“You just said I’m not your best friend,” he interrupted.
“Oh hush,” I said, swatting his arm playfully. “So, in walks her best friend, and he’s super hot, super funny, just an all-around great guy, and he has the same interests as her. Do you mean to tell me you wouldn’t feel the slightest bit intimidated? Especially, when he suggests things like ‘we should ride a horse together, where we will need to have our arms wrapped around one another?’”
He stopped fiddling with the saddle and looked at me. “So, you think I’m super hot, huh?” He grinned.
“That is not the point.” I finished putting Greg’s saddle on, then reached over and showed Mark how to tighten Stella’s saddle.
“Okay, fine. You’re right,” he admitted. “I guess I can’t really deny that I’d be pretty upset. Especially, if this best friend were super hot.” His smile widened again playfully.
I laughed. “Exactly. Now, you’re too dense to figure out how to put a saddle on, but do you know how to ride so we can get over there?”
“For your information, Miss I-Can-Do-It-All, I’ve never put a saddle on a horse before, but I have ridden one, thank you very much.”
“Well, show me what you’ve got, Saddle Boy.”
Much to my surprise, he actually did know how to ride. He mounted correctly then gave a short whistle and got Stella to obey his command to move with no problem. The only issue was that he took off in the wrong direction. I sped up, cut him off, and told him that their ranch was the other way. With a laugh, he said, “I know. I just wanted to make sure you did.”
“Hah, nice try. Keep up if you can,” I gave him a mischievous grin before breaking out into a gallop. I don’t know what it is, but getting a horse at an all-out sprint is pretty thrilling. Unsurprisingly, I beat him there, and we arrived just in time to see Noah and Jack leading Simon and Ella out into the warm sunlight. After helping Jack onto the mare’s back and climbing onto his stallion, they trotted over to us.
“Where are we riding to?” Jackson asked.
“No idea,” I told him. Looking to Noah, I asked, “Thoughts?”
“Wanna go to the lake? There’s a field right next to it that we can let the horses graze in and keep an eye on ‘em while we go swimming.” He looked at Mark. “You got a pair of swim trunks with you?”
Mark nodded and flashed his pearly whites. “Yeah, of course, I do.”
“Alright, you guys go get your swimsuits, and I’ll get mine and meet you guys at Sara’s.”
“Okay!” Jack chimed in, starting to ride and beckoning Mark and me to come along. A few minutes later, I had put my purple and blue bikini on underneath my tank top and shorts, Jack and Mark had put on their trunks, and we were waiting for Noah to come over so we could head out. After what felt like forever, Simon trotted into sight; there were saddle bags attached that normally weren’t there.
“What’s with the saddle bags?”
“Lunch,” he replied with a smile. “You guys ready?”
After a group nod, we set off at a slow pace, Jack in the lead because he “knows this place better than the rest of us.” What a little ham. I assumed Mark wanted to keep a bit of distance from Noah—probably to keep him from getting too jealous—because he was sticking close to Jack instead of back with Noah and me, which gave us the chance to talk.
“You know, you’re really weirding Mark out,” I mentioned.
He glanced at me. “That’s not my intention, but don’t you think I have the right to be a little weirded out by him?”
“I’m not saying you don’t, but that doesn’t mean you should be so passive aggressive. He is still a very close friend of mine, you know. Just because you’re a little jealous of him doesn’t mean you have the right to be a dick.”
“Woah, that’s taking it a little far. Why would I be jealous of him? Is he getting something I’m not?”
I cut my eyes at him. “You know I didn’t mean it like that,” I hissed. God, men, can be so defensive sometimes. There may have been a touch of attitude in my tone because, frankly, I was kinda irritated. Okay, I was pissed. Not because he was jealous—even though he said he wasn’t, he definitely was—it was what he insinuated with his question. “Is he getting something I’m not?”
