7. Hunter
Hunter
M y fingers tapped in time to the music against the steering wheel. I hadn’t quite worked up the nerve to get out yet, knowing Brody might be inside.
Lottie had insisted on taking some time to think about my proposition.
Every passing second was time she could be learning on the field from the retiring manager, but instead, she wanted to sit in her two-story wood-cabin on her father’s small ranch.
The same one I was sitting outside of, trying to muster the guts to knock on the door.
The bottle of wine resting on the passenger seat was half peace offering and half liquid courage.
I turned down the speaker system, leaving myself alone with my thoughts and the gentle sound of my truck’s engine. With a deep breath, I slid my phone from the pocket of my jeans.
I needed to text her at least. Showing up unannounced was one thing, but the idea of Brody sitting in there, relaxing in his lazy-boy, assuming I was there to see him, was enough to fill me with dread.
If he found out we’d slept together, he’d kill me.
Brody wasn’t the soft type. He loved his daughter fiercely, enough to cock that shotgun he kept above his mantle at anyone he deemed unsatisfactory.
But if Lottie agreed to the deal, he’d have to know at least something about it.
That was enough to make this harder than it needed to be.
If it was any other woman with any other father, I’d be at the door without an introduction, without a warning.
Come outside.
I hit send without letting myself dwell on it any longer and grabbed the bottle of wine from the passenger seat.
Kicking my door open with one boot and flipping the key, I hopped down from the high body of the truck, landing in the wet grass with a thick thud.
Every step toward the door squished, each one in time with my breaths.
Please don’t let Brody be home. Please don’t let Brody be home. Please ? —
The front door creaked open. Hair up in a messy bun and pajamas covering every inch of her body, Lottie stood glaring at me from her porch, her phone clutched in her hand and a heavy blush warming her cheeks.
“My dad’s not home. Why are you here, Hunter?” she asked, the words echoing off the trees that surrounded the front of their property. I’d been here so many times to meet with Brody, but Lottie was never present. And I’d certainly never come before just to see her.
“Because I’m not a patient man,” I answered. Kicking the bit of mud off my boots, I climbed up the four steps until I was directly in front of her. “And you haven’t given me an answer.”
“I told you I’d email you.”
“Three days ago. Look, if you have questions, concerns, whatever—I can answer them. Just have a damn conversation with me, Lottie.” I held up the bottle of wine, pushing it toward her empty hand.
“What the hell is this supposed to be?”
“A peace offering.”
She looked between me and the bottle, slowly wrapping her thin fingers around the neck of it. “Is it fancy?” she asked, lifting it from my hand. Her eyes scanned the label, front and back, searching for some kind of sign that it wasn’t just something I’d picked up from the local Trader Joe’s.
“It’s worth more than a horse.” I shrugged and shoved my hands into my pockets, watching the way her brows narrowed in irritation from the comment. “You know, I wasn’t expecting a girl like you to still be living with Brody. You seem very?—”
“Independent?” She cut me off. The door behind her creaked again as she stepped backward. She turned her back to me, a silent invitation to follow. “I am. That doesn’t mean I don’t consider this home.”
I caught the door with my foot and pushed inside, likely brushing off some of the chipped paint from its frame.
Brody made enough money from me alone to keep this place in order.
I’d asked him at least twenty times over the last ten years we’d worked together why he didn’t spend the money to have the house renovated or do it himself.
All he ever said was that it was Allison’s specialty .
His wife, Lottie’s mother, had died sometime long before I was around.
A part of me wondered if that was Lottie’s job now, and if the house had deteriorated while she was gone in Hawaii.
But once inside, it looked the same as ever.
Only a handful of lights were on—one by Brody’s lazy-boy, another in the kitchen at the back of the house, and one lighting the windowless stairs.
The floors were old, a polished hardwood that had seen years of wear and tear, of mucked-up boots covered in soil and toys with moving parts scratching it to high hell.
They were clean, but you wouldn’t know it from the state of them.
Rugs of varying shapes, sizes, and designs covered the majority of them, almost as if in an attempt to cover up the drabness.
But I’d always liked the comforting feeling of Brody’s house.
I’d never understood the reason to hide something like that.
