Lead Me On

by Crystal Green

  Lord knew what had gotten into her, Margot thought, but she could just imagine the private conversation that’d gone on between Dani and Riley after that minibombshell at the gazebo.

  “You’re going to quit?” he probably would’ve said once they were alone. “Where did this come from, Dani?”

  Fortunately, Margot had gotten the opportunity to ask Dani the same question while Clint and Riley had bonded over grilling steaks outside and Margot had helped Dani in the kitchen with twice-baked potatoes, Caesar salad, plus mushrooms stuffed with spinach and topped by a béchamel sauce.

  She hadn’t gotten much out of Dani, though.

  “Everyone and everything changes,” she had said simply. “Remember last weekend when you told me that I was capable of running my own business, and I just hadn’t taken the opportunity to try it? Well, that stuck with me, Margot. It made me rethink where I’m going and where I’ve been.”

  Margot ran her gaze over Dani’s saucy haircut, but didn’t say anything more. Quitting a job and pursuing a new business was a serious turn of events for anyone, but the issue was between Dani and Riley. And, until her friend wanted advice or feedback, Margot would let them work it out.

  * * *

  AFTER DINNER, DANI shooed everyone out of the kitchen, preferring to clean up “like the totally efficient home ec machine” she said she was, so Margot wasn’t sure what to do with herself. She was hardly tired, though, so she retreated to the porch, where night had already fallen across the clear California country sky, stars winking down.

  She chose to sit in a gliding herringbone swing and leaned back, finally breathing for the first time that day. It’d been a rough one. Yesterday, she’d gotten news from her agent that her publishing house hadn’t merely decided to refuse any future contracts with her, but they had actually told her to forget about fulfilling the final book on her present agreement. She couldn’t stop worrying about it.

  I’m an official, utter failure, she thought. And where was there for a failure to go now? She heard the door open, and she straightened up.

  It was Clint, holding two crystal shot glasses with golden liquid, backlit by the warm illumination from the foyer.

  His boot steps thudded on the planks as he walked toward her, and her heart imitated the sound with tiny booms.

  The two of us alone...Le Crazy Horse...a bubble bath...

  “Nightcap?” he asked, handing her a glass.

  “What did you bring me?” It’d been asinine to think that she wouldn’t find herself alone with him again. But this time, she would stay strong.

  Even if she was already going weak, just from smelling the clover and hay on his skin.

  Something in her chest seemed to expand because he was near, and she shooed the sensation away.

  “It’s a liqueur,” he said. “St. Germain. They say it’s really rich, made from elderflowers.”

  “You’ve never had it before?”

  “First time for everything, even for a fellow like me.”

  She couldn’t help laughing at that and took the glass in hand.

  He said, “I figured you all might like it.”

  “I’ve had it before, and it’s wonderful. Thank you.” She almost tacked on a “stud” at the end of the sentence but bit her tongue before old, flirting habits could take over.

  No need to flirt with him when they’d finally gotten each other out of their systems.

  He sat next to her in a rustic chair. Couldn’t he leave her alone to wallow in her misery with a fine libation, just as if she were a poet with her absinthe?

  He’d doffed his hat earlier, and his hair was a mess. Damn him for that, too, because she found it adorable in a dumb, schoolgirl-crush way.

  “So,” he said.

  “So.” She searched for words. “How about the drama you’ve got on your ranch? And we haven’t even come to a wedding yet.”

  “Are you talking about the girl with the new haircut?” He jerked his chin toward the door, indicating Dani. “I’m leaving her and Riley to work everything out.”

  “I can’t blame her for flailing around a little. She’s getting married and making a huge life change. I think this is her version of cold feet.”

  Why was she talking so much?

  Clint only nodded as he took a sip of the St. Germain. When she caught herself aping his movements, she paused. Then she thought, Screw it, and drank away, letting the thick warmth of the liqueur travel down her throat and through her limbs.

  What to talk about now? It wasn’t as if they’d ever had a normal conversation. But here, under the stars, at his home, normal seemed...well, normal. It was nice to be someplace comfy like this. She’d never really sat on a porch with someone before and felt like she didn’t want to rush off anywhere.

  “You’ve got a great place here,” she finally said. “It’ll be a fabulous location for the wedding. You were right about that.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Your brothers don’t care that you offered it to Dani and Riley?”

  He took his shot glass and held it up, absently looking through it, as if to inspect the golden nectar. Offhandedly, he said, “I’m going to assume Riley told you much more about Jeremiah and Jason than I thought.”

  She was skating on thin ice here, and she wasn’t sure if it would hold. Why had she even mentioned his brothers?

  Out of anxiety, she thought. Out of the pure, scary adrenaline freeze of trying to have a regular conversation with Clint Barrows.

  “I heard something about the notorious Jeremiah and Jason,” she said. “They’re giving you trouble.”

