A harried employee took Zoey’s paperwork and marked down that she was indeed carrying a helmet beneath her arm, never once looking up to her face. “Caldwell, you’re stall sixteen. Go down to the end, far side.”
“Over there?” she asked, nervous and excited as she peered at the line of horses, the open barn now swarming with their soon-to-be riders.
“Huh?”
The helper was too busy, so Zoey edged aside to let the impatient group behind her—two adult women and a heavyset man—move up. “Never mind. I’ll find it.”
Stall sixteen wasn’t easy to find because the animal tied in that spot was trying his best to go unnoticed. Ears pinned and a sour, pinched expression on his velvety nose, he eyed her balefully as she approached. Zoey didn’t know a lot about riding, but as she stood next to the short, brightly patterned mount she’d been assigned, she could feel waves of resentment rolling off the animal.
If the universe had put polka dots on a barrel and made it look bitter about life, that was her horse.
“Hi,” she tried, hoping to start this temporary relationship on better footing.
The horse turned his head, staring at the pipe gate he was tied to instead, deliberately ignoring her.
A single guide moved from horse to horse, giving the same directions on how to go forward, stop, and turn to every rider. When the guide reached her, Zoey realized she was a teenager, not the tall handsome Alaskan cowboy she hoped would be part of this adventure.
“My name is Riley, and I’ll be your trail guide for the day. If you have any questions, just ask me.” The statement was delivered in a monotone, as if she’d repeated it so much, she didn’t hear her own words. “This is Mugs, your horse for the ride today. Appaloosas are known for their speckled coat patterns.”
With bored eyes, Riley droned a rehearsed spiel specific to every horse, adjusting the stirrup length for Zoey with the automatic actions of someone who had done this on twenty horses three times a day, all summer long. “Mugs here gets picked on a lot by the other horses because he’s so brightly patterned. It makes him cranky.”
“Oh no. I’d be cranky too.” Zoey’s heart went out to her mount. She reached out to pet his velvety nose, then squeaked when his ears flattened and his lips wrinkled.
Well, that wasn’t reassuring.
“Why do you call him Mugs?”
“His name’s Mugshot, because he always looks like he’s about to get sent to prison. Okay, picture time.” Riley stuffed the reins into Zoey’s hands. Stepping back, she pulled out her phone and in an equally bored voice said, “Say cheese.”
Waving the phone with the image beneath her nose, Zoey caught a glimpse of her startled eyes and Mugs’s flattened ears, his expression one of serious disgust.
“Stick your foot in the stirrup and use his mane, not the saddle horn, to pull yourself up. Horses don’t have nerve endings in their manes, but they do get sore backs.”
Was that true? The idea of pulling a poor animal’s hair while awkwardly climbing up its side sounded mean. With the grace of a sack of potatoes, Zoey did as directed. Mugs grunted dramatically, then swung his head toward her leg, massive square teeth bared. Yelping in alarm, Zoey jerked her heel up to her hip, looking to the guide for help.
“What did I do wrong?”
“Nothing, he’s just in a mood today. Shove your foot out when he does that. He won’t want to bite your shoe. I’m sticking you in the back. Normally, my other guide would take the last place, but she called in sick. Mugs knows these trails better than I do. Just kick him if he falls behind.”
“Won’t that hurt him?”
The tiny smirk broke through the boredom in her eyes. Smacking her hand down on Zoey’s tennis shoe, Riley said, “Not with these little nubs.”
Now, that wasn’t fair.
As Riley turned her back, Mugs swung his head again, aiming for Zoey’s shoe to prove her wrong. Riley moved on to the next horse and rider, a beautiful sorrel gelding, half dozing as he waited patiently.
“My name is Riley, and I’ll be your trail guide for the day. If you have any questions just ask. This is Patch. He’s—” As Riley started a new spiel about this horse, Patch nuzzled the other rider’s hand, tickling her with his long whiskers and wiggling lips. Zoey eyed him wistfully.
“You see them?” Zoey muttered to Mugs. “He doesn’t hate his rider.”
