Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Evan woke up the morning after he got Max off to the airport and on his way back to Boston in Sam’s guest room, the bed like a damn cloud, and long enough that his feet didn’t hang off.
Hallelujah.
He’d taken Sam and Hillary out for supper. Her nausea had been done for the day, and she’d tucked into her all-day breakfast pancake supper at Denny’s with gusto and half a bottle of syrup.
He and Sam had stayed up after she went to bed and played cribbage, and he felt more relaxed than he had since he’d come to New Mexico.
It was… nice.
He could hear whistling coming from somewhere, and he peeked out of the window to see Sam on the back of a gray horse, the animal and man moving like they were a single beast.
Wild.
Because he’d never seen Sam interact with the animals at the rodeo, one way or the other.
This man, though, he was riding and comfortable, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, carefully moving calves through one gate to another.
This wasn’t a bull fighter. This was a rancher. Clearly he had been up well before the sun getting work done, and now he was out doing something—Evan had no idea what it was for.
Evan watched for a few more minutes, and then Sam rode around the side of the house and disappeared. He headed to the bathroom to do his business and then got dressed before he went looking to see if maybe he could find himself a cup of coffee.
Sam had shown him where the coffee maker and the cups were last night, just in case he wasn’t inside when Evan got up.
Evan had scoffed at that because he was used to getting up for an early morning workout or early morning practice, but this put him to shame.
Sure enough, there was a pot of coffee sitting on the warmer, so he grabbed a cup and he put some milk in it before he poured himself some. He was leaning against the counter still, legs stretched out in front of him as he rested his hips there, when Sam came strolling in maybe ten minutes later.
“Hey, buenos dias.” Sam said giving him a grin. He smelled like horses and a bit like sweat. It was actually a pretty interesting scent.
“Hey, good morning. You already unsaddled and all that stuff?”
“Yeah, I was just taking my gray ghost out for a spin around the inner pasture for a little exercise.”
“Do you exercise all the horses every day, or…”
Sam shook his head and went to pour himself another cup of coffee. His cup had been sitting on the counter with a little residue in it.
“Nah, I usually just turn them out and let them exercise themselves, and they range all day. But I do like to work at least one of them a day when I’m home.”
“Cool. I’d like to meet some of them.” He hadn’t touched a horse since he was about thirteen, maybe, and he’d gone to a friend’s house to spend the night. It would still be kind of fun.
“Sure, any time man. What do you want for breakfast?”
Evan paused with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. “What are my options?”
Hopefully it hadn’t sounded like too much of an inuendo because it had popped out, and he meant it on a multitude of levels.
Sam stared at him, seeming to focus on his mouth. “Uh. I got eggs. We could have beans and tortillas. I could take you out, or I could run you over to Mama’s. She’ll have something good, for sure.”
Well, he definitely didn’t want to go out. There was way too much to explore here. “What do you think Hillary will want? I don’t want to upset her or her stomach.”
“Ah, she went to see her mama in Albuquerque for the day. She’ll probably spend the night. There’s no way to know for sure, of course, but she was wanting to do some shopping, and her mom has today off, so they were going to do some spa thing.”
“You said she was a reporter?”
Sam nodded. “A good one, too. As smart as a whip, and she’s got a nose for it. We’re real proud of her.”
“I bet you are. Let’s have eggs, tortillas… Breakfast tacos are a thing, right?”
“I like beans and tortillas, so I’ll probably have that, but I’ll totally make eggs. Scrambled?”
“Perfect.” God, this was weird. “So, what’s on your plan for today?”
Sam shrugged, those dark eyes totally checking him out. “I hadn’t really made one yet. I mean, I have to make sure everything’s cleaned and ready to leave on Friday. Got to make sure the trailer is ready to go. That’s probably the biggest thing.”
“Trailer?”
Sam started cracking eggs. “Yep. Got a trailer that I pull behind my truck to events. It saves money on a hotel.”
Wait. What? “No one puts you in a hotel?”
Sam snorted, obviously tickled. “Hell, I ain’t fancy. I get paid per event. I’m just a contractor, so if I can take my own stuff, I do and just park my trailer at a campground. I don’t have to worry about bed bugs or flat pillows, and I can grill out. It’s nicer.”
Evan’d never thought about it. He just assumed someone put the rodeo workers in hotels.
“I got my first trailer when Hil was a baby. I didn’t want her to be in hotels with all these cowboys. This way, I could bring my folks or one of my sisters—whoever wanted to come—to watch her while I was at work. It was very cozy, and I just thought it was safer.”
