually wanted to do some work. I wasn’t only looking for Gus.”
“Charity’s going to be here soon to do a vet check. Did you want to help her? I mean, she’ll have Lachlan, but we’ve got to get all the horses out and get them ready for her to look at.”
“Yeah. I can do that.”
Lachlan’s best friend, Charity, was the vet in town, and she was assisting with the equine project. She knew a little bit about all of it. But it was neat to come and see the inner workings.
“Did you still want to see Gus first?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“In there,” he said, gesturing to the barn.
And she didn’t know why he hadn’t said that in the first place. She now couldn’t escape the image of Gus as a bear. But yes. That was accurate. Sort of brutish and big and utterly uncaring of what anyone around him thought. Because why did he have to be? Because he was a bear.
And he made the rules.
“Good morning,” she said.
She was greeted by a grunt.
“You’re cranky,” she said.
“Yep. But you were cranky the other day. So that’s fair, right?”
“I guess. I would like to go grocery shopping with you later.”
He straightened and looked at her. “What the hell do you think this is, mite?”
“A partnership, Angus. I want to know the kind of food that you like. And then you can take me to dinner.”
He looked like she had hit him with a two-by-four. And she had to admit it was sort of satisfying to see that. Because... Bear. Therefore difficult for him to ever be thrown off his game.
“Well. Well.”
“Well indeed,” she returned.
“Sure. We can do that after work.”
“Great. I already have my assignment for the day. We will reconvene when everything’s done.”
She turned on her heel and felt...good. Because she had taken control of the situation. She was not going to leave the house a squalid den. And today her room wasn’t going to get unpacked. So that was a little bit unfortunate. But she was amped to be helping with the vet check.
She went down to the main paddock, and Lachlan was already there. Leading a horse out of one of the stalls.
“Hi,” she said to him.
“Howdy,” he returned. “You here to help?”
“I see Brody’s been in touch.”
“Yeah. Charity’s almost here.”
And a few moments later, a big truck with modified racks on it pulled onto the property. And a very small woman climbed out of it.
Charity had always reminded Alaina of a mouse. She was quick and able in her movements, fine-boned and bright-eyed. She had wispy blond hair that fell in ringlets from a bun piled at the top of her head. She was wearing a pair of serviceable jeans, a T-shirt, and as soon as she got there, put on some gloves. “All right. Vaccines, checkups and all the rest ready to go.”
“All right,” he said, elbowing her. “How’s it going?”
She frowned. “My dad’s not doing great.”
“Sorry.”
And for all that Alaina knew they were just friends, she felt slightly uncomfortable witnessing the intimacy between them. They were close. And it was obvious.
“We’ll talk later,” Lachlan said.
She nodded. They got twenty horses checked and given a clean bill of health, and when they were finished, she went and found Elsie, who was exercising a horse in the paddock. She leaned up against the fence and looked at her friend. “How’s it going?”
“Great,” Elsie said. “Great. How are...? You didn’t...you didn’t tell me how the whole...the whole you-and-Gus convo went.”
“Which, um, one?”
Elsie’s eyes went wide. “The...sex one.”
Alaina’s throat went dry. “Oh, that. Well. Because. Because he laughed at me and said he didn’t want to...do that.”
Elsie stopped the horse. “Oh.”
“Right? I thought men were all for that. Gung ho for that. But apparently he is just wanting to help.”
“Is that why you didn’t ask anyone to be your bridesmaid?”
Alaina’s heart slammed against her ribs. “Yeah. It wasn’t a real wedding. Were you... Did I hurt your feelings?”
“I was a little worried. I thought maybe you were still mad at me.”
“I’m not. It’s just...this isn’t real and we didn’t spend a ton of time planning it. It was a hurry-and-make-it-legal thing. That’s all.”
“Good. Because I want you to be in my wedding.”
Emotion made her chest feel like it was expanding. “I want to be in your wedding.”
“Good.” Elsie paused for a second. “I know your wedding happened quickly, but it was real. Are you really never going to...?”
“He said he isn’t into it.” She thought of the kiss and her cheeks warmed.
“Are you into it?”
The thought made her brain short out. “I don’t... He’s Gus. I trust him more than I trust anyone. I... Sorry. He’s not my best friend or anything but he’s a protector. He’s...”
“It’s okay that you have a different relationship with him than you do with me. You trust him. He’s always been there for you.”
He had been. A strong silent presence that she somehow had always known would back her up.
“That’s what this is,” she said. “It’s just more of the same. Him protecting me.”
“Do you want there to be more?”
“I think that would be one too many things on my to-do list. I’m already his farm wife. His house is a wreck.”
Elsie laughed. “Yeah. I’m going to have to do some work to civilize Hunter. I know he’s not quite as feral as Gus, but...”
