Chapter 18
Eli
Ava might trust him, but I wasn’t convinced. The guy looked like a young Enrique Iglesias, for crying out loud! With all of us there–me, Luke, August, and Ava practically attached to his hip–the stable felt crowded.
Luke threw an armful of hay in Sugar’s feed bucket, and August immediately pulled some out and walked it to Chuck’s stall, saying, “Only two flakes for each horse.”
The kid shot him a look, then stormed off with the wheelbarrow, muttering, “What the hell’s a flake?”
I jogged after him, sharing the same thought. Neither one of us was charmed by that accent. “Wouldn’t it really throw ‘em,” I said, catching up to Luke, “if you came back with exactly what he asked for?”
Luke yanked an open bale apart with his hands, breaking the layers and making a mess. Maybe those were flakes? The layers?
“If they’re working here,” he grunted, “why do you even need me?”
“This guy isn’t your boss,” I told him. “He’s just here to train someone. Maybe. This is like his interview.”
At first, Ava’s plan sounded good, but this August character was not what I expected. I’d figured he’d be older, like Terry. And who knew they’d be so buddy-buddy? Why didn’t she call him when she got stranded at the strip mall?
“What about your girlfriend?” Luke said.
“She’s not …” I ran a hand down my face. “She’s also temporary.”
“Harsh. So what? She’s like your booty call?”
“I meant she’s temporarily helping with the horses, smartass.
” Did it look like we were–like she was …
I grabbed a handful of hay from the ground and put it on Luke’s stack.
“Ava likes horses, like you. And August is supposed to be an expert.” If Ava planned to hire him for her ranch, he had to be good, right?
And that’s what we needed. Someone with horse skills. I didn’t have to like him.
“Think of August like a math tutor.”
“I got an ‘A’ in math.”
“Okay. English, then.” The kid went silent. I backtracked. “Listen, I hired you. I want you here. Let August share what he knows before he moves on. Maybe we’ll learn something.”
“Whatever.” Luke spun the wheelbarrow on the front wheel and hightailed it back to the stable, leaving me in his dust.
Before following, I looked up “flake” on my phone.
Ha! I was right!
The rest of the morning didn’t go much better. Every time August tried to show Luke how to tie a knot or scrape out a hoof, the kid shut down and stared off into space.
When the morning tasks were done, and Luke trekked to the house, August jogged up to me. “He’s on, eh, service?”
I crossed my arms. “What do you mean?”
Latino Popstar crossed his arms back. “He looks like he don’t wanna be here. Like maybe he’s in trouble?”
“Community service?”
“Sí. Yes, community service.”
“No. He’s here by choice.” I widened my stance. “He’s a good kid. Just not a fan of new people.”
“Actually,” Ava interjected, “Eli runs a youth program for troubled kids. To boost their self-confidence.”
“It’s not a program,” I said. “It’s just Luke.”
“And Marley,” she added.
I waved her off. “That’s different.”
August stared at me, then dropped his arms and smiled. Always smiling. What the hell? This wasn’t a photoshoot. “I’m gonna go for now. Maybe I come back tonight, when it’s cooler, to help exercise the horses?”
I didn’t need his help. So far, I hadn’t seen anything impressive about this guy. But Ava stood behind him, holding her hands together in prayer, and pressing them into her pouty lips. “Fine.”
They walked together to his truck, and I stalked into the tack stall, looking for something to do. I couldn’t deal with Luke and Marley right now. Wasn’t up for confronting Dad about his business numbers. I ran a hand over my hat. Just how good a friend was August?
“You know …” Ava said. I turned to find her leaning on the opening of the stall. “If you bumped everything up an hour, you’d finish before it got this miserable.” Sweat highlighted her face, her arms.
I glanced down at the darker areas of my shirt. “Luke’s a teen. I’m lucky I can get him here before noon.”
“Fair point.” She puffed out a laugh. “I don’t know what I’m going to do when Nina becomes a teenager.”
Guess we were gonna pretend nothing changed. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“Hopefully.” Her smile faded. “It’s just, losing her dad so young? And I keep disrupting our lives. That’s a lot of trauma.” She ran a hand through ridiculously shiny hair that she wore down. For him? “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Meaning?”
“The whole thing with Steven.”
For a second, I’d thought she meant hitching a ride with me.
“I was so focused on saving money,” she said. “On hiding my sadness so it wouldn’t affect her. Trying to keep things normal. I mean, he is terrible with kids!” Her hands flew up. “How did I miss that red flag?”
I shrugged. “I heard somewhere that five percent of people are colorblind.” She laughed, and it stole the anger outta me. “It’s better she’s young. My mom died when I was eleven. It sucked being aware of all the things I was missing.”
