2. Candice
2
CANDICE
I take a deep breath, cross my arms in front of my chest, cock my head to the side, and pray that if I repeat myself slowly and clearly this time, my brother will get it through his thick head.
“Nathan Booth is not coming here,” I say, pausing after each word for emphasis. “Period. End of story.”
“Candice, come on,” my brother says, giving me a stern look, in what I’m sure is a bid to remind me that he’s older, and that I should do what he says.
“No,” I say, tapping the heel of my boot against the ground and jostling my leg. Damnit, my nerves are showing. Beau will be sure to catch on.
“Why not?”
“Because,” I say, taking a deep breath. “We don’t need people like him at Star Mountain Horse Rescue.”
“Who exactly do you mean by people like him, Candice? Because you’re looking at one,” Beau says. “He’s my best friend.”
“Sure. But while you went on to graduate summa cum laude from college and become a vet, Nathan has spent the last four years gallivanting around rodeos and stock shows, winning every buckle possible, and spending those winnings at every bar between here and Texas,” I huff, feeling myself getting angry just thinking about him.
“So? He earned that money fair and square and he can spend it how he likes,” Beau says.
“He’s a playboy,” I respond flatly. “He’ll cause trouble here and in town. He’ll flirt with all the women.”
“So what? What harm is there in flirting with women or going to the only bar in town? Relax, Candice. There’s hardly any trouble he can get into here.”
“It only takes one bar. And drinking and fighting is what got him into this mess in the first place.”
“Look,” Beau says, “I don’t know what that incident was all about but that’s not the Nate I know. He might like to party, but he’d never hurt anyone without reason,” he continues, referencing the fight that landed Nathan in jail, hence why he needs somewhere to do community service.
“I’m sure that’s the version of him you know…”
“Then what’s the problem? Nathan won’t cause any trouble in town, I promise.”
“He’ll be here though, on our property, working with my horses, and causing trouble for me . Owner and manager of Star Mountain Horse Rescue.”
“Co-owner,” Beau fires back.
I don’t meet his stare, because he’s right. We own Star Mountain together, and if he wants Nathan to come here to do his community service hours then there’s nothing I can really do to stop him. Sure, I could pull the manager card, because while Beau looks after the wellbeing of our horses and treats all the rescues, in addition to our small but growing herd of goats, I manage all of the operations of this place and work with all of the horses day in and day out.
“Fine,” I grind out. “He can come.” Nathan Booth’s face flashes in my mind as I say the words: stupidly handsome with cut glass cheekbones, piercing blue eyes, and a swath of chestnut hair that is often hidden under a Stetson of the same color. He’s clean shaven, probably because he thinks his face is too pretty to hide with a beard.
Beau grunts in response and says, “He’ll want to bring his horse.”
“Why? Because tormenting the ones we have here won’t be enough for him?” I snort.
“Don’t say that shit, Candice,” Beau says. “You know I’d never be friends with someone like that. You might want to deny it, but Nate’s one of the best horsemen around. On top of being the best reiner in the country.”
I squirm hearing my brother’s words, because I can’t deny he’s right. He’d never be friends with, let alone tolerate, someone who mistreated their animals. Plus, the few times I’ve watched Nathan compete, I’ve been begrudgingly impressed with how good he is. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that there are plenty of competitors who run their horses into the ground, creating basket cases who need serious rehab. Which is exactly where I come in, along with the rest of Star Mountain Horse Rescue. Guys like Nathan just make more work for me.
“Fine, fine,” I tell Beau. “But I’m charging him out the ass for board. And he’s staying in the bunkhouse with the others. I’m not having him in my house.”
“Our house.”
“Sure, our house, but he’s still not staying in it. We don’t have the space.” That’s not strictly true, as there are three bedrooms. But there’s only one bathroom and I will not share a bathroom with Nathan. It’d be like sharing a bathroom with a pig.
Although, most pigs are smarter than Nathan is, and cleaner too, I’m sure.
“You’re a tough cookie, Candice, you know that?” My brother sighs and looks a bit beaten down for a moment.
I feel guilty for about the third time in this conversation and promise myself that I’ll be nicer to Beau. He’ll go head-to-head with me when need be, but he doesn’t like to. Despite his grumpy exterior, he’s actually kind and patient when he needs to be.
Unlike me.
“A hissing viper” is what Nathan called me the first time I met him, and the look Beau is giving me right now says that he’d agree with that assessment.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “But something about Nathan just pisses me off, okay? You know I’m not a rodeo gal. If he’s staying in the house with us, I’ll end up killing him. And besides, he’ll need to learn how to work well with Tomás. Being in the bunkhouse will help with that.”
The bunkhouse is where we house stable hands and volunteers who need somewhere to stay. We only have a few permanent members of staff, and usually operate with a revolving door of volunteers helping us out. People come from all over to do community service at our rescue, and I’ve been known to take in a few strays here and there.
Jenny, who helps out in the office and with the goats, came to us a few years ago after getting out of jail, and never left. Her ex-husband accused her of abuse, even though she was only defending herself from him. Star Mountain gave her safety, and a second chance at life. Tomás, our one permanent stable hand, did community service here for a while too, and then stayed on for good.
