Chapter 10
KENZIE HAD NO idea how far she’d gone before Indie slowed of her own accord. Lathered sweat lay in foamy patches along the mare’s neck. Chest heaving, the animal slowed to a brisk walk, her head bobbing with pleasure at the hard run.
Knotting the reins, Kenzie rested them and then laid them over the horse’s withers before lying down, her spine parallel to the horse’s.
A little hissing noise—air between her teeth—instructed the mare to drop to a far more casual pace.
The clop-clop-clop of the horse’s hooves on dry, winter-hardened ground sounded out a rhythm roughly one-fourth as fast as Kenzie’s heart rate.
Somewhere nearby, cows called their calves to their sides, disturbed by the sudden appearance of horse and rider.
Let them chatter. It’s what parents do.
And just like that, everything her dad had said to her raked across Kenzie’s raw nerves again. Her shoulders twitched.
Indie shied away from the movement, the skin along Kenzie’s back shifting hard in protest.
“Easy,” Kenzie said, calm and firm, as she resituated herself in order to keep from ending up in the dirt. The walk to the barn would be a long one.
The horse snorted and tossed her head.
“You and everyone else, always with your opinions.” She rubbed her wind-burned cheeks and stared up the darkening sky.
The bone-chillingly cold air was infused with the crisp scent of snow.
The sky would let loose before sundown. The cloud cover hung around like the wind’s hired muscle, conveying to everyone that things were going to get ugly. It was only a matter of time.
As if in agreement, Indie kept her stalwart pace but made a wide circle that pointed them toward the barn.
Kenzie wasn’t ready to return, but she didn’t fight the horse’s instinct when it came to the weather.
Or anything else, really. She just hated the idea of facing the Covingtons right now, having to load Indie and all their gear and start the arduous journey home.
And through miserable weather, no less. Just..
.ugh. But staying here wouldn’t be an option.
Not after today’s confrontation with Ty.
She hadn’t meant for it to get out of hand, but the opportunity to save face, to make the alleged partnership legitimate instead of a lie, had been too tempting.
That whole “resistance is futile” thing proved true.
Hurting Ty hadn’t been anywhere on her impromptu agenda, but despite her good intentions, it had happened.
The trust between them now fractured, she had no idea how to move forward.
There would be no sidestepping the truth—that she’d tried to force his hand where it came to securing Gizmo’s stud rights for the Malones’ Quarter horse breeding program.
But he’d hurt her, too, when he’d said he’d sell off some of his stock.
He would do it, violate that almost sacrosanct rule of keeping your best blood at all costs, simply to ensure he would be done with her.
And that was what this was mostly about.
The undisguised anger in his gaze had said he wanted her and her horse gone yesterday.
After all, Indie was a mare. If he wasn’t diligent in protecting Gizmo’s honor, Indie may seduce him, get pregnant and demand child support.
“Such an idiot.” Kenzie huffed out a breath, watching it condense on the air into a thick, white cloud. “We’re not seducing his horse.”
Really, though, did he hate her so much, think so little of her and her breeding program, that he’d go so far as to cull his own herd to satisfy the debt between them?
She thought she’d been clear that simply allowing her to introduce Gizmo’s genetics into her line would render the debt paid in full.
Ty’s selling off a handful of horses he’d worked so hard to develop simply wouldn’t do. There had to be another solution, one where they could both get what they wanted.
Drumming her fingers against one thigh, she didn’t realize the wind had shifted directions and now blew straight out of the north.
Since she was headed south, that put the thirty-mile-per-hour “breeze” at her back.
..and carried away any sound coming at her with an into-the-wind approach.
Including that of the oncoming horse and rider.
Kenzie had no forewarning other than Indie’s sudden halt.
The mare raised her head, ears trained toward the stranger and unknown horse.
Scrambling to sit up with as much grace as she could muster, Kenzie reached out to grab the reins. She curled her fingers around the thin leather strips but couldn’t stop herself from sucking in a sharp breath.
Her lungs promptly froze.
She’d been preoccupied, but not so much she hadn’t realized the cold had been leaching into her and stealing what mediocre warmth she had left as the wind hammered her. The problem? She hadn’t realized just how cold she’d become. And cold killed.
