by Claire Adams
After I came in from riding with Eric, I took a nice, long shower, soaping every inch of my skin and thoroughly washing my hair. I loved the horses more every time I went for another ride, but I didn’t love smelling like them afterward. I didn’t know how Cash was able to stand smelling like dirt and big animals all day. He was used to it, I guessed. He did shower twice a day, so maybe he didn’t like it as much as I thought.
I also spent the time in the shower going over the events of the last several days. I wasn’t quite sure what had happened, but the boys were exhibiting some puzzling behavior. I still hadn’t figured it out at the end of the shower, which meant I needed to talk it out with someone I trusted. I wrapped my wet hair in a towel, shimmied into a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, and left the steamy bathroom, breathing in the fresh, cool air of the hallway. It was the middle of the afternoon, so I could probably wander naked through the house without Cash walking by. He rarely returned to the house after he left in the morning. But it would be just my luck to try dashing buck naked through the hallway only to crash right into Cash on his way to the library…although maybe literally having me run into him naked would finally be the encouragement he needed to take things to the next level. Well, I guess a level. As things stood currently, we weren’t doing much more than sharing dinner and occasional horseback riding lessons. I was waiting on the figurative edge of my seat for more, but not willing to put myself out there to get it.
I put my glasses on when I got back to my bedroom, collapsed on my unmade bed, and called Paige. I hadn’t spoken to my sister in over a week, and I was really interested to hear her opinion on some weird stuff that had been going on around here. It could be nothing, but it didn’t feel like nothing. I needed an outsider’s view, and no one from New York would understand this. At least Paige had spent some time on the West Coast, albeit it in another urban wasteland.
“Hey, Hale,” she said, and it was a relief to hear her familiar voice. I didn’t see her as much as I’d like, but we chatted on the phone several times every week. Right now, she was my one connection to home, even if she didn’t live just outside the city anymore. “What’s up?”
“That’s why I’m calling,” I replied, lying back on the twisted nest of blankets and shifting around to get comfortable. I hadn’t made my bed since middle school when Mom finally got tired of reminding me every damned day. Paige, on the other hand, had been making her bed by choice since kindergarten. She even made beds in hotel rooms. It was a sickness. “I’m hoping you can help me figure that out.”
“What’s going on?”
I’d gone over all of this in the shower and therefore knew exactly what I wanted to say and how to say it. There had been a number of days this week that I spent mostly confused, but I thought I’d cleared out enough of the cobwebs to see the situation clearly.
“I’m not sure. The guys are acting weird. That’s all I know.” Okay, that was a lot less descriptive than it had sounded inside my head.
“Define weird,” she said, sounding amused. I could picture the careful smile on her face, the one she wore whenever she was trying to figure out just how serious a situation was going to turn out to be.
“Well, for the first few weeks I was here, Eric was never up at the farm, though he would answer an email moderately quickly if I sent it to him. Cash got up, went to work outside, and came in to eat by himself. That was it. We didn’t really speak much unless it was me tailing him and asking questions to help with my character sketches and story outlining.”
“Okay…?” she said, drawing out the word like she did when she was waiting for me to get to the point.
“Well, then Cash and I started having dinner together, which has really been great. I’ve gotten to know him, and it felt like we were becoming friends.”
“Has he stopped doing that?”
“No, we still eat together, but something has changed, and I don’t know why. Eric offered to teach me horseback riding a few weeks ago since Cash was really too busy to take time away from his work on the ranch. Those lessons went great after I got over my belief that I was only a few seconds from being bucked off the horse and trampled, but now Eric is up here just about every day wanting to take me riding and teach me about ranching life. It’s great because I need the information for my notes, but now Cash is suddenly trying to take me out for rides and show me around the ranch, too. I don’t understand what’s going on. One minute, they are both too busy to hang around me much at all, and now, they are around all the damned time. I get that having dinner together has helped warm things up between Cash and me, but it’s really bizarre how friendly he’s become. Not to mention how often Eric is here all of a sudden. He used to go weeks at a time without showing up.”
I took a deep breath and released it again after getting out that mouthful. It felt good to put into words all the things that had been bothering me over the last week. Well, it felt good until Paige started laughing at me.
“What?” I said, frowning, though she wasn’t here to see it. I doubted she could hear me since she was still yukking up a storm. Still scowling, I waited for her to calm the hell down before I spoke again. “What are you laughing about? I’m calling you for help.”
“Oh my God, Hailey, you can’t really be this blind!” She started giggling as soon as the words were out of her mouth.
“What?” I asked again, only this time she heard.
“You are really dense when it comes to men.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d said so. I couldn’t say that I disagreed with her. I spent way too much time in my own head—it was nice in there and, bonus, it was also how I made my living—and sometimes it was just so hard to get out again. Still, that didn’t mean I had to take the abuse lying down.
“Well, screw you too then, Paige.”
