Chapter Seven
Beau
Beau and Buttercup eyed each other with mutual distrust.
Their standoff took place in front of a red barn at the far end of the sorriest excuse for a town he’d ever seen. The barn was a stable, Jayce had explained—a hotel for horses, and part of their tourism business. In the old days, horses were bought and sold here, as well.
Beau couldn’t imagine anyone paying good money for this ancient nag.
Even he could tell it was old. In horse years, it and Benny had to be peers.
It hadn’t lost its winter coat, so it was patchy in places.
Its lumbar sagged to the point the saddle disappeared like a tire in a pothole.
Or a house in a sinkhole. It had long yellow teeth, and showed enough gum when it peeled back its lips to make Beau suspicious that it was laughing at him.
He had no similar suspicions about Adam and Jayce. They were openly enjoying his and Buttercup’s uneasy meet and greet. Or maybe it was the butt-ugly striped cotton shirt and baggy woolen trousers Adam had made him put on, even though the other men were wearing jeans.
Beau got why Marlboro Man didn’t like him.
Belle was appealing—if a guy liked the sweet, innocent type—and in his eyes, right now Beau had the home team advantage.
Adam’s dislike was more of an enigma. It was possible that torturing people was a hobby of his, and Beau happened to be the unlucky target.
Either way, their animosity toward him could be easily resolved.
If they didn’t want him around, they could show him the exit. He’d happily leave.
“Here. Use this,” Adam said. He planted a dusty three-legged stool, covered in cobwebs and topped by an unidentifiable crust, on the ground next to the horse. “You can’t use your bum ankle to mount, so stand on the stool and swing that leg over.”
Beau’s string of New Jersey DNA tugged tight and bunched together. Beau dismissed its concerns. While his goal was to show these two rednecks what a lousy cowboy he’d make, no way did they get to think he was also a pussy.
He muddled his way into the saddle with no help or hindrance from Buttercup.
Honestly, saddled with a name like Buttercup, Beau sympathized with the horse’s bad attitude.
The name Beauregard, plus classical music, hadn’t exactly smoothed his path through the public school system. He’d learned how to fight, though.
And he could fight dirty.
Jayce unwound the reins from the horn of the saddle and passed them to Beau. “You hold the reins like this. And mind you don’t get your splint tangled in them.” He eyed Beau’s broken pinky. “Because that would hurt.”
Beau and Buttercup plodded around the fenced paddock next to the barn until it became obvious to everyone that Buttercup was too lazy to bother trying to dislodge his rider. Or maybe he was too senile to remember he had Beau on his back.
Adam and Jayce exchanged looks.
“You boys might as well ride along with me,” Adam said to Jayce, whose enthusiasm for the day hadn’t warmed.
Adam led Buttercup through the paddock gate because he couldn’t find his way on his own.
Two more horses were already saddled and tied to a rickety hitching post in front of the barn.
He and Jayce mounted, then they turned their horses toward a path into the woods that surrounded the town.
Adam took the lead, with Beau in the middle and Jayce trailing behind.
Adam carried a large burlap sack in front of him.
“Where are we headed?” Beau asked Adam, more out of morbid curiosity than eager anticipation, because already, his ass was starting to hurt.
“Checking for signs of bear.”
He hoped Adam was kidding but feared he was not. The guy remained determined to make a cowboy out of him, despite mounting evidence that he was wasting his time.
“Don’t bounce in the saddle like that, Beau,” Jayce said, irritated. “You’ll cripple your horse.”
Turning into a cripple was the least of Buttercup’s worries. The horse had probably been dead for a year. Beau, on the other hand, was heading into the woods with two men whose motives toward him were cause for concern.
They didn’t get very far before the woods turned into a war zone.
Tiny birds with black markings hung upside down from the underside of pine boughs and began hurling insults.
Jayce, unbothered by their bad attitude, withdrew seeds from a saddlebag and held out a few in his palm.
Beau ducked as the little thugs took turns divebombing him, only to land on one of Jayce’s fingers and pluck the bribes from his hand.
“Stand back,” Adam said, ignoring the Hitchcock horror movie unfolding around them.
