by Lexie Ray
We all did. Avery didn’t want to be here — at least, he used to not want to be here. He hadn’t wanted to marry Paisley Summers, either, but that move had saved both of our families’ ranches.
“So what changed?” I asked. “Was it the honeymoon that made you change your mind about things?”
“Yeah, our long-delayed honeymoon,” he said, laughing. “I don’t know. It seems like everything’s been a honeymoon since getting shot. I couldn’t work, so we traveled. Got to know each other better.”
“Made business plans,” I said, only a little bit jealous. Okay, fine. I was stupid jealous. It was ugly to be this jealous of my brother. But Paisley, as the CEO of the Summers side of the Corbin-Summers Ranch, had a lot more pull than, say, Tucker or me, and Avery enjoyed a certain privilege being married to the CEO. When he had proposed a dude ranch as a way to bring in extra money — and appreciation and awareness campaign for ranching, in general, the right way it was supposed to be done — Paisley had thought it was a great idea and pushed it through with Chance.
“The planning with the dude ranch is insane right now,” Avery said, his eyes widening. “I mean, I kind of thought it would be a lot more straightforward than this. You know? If you build it, they will come? That kind of idea.”
“Not so much, right?” I said, forced to laugh at him. He was seriously such an idiot sometimes that it would almost have been adorable, if he hadn’t been a grown man and married. “Marketing to do, packages to plan, social media campaigns to organize …”
He shuddered. “You sound just like Paisley. You haven’t been talking to her, have you? She’s trying — and succeeding — to light a fire under my ass for this thing.”
“Well, the barracks will be ready to go soon,” I reasoned. “It would be stupid for them to be complete and then just to stand there, vacant, taking up room on the property that could’ve been used for something else.”
“Fuck, man, now you sound just like Chance.” Avery looked a little spooked. “I mean it. What you said right now is the last conversation I had with them. An executive meeting, Paisley called it. Jesus.”
There was a time he would’ve been bemused — irked, even — to make a statement like that, but I noticed he looked vaguely pleased with himself, like he’d hitched his wagon to something pretty great. I loved my brother, but I did feel like Paisley was a little out of his league. She was so motivated, and he was just … Avery. I wasn’t sure how they worked together, but they did. For a little while, though, we’d all doubted whether they would. But something seemed to have changed after that night Avery had gotten shot. It had shaken them both up, shown them just what could’ve been lost.
And somehow led Avery to his big revelation about a dude ranch, probably the second time he single-handedly saved this place.
Maybe I’d get my chance to help this place in a visible way like Avery or even Hunter by teaming up with Peyton on the horse rehab project. The thought of Peyton made me sweat even harder than I already was in the morning sun.
“So what are you doing over on this side of the ranch?” I asked, shifting my weight from foot to foot. And what could I do to get him to go away? I left that thought hanging unsaid between us. I didn’t want to be rude. That wasn’t really my nature. Being rude to try to drive him away would be so out of character for me that it would pique his curiosity and he’d insist on hanging around to figure out what was making me act like such a weirdo.
“Can’t I come back over to the Corbin side every once in a while?” he joked. “This was my home, too, same as the rest of you.”
“You’ve joined the dark side, now,” I joked back, hoping that grinning and laughing would help conceal just how manic and anxious I was feeling right now. “You might as well have changed your last name to Summers at the wedding.”
“Very funny,” Avery said. “I had that meeting with Chance and Paisley, which was up at the house, in the laundry room — super embarrassing — and I decided to come out here for nostalgia’s sake and take a gander at the old trailer. You don’t mind, do you? This place brings back lots of memories for me.”
“Lots of memories? You were living here just a few months ago.”
“Recent memories, then.”
“It’s not that clean,” I said, trailing off, hesitant to let him stay any longer. By some grace of a merciful god, Peyton was running late, or else she and my brother would’ve already had the pleasure of crossing paths — to my chagrin.
“Oh, please,” Avery scoffed. “That place was a shit hole when I lived here. I’m sure it’s ten times better now.”
He stepped inside the trailer, and I had no choice but to follow him in.
“I had to use an entire box of disinfectant wipes on this place when I moved in,” I grumbled good-naturedly, still doing everything in my power to conceal my panic.
“Good thing, too,” he replied. “This was a bachelor pad if there ever was one. Lucky trailer, though.”
“Lucky how?”
“Well, right after I moved out here, I got married,” he said. “Maybe you’ll be the next of us to put a ring on it.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said, flushing in spite of myself at the thought of Peyton. God, I was such a dumbass that I couldn’t stand myself sometimes. Why would the idea of being the next to marry make me blush like some kind of lunatic? Did I think that Peyton would want to marry me? The idea was as laughable as Avery thinking his trailer was magic or something.
“At the very least, may this trailer get you laid.” Avery waved his arms around, looking like he was attempting some kind of wish or prophecy. “A night of pleasure for Emmett from the bachelor pad.”
As if on some kind of horribly timed cue, the crunch of car tires on gravel made the both of us look to my open door.