That only resulted in more laughter on her end. I waited for her to simmer down a second time while I boiled in the sour juices of my own irritation and considered just hanging up on her. She had always been able to piss me off faster than anyone else. My only consolation was that I could do the same to her. It wouldn’t take very long for me to find an opportunity to pay her back tenfold.
“Hailey, these men are interested in you and are obviously competing for your attention,” she said.
I started to scoff at the very idea of that level of ridiculousness, and then shut my mouth to actually think about what she’d just said. As much as I hated to admit that she was right, it actually made a lot of sense. What else could explain why Eric was suddenly showing up every day? At first, he brought different things to Cash for the farm, but by the middle of the week, he was obviously coming here to take me riding. We’d even gone for a tour around Jackson that included lunch, shopping for western wear, and a stop by his house for a tour and a snack. I liked Eric and was glad to have him around, but I didn’t understand how I’d been so blind to what was going on. Cash was no better. Now he was inviting me out to join him in his work on the farm and getting damned near chatty, which wasn’t like him at all. We went horseback riding pretty often too, usually after dinner. It was nice, riding around the property as the sun set, our suppertime conversation following us into the wide open spaces around Ogden Ranch. I enjoyed spending time with each of them for different reasons. This kind of thing would seriously complicate matters. What happened if things took an ugly turn? If they demanded I pick between them? I didn’t want to be responsible for breaking up two lifelong best friends.
“You see it now, don’t you?” Paige asked, the smile still in her voice. “These guys are fighting over you.”
“Yeah. At least, I think I see it. I just…” I let my voice trail off while the thoughts continued to collide inside my head.
“You just what?” Paige asked.
“Why?” I asked in a whisper, still stunned by the idea.
“What do you mean, why?” She sounded pissed. “You’re a total catch, that’s why. Any guy would be lucky if you gave him the time of day.”
&nb
sp; I had to smile at that. “Thanks, Paige.”
“It’s true. The Young women are amazing.”
We shared a laugh, which completely swept away all the building tension between us.
“I just don’t understand why it’s happening all of a sudden. Cash and I have been eating together at night for weeks. I never noticed a damned thing. He didn’t even seem interested.”
“What about Eric?” she asked.
“He wasn’t really around much, but then he showed up one night out of the blue to have dinner with us and offered to teach me how to ride horses.”
“Maybe Cash only realized how much he liked you after Eric started showing interest. It’s actually pretty typical for men.”
Was it? I wondered. I’d never experienced that sort of thing. But, if so, maybe it belonged in the story I was crafting from my experience out here.
“You know what your problem is?” she asked.
“No, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”
She giggled before getting to her point. “You went out there in research mode. Everything you’ve done so far—maybe besides drooling over the Clint Eastwood look-alike right after you got there—has been about research and your character sketches and your outline. I get it. You are out there to work. But that way of looking at everything that had happened around you up until this week has made you forget that these guys are men and not just potential additions to your latest novel. They have desires and thoughts too separate from whatever information they can add to their fictional counterparts. And don’t discount yourself. These men would be blind to ignore how great you are.”
“Well, I have no idea what to do now,” I said, sighing and closing my eyes to my view of the ceiling. It was the only clean surface in my room. The rest was covered with papers, clothes, and piles of books. The constant mess seemed to follow me wherever I went. I even found it annoying, but it was as though it happened without my assistance. If I spent more than one night in a place, my things just exploded everywhere, much to my embarrassment.
“Do you like either one of them?” she asked.
I didn’t answer right away.
“Both of them?”
I tittered nervously as I turned my feelings over in my head, trying my best to expose them to the light. “I like both of them for different reasons. You saw the pictures I sent you. They are both good-looking, decent men. It’s like being asked to choose between cake and ice cream. They are both amazingly delicious.” I blushed in shame at my cavalier explanation of actual human beings. If I’d heard men describing women this way, I’d tear them a new one.
“There’s no way you like them both equally,” Paige said, dismissing my earlier comments as bullshit. As annoying as I sometimes found it, I did appreciate her ability to cut right through my excuses to get to what mattered. “Think about why you like each of them. Maybe coming up with a list will help you figure out which one is right for you. I know you like to write shit down.”
That was an understatement.
“I’m not here to hook up with someone—” I started, and Paige shut me right down.
“Oh, shut up. It’s been forever since you’ve been with someone. And I’ve heard the way you talk about these research subjects. You like them. Don’t act all high and mighty. It’s okay to be attracted to someone. It doesn’t make you any less intelligent.”
I drew in another deep breath and let out a long sigh. “If I’m being honest, I like Cash more. He’s a reader and so intelligent. I love Eric’s playfulness, but there’s something about Cash that just draws me in. He’s like a slow burn, and Eric is more like an explosion.”
“That’s good, Hale. It makes sense. And now that you know that, you should probably let him know it, too.”
The thought was terrifying, and my eyes flew open to stare up at the ceiling again. “What? Why would I have to do something like that?”