“There are whole packs of wild animals that are less feral than Gus,” Alaina said.
And they smiled at each other.
“Are you happy?”
She shrugged. “I think I have to wait and see how everything pans out. I’m just kind of anxious to get to the changes. Like get them over with. So he and I have moved in together. But I need to get the house in order. And then when the baby comes... I just need to be able to get a handle on where this is all going.”
“I think unfortunately you’ll find your feet and then more stuff will just change.”
Alaina didn’t like the sound of that at all. She wanted to arrive at a place of certainty. Where everything was well ordered and it was a perfect and proper place.
“Don’t tell me that.”
“Well. With your busy schedule let’s actually hang out. Let’s not be those people that get...lost. Because of men and all of that.”
“All right. Let’s make sure.”
And she left feeling a little bit lighter than when she’d arrived. She went hunting for Gus around five o’clock, and found him standing out in the driveway with a pretty blonde woman that Alaina had never seen before. She was elegant. Something Alaina had certainly never been accused of. Wearing pearls and a very understated sheath dress with navy blue sling-back shoes. And she was just...pretty.
Gus looked at ease with her. In a way that he never did with her. Of course, she’d never really seen Gus when he wasn’t with her, so she didn’t know that he could look like this. Relaxed.
She skulked into view, and made her way over to the two of them. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Alaina. Alaina McCloud. Gus’s wife.”
The other woman grinned warmly at her, and did not respond to the slight spikiness in Alaina’s tone.
“Elizabeth Colfax,” she said. “I’m going to be the licensed therapist and consultant at the facility.”
“Once we get everything cleaned up.” Brody’s voice came from the barn, and a second later he appeared. And Alaina watched as Miss Elizabeth Perfectly-Put-Together went stiff. Her smile was still there, but she had gone rigid. Obviously, she was bothered by Brody McCloud. “Yes. Well. I look forward to that. Thank you for the productive meeting,” she said. “But I have a drive back to Portland. So... I’ll see you in a couple of months.”
Gus took his hand out and shook hers. “See you then, Elizabeth.”
“A pleasure. Thank you, Angus.”
“Angus,” Brody said as soon as Elizabeth left. “A pleasure. She’s got a stick up her ass.”
“She’s professional,” Gus said. “Something you wouldn’t know anything about.”
“It’s something I don’t need to know anything about,” Brody said. “Because all this kind of stuff isn’t my problem. The uptight therapist girl is your issue.”
“Not unless I make it yours. Because I’m your boss.”
Brody scowled. And Alaina didn’t think she’d ever seen Brody scowl.
“Are you ready, Gus?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
They headed to his truck, and got inside. And for the first time, Alaina wished she would’ve gone back to change. Into something a little bit nicer. Because that Elizabeth had made her feel like a troll.
“What was that about?”
“What?”
“Alaina McCloud. You haven’t changed your name, mite, at least as far as I know.”
“I will,” she said, sniffing. She buckled her seat belt fiercely and stared out the window. “Anyway, I am your wife. I was introducing myself is all.”
“Yes. You are my wife. But that was...that was a little bit of jealousy there, wasn’t it?”
“I am not jealous. Of her. She...she looks like she should be on a yacht. I don’t want to be on a yacht. I’m not seagoing. I am of a mountainous people. And I have no desire to be... No. Not a wayfarer.”
“Okay,” he responded, his tone indicating that he very much thought that she was unhinged.
“Let’s just go to the store.”
“You want to go to John’s or...”
“I’d rather not. I’d rather just skip over to town.”
“All right.”
“Hmm, I need to feed you first. Because you’re being a feral little demon.”
She slapped her thigh. “I thought you were going to be nice to me.”
“That was nice.”
They didn’t speak as they made their trip toward town. And he took her to the same restaurant for the same burger, and she almost groused about it, except that it really was very good, so her grousing would’ve been disingenuous. They got to the grocery store, and Gus, in his cowboy hat, grabbed the shopping cart and steered it toward the automatic doors. And seeing him do such a mundane act was about the strangest thing she had ever experienced. This domesticated act of being in a grocery store. Pushing a shopping cart. And it made it harder for her to ignore the fact that he was a man. A human man.
Not a bear.
Not a mountain.
And definitely not out of reach.
Her fingertips felt strange.
“Okay. Let’s do this thing,” he said.
“What do you like?”
“I eat almost exclusively frozen pizza.”
“How do you look like that?” she asked, knowing that she had just betrayed that she had in fact noticed his body. All hard-packed muscle, without an ounce of fat.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Do you secretly do a thousand sit-ups every day?”
“No.”
“You don’t...you don’t work at that?”
“No. What the hell do I care? I just need to be able to get my job done. I’m not some gym bro out trying to get gains or whatever else. I don’t care.”
And she didn’t know why that was compelling. It just was.
