Poker Face
SLADE
“Yo, Slade.” Tanner stands in his stirrups, already not watching the cattle. “Your pipes bust or something? What’s with all the painters?”
I’m with my Dad, my younger brother and our informally adopted brother Rafe, who’s also Wild Rose’s foreman, trying to get our cattle from one pasture to another. The cattle are being difficult, which suits me fine. I don’t shy away from a challenge.
I’ve had years of professional challenge playing in front of crowds, of being watched and evaluated and written about.
I don’t like that part of it, but it’s tolerable because I can escape it and come home to this.
Dust and horses and uncooperative animals on a cold September morning.
My family land. My brothers’ voices carrying across the grass.
Nobody watching. Nobody keeping score.
“Redoing some stuff at the house,” I say in answer to Tanner.
“Where’s your new dog?”
“Dropped her off to be watched.”
I keep everything as vague as possible, which isn’t unusual for me. Besides, my brothers wouldn’t suspect that I’ve dropped off “my” dog with a beautiful woman I can’t stop thinking about.
“What broke?” Tanner pushes.
“Nothing.”
His brow furrows. “You’re just repainting for the hell of it?”
“Why not?”
“Because you sleep on a mattress on the floor. What do you care about what color your walls are painted?”
“I need furniture, so I hired a designer. Designer said the walls need new paint color, so they’re getting painted.”
“You hired a designer,” he repeats, obviously baffled.
Rafe glances over once. “Who’d you hire?”
“Local firm.”
“What’s the name?” my father pipes up.
I don’t give my family details. Details become questions become a conversation I don’t want to have.
This detail in particular is one I have no intention of handing over.
The detail being a certain gorgeous pink-haired designer who picks out ridiculous squeaky toys that have somehow ended up in my home, along with the three-legged dog I’m fostering because it puts a smile on her face.
The designer I’ve been finding reasons to stay with twenty minutes longer every morning this week.
Tanner would never let me hear the end of it if he knew. Let alone if it got back to Walker, who had to put up with us giving him shit for turning into a lovesick fool over his now-wife. He’d just love to turn the tables on me.
More importantly, there’s nothing to tell. Lila is my designer. She’ll be in my life for a few months and then I’ll leave for another city and another season and she’ll have probably been snatched up by some other cowboy by then.
An emotionally available one, one good at relationships, like she deserves.
And that’ll be that.
But my dad asked directly and I’m not going to lie to my dad. I tell him, “The name is Lila Interiors.”
“Never heard of it,” Dad muses. “Must be new in town.”
“Yup.”
Tanner perks up. “Lila. That’s a name. That’s a woman’s name.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” I say.
“Is Lila—”
“A designer,” I say. “Her style reminds me of Mom’s.”
I don’t say it to shut Tanner up, though it does. It’s not a deflection. Or it is, but it’s also the truth.
“Ah,” Tanner says, like that explains everything.
“That’s the whole story,” I continue. “Can we move on now?”
Rafe rides past me moving a steer and says, without looking over, “Doesn’t sound like the whole story.”
Fucker. I love this family, but I hate this family sometimes.
Tanner nods slowly, still watching the painters. “Mom’s style, huh? So this designer, she one of those nice old ladies who goes to the antique markets and stuff?”
“Something like that,” I say.
The conversation moves on. I let it, and turn my attention back to the cattle, and try not to think about rose-gold hair and the shimmer on her cheekbones and the way she looked standing in the middle of my empty house like she already knew what it needed.
I’m due to meet Lila at her office in a hour to go over something called a “moodboard” and take the dog back home with me. I saw her just this morning when I dropped off Lucky and I already can’t wait to see her again, like some overeager schoolboy.
It’s been a week now of me dropping off the dog at her boutique, along with a cup of her favorite coffee.
I found out her drink order from the girl who works at her store, and now it’s all part of my regular route: Bison Brew for a maple latte for her and a black coffee for me.
Occasionally, something called a puppacino that was foisted on me by the barista but that the dog seems to love gobbling up.
Then I drop the dog off with Lila and go on with my day.
Just that simple routine is way more domesticity than I’m used to, but it feels natural. I just like putting that smile on Lila’s face and it’s no trouble to go out of my way a little to do it.
Every morning we spend a few minutes going over my home renovation project.
She shows me fabric samples and paint colors and it turns out, I have opinions I didn’t know I had.
Yesterday, I told her I didn’t like a certain shade of green and she looked at me like I’d said something interesting instead of difficult.
