by Emery Rose
Brody was quiet for a beat while he used the screw gun. I waited for him to laugh or call me crazy. I wasn’t really expecting an answer, so it surprised me when I got one. “His name was Walt. Guess you could say he was my mentor. Best horse handler I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. I met him about twelve years ago when I was on the rodeo circuit. When I bought this place, he asked if I needed help. Came out for two weeks, took a liking to the place, and ended up staying.”
“Can’t say I blame him. I can see how this place would make you want to stay. It’s special.” Brody glanced at me, as if to check whether I was being sincere. I smiled, remembering how he told me I should do it more often.
“Yeah, it is.” He stood back to assess his work then lined up another fence panel. Without being told, I held it in place for him.
“What happened to Walt? How did he die?”
“Doc said he went peacefully. In his sleep. Best you could hope for anyone.”
I nodded. “It was the same with my Maw Maw. My grandmother,” I added in case he wasn’t familiar with the Cajun term.
“I know what a Maw Maw is. You were close?”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “She’s the one who raised me and my brother. Some people thought she was crazy. Others were true believers.”
“Believers of what?”
“She was a psychic.” I watched his face for signs of disbelief but there were none. He accepted it as if it was perfectly natural that some people had those powers.
“You got the gift too?”
“So she said.”
“But you don’t believe it?”
“Sometimes I do. Some things can’t be explained. And sometimes I know things that people don’t tell me.” He looked wary and I hastened to reassure him. “Not specifics. I’m not a mind reader. Just... I get a feeling about people. Kind of like a vibe. I don’t get it with everyone. Only certain people.” Like you. “But some people have an aura and give off strong vibrations.”
“Some people... like me?”
Noting the wariness in his tone, I hesitated before answering. Sounded to me like Brody had a lot to hide. “Would it scare you if I said yes? Would it send you running?”
“Running from what exactly?”
“Me.”
“If this is your idea of hitting on me, you get points for originality.”
“I’m not hitting on you. I’m just making conversation. Thought you might be interested. Considering you’re obviously some kind of horse whisperer.”
He snorted. “I’m not a horse whisperer.”
“Okay. Whatever you say.”
“Here she comes,” he said quietly as he rose to his feet and tested the fence panels to make sure they were strong.
I turned around and watched Rebel as she crept closer to us then stopped. How had he even seen her with his back turned?
I stood statue-still and waited to see what she’d do. After about a minute of this stand-off, she took a few more hesitant steps closer and then a few more until she was standing right in front of me.
“Aren’t you a pretty girl?” I reached out a tentative hand and when she didn’t back off, I rubbed the side of her neck. She nickered softly so I kept doing it, my strokes growing bolder until she nudged my thigh with her nose, a playful gesture that made me smile.
“She likes you.”
He sounded surprised. I should have been insulted, really. “Maybe she’s trying to tell you something.”
“And what would that be?” he asked, packing up his tools.
“Be nicer to Shiloh.”
“How much nicer do you want me to be?” he scoffed, slipping a bridle onto Rebel and clipping on the lead rope.
I shrugged one shoulder. “I could use a friend.”
“You want to be friends?” he asked skeptically.
“Sure. Why not?” He was standing next to me now, close enough that I could smell his singular scent and feel the warmth radiating from his skin. “I’m not looking for a relationship.”
“Good thing. Because I don’t do relationships.”
“What do you do?” I asked as I led Rebel out of the pasture while Brody carried his tools.
“Casual hookups. How about you?”
Just bad relationships, apparently. “I’m taking a hiatus from men. I packed extra batteries.”
A laugh burst out of him. “That’s just sad.”
“My big boy takes good care of me. I can change the settings. Speed up. Slow down.”
“Your big boy.” Another laugh burst out of him. “Holy shit. That’s pathetic.” After a beat he said, “Bet it’s not as big as me.”
“Are you seriously competing with a sex toy? Size isn’t everything.”
“Does that big boy of yours have a tongue and hands too? Can your big boy take you from behind and whisper dirty things in your ear while he—”
“Stop!” I smacked his arm. Not that I was a prude, but now he’d gotten me thinking about what he could do with his tongue and hands and his big dick.
My eyes lowered to his crotch and he laughed. “You’re considering it, aren’t you?”
“Nope.” Admittedly, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, but he didn’t need to know that. “I just want to be friends.” I wasn’t even thinking about using him to get to Hayley. It was the truth. Even though he was moody, I liked hanging out with him. “I meet a lot of fake people. And a lot of users. People who ... just want something from me. It’s hard to know who to trust sometimes. But you’re different. You’re real.”
He set Rebel loose inside the pasture and closed the gate, turning to face me. The sun on his face made his eyes appear lighter, like golden honey. “And how about you? Are you real, Shiloh?”
“Not always,” I admitted. “But right now? With you? Yes. You’re getting the real Shiloh.”
He studied my face for a moment, searching for the truth in my words. Could he read people as well as he read horses? As if he’d made up his mind about me, he nodded. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to Dakota.”