“Damn, that’s nice though. I think that’s cool for you.” Personally, he thought a hotel with housekeeping and room service sounded nicer, but he could understand a bit of rustic.
“Well, then, of course, when she started riding, I had to have a trailer that held a horse. So now I have a nice one. I don’t carry a horse ninety percent of the time, but I will once she’s not pregnant anymore.
” Sam threw a bowl of beans in the microwave and started stirring eggs.
“But at any rate, I’ve got to get that all put together—make sure there’s food and that kind of thing. ”
“I’d love to see it.” He wanted to see Sam’s life. Of course, Friday didn’t seem long enough to get to know all of it. That was a stupid thought. Of course it wasn’t. Sam wasn’t a get-to-know.
Sam was a hope-to-fuck.
“So where are you going on Friday?”
“I drive from here to El Paso, work that weekend, then drive up to Flagstaff. After that weekend, I have a big event—a week-long fair that’ll make me some good money. Then I’ll be home for three weeks, four.”
“Wow, and Hillary comes with you?”
“She does a lot, and I kind of expected her to ride all three of these events, but obviously that’s not going to happen.”
“No, I mean like you said, she’s not riding because she’s pregnant, but even if she was riding pregnant, she wouldn’t be going right now because all she does is puke.” He’d heard her this morning. God, that had to suck so hard. Poor girl. It sucked.
He wasn’t the kind of guy who got all urpy if somebody else was puking.
If he did that, he would never have made it through hockey. There was a lot of barfing in training camps when kids were young, between nerves and the exertion on ice.
Sam shook his head sorrowfully. “Yeah. Luckily, she’s out and about this morning with her momma, so we don’t have to worry about her getting all upset about eggs.”
Evan snorted. “So Flagstaff, is that near the Grand Canyon?”
“Not too far. Closer to there than here.”
“Hmm. I haven’t ever managed to get there. Some day.”
Sam gave him a look like he was speculating a bit. “You should come with me.”
“I should?” His own eyebrows flew up.
“Yeah, I can always take you from Flag to the Grand Canyon. You can see everything, and then if nothing else, I can drop you off somewhere you can get to Phoenix real easily and get to the airport. I mean, if you have to head out.” Sam pulled the eggs off and then held out the pan to him.
“Is that scrambling enough for you, or do you like them hard?”
“Those look great, thanks.”
Sam dumped half the eggs out on a plate and put the pan back on the heat. “I figured. I ain’t never known a Yankee that didn’t like soft curds for their eggs, but we like them hard around here.”
He had to hoot at that. “I can eat them brown and hard as a rock if I have to. It’s no big deal. I’ve eaten a lot of buffet breakfasts in hotels.”
“Do they feed you in hockey, or what?”
“On the road, you mean? We’re usually on our own for breakfast and dinner unless there’s some kind of a meeting or a charity thing or something like that.
” He waved his hand dismissively. “We eat a lot of hotel breakfasts if they have a free buffet, and most of us just grab stuff to either put in our mini fridge or eat out for dinner. But lunches they usually provide for us if we’re at practice or if we’re going to have a game in the early afternoon. ”
“We’re on our own pretty much most of the time unless the sponsor wants to take us out to dinner,” Sam said. He got the tortillas heated up, pulled the beans out, and started assembling his own plate, adding shredded cheese and salsa.
He followed along, being super easy with the hot stuff. “So you’d really take me with you? You’re not just offering to be polite?”
Sam wiped his mouth with a napkin and smiled. “I’m pretty used to having Hillary on the road with me. It’s way easier to be a two-person operation, but you don’t have to. Do you need to get back? I get it.”
Evan thought that sounded amazing. Not just because he wanted to see more of the desert southwest than he’d ever gotten to see, because they generally flew to those places, but because of Sam.
He really thought he could get to liking this guy, and he really thought Sam was hot as fuck. That might be inconvenient, but no more inconvenient than staying in his house, he guessed.
“I’d love to come. I’m excited. I’ve never got to see a lot of this stuff, and I’m curious. I’ve got some time free, quite a bit, and I could work on the road if I’m just answering emails.”
“Hell yeah, we can road trip then.” Sam seemed tickled to death, and he liked to see it.
“That’s what we’ll do. What do I need to do?”
“I’ll get you tickets to the different events, and you can learn more about rodeo than you ever wanted to.”
“Cool, cool, cool.” Evan was kind of unexpectedly surprised and excited. “You tell me what I need to do.”