Ava’s sympathetic look was just as pretty as all the other ones. “That must’ve been so hard.”
“The worst,” I said. “Cancer stole my mom, but it also took away Dad. It broke him. Then I made it worse by being an impossible hellion.”
“I’m sure you weren’t that bad. You were dealing with losing your mom, too.”
Ava’s phone pinged a bunch of times in a row, breaking the moment. A moment I was kind of enjoying. She pulled it out of her pocket, and her face twisted in confusion.
“What’s wrong?” I resisted the urge to demand her phone. “Is it Steven?”
Her eyes flicked up to mine, then back to her screen. “Huh? I–I don’t know.” As she scrolled, her face fell until she looked like she was gonna cry. “This can’t be happening!”
“What? What is it? What happened?” I crossed to stand next to her and read the screen as she opened an email.
“Someone just opened a bunch of credit cards under my name!”
“What, like right now?”
“Yes!” She opened another email that looked the same as the first.
“Can’t you call the fraudulent department or something?”
“That’s not the point! Someone has my info.” She tilted her head back and groaned. “I’m so stupid. I told Steven I was getting my loan preapproval today.” Her eyes slid to mine, glassy and full of fury. “This will freeze my credit!”
“Why would you tell him that?”
“I don’t know,” she moaned. “He caught me off guard when he came by my complex yesterday–”
“Wait, he knows where you live?”
“Yes. Apparently, he’s friends with my landlord.”
My fingers curled into fists. First, he shows up at our ranch when Ava’s got an interview, now he’s going to her place! Was he tracking her?
Her phone started ringing, and her voice shook when she answered it. “Hello? Yes, this is she.” But then her tone shifted. “Oh, hi!” I studied her profile in the pause. “Of course.” She offered me a small, hopeful smile, mouthing “job.” “For paperwork? Sure. How about tomorrow?”
How did she do it? Switch gears like that?
She ended the call, took a deep breath, then stared at me with wide, searching eyes.
My boots itched to move closer. But they didn’t know the difference between casual flirting and booty calls, and apparently neither did I.
The thing is, I’d thought about her like that.
More than once. Knowing full well it wouldn’t be anything long-term.
Leave it to a kid to serve up the harsh truth.
“I should go,” she said. “I have to, um … I have a lot of things.”
“Yeah.” It wasn’t right. She shouldn’t have to deal with all that bullcrap. “Is there anything I can do?”
She pulled a face that looked almost painful. “I don’t suppose you can watch Nina tomorrow? I can ask you dad–”
“Yeah. Of course. Whatever you need.” God, I was such a sap. She’s parading around with her new, old best friend, and I’m begging for scraps.
“Thanks.” She scooped up her hair and tied it back with the hair band from around her wrist. “Hey, do you want me to swing by later? When August comes back?”
A better question–did she want to swing by to see August?
“It just seemed like …” she paused, chewing on that lower lip, put on this earth to taunt me. “It’s just, I was really hoping you two would get along.”
I ran a hand over my hat. “No. Get your stuff done. I promise I won’t start a fight.” At least, I’d try. She hesitated, like she didn’t believe me. “Scout’s honor.” I held up three fingers. Something I hadn’t done in decades.
She nodded and walked out of the tack stall, and all I could think was, Is this day over yet?
I stared at my dad in disbelief. “You’ve been pulling from your retirement fund?”
Dad leaned against the kitchen counter and took a swing of his beer. “I’m in my retirement.”
“Yeah, but this is a business. It should make money! It shouldn’t be using what you’ll need when you’re not business-ing anymore.
” Even without a degree, I knew that! I glanced out the kitchen window, wondering when August planned to show up.
“Dad, what happens when you run out of retirement?” This cowboy fantasy could drain his savings, and he didn’t even care!
“Do you need all of it? What if you just kept the house?”
“I don’t need the ranch,” he said after a long pause. The way he said it sounded like there was a “but” coming.
I’d done the math. Even with a full stable, he’d barely break even. Didn’t help that he had the lowest boarding fee in Arizona.
“I’m trying to help you,” I said, “so you’re set up when I leave.”
Dad put his empty bottle in the sink. “I gotta pee.”
I watched him leave the kitchen. What wasn’t he saying? Why skip out on his taxes? That wasn’t like him.
My phone rattled on the table next to me, and I had to blink at the screen, sure I was seeing things. My sister never called. Not me, anyway. “Hey Hans. Did you butt-dial me?”
“You’re at Pop’s, right? Is he around? He’s not answering his phone.”
Wow, not even a “Hi, Eli, how are you?” My eyes cut to the wall that separated the kitchen from the bathroom in the entryway. “He’s busy. Why?”