by Vicki Tharp
“I’ll take that under advisement.”
“But…”
“Please don’t say the F word.”
“I thought ‘fuck was your favorite word.”
“Not fuck, friend.”
She scrunched up her face. “Finished? How’s that for an F word?”
He groaned. “Say it fast then, like ripping off a Band-Aid.”
“I think it’s better if we don’t see each other.” The words tumbled out of her mouth, battering his ego as they fell.
How was that different than wanting to remain friends? He pasted on a close proximity of a smile. No need for her to know her words had bruised him. “You want me to close my eyes every time you pass by?”
“Exactly.” She huffed out a laugh, and though the darkness made it difficult for him to see, he’d bet his SIG Sauer and a set of blasting caps she rolled her eyes.
Fluent in English and sarcasm. Smart, talented, and bilingual.
“Whatever you want, Irish.”
She smiled as she turned her face into the moonlight, but pity made it flat and tight. She slowly stepped back, their fingers sliding apart when she’d gone too far. “You know that whole not-lying thing you were talking about?”
“Yeah?”
“Make sure you extend that courtesy to yourself, not just to others.”
Her boots scuffled in the dirt, and he watched the play of her hips until the dark mouth of the barn swallowed her whole.
Boomer beeped his truck locked and walked back to his cabin to clear his head.
She was wrong. He wasn’t lying to himself. Did he drink? Yes. Take pain meds? Fuck yes. Did he have a reason to? That would be a resounding yes.
Was it a problem? The half-digested steak flopped in his belly, still showing signs of life. No…no, he was good.
He laughed at himself. Yeah, sounded like denial, but like he’d told Sidney, he didn’t get drunk any more than the next guy, the drinking didn’t affect his work, he wasn’t hurting anything but his pocketbook. If drinking made his fight for peace an ass-hair-width easier, then who was anyone else to judge?
He double-dog-ass dared anyone to walk a mile in his prosthetic and not come out screaming on the other side.
* * * *
Cleaning out Eli’s stall, the air was cool, but sweat dampened Sidney’s bra. She let the rhythmic thump and scrape of the manure fork fade into the background as her mind whirled through her plans for the training demonstration later that morning.
Her eyes were gritty from lack of sleep, her muscles fatigued beyond what she’d ever endured, and she’d been up until three in the morning making sure Things One and Two were bathed and clipped and their coats shone like Turkish copper pots.
The horses had been under saddle for a week, and despite everything she’d worked on there remained unlimited potential for things to go pear shaped in the span of a second.
“Why aren’t you up at the house getting breakfast?”
She glanced up to see Bryan leaning against the support post of the open stall, his shirt off as he wiped sweat from his face and neck, his socket and blade prosthetic jutting from the bottom of his running shorts.
Perspiration formed on her upper lip and the remaining coolness in the air evaporated.
She must be coming down with something—all those long hours. High stress. The hormones. Like early menopause. No, no lies.
Okay, so she found him attractive.
Like a moth to an acetylene torch.
“I wanted to get a few things done before I came up,” she said.
“Nervous?”
Sidney tightened her grip on the manure fork so he wouldn’t see her hands shake. “Do I look nervous?”
He tilted his head and studied her face. “You look exhausted—and a little like you dined on week-old roadkill.”
“I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for you to resist me.” She scooped another heavy pile of manure, shook the shavings out, and dumped the load into the wheelbarrow. She’d seen her reflection that morning. If anything, he was being kind.
Honesty. If you are going to talk the talk… She worked her neck from side to side and shook out her arms like a sprinter toeing the line at the Olympics. “I’m good. Mostly. When I don’t think about it, or the fact that my future could hinge on this demonstration. So yeah, pretty much nervous as hell.”
“You know what, Irish? You’ve done the work. I’ve seen you up early and training late. I’ve seen you take a herd of scared horses and give—”
“And a burro.”
“And a burro,” he corrected amiably. “And give them a great foundation. You’re going to kick so much ass this guy won’t be able to sit for a week. So give ’em hell today.”
Her cheeks heated. She looked down at her boots and kicked at a manure ball she’d missed. She cocked her head and looked back up at him. “Thanks. You going to be there?”
“Just need to shower and dump the sweat out of my socket before my leg slips off, then I’ll be back.”
Sidney scrunched up her nose. “Thanks for that visual.”
“Just a little brutal honesty.”
“Maybe we can agree on a little veiled honesty, angelic white lies, if it’s before breakfast.”
He raised his hands and backed slowly away, mischief tugging at the corners of his bright smile. “Hey, trying to give a girl what she wants.”
She ignored the zing at her core when he mentioned her wants. Bryan was the shiny red apple in the Garden of Eden waiting to be eaten. The lock on Pandora’s Box waiting to be picked.
Two hours later, Sidney had One and Two saddled in the barn, their manes and tails sleek and shiny with ShowSheen. Richard Hockley had arrived fifteen minutes before and had gone up to the house with Mac and Hank. Santos and Alby were somewhere around, trying to look busy until the demo started.
She combed the brush through One’s lush tail over and over and over. He swished his tail hard enough that she lost her grip, and his tail floated back down.