  “Trouble is such a kind word.” He kept considering his drink until he took another swig, then let out a deep breath, lowering the glass. “See, my grandparents bought this place, turned it into a working ranch, left it to Dad, and he took it from there with Mom. I always had a deep interest in it. They said I was more a cowboy than either of my brothers. Jeremiah and Jason were interested in the money side, and I wasn’t. That’s the last part I ever cared about.”

  “You were all about the cutting horses.”

  “And cattle and ranch hands and everything that goes with the operation. All of us work together to care for, train and breed the cutters.”

  He seemed proud of what he accomplished on a daily basis. She’d never noticed that about him.

  “We’ve got one hundred and eighty acres of roads and trails, pastures, horse barns, cattle pens, an arena...and all my brothers want to do is start selling off the land to some ag business that will pay top dollar, in spite of the economy. I say that sounds a mite suspicious, if you ask me.”

  “You don’t trust your brothers to have your best interests in mind?”

  He seemed to process that. “I’d like to think so. But brothers don’t threaten each other with lawsuits and strong-arming. At least, not the brothers I know.”

  He was talking about Phi Rho Mu, but she wanted to know more about his blood brothers—whether they were true family or not. “It sounds like Jeremiah and Jason don’t care about what you’ve always done here.”

  “You’re right. When my parents sent them off to college, they became ‘businessmen,’ and they only see bottom lines. They’ve always been of one mind, though. Twins.”

  “I see.” She paused. “It almost sounds like they’ve left you out of their plans.”

  “That’s not the only thing.”

  She almost asked what he meant, but the m
oment passed. It almost seemed he got no support around here.... He was on his own.

  Margot crossed one booted leg over the other, barely recognizing that she’d turned her body toward him. “From the way you talk, it sounds like your brothers came out of school with a different philosophy than your parents had. What about you?”

  He chuckled. “To this day I maintain that I didn’t need schooling, but Dad insisted. Mom, though? She said I was a natural for the ranch, no matter how many courses in ag business I took.”

  “Your brothers disagree, I take it.”

  “True.”

  As he leaned his arms on his thighs, he moved into a patch of light. She hadn’t ever thought Clint Barrows was capable of a conversation, much less one about business. She wouldn’t have guessed he could be serious about anything.

  “You’ve got some brains, stud,” she said, lightening the moment. “Who knew?”

  He grinned.

  “You’re the one with the brains,” he said. “What with all your books. That’s impressive stuff, Dostoyevsky.”

  In spite of his kidding, she almost cringed. Yeah, being an out-of-work author was truly an achievement.

  For some reason, she found herself talking when, with everyone else, she had shut down. It had to be the St. Germain.

  “To tell you the truth,” she said, “I don’t know about my future books.”

  “You’re getting tired of writing them?”

  Wouldn’t that be an easy excuse to use? Yes, the reason I’m not publishing more girl-around-the-world books is because I’ve gotten over the whole scene.

  She hedged. “I’d just love to go a different direction.” With her travelogues. With life.

  “Which direction do you want to go?” he asked.

  So many questions, so few answers.

  He gestured toward the night, with its near silence—so quiet she could actually hear herself think for once.

  “Know what you should write a book about?” he said. “The Sex in the City girl goes country. It’d be one of those... What do you call it?”

  “Fish-out-of-water stories?”

  “Exactly. You could do one of those blogs, too. Like a journal.”

  He’d been teasing her, but...

  She liked the idea. If only she liked it more than the books she was already writing.

  Still, the more she thought about it...

  Nah. “That’s actually a marketable idea. For someone else.”

  “But not you.” He put his glass on the armrest and placed his hands behind his head, so nonchalantly that she wondered if she’d said something that had rankled him and he was proving that she couldn’t affect him at all. “I don’t know why I was thinking that you’d want to stay more than a night out in the boonies.”

  “I’m staying two nights. Give me some credit.”

  As she tried to get over the fact that he’d been the first person she’d given any hint to about her career predicament, he got out of his chair, took her shot glass, then his and headed for the door.

  “One more before the night ends,” he said.

  While she waited for him to return, she absorbed the sounds around her: a breeze combing through oak leaves, an owl off in the distance, the beautiful quiet she’d noticed before. So peaceful. So much more comfortable than anything she’d heard in all the out-of-the-ordinary places she’d sought.

  He came back with her drink, but instead of sitting, he leaned against a porch pillar, staring into the night.

  A fist seemed to be squeezing her heart, stopping it for a moment as she ran a gaze down him. If he’d been any other man, she might’ve...

  Done what? Asked him to come back to her room with her?

  She squashed her thoughts by talking. “The most country I get is going back to my condo. And it’s more suburb than country.”

  “Chico, right? It’s a nice area.”