We walked to another paddock, smaller than the first two, with only one horse in it. I didn’t know the first thing about horses, but this horse didn’t look like the others. She looked depressed. Sad. She was standing near the fence with her head down. Brody clucked, and she lifted her head and looked over at him.
“Why is Dakota alone?”
“She’s not ready to be put with the others yet. She was abused.”
“What happened to her?” This time I stayed outside the gate while Brody went inside, and Dakota slowly walked toward him. I leaned my forearms on the top of the fence and rested my chin on my hands.
“She was found in a stall standing in four feet of manure. Skinny. Malnourished. Neglected.” He rubbed the horse’s neck with firm but gentle strokes. “Not sure what all had happened to her but none of it was good.”
“And what do you do with a horse like that?”
“Start from the ground up. Take it nice and slow. You can’t rush it, or you’ll undo any of the good you try to do. For now, I’m just trying to get her healthy and get her used to human touch. I spend time with her, just talking and stroking her. She’s come a long way in the past few months.”
We spent about twenty minutes with Dakota and all Brody did was stroke her and talk to her. But I could have watched him doing that all day long. It made me feel so calm and peaceful, the warm sun on my face, the soft swish of Dakota’s tail that made me think was her way of showing appreciation. She trusted Brody to be kind to her.
These horses were so damn lucky to have a Brody in their lives. Even though he could be grouchy and sometimes rude, I knew deep down he was a good person. I’d been around enough bad ones to know the difference.
“Wish I could rescue them all,” he said when he joined me by the fence.
I wished he could too.
“The Paint was a rescue horse. The first one I led out of the pasture,” he clarified as we walked back down the trail toward t
he barn.
“With one blue eye?”
“That’s the one. When he came to me a few years ago, he was in bad shape. We suspected he’d been beaten and whipped. His owners had left his saddle on for weeks and tied his head to the stall.” Brody shook his head in disgust.
“And look at him now. You gave him a good life.”
“Doesn’t always work out. Some of them don’t make it. But yeah, when I can rehabilitate them, there’s no better feeling in the world.”
“You have a gift, Cowboy.”
He glanced at me. “So do you, Shy. So do you.”
“I might have to write a song about you.”
He snorted. “A rock song about an asshole cowboy. Sounds like a chart topper.”
“I get the feeling there are a lot of layers to you.”
“Lucky for me, you won’t be here long enough to peel back all the layers.”
“Don’t underestimate my psychic powers.” I nudged his arm with my shoulder. “For all you know, I’m reading your mind right now.”
We stopped outside the barn and he turned to face me, his eyes roaming down my body before returning to my face. “Nah. If you could read my mind, you’d be blushing like a schoolgirl.”
“Doubt it. I’m not an innocent little virgin.”
He spun the rope in his hand. “Too bad you’ve given up men.”
“Yeah. Too bad.”
“You hungry?”
“Starving.”
Brody’s pickup bounced over a rutted dirt lane that cut through his property, the sunshine pouring in through the windshield, and the warm breeze whipping my hair around. I’d tuned into the oldies station and Aretha was singing about a woman who demanded respect from her man. Something I should have done years ago.
I had no idea where he was taking me. Earlier, we’d made sandwiches in his farmhouse kitchen with terracotta floors and oak cabinets. His house had surprised me. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected—maybe a bachelor pad—but it looked like a well-loved home, the paneled walls painted off-white, braided rugs scattered on the wide-plank hardwood floors and a brown suede sectional in the living room that looked worn but comfortable.
He’d packed up our lunch, grabbed bottles of water and hustled me into the truck, claiming he preferred to eat outside and wanted to show me something. A few minutes later, he backed the truck under a tree and cut the engine.
We sat on the tailgate to eat, the valley spread out below us, sitting close but not so close that we were touching.
“What did you want to show me?” I asked after I’d eaten half of my turkey and swiss on rye and he’d almost finished a second sandwich.
I followed his finger to where he was pointing and leaned forward, straining my eyes for a better look. “Hang on,” he said. He hopped off the tailgate and came back a few seconds later with a pair of binoculars. I took them from his hand and held them up to my eyes, bringing the horses into focus. There were about a dozen horses, maybe more, clouds of dust kicking up behind them as they ran. They looked so wild and free.
“God, they’re so beautiful.”
“They are,” he said quietly. “America’s living legends.”
After a few minutes, I lowered the binoculars and set them next to me then picked up the other half of my sandwich and took a bite. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I could watch them from here. “Why aren’t they with the other horses?”
“They’re wild horses. Mustangs. I wanted them to be free to roam the land but still be able to take care of them.” He bit into his green apple, his gaze focused on the valley. “If I could, I’d rescue hundreds of them, but I don’t have enough land.”
“How much would you need?” I wrapped my crusts in saran wrap, tossed it in the paper sack and plucked a grape off the stem, popping it into my mouth.
“Thousands of acres. I’ve got eighty now. Forty are for them. I’ve got eighteen mustangs and can’t take on anymore. As it is, that’s not enough land for them.” He finished his apple and tossed the core into the grass. “So yeah, that’s never gonna happen.”