Thankfully, neither of them cares that I can only pay them pennies. At least room and board is included.
“You’re right,” Beau says. “The bunkhouse will be fine.”
“Can he handle it?” I ask. “Is he able to work well with others?”
“Yes, Candice, he can work well with others. Just not with you, apparently.”
I cross my arms again. “And what about the digs? Will he be annoyed at how rustic everything is?” Rustic is a nice word for the bunkhouse, frankly.
“The man grew up on a cattle ranch for Christ’s sake. He’ll be fine.”
“As if he’d ever let anyone forget that fact,” I shoot back.
“What the hell does that mean?” Beau is scowling now, and I can tell that my brother is just about done with this conversation.
“Oh you know, every single interview the man gives begins with some story about what it was like on daddy’s ranch out there under the stars.” I wave my hand and scrunch up my nose.
Beau snorts. “Didn’t know you watched his interviews so intently.”
Damn it. I’ll never admit it to Beau, but sometimes I watch Nathan’s interviews just to rile myself up and make up arguments I could be having with him in my head. The thing is, at one point, Nathan and I might have been friends: we’re both from Montana, we both grew up with horses, and we both love working with animals more than anything else. But he’s miles away from the country boy he once was. The buckles and sponsorships saw to that.
“It’s hard to escape them,” I say vaguely. “I’m going to see how Brown Sugar is settling in,” I continue, referring to the anxious horse who arrived at the rescue yesterday.
“I checked on her earlier,” Beau says. “She’s doing fine.”
“I know, but still. I want her to get used to me.”
Beau nods, but his eyes are sharp, and I can tell that he knows I’m using our new patient as an excuse to stop talking about Nathan.
“He arrives tomorrow, by the way,” Beau says.
“That’s fine.” It’s not, but I need to get used to the idea of Nathan being here and I might as well start now.
I head out of the barn office and into the stable. The smell of horses welcomes me, comforting me instantly with its familiarity. The stable at Star Mountain Horse Rescue is the best maintained building on the property, though still run down, and has two long aisles of stalls, each big enough for a horse to lay down in. As I walk down one aisle, a few familiar faces poke their heads over stall doors to greet me.
“Hey Mags,” I say, stopping to scratch my mare under the chin. She whickers softly at me, and swings her head into my shoulder, pressing into me. She’s inside having her evening meal, and I’ll be taking her out again later.
“I know,” I say. “I haven’t had time today to see you. But we’ve got a newbie here who I have to look after.” Maggie nudges me in response. “You’ll like her, I promise.”
Maggie plays hard to get, but she’s like a mother hen for the whole barn and is a constant presence beside me when I work with nervous horses. Horses are herd animals, and they need the type of calm reassurance that Maggie projects. I give her a kiss on her forehead, and head to quarantine stalls where Brown Sugar is being housed for a few more days.
She’s munching away on some hay and doesn’t immediately look up at me. When she does, she backs up a bit and her nostrils flare slightly.
“Hey, Brownie girl,” I say softly, keeping my voice as calm as possible. “It’s okay. It’s just me. We met yesterday. You can get back to your hay, I’m not going to bother you.” I reach into my pocket and pull out a few rounds of carrot. I place one on the top of the stall, and take a step back.
Brown Sugar continues to look at me warily, but leans in and scarfs up the carrot, munching away at it. She’s a Quarter Horse, favored breed of cowboys, and under normal circumstances, a horse like her shouldn’t be here. But Brown Sugar was worked hard as a barrel racer on the amateur rodeo circuit even though she didn’t enjoy it all that much. Eventually, she got so nervous that she stopped wanting to enter the arena, and panicked whenever she saw it.
Beau knows her owners because they have a few other horses he looks after, and when they told him that they had no idea how to handle her or train her out of her anxiety, he offered to help. Helping, in reality, meant buying her off of them, but he just couldn’t stand the idea of her being forced to run another barrel if she didn’t want to. My brother is a grump, but a soft hearted one.
And so am I. We can’t exactly afford to take on another horse at the moment, but if there’s one thing my brother and I always agree on it’s that we’d both rather go hungry than let a horse in need suffer.
I place another carrot round on the top of the stall, but get a bit closer this time. For the moment, all I want to do is get Brown Sugar used to my presence. So I stand by her stall and tell her about my day, talking until I see the tension in her face ease, and she goes back to her hay.
I have deep respect for the barrel racers who get it right. It takes a skilled rider who really knows their horse to be good at such a difficult sport. But there’s always the odd rider who resorts to frequent whipping and kicking, and their horses can end up like Brown Sugar: too anxious to do much of anything at all. My job is to retrain her, to find out what she likes to do, and then find someone to adopt her and give her a permanent home.
“I will see you tomorrow,” I say, and reach out and scratch her neck, which she seems fine with, thankfully.
I head back through the stable and out into the yard beyond, where I find Tabitha, one of the barn cats, perched on a fence. She hops off and saunters over to me, weaving her way through my legs as I walk.
