Had he been this—
Two
Rachel was three bales deep into the herd’s dinner when she was interrupted.
“Ride me.” A booming voice ricocheted around the barn, rending Rachel’s calm and startling the ladies into echoing lows and shuffling hoofs.
She whipped her head toward the voice, ready to give a thorough tongue lashing to whatever filthy-mouthed ranch-hand thought now was the time, but her voice froze in her throat.
The biggest man she’d ever seen was heaving emotional breaths in the middle of the barn, his hulking form giving the impression that he filled the massive space from gate to gate.
It took several embarrassing moments for Rachel’s mind to comprehend the soft, red hide stretching over his muscular form, the bull head and horns atop the human body.
“Oh,” she finally said, shoulders dropping from her ears.
“Eric.” Her grandma’s adopted minotaur who had taken off for the city some years ago.
Rachel had grown up every summer with the miraculous creature, mucking stalls and hauling hay shoulder to shoulder as if he were any other neighbor kid earning cash for the season. Had he been this overwhelming then?
Had he been this—
“Ride me.” He said again, honeyed gaze liquid heat, fists clenched alongside his tight jeans and neatly pressed flannel. Rachel couldn’t help noticing the flash of gold on his wrist, the crisp black boots she was sure were expensive just from their gleam.
He’d done well for himself then, in the big city somewhere far away.
“Does Gran know this is how you greet folk now?” She tilted the brim of her Kansas City Chief’s cap up to get a better look at the minotaur, resisting the urge to suck her teeth at his impressive form. No. He had not been this hot the last time she saw him.
“For the rodeo next week. For the money.” He stomped a booted hoof into the dirt, snorting with impatience.
“Wait,” she shook her head, trying to clear it, finally dropping the bucket with a metallic clang that set the cows to lowing again. “How do you know about that?”
“Don’t waste—”
“—my time or yours,” Rachel finished the Gran-ism she’d heard a thousand times before. She sighed, planting both hands on her hips and facing Eric. “She told you.”
He nodded, the gold ring in his nose swinging lightly.
“So, you know she won’t give me the farm anyway, and I’m strictly forbidden from ‘risking my neck.’” Rachel spat in the dirt, the words venomous on her tongue.
All she’d wanted from her first summer here to now was to carry on the careful, intentional practice Gran had sown in the very dirt she’d be buried in.
Nothing else in the whole world made more sense to Rachel than this farm with its peeling shutters and fussy herd.
But Gran wouldn’t see it—insisted there was something bigger or better out in the world for her only kin.
Honestly, Rachel blamed Eric, who had always fit into their family as some pseudo firstborn son—off in the city, chasing dreams, making it big.
After him, Gran refused to believe success could bloom in her own front yard, pushing Rachel year after year to apply to colleges far away, to explore artistic endeavors, and even once duping her into attending a month-long workshop on finding her life’s purpose that Rachel walked out of after day one.
“You can’t risk your neck if I never throw you.”
“No.” Rachel returned to the task at hand, ignoring the insult sliding over her skin.
Eric let out a frustrated groan, running a hand over his snout. “What do you mean ‘no?’ You wanna win the money or not?”
“Not by cheating.” She returned to the half undone bale on the truck bed next to her, sticking the pitchfork in and hauling another chunk off before dropping it in front of the eager cows.
“What does it matter? You get the money by staying on the bull. There’s nothing in the rules that says the bull can’t decide who stays and who falls.”
“Because the bull doesn’t usually work the stock market.”
“What if I try to throw you?”
“Then we’re back at square one—Gran won’t allow it.”
“We could practice. You could learn how to fall safely—like a stuntman in the movies.”
Rachel shook her head, brown ponytail flying. “I don’t need anyone thinking I can’t hold my own. That’s not the reputation I want to start on and it’s not the reputation I’ve built for myself or this place.”
“Rachel—”
“The answer is no.”
“And I’m assuming you won’t let me give you the money.”
Rachel snorted in response, not bothering to look up from another sheath of hay.
“You Nelson women are going to actually kill me.”
“Well, we won’t be your problem much longer.
” She continued distributing the herd’s dinner.
She tried not to think of Gran in the house, getting frailer by the day, standing as straight as she always had as if she could scare off death with a stiff upper lip.
That familiar twist in her stomach returned, writhing deep inside as if to signal that something was wrong but there were no words for what, exactly.
As if she didn’t already know—as if she didn’t rise before the sun every morning dreading the sound of Gran’s strained breathing from down the hall, dreading the forced monotony of her daily tasks as the only thing that kept her moving. The alternative was to sit and watch and do nothing.
At least, so long as she respected Gran’s wishes.
Rachel glanced up from her grip on the pitchfork, startled by the pain stretched across the minotaur’s face. He cared. Maybe as much as she did, in his own way.
She scanned his strange features, letting herself sink into the heat of his eyes, the restless twitch of his boot in the dirt. Something in the back of her mind whispered—the piece of her that couldn’t let this fight go, that railed against her obedience.
What if.
As if sensing her resolve tilting, Eric whispered, “Please, Rachel.”
She straightened, putting a firm hand on one hip. “Like a stuntman, huh?”
He nodded, eyes tracking the slightest move as if she were a spooked horse that might knock him ‘round the world. She tried not to writhe under the scrutiny or the pleasurable heat it sent cascading across her skin. The barn was suddenly too small, too crowded, with Eric’s massive form taking up that much more air.
Her breath was tight in her chest, and she had to resist the urge to fan herself for relief.
Instead, Rachel waved a cool hand through the air in a dismissive gesture, grabbing the pitch fork and strutting off with purpose to the far exit of the barn.
“So long as you perform better than you dress,” she called over her shoulder, sure she’d crossed some invisible threshold from common sense to insanity.