Chapter 17
Ash had never wanted to ride a horse faster, but you didn’t send your new mare into an all-out gallop on woodsy terrain unless someone was chasing you, and the only thing chasing him at the moment was his need not only to explore all the amenities the master bedroom had to offer with its current inhabitant, but also to take Willow up on her offer of relocating him from the couch to the bedroom before she had time to change her mind.
Not that he had much in the way of possessions to relocate, but he figured once he occupied a drawer or two…took up residence on one side of the bed…it would be harder to evict him.
“I’ll untack the horses if you want to head inside to…uh…de-sand yourself,” he told Willow as they led the mares to their stalls, but they both stopped short when they found Cirrus’s stall door open and Boone about to lead the horse out.
“Welcome home, li’l bro,” Boone said in greeting. “You’re just in time, though…” He looked his brother up and down and wrinkled his nose. “You might want to shower first.”
Ash blinked twice, then looked from his brother to Willow and back to Boone again. “Just in time for what ?” he asked.
Boone raised his brows. “I’m bringing Cirrus over to the grazing field to give him some outside time while we’re gone. Beth will bring him back to the barn later.”
“I’m gonna get Holiday untacked while you two hash out whatever this is,” Willow informed the men as she motioned between them. Then she disappeared into Holiday’s stall with the mare.
Ash opened Midnight’s gate and nudged her inside, promising to get her situated in a minute. Then he stepped inside Cirrus’s stall with his brother and whispered under his breath.
“I’m kind of in the middle of something important, big bro ,” he told Boone.
Boone nodded in the direction of Holiday’s stall with a grin. “Sand-in-your-pants kind of important?” the older Murphy teased.
Ash instinctively gave his right leg a gentle kick and watched as sand sprinkled onto Cirrus’s bedding. He cleared his throat. “ Important important, okay? I don’t need to justify my reasoning to you.”
Cirrus nudged Ash’s shoulder with his nose, and Boone laughed.
“Maybe not to me ,” Boone conceded. “But Cirrus here might not let you leave without an explanation.” He patted the gelding on the nose, and Cirrus gave an approving snort. “Look…there’s a rescue pair we need to grab over in Tahoe.”
“A pair?” Ash asked. “Can’t you and Eli take care of it?”
Boone scrubbed a hand across his jaw and sighed. “It’s a pretty bad neglect case. The owners were taken into custody, and there’s not a good equine vet in the vicinity. The one tending to them for the time being called Eli directly and asked for his help. Custody goes to the state if the owners are formally charged, which looks to be the case. But the doc in Tahoe can pull some strings and hopefully get us on the short list. This is an all-Murphy hands-on-deck kind of situation.” He crossed his arms. “We were just waiting for you to get home.”
Ash’s chest tightened as he clenched his jaw. The thought of someone harming a horse—or any animal for that matter—made him want to smash a fist into the wall…or a phone into another seventy-five-inch 4K television.
“Go,” Willow told him, brushing off her hands as she appeared in the stall door. “I’ll get Midnight untacked so you can run inside and shower.”
Ash’s mouth fell open, but he didn’t know what to say. He was too afraid to slow the momentum of whatever was happening between them. What if—given time and distance—Willow came to her senses and realized he wasn’t worth the risk after all?
“I’m gonna walk Cirrus over to Eli’s,” Boone announced, effectively excusing himself and his horse. “Meet us in front of the clinic in thirty?” he asked his brother, though Ash knew there was only one answer to the question.
Soon, Boone and Cirrus were gone, leaving Ash and Willow to slow the momentum.
She pressed her hands to his chest and laughed. “You really do need a shower.”
He smiled. “We both do…and I figured we might do that together,” he lamented.
She shrugged. “We still can…”
But Ash sighed. “There is nothing I want to do more than climb into that shower stall with you. But if Boone says to meet in front of the clinic in thirty, I guarantee you Eli will be knocking on the door in fifteen. Hell, it’s his place. He might not even knock.”
They both laughed, though neither of them were smiling as much as they had been the entire ride back from the campgrounds.
“Go get cleaned up,” she told him. “Sounds like an important job and probably some really good bonding time with your brothers. This is important.”
He nodded and reached for the waistband of her pants, hooking a finger inside and tugging her toward him. “How do you feel about kissing my stupid mouth one more time before I go?”
She licked her lips, and hell if that one little movement didn’t unravel him entirely.
“They’re actually not so stupid,” she admitted, rising up on her toes and brushing one sweet, chaste kiss across his lips before sliding her mouth up to his ear. “I know what you’re thinking, cowboy, and you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to change my mind.”
He sighed and kissed her jaw, then buried his face in the crook of her neck. Despite their night outdoors, their swim in the falls, and their ride home, she still smelled like her coconut shampoo and the faintest hint of fresh-baked cookies.
“How do you already know me so well?” he asked, lips trailing up her neck.
She hummed a soft moan and then leaned back, pushing him to arm’s length. “I might want you bad, Ash Murphy, but I draw the line at a horse’s stall. No offense, Holiday and Midnight.”
“Seriously, though, Wills…” Ash started. “If you do change your mind, it’s okay. This is all happening kind of fast, so if you decide we need to slow down or hit the brakes, I’m not going to fight you on it.”
“Oh,” she replied, her smile falling. “Yeah. Okay.” He furrowed his brows, but then she brightened and added, “I appreciate you giving me space…if I need it, I mean.” She kissed him again, this time a quick peck, and then patted him on the ass. “Now go before you’re late being fifteen minutes early!”
He laughed, kissed her one more time, and then thanked her for taking care of the horses while he got ready and left.