“One of these days someone is going to trip over you and land right on top of you, Tab,” I say.
She meows up at me as if she understands, but continues brushing up against me. It’s nearly dusk, and the sun is going down, painting the fields around me in gold. In the distance, the mountains loom large and hazy, dark purple against the sky.
This is a view that has never gotten old, not once in my entire life.
Because that’s how long I’ve lived in Star Mountain. I was born here, and grew up helping my grandparents with the horses, working my way up from mucking stalls and grooming, to doing groundwork and training. Our grandparents died two years ago, and Beau and I took over the rescue together.
It’s hard not to miss them every time I walk through the door of their house, as I’m doing right now, the screen door swinging and clanging shut behind me. It’s hard not to think of Grammy’s hands working swiftly as her knitting needles clacked together when I walk into the living room and see the throw she made. It’s harder, even still, not to think about Gramps’s cooking when I walk into the kitchen and smell it.
All of my brother’s recipes are ones that our grandparents taught him, and tonight Beau is making cornbread, beans, and pulled pork sliders. He’s standing over the stove, stirring the beans and chatting with Tomás, who is basically family at this point. So is Jenny, and I expect that her and her three-year-old daughter Lila will be making an appearance at dinner soon.
“So, I heard your favorite person is coming here,” Tomás says as soon as he sees me.
“What do you mean?” I ask, playing it cool because there’s no way Tomás knows how much I hate Nathan. The only person who knows that is Beau. And Winnie, my best friend.
“You know, Nate Booth. Your nemesis.” Tomás snags a piece of pork from the cutting board where Beau is shredding it, not caring about the dagger eyes my brother gives him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Nathan and I have only interacted a few times.”
“Yeah but he must have left quite the impression.” He raises a brow at me.
I give Tomás a quizzical look.
“I saw the magazine on your desk, Candice,” he says, smirking.
“What magazine?” My brother asks, now intrigued by the conversation.
“It was nothing,” I snap. I move over to the fridge and dig around until I find an open container of jackfruit.
“It was a copy of Western Horsewoman,” Tomás says. “And Nate was on the cover. Flannel shirt open, abs for miles, his trademark smile pasted on his face. Someone had drawn Xs over his eyes and devil horns on top of his cowboy hat.”
“Well that someone wasn’t me,” I say, because there’s no way in hell I’m owning up to it. It was juvenile, but I just couldn’t stand the smug look on his face staring up at me every time I picked up the damn thing. I’ve been reading Western Horsewoman since I was fifteen, and I never thought I’d see the day they had a male cover model. But Nathan Booth is the biggest name in Western riding right now and I’m sure they happily made an exception for him. I bet they sold more copies of that issue than any other, too.
“Really, Candice?” Beau shakes his head. “You’re not twelve.”
I stick my tongue out at him just to prove that sometimes I still am. I take the jackfruit out of the package and grab a pan, nudging Beau out of the way with my hip.
“I can’t believe you eat that shit over Beau’s pulled pork,” Tomás says, shaking his head. “I’ll never understand it.”
“You don’t have to,” I say. “And you’re lucky Beau still eats meat otherwise you’d be eating jackfruit and veggie burgers along with me. Because I don’t see you cooking, Tomás, do I?”
“Damn, Candice, settle down.”
“You’re just provoking her, and you know it,” Beau says, ever the mediator.
“Besides,” I say, “I can eat the cornbread and barbecue sauce and those are the parts of the meal that really matter.”
“Whatever. Back to the matter at hand,” Tomás says, taking the plate Beau hands him. “Why do you hate Nate so much?”
“Well, first of all, the feeling is mutual.” I bang my own plate down onto the kitchen table and pull out a chair. “We met four years ago or so? Right when Nathan was getting good at reining.”
“He’s always been good,” Beau cuts in. “But he only started competing full time four years ago. The ranch was in dire financial straits, and Nathan thought he could help bring in some cash.”
“I’m sure the Holder’s boot endorsement helped a ton.” I roll my eyes.
“It did. They gave him a half-million-dollar deal,” Beau says.
Tomás whistles, and I can see the wheels turn in his head as he tries to figure out how a stable hand like him might land something similar.
“So on top of an asshole, he’s also now a rich asshole? Figures.”
“He’s not an asshole?—”
“Yes he is, Beau! He is. Maybe not to you, because he’s your best friend. But he took one look at me when he met me and decided I was scum on the bottom of his boot.”
“That doesn’t sound like Nathan,” Beau says slowly, though I see doubt filling his eyes. “But I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding. And Candice…”
“What?” I snap, stuffing a piece of cornbread into my mouth.
“Well, you aren’t the easiest person to get along with sometimes.”
I glare at him, but inside all I can think is that unlike me, Nathan is adored by everyone.
Tomás starts snickering behind his sandwich. Just then, the front door bangs shut and the sound of tiny feet fills the house. Lila runs into the kitchen with Jenny close behind, and the conversation immediately switches from being about my hatred of Nathan to the pictures Lila painted today.
Thank God for that.