Jayce sidled his horse next to Beau’s and took hold of Buttercup’s bridle. Buttercup seemed more than happy to find any excuse to stand still. Meanwhile, Adam opened the sack and withdrew a big plastic scoop, then sprinkled a thick layer of red powder in a line on the ground behind his horse.
Beau took advantage of Adam’s preoccupation. Tackling them one at a time was the smarter approach, and he already knew how to get under Jayce’s skin.
“Belle’s really something, isn’t she?” he said to Jayce.
His admiration was entirely unfeigned. She really was something.
She had to be fast-tracking for sainthood or something, because the worse he behaved, the sweeter she was.
He’d complained about the funky-smelling mountain air, and the lack of traffic sounds to lull him to sleep, because he needed something to do.
As it turned out, though, the tangy bite to the breeze—he thought it was pine, but what did he know—and the loud quarreling of birds that started at daybreak, turned out to be surprisingly soothing. Although whatever thrashed around in the bushes late at night didn’t have the same calming effect.
Then there was Belle herself. She was as easy to live with as she was to look at.
No drama to her. Nothing at all like his ex-wife or sisters.
When she spoke, it was because she had something to say.
When she smiled, she meant it. It wasn’t because she wanted something from him.
She did little things—things like placing flowers on a tray—to be thoughtful, not for any thought of reward.
And yet all that perfection was super annoying.
Not because it was fake—from what he’d seen there was nothing fake about Belle—but because there had to be more to her.
The problem was that he couldn’t figure out how to strip off the layers to see what was beneath.
Poking at her was about as much fun as punting a puppy.
Poking at Marlboro Man held far more appeal.
“Belle and I have an understanding,” Jayce said.
“You sure about that? Because that’s not the impression she gave me last night.” Beau did his best to sound doubtful, which wasn’t hard. He really did have his doubts.
Jayce’s eyes hardened. His knuckles turned white. “Careful. Belle’s not the type of woman a man messes around with.”
Beau had no doubts about that. She’d take her relationships as seriously as she did her work—although he couldn’t figure out for the life of him how third in my class had ended up in a theme park run by a cult.
“No, she’s not,” he said agreeably. “She seems to know her own mind, though. That right there might be your problem.” He left his meaning hanging to see if Jayce picked it up.
Which he did. Jayce’s horse tossed its head as if to say it got it, too. It danced sideways a few steps and bumped into Buttercup, who’d lost track of his surroundings and probably thought he’d been alone. He stepped on a twig, which freaked him out more, and he trotted forward.
Beau, who hadn’t anticipated any sudden movements from Buttercup, or any movements at all, tried to right himself in the saddle, which only added to Buttercup’s confusion.
The horse spotted Adam with what appeared to be a full sack of grain, the cure for all horse-type ails, so he headed in that direction.
Adam glanced up. “Watch out!” he said sharply, but it was too late. The scoopful of red powder he’d been in the process of flinging struck Buttercup in the face.
Buttercup snorted, shook his head, sneezed a few times, then bolted. Beau dropped the reins, which tangled between the saddle and one of his thighs, then wrapped his arms around the horse’s neck in an instinctive but futile attempt at self-preservation.
When Beau revisited what happened next, it was a bit of a blur.
They charged through the woods with tree branches slapping and clawing.
That went on forever. They emerged from the trees and Buttercup slowed as if undecided where to go now.
Straight ahead was a wide, shallow creek with a bumpy rock bed.
To the left of them—and this was where things got confusing—was a glass-roofed log cabin.
An Asian couple dressed in period clothing stood on the stoop. They stared. Beau stared back.
Buttercup eyed the creek in a way Beau didn’t like.
Something buzzed past Beau’s ear, followed by the clap of a gunshot, and Buttercup made up his mind.
He charged past the Asian couple, who applauded and waved as they thundered by, and plunged into the woods on the far side of their cabin.
Another shot sounded. Dirt kicked up at Buttercup’s heels.
Beau squeezed his eyes shut and hung on.
Someone pursued them. He heard extra hoofbeats, but he listened for more gunshots, because those were what worried him most.
Then they were in town and lumbering down the main strip.
Buttercup wheezed like the doors on a New York City bus but still moved too fast for Beau to comfortably leap from the saddle, given his bad ankle and broken finger.
Tuck and roll was a last resort. Running for his life was out of the question.