“Who’s that?” Avery asked, but I knew who it was. Peyton Crow, here to see me, in my lucky bachelor pad. I wished I could run away and hide somewhere, and ran through myriad possibilities for what I could do to deal with this situation. I could cold cock Avery and lock him in the bathroom. When he came to, eventually, I could let him out and tell him he fainted, hopefully sending Peyton off before that, our business concluded. Or I could play dumb when Peyton stepped out of the car and send her away in shame and scorn — except I couldn’t do that. I’d waited and waited as long as I could, and I’d told her to meet me here. I just hadn’t counted on Avery being here for the party, too.
“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” my younger brother said as he leaned out the door of the trailer before I could stop him.
“If you’re a son of a bitch, that would make me one, too,” I reminded him mildly. “Not a very nice expression to remember Mom with.”
“You know it’s just an expression,” Avery said absently, watching Peyton unfold herself and stretch while getting out of her beat-up car. She looked nice — slick black leggings with a deep magenta tank top that complimented her figure. Complimenting that figure, though, wasn’t hard to do. Peyton could’ve worn a paper sack and done it fashionable justice.
Avery shook himself as if he had been dreaming — hell, I felt like I’d been dreaming, watching her move in her languid way — and gave me a shrewd look, raising his eyebrow.
“You expecting someone?”
“In fact, I am,” I said, clearing my throat and easing past him and into the sunlight. “Hey, Peyton.”
“I’m running a little late, looks like,” she said, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. “Avery Corbin? I didn’t believe my eyes, but it really is you. How’s it hanging?”
Avery beamed and stepped forward to give Peyton a one-armed hug. “It hangs well. How are you hanging?”
“Bummed out, actually,” she said, pouting prettily. “You never go to the bar anymore.”
He laughed. “You never gave me the time of day at the bar.”
“Still, it was nice seeing you,” she said, her teeth so white in the sun as she smiled. “And I gave you that nice
ride once, remember?”
“I don’t remember a single nice thing about this alleged ride,” Avery said, cracking up as he raised his hands, like he was being arrested, or found out. “We’ll speak no more of this. We’re making my brother squirm in his boots.”
It was an accurate description, as much as I was trying not to. I understood all too well what Avery and Peyton’s association might’ve been at the bar. My brother hadn’t been a married man for very long, and I understood that there had been a rough patch, right after the wedding itself, that he’d spent in town, bellied up to the bar, trying to forget about Paisley Summers entirely. Still, though. Why did I hate this development in particular? It made me feel like I was in danger of losing breakfast, and Zoe had worked hard on those made-to-order omelets. I refused to let those go to waste.
Avery raised his eyebrow again at me as I stood in the open doorway to the trailer. “More to you than meets the eye, Emmett,” he said.
“See you around, Avery Corbin,” Peyton said, amused at the two of us, and he climbed in his truck and left, checking, I was sure, in his rearview to see if he could catch anything inappropriate happening between Peyton and me. I hadn’t given him an explanation as to why I was meeting with Peyton at the trailer, and he hadn’t asked. What did he assume? That I’d called her here to have sex with her? That we were colluding against our families to carve out a business of our own? I honestly couldn’t figure out which possibility worried me the most.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, wondering when my stomach would stop lurching. Would it have to wait until the dust Avery’s truck raised driving away settled again? Until a week passed without any of my brothers mentioning anything to me about Peyton Crow and my intentions with her?
“Emmett?” I looked at her, at the hand balanced on her hip, the other one working its way through her long, dark hair, ruffling it before tossing it over her shoulder. “Relax.”
“I really didn’t know he was going to be here,” I babbled, well aware that I already sounded like an idiot and was just digging myself a deeper hole to languish in. “He’s usually on the other side of the ranch. He married Paisley Summers, after all. He’s never over here.”
“I really, really don’t care,” Peyton said, walking over and giving me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. It was stupid of me, but that kiss was disappointed. It was possibly even less friendly than the hug she’d shared with my brother. Even as I thought that, I cringed at my own idiocy. Peyton wasn’t here for pleasure. It was purely business, purely horses.
“I just hope it’s not, um, awkward for you,” I said, showing her into the trailer and instantly regretting its inherent shabbiness. We should’ve met somewhere else — the house, maybe, or a little restaurant in town, or Peyton’s place. I realized that last option probably wasn’t viable. I imagined she stayed on her father’s property somewhere, and I couldn’t imagine it would end well for either of us if he found out we were meeting to talk about horsing operations — or anything else, for that matter. I just regretted this “bachelor pad” of a meeting spot. It didn’t feel appropriate, somehow, even if it was relatively private.
“I think it’s turning out to be more awkward for you than it could ever be for me,” Peyton said, ducking into the trailer. “Hey, this is nice.”
“I … it’s not awkward for me,” I said. “I just … I guess I didn’t know that you and Avery … knew each other.”
Peyton let her purse drop onto the bed. “Emmett, everyone in this town knows each other. It’s that kind of town, in case you missed it. Super small. Not very many people. Now, shut that door. You’re letting all the cold air out.”
I let the door close with no small amount of trepidation. “But you all seemed kind of friendly.”
“He was a regular at that bar before his wife snatched him up,” Peyton said with a shrug. “We saw each other there all the time. And he was a year behind me in school. We know each other. No reason not to be friendly.”