Pretty tails wouldn’t sell the horses. Training would. She dropped the brush in the grooming bucket. Eli called out to her from his stall and knocked a front hoof against the stall door, frustrated at the extra measures she’d gone through to keep him locked up. She couldn’t risk having him pull a Houdini and mess everything up.
Mac stepped into the tack-up area, dressed in jeans, boots, and a fitted T-shirt. Her dark brown hair was in a ponytail out the back of her USMC baseball cap. “Time to show ’em what you got.”
Sidney nodded, her stomach queasy and her heart rate revving two clicks above normal. She pulled the tail on the lead rope’s quick-release knot and led One down the barn aisle. Mac walked ahead and rejoined the others. As Sidney stepped out into the sun, she settled her best tan cowboy hat on her head and reached for the stirrup.
Showtime.
She stepped up and threw her leg over One. As she found the opposite stirrup, her stomach settled and her heart rate slowed to normal. All she could do was her best.
Mac, Hank, Lottie, Dale, and Richard Hockley lined up against the round pen. Bryan was off to one side, sitting on the tail bed of his truck, flanked on either side by Alby and Santos on their horses.
Sidney started slow, demonstrating One’s lightness in the bridle, then went on to show his ease and willingness to transition from the walk to the trot, then up to the canter.
On the downward transitions, he responded to her seat cues, slowing to a trot and then back to a walk by her sitting deeper into the saddle, without pulling back on the reins. He pivoted on the fore and the hindquarters.
After she finished with One she moved on to Two, again highlighting the solid foundation she put on them to set both the horses and their future riders up for success.
Near the end of the demonstration, she stripped
the horses of their saddles and bridles, put their halters on, and led them over to the two-horse trailer Bryan had brought around for her. She threw the lead ropes over One and Two’s backs and told them to load up.
Two stepped off. One lingered and glanced at her over his shoulder, as if to ask if he really had to do it. “Load up,” she told him again. He cleared his nose, shooting droplets of snot onto her one nice shirt as he passed.
She sneaked a glance at Bryan. He shot her a quick thumbs-up, his smile making the sky bluer and the sun brighter.
Within a few seconds, both horses were loaded and standing calmly in the trailer. Not bad for a prey animal with a natural fear of tight spaces. Then she told them both to back up. One came out faster than she liked, but Two backed out like a rock star not wanting to leave the stage.
She gathered a lead rope in each hand as she led the horses back to the group, unable to keep the smile off her face, so she didn’t even bother trying to act cool and professional.
She was Brandi Chastain after her goal at the World Cup. She fought the urge to rip her shirt off in victory and run around the field in her sports bra, waving her shirt over her head while the crowd cheered her on.
Only there wasn’t much of a crowd.
And no one cheered.
Bryan gave her a nod of approval. Mac and the rest of them were smiling.
Except Hockley.
Hockley stood against the round pen, one leg bent back and braced on the rail behind him, one arm draped over his chest, the other under his chin, doing his best impression of The Thinker, furrowed brows and all. Except The Thinker’s expression was less stony.
Sidney stopped a few feet away, her heart rate kicking up with each second that passed. Mac glanced at Hank, who shrugged his shoulders in a gesture that on Bryan would have been who-the-fuck-knows.
Dale cleared his throat—a tad louder than was necessary to get the job of throat-clearing done—and stepped up to Sidney with his hand out. “Damn fine job.”
Sidney shook his hand. “Thank you.”
Dale clapped Richard Hockley on the back, which finally reanimated the man. “So, what do you think?”
“Impressive.” Hockley gave Sidney a short nod. “Very impressive.”
“Thank you, sir.” Her cheeks cramped her smile was so big. “This is only the beginning of their training. By the time they’re done, you’ll be able to put a seasoned hunter or a rank beginner on their backs. A string anyone would be proud to own.”
Hockley nodded again. He had a way of making Clint Eastwood seem verbose. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Sidney Teller.” For the first time in a long time, she said her last name with pride.
Hockley froze, as if he’d turned back into stone, but then he said, “Any relation to the Terrible Tellers?”
Sidney choked on air, sweat beaded on her scalp, and by the weird flutter thing her heart did, she was pretty certain her atria had gone into fibrillation. “Excuse me?”
“The Tellers. The ones that were in the news a while back for abusive training practices, felony neglect. You one of them?”
“They are my parents, but I assure you I am not one of them.”
Hockley turned to Dale, his lip raised in a near snarl. “As a friend, I expected better than this from you.”
Dale turned that funny shade of purple-red that made EMTs reach for the oxygen masks. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“The Tellers’ kid?” Hockley started walking back to his truck in choppy, robotic strides. Dale followed.
Hockley said, “I don’t want nothing to do with anything she’s touched. If you had any sense you wouldn’t either.”
Sidney’s cheeks flamed as anger flooded in. She shouldn’t have to defend herself so vehemently after the demonstration she’d had, but defend herself she would.