When he got out of the shower, to absolutely no one’s surprise, Eli was waiting at the breakfast bar.
“Nice outfit,” his brother remarked, nodding at the one garment Ash wore, a towel wrapped around his hips.
“Where’s Willow?” he asked. “She not back from the barn yet?”
“Colt came and picked her up a couple minutes ago,” Eli informed him. “Said she can shower at his place and have dinner with him and Jenna.”
Something sank in Ash’s gut. Was she pulling away already? He tried to retrace his steps to figure out what could have flipped a switch in the short time since they’d raced home to tear each other’s clothes off and essentially start living together as Ash and Willow instead of Ash out here and Willow in there .
He offered to slow down for her benefit. But that was it, wasn’t it? When he said he wouldn’t fight her if she pulled the brakes.
The truth was, he couldn’t fight her. He didn’t have it in him after he’d already fought for four whole years without so much as a word from her. He owned his part in messing up what they had, but how could he fix what he’d broken if he was doing it all by himself? If Ash fought now, and she hung him out to dry again? It would break him beyond repair.
“Oh,” he finally replied. “Right. Yeah. Colt,” he added, hoping to make it look like this was always the plan. “I’ll be ready in a few. How long do you think we’ll be gone?”
Eli shrugged. “Depends on what kind of shape the horses are in, if they’re healthy enough to travel.”
A muscle in Ash’s jaw pulsed. “I know I got lucky with my—uh—law enforcement situation last week, but I’d sure love a few minutes alone with the assholes who thought starving a couple of horses was a good idea.”
Eli shook his head and huffed out a bitter laugh. “Why don’t you rein it in there, Rocky. From what I hear, you and Boone barely lasted ten minutes in the ring. The owners are in custody and being dealt with. Our job is the horses, a mare and a stallion I think they were trying to breed. I’m guessing their lack of success in that department is what contributed toward the neglect. Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, we’ll be gone a few days at least as we get the whole ownership thing sorted out. The rest depends on the horses.”
Ash nodded. “Okay. I’ll get dressed and pack up…again,” he responded coolly.
Eli stood and headed toward the door, stopping briefly in front of his towel-clad brother.
“Just because she might be a little spooked about whatever happened on your little getaway doesn’t mean you have to get spooked too. Call her. Text her. Do whatever you need to do to let her know you’re all in if you are.” He shrugged. “It’s just a thought.” He strode back out the door before Ash had a chance to respond.
Once back in the bedroom, he grabbed his phone from where it was charging on the dresser and then swore.
His phone was a loaner with exactly zero contacts aside from the two numbers he knew from memory—his brothers’ and Sloane’s. Okay, so he did remember one other, but Willow hadn’t just blocked his number. She’d gotten a new one herself. And since they’d both been living under the same roof for the past ten days, they hadn’t yet gotten around to exchanging numbers.
He hurried back out to the kitchen, opening and closing drawers and cabinets.
“Come on, Eli,” he mumbled to himself. “Tell me there’s a drawer full of junk somewhere around here. No man is that organized.” He finally found it in the drawer next to the fridge. Amid random pens and pencils, a tape measure and three rulers, and so much loose change that Ash wished it was 1989 and there was an old-school arcade around the corner, he found an unopened package of sticky notes.
When his short nails were no match for the cellophane wrapping, he tore the package open with his teeth, grabbed one of the random pens, and scribbled what he would have sent in a text. Then he marched back into the bathroom and stuck it right in the center of the mirror where she wouldn’t miss it.
After that, he threw on a clean T-shirt and jeans, tossed a few odds and ends into the camping pack he’d emptied straight into the washing machine, slid on his boots, and grabbed his hat. When he made it outside, his brothers already had the trailer hitched to Eli’s truck and were ready to hit the road.
He laughed as he watched Eli hop into the driver’s seat and Boone take the passenger side.
“Right,” he mused, opening the cab’s rear door. “The youngest has to sit in the back seat.”
Boone reached back and ruffled Ash’s hair like it was twenty years ago. “What…was the celebrity hoping for some sort of special treatment?”
Ash swatted his hand away and told his brother to piss off using a much more choice four-letter word. “I’ve been sleeping on a couch for over a week without complaint,” he reminded them.
Eli laughed as he put the truck in gear and began rolling away from the property. “I think I’d file the mention of the couch as a complaint, wouldn’t you, Boone?”
Boone shook his head. “Come on, Eli. Is that any way to treat our poor baby brother’s martyrdom? The man has been suffering.”
Ash groaned. “All right. I can see how this little trip is going to go. You two get to be assholes, and I get to take it.” But a smile tugged at his lips. Before Eli’s little family reunion, it had been years since the three Murphy brothers were in the same place, and even then it was at one of Ash’s shows, so how much did that count? Before that? Ash was pretty much a kid. And though he’d never have admitted it then, he loved when his older brothers messed with him because it made him part of their world, a world for which he was always just a little too young or a little too na?ve.
“Exactly,” Boone replied. “I’m glad you understand the group dynamic.”
They all sat in what felt like their first comfortable silence as they made their way out of their small hometown and toward the state highway. Then Eli turned on the radio, and the ribbing started all over again when they landed on a station playing none other than an Ash Murphy song.
“Nope,” he declared, leaning forward and reaching for the station presets. “Not happening,” he continued, then pressed button after button until he found an alternative rock station that had no chance of tossing one of his records on. From there on out, it didn’t matter what song blared through the speakers because in his head he started to hear it—the melody for his and Willow’s duet.
That was a good sign, right? It all was… Time with his brothers, bringing two more horses back to the ranch, and the song—no…his life —finally starting to take shape.