Mugs snorted in equine contempt.
When everyone was on their horse and ready to go, Riley swung up on her own gray mount—a tall, energetic animal who hadn’t given up hope of a different life yet—and called for them to line up. A rich hodgepodge of variously skilled riders managed to form themselves into a semblance of a line, although the three who ended up behind Zoey at check-in now were in front of her. Listening to their conversation wasn’t intentional. The two women—sisters from what Zoey could glean—had the kind of voices that carried, even if the people around them would rather those voices didn’t.
Mugs dug in his heels when the group took off at a walk, but with a sigh of disgust and some nudging and cajoling on Zoey’s part, he finally shuffled forward.
“I bet Patch isn’t giving his rider side-eye,” Zoey told him. Mugs ignored her.
They hadn’t lied about the stunning scenery. As the trail wove in and out of the forest, through open glades, the mountains rising tall and glorious above them, Zoey’s heart swelled. If she could have jumped off her horse and rolled around on the ground, she would have, so happy as she was to be there. To see this. Then they descended into a shady glen, the afternoon sunlight filtering through the evergreens, and Zoey fell in love.
Complete, unadulterated love. There was literally no other place on the earth she would rather be than exactly that spot.
As for wildlife…well…the current volume of conversation in front of her had Zoey wanting to shrink away. No wonder there were no deer to be seen.
The two sisters had traveled everywhere, and they wanted everyone to know, sharing their stories as loudly as they could in an effort to regale the others around them. As they talked and argued over details, the husband kept slipping something out of his pocket and taking sips of it, ignoring them both.
Mugs wasn’t enjoying himself, especially when the one sister’s horse—a very pretty palomino—started misbehaving. Now, Zoey had been trying to see any kind of wildlife at all and was twisted around in her saddle when it all went wrong, so she didn’t know exactly what happened to start everything. The palomino started bucking, sister one screamed bloody murder, convinced she was going to die, sister two screamed at sister one to stop screaming, and husband one and a half pulled the flask out of his pocket and started to drink hard.
Stuck at the front, Riley tried to yell back what to do, but the trail was too tight to let her get there to help them. An aggressively bucking horse butt was not as picturesque as one standing in line or grazing in a meadow. Mugs snorted with surprise as he caught a tail beneath the chin, startled to the right, and ended wedged between two trees, Zoey clinging to the saddle horn.
Backing himself out from in between the trees, Mugs ignored Zoey’s attempts to help by tugging on the reins. Zoey realized a moment later than her horse that they were pointed with his nose back to the barn.
Mugs was done with this foolishness. With a derisive snort to the rest of the group, he started back up the trail.
“We’re going the wrong way.”
Mugs ignored her.
She tried to turn his nose, but he tensed his neck and ignored that too.
“Riley, I need some help here,” she called out, waving frantically, but the teenager was too busy trying to contain the screaming situation, the bucking situation, and the drinking husband situation. The poor girl looked like she wanted to scream or drink too, up until all of them disappeared because Mugs topped the hill and was resolutely headed down the other side.
Pulling on the reins, stuffing her nubs into his sides, verbally appealing to his better nature…none of it worked. There was nothing Zoey could do. The horse was determined on going back to the barn, and her options were to bail from a moving equine vehicle or just let this play out.
“Okay, what do I do? What do I do?” Frantic, Zoey looked around at a much more peaceful but far more frightening expanse of wilderness.
“I’m not calling Lana for help. One, my phone doesn’t work, and two, I have my pride. So we’re going to turn around. I’m sorry if this hurts your mouth, but I have no choice. I’m not getting lost a second time in two days.” Stuffing her feet into the stirrups, Zoey stood up with both hands hauling on the reins as hard as she could. “Mugs, whoa.”
Mugs thought about it. He paused. There totally was a pause. Then a derisive snort and a shake of his head later, he continued on, a trail horse untrailed, a beast of burden now free.
“I’m going to die in Alaska. We’re going to get lost, and my horse is going to eat me to survive.”