Sidney dropped One and Two’s lead ropes and jogged after Dale and Hockley, stopping in front of the man and making him come up short. “With all due respect, what my parents did was reprehensible, trust me, I get that. But don’t kick me to the curb and slap a damaged goods sign on my forehead because of my last name. You saw with your own eyes what I can do, what I can accomplish in a very short time.”
“Yes, but by what means?”
Dale said, “Richard—”
“Dale, let me, please,” Sidney said. When Dale nodded, she continued. “I don’t mistreat my horses. Do you see any lash marks or welts? Any girth galls? Spur marks, malnourishment, or anything else that would make you think they’ve had anything but the best care and training?”
“I ain’t willin’ to take that chance.” Hockley turned to Dale and said, “If you were smart, you’d find someone else. Ain’t no one gonna want to risk their clients’ safety on harshly trained horses.”
“Mr. Hockley—”
“Let him go,” Dale said.
Sidney and Dale watched as the man climbed into his late-model Ram dually. He shifted, buzzed the window down, and as he reversed in the driveway he said, “Yer gonna regret this, Cunningham. Mark my words.”
They stood there side by side until the truck disappeared down the hill. Sidney blinked back the sting in her eyes, taking shallow breaths, because it felt like she had the whole mustang herd, plus the burro, sitting on her chest.
She’d failed.
Them and herself.
She’d been a fool—complete with pointy shoes and multicolored tights—to think she would ever escape the hellhole her parents had dug for her. “S-so what happens now?”
Dale put his arm around her shoulders and walked her back toward the barn. “Now we put the horses away, you take the rest of the weekend off because you deserve it, and we’ll sort the rest of it out later.”
She nodded, because that was the best she could do without blubbering like a four-year-old at a Bambi screening. With her hands outstretched, she snagged both of the lead ropes from Bryan and turned toward the barn to give the horses a much-deserved hosing off.
“Help her out there, will ya, Boom?” Dale asked.
“No,” Sidney said, a little too loud, a little too forcefully. She hadn’t meant it to come out that harsh, but she’d needed the extra push to get the words past the stricture in her throat.
“I don’t mind helping,” Bryan said.
She glanced around. Santos and Alby had gone back to work. Dale had met up with Hank and Mac and Lottie and they were heading back up to the house. “I’d rather do it myself.”
“Sid—”
“Please?” Her voice cracked, but she was at the point where she almost didn’t care.
“Sure,” he said, though the hard set of his mouth told her he was resigned, not agreeable. “I’ll see you around.”
He walked away backwards, as if waiting for her to say she’d changed her mind. She watched him go until he gave up and turned around. She opened her mouth to call him back, but then reality slammed into her, knocking her thoughts, her words, out of her.
The reality that even though she’d worked her ass off, it wasn’t enough. The reality that even though the horses’ performances amazed her, it wasn’t enough. The reality that even though she’d done her name proud, it may not be enough to keep her job.
CHAPTER SIX
Sidney lay flat out on her bed in the barn, her door open to accommodate Eli, not knowing what to do with her unexpected time off. It was only early afternoon and she’d succumbed to exhaustion, her lunch untouched on the counter, except where Eli had nudged the bread off her sandwich and stolen the slice of lettuce.
She closed her eyes, but she was too worried about her job to sleep. Eli, on the other had was sleeping just fine, his lips resting on her belly as she rubbed a hand up and down his long face. A pile of horsehair formed a semicircle on her shirt around his muzzle. A few of the hairs had worked their wa
y through the T-shirt, making her skin itch. She ignored them, as well as the thin layer of sweat covering her body.
The sun had heated the barn. She had no window for ventilation, and she had an eleven-hundred-pound hay burner packed into the room, blocking the breeze.
Eli flicked an ear back and cracked on eyelid a second before Sidney heard the clomp of boots in the aisleway, though neither one of them bothered to move.
“I could come back if you two lovebirds want your privacy,” Bryan said.
Sidney glanced up to see Bryan’s head and chest above Eli’s rump in the doorway. “Stay,” she said. “He’s only using me for scratches and hay.”
She shooed Eli out of the room with a wave of her hand. Eli backed out and eyed Bryan for a few seconds before clip-clomping his way back down the barn aisle. Bryan stepped into the room, dressed in cargo shorts and a blue T-shirt that said, “I put my pants on one leg…”
He held out his hand to her.
“What?”
“Come on. We’re blowing this joint.”
“Why?”
“You seriously need to ask me—”
He spun around the room, took in her packed bag on the chair, then swung back around to her. “What the fuck, Irish?”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Really? Because it looks a hell of a lot like you packed your bag and are trying to get up the courage to tell Mac and the rest of us that you’re leaving.”
“Okay, so maybe it is what you think. Kinda.” She sat up and brushed the horsehair from her shirt.
He crossed his arms and glared down at her. “What part did I get wrong?”
“The part where I actually leave.”
“How so?”
“I forgot my truck is still dead.”
“For hell’s sake.” He paced the room like a WWE wrestler before his first cage fight. Then he plopped down on the bed beside her. He cocked his head and looked at her, his eyes a deep, dark sapphire that pulled her in.
“Were you really going to leave?” His timbre resonated in her chest.