“What ‘something’ are you referring to, Noah? Sex? Because if you think I’m the type of girl who will date someone and have sex with someone else behind his back, why the hell would you want to be with me?”
He sensed the attitude and responded in turn.
“How am I supposed to know that? I’m just a dumb bull rider, anyway.”
“Noah, quit being ridiculous. Mark and I have been friends for as long as I can remember. Don’t you think I can tell that makes you feel threatened? Every damn time he says two words to me, hugs me, or calls me ‘Lace,’ I see the way your jaw tenses up like you’re trying to hold back from kicking his ass. Pardon me if I don’t want the drama. Or if I don’t want to have to tiptoe around the subject that one of my closest friends came to visit me.”
As far as I was concerned, nothing I said was out of line or wrong in any way. Apparently, Noah disagreed because he blew his top. His face got all red and he pulled Simon to a complete halt. “Are you kidding me right now? What is your problem, Laci?” His tone changed from the hushed murmurs we had been using to avoid being heard into a full-out bark. “I have had nothing but bad experiences with women—especially with city girls! So, pardon me if it’s difficult for me to trust random strangers that stroll into my life and make me feel like my newfound relationship is about to go down the shitter!”
“Noah,” I said, my voice shaky. I may have a sassy mouth and the ability to shoot it off at the worst possible times, but I’m not one to air my confrontations where others can hear. It can be rather uncomfortable, and at the moment, I was exactly that. “Noah, please stop raising your voice at me.” Tears sprang to my eyes, and I suddenly wanted to gallop off somewhere nobody could see me. Crying in front of people has never been my favorite thing to do.
I didn’t realize that Mark and Jack had come back to us until I heard Mark’s voice: “Woah, man, there’s no need to talk to her like that. I’m not trying to cause any trouble here. Lace and I have already dis-”
“Oh for Christ’s sake, drop the good guy act, pretty boy! Anyone with eyes can see that you’re in love with her. I mean, you don’t even attempt to hide it, do you? The very first thing you saw when you got here was that we were together and holding hands. And, you still did everything in your power to make me feel threatened! Well, guess what? It’s working! You happy?”
He finished his tirade and slid off the horse, panting in anger. I sat there, completely dumbfounded at what he’d just said. I knew he tried his hardest to keep up the tough guy ruse and tamp down the jealousy, but he just admitted that he was feeling threatened by Mark—and directly to his face, no less.
I dismounted and walked over to him. I tried to lay a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off angrily. This type of angry confrontation was more than I knew how to handle. The blind fury he was demonstrating was more than just uncomfortable, it was terrifying. “Noah,” I started hesitantly. “Noah, you’re scaring me.”
When he heard those words, his whole demeanor changed from fuming and practically smoking at the ears to a look of utter defeat. “I’m scaring you?” he whispered, rubbing his jaw—no doubt from the extreme tension that was built up in it. “I…” He shook his head without saying another word. Then, in one swift motion, he mounted the horse and rode away. I stood there in stunned silence, crying as I stared after him. A moment later, I felt a small hand on my shoulder.
“Laci, come on, let’s go to the lake. It’ll make you feel better. Don’t worry about Noah. Take it from somebody who knows him—he’ll get over it,” Jack insisted. “Just give him some space. Let’s go.” How did my little cousin get so wise? I wondered.
Numbly, I crawled back onto the horse and followed behind Jackson until we got
to the lake. Mark rode silently beside me. Jack used his favorite trick to keep the horses where they belonged when we arrived: he took out three heavy-duty carabineers and clipped the reins of each horse onto a small guard rail nearby. The guys tried to get me to jump in the water as soon as we got there, but I told them to go ahead and enjoy themselves. I just wanted to lie in the heat of the sun for a little while.
After reassuring Mark that I was fine what felt like a hundred times—I could tell he still didn’t completely believe me, but didn’t want to press the subject—they both peeled off their shirts and shoes and went sprinting for the cool water. A bunch of splashes later, and I was finally able to tune out all of the noise and lie back on my towel in an attempt to loosen my tense muscles. I shimmied out of my shorts and t-shirt and lay there, soaking in the warmth.