“Well. Fine. But we’re not doing frozen pizza.”
“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting we should. I’m sick of it.”
“Okay. So I’m not a gourmet or anything. But spaghetti? Pot roast?”
“Like I said. It’s all good.”
They stopped by the produce and she grabbed onions and some potatoes.
“I assume we can just get steak from the Garretts?” she asked.
“Yep. Direct. I actually have a flat freezer outside and there’s plenty of meat in there.”
“Oh. I didn’t check there.”
This was mundane. This was skipping to be an old married couple. And she felt...weirdly charged. She couldn’t say that she cared for it.
She grabbed the front of the cart and guided it toward a small section that had dishes. “You need a sugar shaker,” she said.
“I do?”
“Yes,” she said. “I am not a savage, and I will not live as one.”
“I think you mean we need a sugar shaker.”
And he was messing with her. She was pretty sure. But he grinned, and it was irresistible. And she wondered if it mattered whether he was teasing her or not, since the end result was the same. It was their sugar shaker. Everything that they were getting today was going to be theirs.
The house was theirs.
She stared at him. “Fine. We need a sugar shaker.”
They went over to look at them, and there was a white one with flowers. And a cowboy. But sugar that came out of his hat.
“You know which one we have to get,” he said.
“No,” she said.
“Marriage is about compromise. You think we need a sugar shaker. I think we need no such thing. We have to get a cowboy.”
She stared up at him, trying to see if he was smiling. She swore she could hear a hint of humor in his voice. It was so very hard to say.
“Are you messing with me?”
“Yes. But we are getting the cowboy.”
“You’re a child,” she said.
“I thought I was an old man.”
“Angus McCloud,” she muttered, grabbing the cowboy and putting it in the cart.
Then she stepped back toward the produce, and chose some avocados and other things that they weren’t able to grow in the garden at Sullivan’s Point.
If she got caught buying pitted fruits, she would be disowned forever.
“What are we having tonight?”
“Tacos and guacamole?”
“Yeah. I can dig that.”
“All right. But I hope you are not expecting homemade bread and the kinds of things that Evelyn Garrett comes up with. Or Violet. Or my sisters. I am not my sisters.”
“I know,” he said.
“You should learn to cook,” she said. “It would be fun.”
“I don’t think it would be. And why would I do that?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Because. You have someone to cook for now.”
CHAPTER SIX
HER WORDS RANG in his head the whole rest of the next day.
He had someone to cook for now.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. But if anything made him want to learn how to fry an egg, it was that.
The thing about his house. He had a well-worn path he moved through. Rooms he went into every day, rooms he didn’t go in at all. It was a necessity, like sleeping and eating. The thing about eating was it was something he had to do to fuel himself for work.
He just didn’t think a whole lot about his own comfort.
He had always rationalized that with the fact that he had gone through a horrific injury and a hellish recovery.
His dad had been mad about that too. Had to declare medical bankruptcy after Gus’s long-term stay in the hospital.
Burns were a bitch. They didn’t just heal.
He’d had rehab and recovery and all kinds of shit. Surgeries. He didn’t have feeling in the place where the burns were the worst. And he sort of figured...it was the kind of thing that guarded him against good and bad sensations. Pain and pleasure.
He figured it had translated into other areas of his life. So he didn’t think much about what he ate, what he wore.
He liked sex, but he wasn’t obsessed with it. His life didn’t revolve around his own desires. That was the thing. But...she wanted to work at the ranch. And could he really ask her to do that and cook all the meals? They were having a kid. He wouldn’t want his son to do anything like that to a woman he married. And he sure as hell wouldn’t want his daughter to accept that.
He stood still for a moment, his heart frozen in his chest.
He’d committed to being a father and that meant modeling behavior.
He could have a little girl. And he knew...he just knew how terrible men could be, and the very idea of it terrified him.
So yeah. He supposed he needed to learn how to cook.
This was a lot more complicated than he’d anticipated. A lot more involved.
Down to grocery shopping with her last night. He looked across the field and saw Elsie and Hunter, on their horses, talking to each other, looking...settled.
He wondered what his life would be like when they were all settled.
He supposed he was settled now. Well, and he had the kid to look after.
All of his life he’d had to look after the boys.
All of his life he felt an intense, fierce protectiveness over them.
Because he knew his parents wouldn’t protect them.
His mother couldn’t. She’d been way too beaten down by his father, and the thing was, Gus knew just how lethal the man was. Gus knew. He didn’t blame Hunter, even though Hunter blamed himself. That was just youngest-kid bullshit. He wasn’t here for it. Youngest kids always did that. Managing to make it all about them while trying to take all the guilt on board at the same time.
Useless. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but Seamus McCloud’s. He was a dick. And he was the only one that had to answer for the things that he’d done.