“If these guys are busy flexing their muscles for you and showing off, things might start to get out of hand,” Paige explained. “And you said they’re good friends, right?”
“Yeah, best friends. Since kindergarten.”
“This kind of competition could really fuck up their friendship. I know that’s the last thing you’d want.”
That made perfect sense. Ideally, I’d rather just go back to the way things had been before I started learning how to ride—with Eric only an occasional visitor to the ranch and Cash joining me every night for dinner and conversation while I stared blatantly at him, committing every freckle on his face to memory. But then something hardened in me, and I tossed off my baby sister’s advice, the steel rod in my spine going rigid.
“This issue is between them, not me. And they are grown men. They aren’t going to fight over me like two horny teenagers after a high school football game. That sounds like a bad rom-com.”
“You think it’s not possible?” She sounded amused again.
“I just think that they are grown men and know how to act.”
“And you’re a grown woman,” she threw back. “If you like someone, you should let him know it.”
That knocked me back into silence for a second, which was long enough time for Paige to gloat.
“See? Who said a younger sister can’t be smarter than her older sister?”
We both broke up laughing. I loved and respected her strong opinions, but I was going to have to find my own way through this.
Chapter Nineteen
Cash
Late August
I’d overheard Eric the day before talking to Hailey outside of the barn about what he had going on today. He had to work at 9 and was planning to drop by the ranch for another horse ride right before dinner. I’d had about enough of him hanging around every day but not helping out with chores like he usually did. He hadn’t been over to my house every day since we were just out of high school. Now, all of a sudden, I couldn’t get rid of him. I knew why, and that was another reason for putting my foot down before things went any further. I knew Hailey was a grown woman who could make her own decisions, but I was also a grown man who needed to just come out with what he did and didn’t want to happen on his own property.
I got up a little earlier that morning and went right out to tend to the horses and cattle without even taking the time to brew my regular pot of coffee. I decided to save the mucking out of the stables and grooming of the horses until after I’d spoken to Eric, which let me focus on feeding and watering the horses and then getting them out to the pasture where I planned to leave them until the afternoon when I’d returned and finished up a few other tasks that needed doing. I tended what was left of my cows next, scanning each one closely for signs of disease as I laid out their feed. I hadn’t found anything that resembled sickness yet, but I didn’t think I’d ever stop looking after what had happened a few months ago.
As soon as I’d finished setting the animals right, I hopped into my pickup and drove down to Jackson proper, crossing the city limits just as the sun was actually making its appearance above the line of the horizon, though it had been light out for some time now. It was just past 7, so I was sure Eric would still be at home. Hell, he might even be asleep. I smiled at the thought of rousing him from bed with a volley of loud knocks to the door.
I parked in his driveway and got out of the truck. Damned if he didn’t come outside at that exact moment. I had no idea why he was out here so early. It stunned me a moment, but I went towards him while he was busy gaping at me, probably wondering why the hell I was out here, the same as I was wondering why the hell he was.
“What are you doing here, Cash?” he asked. I didn’t see him dressed for work very often. He had on a nice button-up shirt and slacks that made me uncomfortable to look at, let alone wear. He was wearing his cowboy boots though, a nicer pair than he did when he came up to the ranch, but still boots. This was Wyoming, after all.
I’d planned what I wanted to say while I was busy getting the horses taken care of first thing,
but all those words were hanging just out of reach while I stood blinking at him.
Eric smiled hesitantly, his eyes moving over my entire body before settling back on my face. “Everything alright up at the ranch?”
That did it. Everything I wanted to say came flooding back into my skull, giving me full access.
“You need to stop coming out to the farm every day,” I said in a firm voice. “Enough’s enough.”
He didn’t lose his smile, but it changed, getting sharp at the corners the way it sometimes did when he was about to get sly, his eyes flashing in the morning sun. He adjusted his shoulders into a more challenging posture.
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t have a reason to be up at the ranch every day.”
“I’m showing Hailey how to ride,” he replied, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his shiny black pants.
“She can ride just fine now. You need to back off and let things be.”
“Is that really why you came all the way down here? To tell me to stay away from Hailey? Like that’s your right?” His light eyebrows were pulled together, but he was grinning aggressively, his teeth flashing white.
“I got a right to say who’s welcome on my property.”
That drew a bitter laugh from him that riled me up even more than the smile on his face. “Oh, now I ain’t welcome out at your place? I wonder what Hailey would think about you controlling who she gets to see. You forget I have her email address. We talk all the time through those messages and have since before y’all ever met.”
Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. And it would be just like him to reach out that way, knowing I had no way to stop him. Hailey had access to all of that technology through her phone. She’d explained using it as a mobile hotspot that would let her use her computer to listen to music and watch movies whenever she wasn’t busy researching or writing. I didn’t see why any of that was necessary when you were fortunate enough to live smack dab in the middle of some of the most gorgeous scenery in the West.