  “It’s a good place to hang my hat after a trip.” But as she said it, she realized that the condo was basically a pit stop, just like all the other houses she’d flitted through in her life. Hell, she’d even switched rooms when she’d stayed in the sorority house, telling everyone that she always went for the best upgrade possible.

  And, really, had she ever felt as if she’d been at home while she traveled to places as far away as the cluttered streets of Bangkok? Or had she always just been a visitor, searching for a place where she belonged?

  She was getting warm from her drink...or maybe for another reason altogether as she sat there watching Clint under the porch light, his hair thick enough to make her fingers itch to touch it.

  And, damn, she really wanted to touch it right now.

  He downed the rest of his liqueur, as if he’d needed one last shot before bed, and went toward the door.

  “Sweet dreams,” he said, and it wasn’t even followed by one of his patented, suggestive stud winks.

  All alone now, Margot stayed out in the darkness, wishing he was still here and not having a clue why that was.

  * * *

  AFTER SHE TUMBLED out of bed the next morning, Margot made a beeline for the bathroom down the hall, hoping no one would see her with “morning face.” She was an expert at saying goodbye to men before the sun lit the sky and they could clearly see the bags she always got under her eyes when she didn’t get a good night’s sleep.

  It wasn’t that the guest room bed hadn’t been comfortable or the room cozy. Her mind had just been busy, despite sleeping on a feather mattress among the soothing Southwestern décor that Clint’s mom must have introduced and he’d never bothered to change.

  If she was right about that, she figured she’d probably have liked his mom. Mrs. Barrows would’ve been a heck of a lot more comfort-minded than Margot’s own mother or dad. They hadn’t believed in weighing themselves down with furniture, so they’d always lived with the least amount possible.

  After Margot emerged from the bathroom, she went downstairs to find Dani at the long wooden dining room table with a buffet of eggs, cereal, bacon, English muffins, juice and a coffeepot laid out.

  “Did you do all this?” Margot asked.

  Dani, who looked almost like a stranger with that new hair and a new sweater-and-skirt outfit, put down her newspaper and beamed up at Margot.

  “This is all Clint’s doing,” she said. “Wouldn’t he make a good wife?”

  “To someone who needs one.” Margot took a cactus-patterned plate and began to load it with food. “Where’re the guys?”

  “Riley was keen to get to the horse barn and hang out with Clint while he put in his work for the day.”

  “And how’re things with Riley?”

  “Fine.”

  Don’t interfere, Margot thought. Don’t...

  But Riley was her friend, too, and she couldn’t bite her tongue. “He seemed pretty put out with you yesterday. Or did you not notice?”

  “I noticed.”

  Margot ate standing up. “You sure about that? Because you were doing everything you could to avoid talking with him—barely looking at him during dinner and cleaning up afterward in the kitchen while he went to your room.”

  “Obviously he wasn’t bothered by anything, because he was sleeping like a baby when I got to bed.”

  Margot paused with an English muffin halfway to her mouth. This didn’t sound like Dani, who would’ve never let Riley go to bed angry.

  “Is everything okay?” Margot asked.

  “Perfect.” />
  “I’m asking because... Frankly, Dani, yesterday was like a day on Mars with you.”

  Dani neatly folded the newspaper.

  “What I mean,” Margot said, “is that it seemed like Riley didn’t even have a hint that you wanted to quit your job before you announced it. You don’t spring things on him like that.”

  “You’re right. He didn’t know.” Finally, Dani came back to her old self. It was as if she’d never gotten her hair cut or wasn’t wearing a sleek sweater that seemed as if it could’ve been pulled from Margot’s closet.

  Now Margot did sit. “I understand about cold feet. Your parents weren’t exactly good role models for a long-lasting marriage.”

  Dani sighed. “This has nothing to do with them or with cold feet.”

  “Okay. But I have to say that it’s like something’s exploded in you.” She motioned toward Dani’s bob. “You never, ever changed your hair this drastically before, not in all the years I’ve known you.”

  “And that’s why I did it.” Dani casually stood. “I never have adventures or impulsive moments like you, and I don’t have a fabulous new cooking show like Leigh, even though we were both in home ec and we’re both just as good in the kitchen. If you want me to be completely honest, seeing where you guys are and where I am really made me reevaluate myself last weekend.”

  Margot wanted to smack herself. She didn’t say it, but she had the feeling that this had a lot to do with her and Leigh and the auction. They’d treated Dani like she couldn’t fend for herself.

  Worse yet, Margot wondered if this did have anything to do with Dani’s parents. She didn’t know much about psychology, but Dani had always been the wounded bird of the group, torn apart by her mom and dad’s separation.

  Was it all playing out now?

  “Dan,” Margot said, going to her, taking her hands in her own. “Do you know that I was wildly envious of your hair, especially back in college when I didn’t know what to do with my own mop? Did you know that you always created a menu on dinner nights that made me wish I had even an iota of the talent you have?”