Chapter 3
BECK
Ididn’t sleep worth a damn.
I spent half the night tossing and turning, listening to the house settle, and hoping to hear her down the hall.
Not in a creepy way.
Just the way you're aware of a fault line you didn't know ran under your house until the dishes start rattling.
When I see the sun, I give up and hobble out to the kitchen, because lying in bed thinking about Laurel is a fool's errand.
I get the coffee going, grinding the beans for the French press since Hollywood spoiled me for anything less.
I'm halfway through telling myself today's gonna be fine, that I’ll be a pleasant boss who won’t flirt with his gorgeous employee…when she walks in.
And I forget everything.
She's in a thin robe—cream-colored and belted in a hasty knot at her waist—over a gray tank top, and a pair of fuzzy slippers that have seen better days. Her hair's shoved up in a knot already losing the battle.
She’s definitely not a morning person.
And it’s fucking adorable.
"Mornin'," I say, just to check if she’s sleepwalking.
“Oh, morning.” She squints at me. "Is there coffee?" Her voice is deliciously rough.
I gesture to the press on the counter.
She turns to find it. “Thank god,” she mutters, and grabs the mug I left for her there.
She pours, sips, makes a small purr that has my cock taking notice in my sweat pants.
I adjust just before she turns around with the mug cradled in both hands.
She huffs. "You look like you slept worse than I did."
I push off the counter, wincing when I forget the ankle for half a second. "Probably."
She blows on her coffee. Her eyes are sleepy and a little bit greener in this light, and there's a pillow crease on her cheek that I’d love to press my lips to. "You get any sleep at all?"
"Some." Her gaze flicks down over me, as if she’s still not awake enough to realize she’s checkin’ me out, then takes a long pull off the mug as if annoyed
"I couldn't settle either," I offer.
She wanders past me to the window. She stands there with the mug at her chin, gazing out at Riot in the paddock. My eyes catch on the curve of her neck and my head fills with bad ideas.
"He been out long?" she asks.
"Since five thirty. He's an early riser."
"Mm." She doesn't turn around. "I made some notes last night. I'll get him in the round pen first…see where he's at on the ground before I throw a saddle on. That work for you?"
"You're the boss."
She turns, and I grin. "What? Let’s be real, here."
She smirks into her mug. "More like you're being a smartass."
A laugh punches out of me. "I thought I was flirting."
She rolls her eyes and brushes past me on her way back toward the hall, and the brief, accidental drag of her hip against my thigh has every nerve on alert.
She just keeps moving as if she’s made up her mind that I'm barking up the wrong tree.
"I'll be out in twenty," she calls over her shoulder.
"You want breakfast?"
She shakes her head. “I’ll just grab something small later.”
She's back in less than twenty—hair in a tight braid down her back, jeans, boots, a black tank under an open flannel, and leather work gloves in her back pocket. She’s stuffing an actual notebook in the other pocket with a small pen clipped to it.
She really does make notes, I guess.
I watch her cross the porch and head down to the round pen, and I tell my ankle to suck it up, and I follow.
I catch up to her at the barn, slower than I prefer, but she pretends not to notice, which I appreciate.
I show her around the stable first. Riot's stall, the wash rack, the feed room with the bins labeled in my mama's handwriting from way back.
Then the tack room, with a couple of my saddles on the racks along the wall, Riot's bridles on the hooks, lunge lines coiled on a peg by the door, brushes and hoof picks in a wooden caddy I made one winter when I was bored.
"Help yourself to anything," I tell her. "If you can't find it, holler. If I'm not around, it's probably in the barn office or one of the tack trunks."
She nods, and I can see her mentally re-organizing my hook system into something more sensible, and I don’t take it personally at all.
In fact, it’s just another thing that bewitches me about her.
"Round pen's that way," I say, pointing through the open back door of the barn. "Gate's a little sticky. Lift and pull."
"Got it." She heads out without waiting for me, which is fine, since watching her walk away is pure pleasure.
I ease myself onto the top rail of the round pen, propping a crutch against the post and keeping the bad foot dangling. She's already inside, lunge line in one hand, attached to Riot’s halter.
What I'm watching for, mostly, is whether or not yesterday was a fluke. Whether she got Riot's vibe check by some weird alignment of the stars and cosmic dust, or whether she actually has a gift.
And inside thirty seconds I have my answer.
She moves him out to the edge of the pen while she stands in the center, encouraging him forward along the circle.