“You never know. Sometimes dreams come true.”
“Are you living the dream, Shy?”
I unscrewed the lid of my water bottle and took a long drink of cool water before I answered. “Sometimes it feels like a dream. Sometimes it’s a nightmare. But it’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted. I feel most at home on a stage or in a recording studio. Without music, my life would be so empty.”
He studied my face. “Why are you here?”
The way he was looking at me, searching my face as if he’d know a lie if I told it, I couldn’t form a response. Until finally, I answered as truthfully as possible. “I have my reasons but they’re personal. And I guess...” I let out a breath. “I’m just looking for some calm in the storm.”
Brody nodded like that was something he understood and respected. “Okay.”
“What’s the deal with Ridge?”
He let out a weary sigh. “My seventeen-year-old brother is doing his damnedest to get kicked out of school. I have no intention of letting that happen. I just need to find a way to get through to him.”
“Does he like working with horses?”
“Nope. Not interested.”
“What were you like at seventeen?”
Brody laughed to himself and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I was a train wreck. Spent most of my time getting drunk and stoned, fighting, and screwing.”
Somehow, that didn’t surprise me but right now he seemed so calm and at peace with himself. “And now?”
“Now I’m older but none the wiser. How about you? What were you like at seventeen?”
“Train wreck is pretty accurate. My Maw Maw died a few months before I turned seventeen and it really hit me hard. My brother Landry is three years older and it was left to him to look after me.”
“You didn’t have any other family?”
I shook my head. “My mom died when I was a baby, so I never really knew her. My dad checked out after... she died,” I finished. “He just up and left, never to be heard from again. Until our band hit it big.”
“He looked you up?”
I huffed out a laugh. “Yeah. Came to us with a whole sob story about how his manager screwed him out of money and his record label dropped him. Tried to hit us up for money. He’s a washed-up country singer. Hasn’t had a hit song in over fifteen years. I guess he thought we were the answer to his prayers and could help him revive his career.” It still stung that he’d had no interest in his kids beyond what we could do for him.
“Asshole. I hope you kicked him to the curb. Deadbeat dads don’t deserve the time of day. You don’t owe him your loyalty or your money.”
“I know. I just... I wanted to believe that he actually cared, you know? That he wasn’t using us. But if he ever cared, he wouldn’t have left us in the first place.” When Landry was thirteen, he told Maw Maw he wanted to change our last name to Leroux, our mom’s maiden name. Six months later, we went to a lawyer and had our name legally changed from Holloway to Leroux, officially cutting ties with Rhett Holloway, the man who had no interest in being a father.
“What about your parents?” I asked Brody. “Are you close?”
“They’re both dead.” His voice was flat.
“I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “Don’t be. My aunt and uncle raised me like one of their own. And I’ve got three cousins who are like brothers to me.”
“And Ridge...”
“Turned up a few months ago. I didn’t even know he existed. I hadn’t seen my mom since I was thirteen.”
“How old are you now?”
“Thirty-tree last month. How old are you?”
“I was twenty-five in December.”
He nodded and squinted into the distance. Brody had these little lines around his eyes from squinting into the sun that I found ridiculously sexy.
“I saw you once. You must have been sixteen. You were playin
g in a dive bar in Lafayette.” His jaw clenched, and he flexed his right hand. “Saw you after the show when I was coming out of the men’s room and some asshole was all over you.” He turned his head to look at me. “You remember that?”
My breath caught. “That was you...”
“That was me alright.”
“You pack a mean punch, Cowboy.” I gave him a little slug on the arm, trying to make light of it, to ease some of the tension I felt coming off him.
“Did that kind of thing happen a lot?”
I shrugged, not meeting his eye. “The guy was just drunk. I could have handled it on my own.”
“Why did you have to handle it on your own when you had three guys in the band who should have had your back? Where the hell were they when you needed them?” His voice held so much accusation that I instinctively rushed to the defense of my boys. Even when they didn’t deserve my loyalty or return the favor, defending them was a habit I’d never outgrown.
“They were outside packing up the equipment. I had to run back inside to use the ladies’ room.” I shrugged, once again trying to make light of it. “It was no big deal.”
“You were sixteen years old and some drunk asshole had you up against the wall,” he said, his voice low and angry. “You don’t think that’s a big fucking deal?”
I never told anyone what happened that night. We couldn’t afford to lose that gig, so I hadn’t wanted to cause any trouble. When Brody pulled that guy off me, slammed him against the opposite wall and punched him, I didn’t stick around long enough to thank him. I ran out the back door and hopped in the truck, my body shaking and my knees knocking the whole way home. If I had told the guys, Landry, Dean and Gus would have gone back in there and taken care of the situation. We’d lost plenty of gigs back then, but I never wanted it to be because of me.
“It had shaken me up a bit,” I admitted, downplaying it. “But I was fine. Thanks for stepping in. Were you okay?”