“Sure,” I said, not buying it. I didn’t buy a single word. “Whatever you say.”
“Oh my God, Emmett.” Her mouth dropped open and she openly gawked at me. “Are you serious right now?”
“I just can’t really cope with this, in this moment,” I decided out loud.
“I just told you that nothing happened between us,” she said. “Should I go into more detail? Do you want to ask him yourself?”
“I’m just surprised, that’s all,” I said. “Let’s talk about horses.”
“No. Uh-uh.” Peyton crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not talking business until we get this shit aired out.”
“There’s nothing to air out.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” she said, not the first one to tell me that. “I never slept with your brother. You know why?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to know why.”
“Yes, you do. You want to know and I’m going to tell you.” Peyton leaned close, her eyes narrowed. “Because girls threw themselves at him. He’s never paid for pussy in his entire life because pussy falls into his lap. All the time.”
“Didn’t want to hear this,” I chanted, wondering if it would be too childish to stuff my fingers in my ears to ward off any more of my brother’s sexual history before it wormed its way into my mind for the rest of my life. Avery had always been pretty outgoing, but I didn’t need to know that he was a … pussy magnet, for lack of a better description.
“I saw him at the bar all the time,” Peyton said. “After his marriage, too, which was weird.”
“There was some stuff to work out between him and Paisley,” I said diplomatically.
“I don’t care,” she said. “Girls still threw themselves at him, but he wasn’t the same. He didn’t hit them up. I gave him a ride back to his house a couple times when I realized he’d probably kill himself or someone else if he tried to drive. He was passed out completely both times. And that is the extent of my sordid past with your brother, Avery.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. “What about Hunter? Tucker? Chance?”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Okay, you’re right. I am.”
“Except that you’re not.” Peyton pushed her hair out of her face. “You really need to know that I haven’t fucked any of your brothers.”
“It’s not like that.”
“It is like that.” She looked angry, and I regretted that I’d made her feel like that with my pettiness. “Should I quiz you about your previous sexual partners? Should I demand to know who, out of this entire town, you’ve stuck your dick in that I might talk to on a daily basis or cross paths with every so often? Do you see the difference here? The double standard?”
“I get it.”
“You get it. And yet you’re still asking me. You’re still dying to know.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is weird for me and not fair to you. I get it. I’m really sorry. If I knew how to stop, to say the right thing, I’d want to be doing that right now instead of babbling at you. Maybe let’s put a pin in it, save it for another time.”
“Oh, hell no,” Peyton said, putting her finger in my face, against my lips to keep me from talking. “I did not drive all the way out to your huge fucking ranch for my job to get in the way of a business meeting about a project we’re both excited about. Hell no. We’re having this meeting.”
“If you insist,” I said meekly.
“Good,” she said, her temper still hot enough to burn. “I think we should start small, with only you and me, testing the waters before we hire anyone else to help us with the operation. Agreed?”
“Just — just you and me,” I stuttered. “Agreed. Sounds good.”
“Jesus,” she muttered after studying me for a few beats. “Okay. Okay. I have a solution. This is going to make everything better. Ready? Are you ready for a remedy? A true resolution to this problem?”
“Okay,” I said uncertainly, trailing off.
“Turn
around.” She pointed her finger down and spun it in an exaggerated circle. “Go on. Turn around if you want your solution. Close your eyes. Don’t open them until I tell you to.”
I waited a full breath until complying, wondering what miracle she had in mind that would put my fears and insecurities at ease. There wasn’t a damn thing I could think of doing to assuage my doubts. Peyton was capable of lying, and so was Avery. I didn’t think I would ever believe anything either of them tried to tell me about what had happened between them back in Avery’s crazy days. Did Paisley even know?
At the same time, I could easily recognize the ugliness inside of myself, just like Peyton had pointed out. It wasn’t fair for me to judge her in this manner. There were probably many more people I’d be more shocked at her sleeping with than one of my brothers. And yet that was ugly, too, judging her for it. She was right. It was her job. And I was letting her job get in the way of the horse rehab project.
At least, I was letting it get in the way of the business meeting we were supposed to be conducting right now.
“Okay,” she said. “Open your eyes. Turn around.”
I turned around slowly, and Peyton was standing in front of me, completely naked. My mouth dropped open immediately. I knew a gentleman would turn away, or at least avert his eyes from the display, but I was rooted in place, helpless to the magnificence that was Peyton Crow divested of every distracting fabric layer.
She was just as lithe and athletic as I’d thought she would be — even if I hadn’t realized until now that these were things I was actively thinking about. Peyton’s body was perfectly proportioned, long and lean and devoid of anything that didn’t matter. What at first I thought was a dark birthmark in her bikini area turned out to be, upon closer study, a small tattoo of a galloping horse, its mane and tail unfurling forever in a wind perhaps only Peyton felt. How many men had seen that small expression of her soul and truly understood it? How many hadn’t noticed it at all, preferring to lose themselves in the pleasure she offered them? Was I in danger of losing myself to her, too, becoming one more body in the trail she left behind?