Chapter Six
Poor stupid dupe! Cover your face and be ashamed! Blind puppy!
The next night, after a long day of caring for the horses, chatting with Axel Rose, and doing my best to avoid Chet, I text Bront?: “You up?”
Her call comes two minutes later. I answer on the first ring. “Tell me something only Bront? would know,” I say, already grinning.
She matches my punchy tone. “In middle school, we staged a school cafeteria sit-in, demanding that they go vegetarian. But you and I were the only two protesters who showed up.”
I laugh. Instantly, something loosens in my chest. “I still feel bad for the thirteen-year-old versions of us, sitting on that sticky floor with all the abandoned, smooshed-up tater tots.”
“We were so cute and pathetic,” says Bront?. “So, how’s it going? Have you adopted a herd of wayward stallions yet?”
“Not quite, but almost,” I reply. “Mostly I’ve been bonding with a misunderstood mare while steering clear of my brooding boss.”
Bront? snorts. “Love the alliteration, but tell me everything. Wait, first—are you lying in bed or upright? And are you in pajamas, coveralls, or actual people clothes?”
“Do a Monet lily pad T-shirt and ripped jeans count as actual clothes?”
“I’ll allow it. Proceed.”
I tell her everything, from the moment I shadowed the horse trailer through the gates, to the part about meeting Chet and our conversation around the firepit.
“Jane!” she cries. “Your boss is the Chet Edwards, and you puked on his billionaire-worthy shoes?”
“That’s right. Why? Have you heard of him?”
“Of course,” Bront? says. “Most people have. He and Birdy Banks are this beautiful Instagram couple who everyone else wants to be. Not to sound insensitive,” she adds.
“I mean, since she has cancer and all. But last I heard, she’s in remission.
From the photos she posts, you’d never suspect she was sick.
Dewy complexion, shiny hair, like someone from a Neutrogena commercial.
And Chet is her perfect counterpart—dark and brooding, always wearing a scowl while she’s a ray of light. ”
I remember what Chet said when Miss Adele was unexpectedly delivered to his doorstep. That Birdy was intent on making his life miserable. “Well,” I tell Bront?, “there may be trouble in paradise.”
***
Chet is around more than I thought he’d be.
Even though it’s his horse ranch, I’d expected him to hide away inside, staring at a computer all day.
Instead, I spot him most mornings, walking the fence line and watching the horses while his coffee mug emits steam into the mountain cool air.
Occasionally, he attempts to make himself useful.
And he’s not hopeless; surprisingly, he can read a horse’s body language better than most first-timers.
But there’s something missing in the way he touches them.
One morning I watch him brush Copper Cash with the focused, pressured efficiency of a man who has spent his life solving problems by throwing his very best effort at them. The brush drags. Copper Cash’s skin ripples in protest, one ear swiveling back like a slow accusation.
I can hear my mother inside my head. “Slow hands, Janey. Let the horse come to you.”
When I lean over the fence rail, the wood’s warm from the morning sun. “Try the curry comb,” I call. “He’ll tell you when you’ve got it right.”
Chet doesn’t look up. But a minute later, he switches combs. Copper Cash’s tail swings once, loosely, like a sigh.
By late afternoon that same day, I’ve got Miss Adele and Freckles in the ring together, coaxing them into something resembling a truce.
After putting them back in their stalls, I turn the corner.
The clang of a bucket echoes through the barn corridors.
There’s no one in the ring or the main aisle, but I hear the hiss of water and the slap of wet feet against concrete from the wash stalls.
Must be Axel Rose, using the stable shower stall to wash off the barn smells before she goes home to her husband.
She and I have already gotten past modesty—working with horses can do that real quick.
So I round the corner, clutching a battered plastic caddy armed with brushes and bottles. But what I see stops me in my tracks.
It’s Chet—clearly naked—standing behind the flimsy, nearly transparent shower curtain.
He’s lathering his hair with one hand, a glob of white shampoo streaked across his scalp and tangled in the dark, wet curls.
The water sluices over the sharp rise of his shoulders and (God help me) down his chest, forming beads that linger on the thicket of hair at his pecs and then funnel toward the trail of muscle that dips beneath his navel.
I’m not moving. But I am staring, like an absolute creep whose feet have grown roots.
He must sense my presence, because his head snaps toward me. “Did you need something, Jane?”
“Sorry!” Now I try to dart away, but I only end up dropping my bucket with the brushes and bottles.
They clatter to the stable floor, a couple of them rolling away, one dangerously near the shower stall.
I scurry to pick them up, but when I bend over, I accidentally catch a glimpse of, well—way more of Chet than I ought to see. And there’s a lot of him to see.
Lordy.
“Sorry!” I yell again. “I’m leaving now. Promise!”
Hightailing it out of there, I fervently wish that time-travel was an option. You know, rewind and prevent what just happened from happening.
Three minutes later, Chet bangs on my trailer door.
“I’m not home,” I yell.
“Clearly you are,” he yells back.
“Fine,” I cry, still talking through the trailer door. “Guess you saw through my ruse. But if you came here to fire me, don’t bother. I’ll be packed and gone by morning.”
There’s a pause. “Open the door, Jane.”
“I’d really rather not.”
“Please,” Chet says. “I didn’t come here to fire you. I came to apologize.”
That gets me. I swing open the door. Thankfully (I guess), he’s fully dressed, his T-shirt clinging to his still-damp chest, beads of water dripping from his hair and onto his neck.
“You came to apologize?” I ask. “For what?”
“For putting you in that position,” he answers. “I wasn’t thinking, showering where you might walk in on me. Especially when I have a perfectly good bathroom inside. But I got dirty mucking out the stalls, and I didn’t want to drag any of that in—”
“You were mucking out the stalls?”
He nods.
“Why?” I ask. “Isn’t that what you pay Axel Rose and me to do?”
“Not really. Axel Rose is like the ranch manager, and you’re here to help the horses adjust and give them the care they need.”
I lean against the door frame. “Right. But mucking out the stalls is part of what we’re paid to do.”
Chet holds my gaze for a moment. “Before my mom married my stepdad, she was a maid. And she used to tell me that there’s honor in cleaning up someone’s mess. Every now and then, it’s good, reminding myself of that.” He sighs. “Anyway, I’m sorry if I made things awkward between us.”
“Thanks,” I reply. “No harm done.”
Chet gives me a brisk nod and starts to walk away. I stop him with my voice.
“Hey!” I call. “Are you sure you’re a billionaire?”
As he pivots toward me, Chet’s cheeks turn pink. “Half the time I’m sure,” he says, grinning. “The other half, I’m so busy hating other billionaires that I forget to hate myself.”
If his words confuse me—which they do—I’m even more confused by Chet’s momentary slip into self-deprecation and humility. But I needn’t worry.
It doesn’t last long.
While working in the barn the next morning, Chet seems surly, like he has a headache. I’m brushing Miss Adele in her stall, coaxing her to tolerate the halter, when he stops dead in the doorway. “Why’s she still got mud on her hocks?”
“She rolled. Then I gave up, for a minute, because—”
“No excuses, Jane.”
His rebuke stings, but I don’t show it. “Got it,” I tell him.
Axel Rose walks in. “Chet, there’s another delivery at the gate. Could be new feed, could be another surprise horse. Do you want to come check?”
Chet swears under his breath. “Yeah, I’ll be there in a sec.” Then he speaks again to me. “Just do your job, okay, Jane? No more giving up.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I say to his back.
He walks away. My head is spinning.