Then, my mind drifted to the oh-so-lovely Noah Tucker—or, as I saw him at the moment, the not-so-lovely Noah Tucker. I couldn’t make any sense of what had just happened. Granted, I may not have known him for particularly long, but I hadn’t thought he’d have such a hot temper. From the way he interacted with his mom and with Jack, he had always seemed to be gentle in nature, even if he had a dickish act to hold up. But in reality, it was just a tiny little thing that took him from mildly irritated to full-on Hulk-smash, and that scared me.
If he couldn’t handle a challenge as small as my best friend giving me a hug and calling me by a lifelong nickname, how was he going to handle being several states apart while I acted and probably had to kiss other men for my job? Was he going to come barging in stage left and land a right hook square on the other actor’s jaw? Whether the second question was serious or not, the fact that it ran through my head at all raised a red flag. I still believed that Noah would treat me right. I had no reason to believe he’d ever lay a hand on me; after all, as angry as he seemed, he never made a move toward physical violence, but if he had a temper like that normally, how long could we expect things to stay intact before they totally imploded?
That brought another important question to mind: if things, by some miracle, didn’t implode, where was this relationship going? I was by no means looking to get married and settle down in the near future, but I am at a point where I definitely don’t want to be in a relationship if I don’t see it going anywhere. Considering how close my career was to taking off, a serious relationship was the only kind I wanted. Some people may say that’s counterintuitive because a relationship might be distracting if I want to focus on my career. They would suggest I date around and keep my options open. No strings. However, that’s just not my style. I want to be with someone who’s going to support me through all of the challenges of the business and wants to stick with me.
Call me entitled for thinking that way, but my parents always told me to never settle when it comes to a man; now more than ever, I wasn’t going to disregard their advice.
Speaking of advice, there was one person I could definitely get advice from that I still hadn’t spoken to. Emily. I reached under the towel I was lying on and grabbed my phone, going right for my favorites tab to click on the name “Emmy-Wemmy.” (She hates when I call her that, so naturally, I saved her number under that name in my phone.) After four rings, a breathless Emmy-Wemmy answered.
“Well, long time, no hear,” she huffed.
“Why do you sound like you’re exercising? You never exercise!”
I heard her gulping water before she answered. “Yeah, and this is no exception. I just carried a shit ton of groceries in from the car. I didn’t realize that I could be so out of shape and still fit into a size four.” She sighed. “Anyway, to what do I owe the pleasure, ranch girl?”
“Can’t I just call my Emmy-Wemmy to chat?”
“Shut the hell up with that nickname and tell me what’s going on. I can hear it in your voice.”
“I need advice.”
“Well, lucky you, because I’m a treasure trove of advice. Shoot.”
“It’s a long story. Are you sitting down?”
“Woman, do you know me at all? My ass met the couch the second I plopped the groceries down. Mother Langer is putting the groceries away herself.”
“You’re so classy. Tell her I said hi!”
“Mom, your second daughter says hi!” A second later, I heard her mom saying something in the background, then Em’s voice said, “She says hello and she loves you. Anyways, get on with the story.”
“Alright, here goes nothing. So, you remember how I told you about Noah, right? How he’s an asshole, and I wanted to punch him in the face?”
She gasped. “Did you do it? Please tell me you did it!”
“No. Actually, it’s the opposite. I…umm…kissed him in the face, instead. We’re kinda sorta together now.”
“What the hell? How’d that happen?”
I rattled off the first part of the story in what I swear was one breath.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting that. But alright. What do you need advice about?” she said.
“That’s the tricky part,” I told her. “Mark’s here.”
“Oh boy.”
“Yeah. And, you know how he is. Let’s just say that Noah is less than thrilled about him being touchy-feely. At first, I felt like a total ass for turning Mark down only to end up with a guy I just met a few weeks later, but there’s just a spark there, you know? Like, I gotta do what makes me happy, right?”