Eli reined in beside her, his mount a good deal taller than Indie. The man’s furious stare pierced Kenzie with unabashed animosity. “What the blue blazes were you thinking, charging off into an unknown ranch like that with weather threatening to thrash us within the hour?”
That he thought to ride out here to make sure she was okay? She could almost call the action chivalrous. Almost. That he was railing at her the way a concerned parent would a small child? She couldn’t, in good conscience, call that anything but overbearing. How typical.
Ignoring Eli, she nudged Indie into a swift walk.
Eli wordlessly wheeled his mount in beside her and kept the same pace.
“If there’s something in particular you want, spill it,” she called out over the now-howling wind. “Silent lawyers make me nervous.”
“They should.” He glanced at her before settling his Stetson lower over his brow to block the wind. “What’s going on between you and Ty?”
There it was—the question she didn’t want to answer, mostly because she didn’t know how. She could offer a thousand speculative responses, but there was only one answer she had that would be accurate, though not terribly revealing. “Nothing.” Not at the moment anyway.
“You claimed him as yours in the arena,” Eli countered. “That doesn’t say ‘nothing’ to me.”
Damn. He had to have an elephant’s memory, didn’t he? She was so tired of dancing around the truth, trying to make sure she kept her stories straight, that she gave up and blurted out the truth. “We were friends and, until the accident, occasional lovers. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Eli nodded, not sparing her a glance but rather seeming to file her answer away for future retrieval. They rode in silence. The first snowflakes began to fall as he spoke again. “Where does the partnership regarding Gizmo come into play, then?”
She swallowed so hard she nearly choked.
There was no answer she could offer that wouldn’t expose her as a liar, nothing she could say that would absolve her of the fact that she’d manipulated everyone in order to do what Ty had asked of her, even if he didn’t remember asking.
Painted into an uncomfortable corner, Kenzie chose to say nothing. It was her best—only—defense.
Eli kept shooting short glares her way, waiting on her answer. He finally snapped. “Look. I know you and Ty are at odds. I get that. I’m not asking you to spell out specifics, but I have to understand what you mean—or meant—to him.”
She twisted to face the man at her side. “What are you talking about?”
“You raced by the house earlier.”
“So?”
“That action got him out of his chair.” Eli reined his horse in front of Indie and stopped Kenzie and her mare. “On his own. He got up and stepped to the window on his own.”
Torn between cheering at Ty’s initiative and wanting to rage at the fact that he wouldn’t do more for himself, she again defaulted to remaining silent. It was safer that way.
Eli glared at her.
She returned his stare without apology.
His curse was hot enough it should have melted the snow gathering on his hat brim.
Kenzie only arched a brow.
“You’re baiting me, so I won’t apologize for my language.
” He dragged a hand down his face, over his mouth, and then wrapped it around the back of his neck.
Tension sang off his body. Sensing his anxiety, his horse fidgeted.
Eli ordered the animal to settle. The command proved as effective as telling an alligator to go vegan. The big gelding wanted none of it.
“If you don’t calm down, you’re going to end up in the dirt,” Kenzie offered with casual indifference.
“Probably.” Eli relaxed his grip on the reins, settling his butt into the cantle before visibly forcing his shoulders to relax. “I’m just going to lay it out there, then. Cade and I are both sure you’re lying about this whole partnership thing.”
She sucked in a breath and the pervasive cold burned her lungs. Before she regained the ability to speak, and therefore respond, Eli pressed on.
“Problem is, we can’t prove it. Ty doesn’t remember anything from the point he entered the ring to the actual moment he woke in the hospital.
You could make any number of absurd claims and there’d be nothing we could do to refute it.
” He shot her a shrewd glance. “That doesn’t mean the absurdity of the claim will hold in court, mind you. ”
“Get to it already.”
One corner of his mouth twitched upward before he forced it into neutral submission. “Cade and I talked about it, and I drew the short straw of discussing our plan with you.”
“So far, you haven’t discussed a dang thing,” she ground out, her nerves so frayed she wondered they weren’t sparking.
“We want you to stay and get Ty on his feet—”
“No.” Her response was immediate.