She asked me why, and I had to actually think about it.
What came out was something about how it reminded me of a hospital waiting room.
Like the ones Mom spent so much time in that last year of her life.
But I didn’t tell Lila that part.
She just nodded and pulled out three other options and said these won’t remind you of that. Just like that. Like my opinion was the most important factor to consider.
I’m not used to that, whether in my career or in my personal life.
Defensemen do the work nobody notices: take the hits, block the shots, keep the ice clear for the people who score the goals.
I’ve been doing that on the ice for fifteen years, and off the ice, I’ve been doing something like it my whole life. Fading into the background.
That’s what happens when you’re the middle child. It’s a cliche, but it’s true. I’m the quiet, overlooked one. Which is more than fine by me. Unlike my brothers, I don’t want the spotlight. Never liked attention.
But it turns out I like Lila’s attention.
I can see the dog through the boutique window before I even get out of the truck.
She’s moving better every day, the prosthetic leg less foreign to her now, trotting between displays with her tail wagging.
She looks like a different animal than the one I lifted out of that ditch.
Now she’s a pampered shop dog with a stuffed hedgehog and a puppacino habit.
The bell jingles and she comes straight to me. I crouch down and scratch her ears and she leans into it hard.
Sarah’s face turns pink behind the counter. “Hi Slade. Lila’s in her office.”
“Thanks.”
The dog follows me down the hall. She does that now, follows me, waits by the door when I leave and watches the window until I come back, or so Lila tells me.
I really should be working on finding her a permanent home. I haven’t looked into it yet. Just haven’t gotten around to it. She’s sweet and easygoing and I don’t mind taking care of her.
There’s a muffled voice behind the closed door.
Lila’s. I catch the words unnecessary and insulting.
Hers is the tone of voice that suggests someone is trying hard to stay calm and not quite managing it.
The voice on the other end, coming out the speakerphone, is a man’s voice. I can’t quite discern his words.
A fight with a boyfriend? She’s never mentioned one. And she did specifically say single volunteers put themselves up for an auction date.
But I don’t actually know anything about her personal life. She could have someone.
Come to think of it, a woman as beautiful as her? She probably has her pick. Whoever he is, he better be treating her right.
From what I’m hearing through that door, he isn’t.
My jaw tightens. I stand there another few seconds, hand flat against the door. There’s nothing I can do about whatever’s happening on the other side of it. That’s not my place. She’s my designer and she’s not mine and I don’t have any claim on who speaks to her or how.
So I just knock.
A beat. Then the door opens.
Lila is off the phone but still holding it, and she sets it on the desk with more force than necessary.
Her smile when she sees me is real but thin around the edges.
She’s wearing a soft maroon sweater today and her nails are forest green.
Her hair is down, rose-gold waves tumbling over one shoulder.
There’s a crease between her brows that wasn’t there this morning.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Fine. Family stuff.” She pulls the moodboard out before I can say anything else. “Now, texture. I want to talk about texture.”
I let her talk. She’s explaining something about tonality and variation and I’m watching her hands move and her rings catch the light and thinking that she could wallpaper the entire house in tinfoil and I’d nod along.
I do genuinely like her vision. I trust it. But mostly I like watching her in her element, the way she lights up inside when she talks about something she loves. Right now though, the light is dimmer than usual and I can see her working to keep it up, and that bothers me more than it should.
Trailing off, she pinches the bridge of her nose. The moodboard sits between us untouched as we stand over it, nearly shoulder-to shoulder.
“Hey.” My voice comes out low, almost soft. “What’s up?”
“It’s not a professional concern. It’s fine.”
“You put your phone down like you wanted to put it through the desk.”
She lets out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “I need to take a few notes from you on maintaining a better poker face.”
I don’t want her to have a poker face. I like that she wears her heart on her sleeve. That her emotions flicker across her face easily for me to see.
Lila is just herself, unapologetically, and I appreciate how rare that is. What I don’t like is someone dimming that. Whoever was on that phone, whatever he said to put that crease between her brows... I don’t like him. I liked him less with every second I stood in that hallway.
He’s not here for me to do anything about it. But I can do something for her.
“You wanna go for the trail ride we were talking about?” I propose.
She glances up at me. “Right now?”
“Why not? Nothing like some fresh mountain air on horseback to clear your head.”
She glances down at herself. Then smiles. “I guess it’s a good thing I wore jeans and cowboy boots today, then.”