“Girl, do your thang!” she said in that Rosie Perez way of hers.
I smiled. I knew she’d respond like that.
“Good, I’m glad you agree. But Mark, Noah, Jack, and I were all riding to the lake when I mentioned to Noah that he was kind of weirding Mark out, and he flipped his cap. He got loud, saying that he wasn’t jealous, and he implied that if I thought he was jealous, I had to be doing something behind his back to make him jealous. So then, he blew up on both me and Mark, and you know how I am about that; it freaked me the hell out. I told him he was scaring me, and he just completely deflated and went home without another word. Now, I’m laying out in the sun while Mark and Jack are in the lake, and I have no idea what to do. Like, I can’t just discount the relationship because I feel like there’s something there, but what he did was really shitty, y’know?”
“So, tell him that. Tell him that you think you guys could have something, but what he did was really shitty. I don’t know why you insist on making things so complicated.”
“But it makes me question things. Should I really be with someone whose temper freaks me out like that? Mark has never done anything like that to me. He’s never scared me or made me worry that things might not work out. It just feels like I’m being unfair to him. Dad always told me not to settle.”
“Huh. That’s a sticky situation. What’s your gut telling you?”
“I don’t know! That’s why I’m asking you, damnit! Help!” I begged.
“I know what you mean as far as feeling like you’re being unfair to Mark, but you said no to him in the first place for a reason, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I told him it was because I wanted to focus on my career. Now, it feels like no matter what I do, I turned him down for no reason because part of me wants to be in a really solid relationship to help myself get through the stresses of the business. And nobody understands them better than Mark because he lives them daily. And, since he’s loved me for who knows how long, the reality is he’d be willing to tough it all out and stick with me. But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s just something there with Noah, there’s just this spark. I don’t know him nearly as well, but the fact that I don’t want to forget about him in comparison to Mark feels like it means something. What do I do?”
“Honestly, I think you should pick Noah.”
“Well, that was blunt. Why?”
“You said it yourself; you can’t get yourself to forget about him, even up against someone you’ve known for over a decade. And, if things don’t work with him, Mark will probably still be there in the end.”
>
“So you’re saying that Mark should essentially be a backup plan?”
“Kind of sounded that way, but not really. I’m just saying that if Noah is this important to you, you shouldn’t just forget about the relationship you guys have. Talk to him, see what he has to say for himself. Things might work out. If they don’t, he’s not the only fish in the sea, is what I really mean. I’m a firm believer in what’s meant to be will be. If by some chance Mark is the one you’re meant to be with, that will come back around. If it’s Noah, you don’t want to write him off before you give him a chance.”
Just as she finished saying that, Mark and Jack started out of the water toward me. I told Emily she was a genius and that I’d call her later and hung up.
“Who were you talking to that you had to hang up so fast?” Jack questioned.
“Well, Mister Nosey. It was Emily, if you must know.”
He eyed me suspiciously and then said, “I’m starving, and since Noah left with the food, our only option is to go home to eat.”
“So soon? We’ve only been here like twenty minutes!”
“Food comes first,” Mark cut in. They both stood there, dripping wet and staring at me.
“What are you looking at me like that for? Get your towels and get on the horses, then!”
A few hoots and hollers later, and we were all mounted and riding back to the ranch. I wasn’t looking forward to dropping Ella off at Noah’s ranch, but I didn’t intend to actually see him, just let Jack put her in the stable then go.
Along the way, I thought about what Emily had said. “Mark will probably still be there in the end.” Did it make me a terrible person that I took solace in that? It was nice to think that even if things didn’t work out with Noah, I could still have someone to lean on when all was said and done.
I guess I had my answer.
Chapter Sixteen
Dirty SEAL (A Navy SEAL Romance) (The Maxwell Family) Page 111