Abruptly, they came to a split in the path, and Mugs stopped without warning, pitching Zoey forward onto his neck, saddle horn digging into her stomach.
An equine ear flicked back as if in question. “Oh, now you want my opinion? Now?”
She was not concerned. She was cool, calm, collected. This was all okay. Death by being lost and eaten by the only carnivorous horse in Alaska was okay. Deep, soothing breaths. Deep, soothing—
When her phone rang, Zoey nearly lost her reins in her desperation to answer it. “Hello? Lana, thank goodness.”
“I just heard the best story about you.” Lana’s voice cut in and out among the sounds of voices and music in the background.
“Lana, listen to me. My horse went rogue.”
“What did you say? It’s hard to hear you. I think she’s on her adventure still.”
“My horse went rogue! I think he’s plotting against me. Lana, I need you to teach me how to ride.”
“That’s what the guides are for, love. Besides, those trail horses don’t care you’re up there. They just follow the line.”
“Well, mine’s having an existential crisis and just quit his job. I can’t figure out how to get him turned around.”
“It’ll stop eventually, then hop off and ask for your money back. We’re all at the Tourist Trap. Meet us here when you’re done.” Even with the terrible reception, Zoey could hear Lana cracking up. “Graham says you attacked him.”
“I didn’t! It’s complicated.” Even here, in the middle of the wilderness with nothing but Mugs around, Zoey could feel her face and neck heat up with embarrassment. “There was a misunderstanding.”
“Is that what we’re calling it now?” His warm, sexy chuckle in the background only made things worse. “Let me talk to her.”
“Graham wants to talk to you.”
“Lana, no. Don’t you dare pass over the—”
“Hey there, Zoey Bear. How’s my favorite ballbuster?”
Distracted by his flirty tone, Zoey failed to get her leg out of the way when Mugs drifted too close to a tree trunk. With a squeak, Zoey hung up the phone, scrambling for the reins.
Lana promptly called her back, but there was no way Zoey was going to answer. If Mugs wanted to scrape her off, Zoey had bigger concerns than a hot diner owner.
Carnivorous or not, she’d rather be lost with the horse than without him.
“This was not on the plan, Mugs. Him, you, any of this.”
Mugs ignored her and continued with the kind of resolve only a twenty-year-old barn-soured trail horse with polka dots could maintain. The trail was more peaceful without her companions, but Zoey’s stomach stayed twisted with nerves until the barn finally came into view in the distance. Mugs saw it too, his flattened ears finally perking up. With renewed enthusiasm, the Appaloosa surged into what might have been a trot at an earlier point in his life but now mostly consisted of several strides of lumbering faster, then a jerky slowing to accommodate his freaked-out passenger.
Then, instead of helpfully returning to stall sixteen, Mugs did what Mugs did best. He walked up to one of the massive rolled bales of hay, stuck his face in muzzle-deep, and he stayed there.
* * *
They didn’t give Zoey her money back. They did, however, give her a stern lecture about respect for the rules and the group and how leaving endangered not only herself but everyone on the trail.
Standing up for herself worked about as well as it ever did. There was just something about her that made people not take her seriously, which was super annoying when Zoey was not at fault here.
Her excuse—the horse made me do it—only would have worked if the riding outfit wasn’t convinced Mugs was the best horse on the planet and would never do what she was suggesting. Unsaddled and turned out to pasture by the time Zoey was done not getting reparations, the horse eyeballed her from around his mouthful of grass as she drove past.
“Well played, sir,” she muttered. “Well played.”
Once back at the resort, she met up with Lana and her cousin, who were just returning from the Tourist Trap. Both seemed to find the entire thing far funnier than she had. The closest either Montgomery got to sympathy was Killian saying he’d treat everyone to a night out on the town. Other than showering the smell of horse off her, Zoey had nothing better to do, so she agreed.