He flicks one ear toward her. She doesn't say anything.
She doesn't have to. She just lifts the line a fraction and clucks once, and he picks up a trot as if he's been doing it for her his whole life.
She watches him for a full lap or two, and coaxes him into a lope. Then she changes his direction with a gesture so subtle I almost miss it. He turns through the change clean, and picks the lope right back up on the new lead.
Damn.
She does this for ten minutes. Walk, trot, lope, change, lope, trot, walk, change…
and so on. No flair. No big movements. Every cue is small.
By the end of it Riot is licking and chewing—a typical sign of tension release.
His gaze is soft, his head is low, and he's offering her his attention without her having to ask for it.
She stops him, drops the line, and walks up to his shoulder. She pats and rubs his neck, murmuring praise, and I pick up good boy as she scratches his face until he’s nudging her elbow.
I’ve watched a hundred trainers work this horse. Some of them famous. Some of them the best in the country.
He’s run roughshod over most of them.
Laurel did in ten minutes what those trainers couldn’t do over weeks.
And she did it without a whip or yelling.
I think I’m in love.
I’m falling for this woman like a kid falling out of a tree—fast, hard, and painfully. Because this woman will definitely leave bruises.
She glances over and I tip my chin. "Lookin' good out there."
She smiles. “Thanks."
She walks Riot in a slow lap to cool him off.
I sit on the fence for the rest of the session, watching in awe.
By late afternoon I've watched her work Riot twice (the roll of her hips in the saddle near killed me), eaten lunch across the table from her (a turkey and cheese sandwich she insisted on making us, though I’d eat my own boot if she handed it to me on a plate), then I spent an hour on the porch pretending to read while she went off on a hike up the ridge by herself.
I've learned she likes to take walks. She’ll disappear for a bit, then comes back looking a little less wound up.
I'd hike too if I could put weight on this damn foot.
The ankle is screaming enough by the time the sun starts going down. Between the PT the doc has me doing, the limping around the property, and the sitting awkwardly on the fence rail too long today—I’m cooked.
What I need is a long, hot, soak.
I’ve only ever taken a shower since I busted my ankle, but Doc said baths are fine as long as I keep the ankle out. And right now the idea of sinking into hot water is the only thing keeping me from chewing through the wall.
I haul myself to the primary bath and start the tub running. Hot as it'll go. I dig around under the sink and find an old bottle of bubble bath my mama had—lavender and eucalyptus, according to the label. Whatever…I hurt everywhere.
I dump in a generous pour. The water foams up white and the whole bathroom smells like a spa I went to in Beverly Hills once.
I sit on the toilet and remove the brace, then peel off my shirt, jeans, and boxers. By the time I'm naked and balanced on my good foot, holding onto the vanity, I'm sweating and breathing through my teeth.
The tub is one of those deep clawfoot numbers my mama picked out forty years ago with high sides and designed for a woman half my size. The grab bar I had installed last year when my aunt came to stay runs along the wall right next to it.
My plan is to keep my hand on the grab bar, sit on the edge of the tub and swivel my good leg in first, then use it to lower down slowly.
I get the good leg in and stabilize my foot on the porcelain. I ease my weight onto it, hand white-knuckled on the grab bar—and the wet ball of my heel slides a half inch on the slick tub bottom.
It's just a wobble. But I’ve spent weeks not trusting my ankle, so I panic and grab for the nearest thing.
The shampoo shelf.
And the whole thing comes off in my hand.
"FUCK."
Luckily, most of my weight was on my foot, so I just sink down into the water harder than I wanted to…and end up taking the shelf and three bottles down with me.
Plastic clatters off the porcelain, and water sloshes over the side in a small tidal wave.
I lift my bad ankle, which miraculously didn’t hit anything, and rest it on the edge of the tub.
Then I hear Laurel in the bedroom. “Beck? I heard something crash. Are you okay?”
And then she’s there.
Thankfully, my important bits are covered in lavender-eucalyptus bubbles. But I’m somehow holding the broken shelf in my left hand like a trophy.
She’s surveying the scene, stepping around the wreckage on the floor, the upturned bottles of shampoo and conditioner, the broken shelf—and to her credit, she doesn’t laugh.
She does, however, raise one eyebrow. "Did you hurt your ankle…or anything else?"
I toss on my grin. "If I did, would you kiss it better?"
She shakes her head. “You’re incorrigible.”
"Then just my pride."