It was far more cozy than my parent’s pristine, all-white mansion in the foothills of Rocky Mountain National Park.
The faintest sound of music played gently from somewhere upstairs, almost inaudible due to the low, electrical humming of what I could only imagine was the ancient heating system.
Lottie stepped over a stray cushion and went behind the dividing wall that separated the living space from the kitchen, wrenching a drawer open and sending things clattering around inside.
Despite the countless times I’d been here over the last ten or so years, it had always been on business.
Granted, this was technically business, too, but the urgency of Brody to discuss whatever needed discussing, jumping straight into planning mode, meant I’d never gotten the chance to have a good look around.
Tiny embers barely kept themselves alive in the wide fireplace.
I spotted a few framed pictures on the mantel above, one of them a family photo of a much younger Brody, a little girl no older than five with long, black hair and blazingly blue eyes, and a woman that very much resembled an older version of the woman currently extending a very expensive glass of wine toward me.
“That was meant to be a gift,” I said, plucking the glass from her hand. “Not something to share.”
She shrugged. “It’s just wine.” Lifting the glass to her nose, she took a deep inhale, her pupils dilating. “Haven’t you been here, like, a million times? Why are you so suddenly interested in our family pictures?”
“Normally Brody and I are out in the stables or we jump straight into whatever he wants to discuss. I’ve never really looked at them before,” I explained. I sipped at the pricey merlot, the familiar taste washing away the dust that coated my tongue. “That’s your mother, right? Allison?”
She nodded. “She died when I was seven.”
“I’m sorry.”
I wasn’t expecting the exaggerated eye-roll I got as she turned away from me again, another silent instruction to follow her.
Our footfalls made the floorboards creak with each step until we reached the sliding back door.
The screen squealed on its tracks as she opened it. “I don’t need your sympathy.”
She stepped out onto the back porch, the bottle of wine in one hand and her glass in the other. She sank into one of the rocking chairs and I made my way around to the other one, sitting at an angle next to hers.
I sat down into the cozy chair, appreciating the amazing view before me.
“Sell it to me,” she said, her gaze sweeping out toward the mountains beyond the perimeter of their property. “Make me want to do this for you and maybe I’ll say yes.”
Forty-nine percent of the business isn’t enough?
“And before you ask, no, the percentage of the business isn’t enough of a selling point.”
Damn.
“Alright,” I sighed. “Well, you’ll get to experience a life of luxury for the next six months?—”
“My father makes enough for that already. Do you think I grew up poor?” She glanced at me from the corner of her eye, a thousand unsaid insults lurking behind it.
“Fair enough,” I responded. “I’ll consider taking thoroughbreds off the docket for next year.”
She slowly turned her head toward me. “Promise and mean it.”
God, the way she looked at me like I was the worst person she’d ever met somehow managed to excite me. “Fine. I promise.”
“I want to hire Dana,” she added. “She’ll be more than just a stable hand. I want her by my side.”
I sighed and sipped at my glass of wine, gently rocking myself back and forth to calm myself down from that one. “You’re asking for an additional entire salary with benefits. You realize how expensive that is, correct? That’s a position that isn’t needed.”
“Do you want me to do this for you or not?”
Ballsy. That’s what she was. She would use this as her bargaining chip to get whatever she wanted, and in truth, a part of me respected that. She’d clearly learned a lot from her father.
“Fine.”
She nodded to herself as she broke eye contact, looking back out at the mountains behind the stables.
I wondered if it kept her calm, if it soothed her in a way she couldn’t get elsewhere.
Her thumbnail sat between her teeth, her thoughts churning in her mind in the silence. “What would be expected of me?”
I’ve got her. I’ve fucking got her. “It will need to be public. My parents won’t believe it if it isn’t,” I said, reaching for the bottle of wine and topping off her glass.
Knowing that Brody would also be aware made my stomach churn.
“You’ll come to events with me. You’ll meet my parents.
We’ll sell it however we need to in order to convince them that it’s real. ”
Her face scrunched as she picked up her glass, nearly spilling the wine from the unexpected weight of it. “When you say public?—”
“Brody will see, yes.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, her head shaking, the little bun atop it wobbling. “We’ll have to, what, kiss? In front of people?”
“Yes.”
“Sex?”