If anyone had asked, Zoey could have told them they wouldn’t be welcome at the small pool hall just off the main street running through town, the one with only the tiniest “open” sign in the window. She didn’t even know why they were there until she realized Lana had noticed the receipt Graham had written the car rental information on. But Killian and his crew were determined to do something “fun,” and in cruising the tiny town in his sleek black Lamborghini, nothing else so far had sufficed. Rick’s it would be.
Zoey didn’t know if he actually found a place to rent the thing or if Killian’s Lamborghini was shipped in for him to use, but either way, she felt more than awkward parking her rental car near his. She nearly lost a hip when Haleigh whipped into the spot next to them, squealing her Porsche SUV to a stop.
“I didn’t realize they even made Porsche SUVs,” Zoey murmured, earning an amused look from Lana as they headed toward the unmarked building, noticeable only for the number of cars out front and the sound of music playing inside.
Inside, the building was exactly what a dive pool hall should be, complete with dark wood paneling and a short bar at the far end of the room. Nearly every table was full, and the air smelled of pizza and thinly veiled hostility. Walking into Rick’s was like walking into the high school lunchroom at a new school. Everyone looked, but not one looked happy.
“Someone spilled the beans.”
The smooth, masculine rumble was familiar. The sharp edge to that smooth voice was not.
“Don’t be a grump, Graham,” Lana said breezily. “It’s a free country.”
Despite Zoey’s heels, she was still shorter than her companions and had to crane her neck to see the owner of the grumbling voice.
In a room full of strangers, Graham Barnett was a sight for sore eyes. Or just regular eyes. All eyes. All eyes enjoyed Graham Barnett, especially in dark jeans and a snug black T-shirt.
He’d pulled a ball cap down over his hair, cell phone and leather wallet tucked in his back pocket, and Zoey couldn’t keep herself from staring at the broad expanse of his muscled shoulders as Graham bent over his group’s pool table, taking—and making—a shot.
“It’s free, but sometimes it feels a little crowded, L.”
“We can leave.” Zoey touched Lana’s arm to get her attention. “There’s plenty of other things to do.”
Graham blinked, then the annoyed expression was gone, instantly replaced by the sweetest, sexiest smile.
“Of course, some crowds are bet
ter than others.” Abandoning the table, even though it was still his turn, Graham approached, smiling down at her. “Hey there, Zoey Bear. I thought I might have to go back to the big house to see you again.”
“How are you feeling?” Lowering her voice so as not to announce anything embarrassing to the people around them, Zoey glanced down—then very quickly back up again. “You know…there.”
“In my balls? Where you kicked me?”
His voice was so loud. Graham’s cheerfulness was infectious, but the attention they were receiving with his antics made Zoey want to disappear beneath the plank flooring.
“You kicked yourself in the balls,” she shot back. “I have the police report to prove it.”
“So do I.”
Graham leaned in and took her completely by surprise with an unexpected hug in greeting. The hug was brief, just his palm touching her upper back for a moment, hers braced awkwardly on his muscled arm and the pool cue wedged in between them for safety.
Still, he was warm and smelled like buns.
Crap. She was as bad as Ulysses.
“It’s good to see you, darlin’.”
“Thanks for not having a chainsaw in your hands,” Zoey quipped in reply.
“Don’t knock my preferred art form.” Lingering just a moment in their still awkward hug, Graham added, “One day, I’ll be famous.”
“You already are, love. For all the wrong reasons.” Lana set a hand to her hip, raising an eyebrow at Zoey. “Are you playing with us or playing with the handsome boy tonight? I know it’s been a while for you.”
One of Graham’s companions tried to cough to cover a snort. Could her cheeks be any hotter? Zoey’s entire front side was on fire from embarrassment.
“That’s why we’re friends,” Zoey grumbled. “There’s not enough abject humiliation in my life without her.”
Graham’s grin just grew. “Save me a game, Zoey?” he asked her, sounding far sexier than the man had a right to.
Aiming a look her friend’s way, Zoey immediately scooted back out of the range of hugs and misunderstandings. “Sure…ummm…yeah. Maybe. Good luck to you…and all your…evening endeavors.”
The Tourist Attraction (Moose Springs, Alaska) Page 11