Chapter 3
Current Day
Near Claremore, OK
Gray
“Lainey Rai, get away from that stallion, he’s too big for you,” I swear that girl is going to give me a heart attack. She’s too much like her Aunt Marley.
We’ve been boarding a large, black stallion for the past month and Lainey Rai has taken a liking to him, every time I turn around she’s grooming and feeding him.
To the stallion’s credit, he’s been gentle with her, and I think he understands her when she talks to him, but I can’t have my nine-year-old riding a horse with the kind of energy he has.
“Dad, he won’t hurt me, we’re kindred spirits.” She scrunches her nose affectionately and rubs the tip across the stallion's nose. He even lowers his head and lets her.
She watched Anne of Green Gables with my sister, Kinley, a couple of weeks ago and she’s been quoting Anne Shirley since. I don’t know what I’m going to do when she starts noticing boys, probably have an aneurysm.
“Kindred spirits or no, he’s still too big for you. Didn’t Aunt Marley ask you to help her get a stall ready for a new horse that’s coming tomorrow morning?”
Dad’s been backing away from the day-to-day running of the ranch since his heart attack a few months ago, which means I’ve been stepping in more.
It also means I’ve seen more of what he’s been letting Lainey Rai get away with.
He would argue that she has to do things to learn things, but I would rather she not do things that might end in a broken neck.
“Aw, Dad, I’m almost done, and I’ll go help Aunt Marley.”
It’s one of those rare sunny January days that is above freezing. When the temperature gets into the forties, nobody wants to be inside. Lainey Rai is no exception. She already walked him out to the paddock, and now she’s hooked him up in the grooming stall to brush him.
“Finish with him and go help Aunt Marley, don’t make me tell you twice.” She’s becoming more rebellious like her Aunt Kinley, and I’ve had to take a firm tone with her more and more lately. I miss my sweet little girl.
It doesn’t take long for Marley to come looking for her, I look up as my little sister appears in the walkway between the grooming stall across from where I’m at and the tack room.
She flips her long blond braid over her shoulder and there is humor in her big blue eyes as she looks at Lainey Rai with the stallion before turning to look at me.
I press my lips together to suppress the smirk I want to give her as a smile moves across her face, she wants to make fun of my overprotective nature with my daughter as she brushes one of the biggest horses in our stalls.
“What?” I spit at her with mock irritation, “She’s right across the way from me, I can see everything.”
She steps into the doorway and leans against the sliding door while crossing her arms over her chest, “And no heart palpitations or no blowing gaskets?” She holds her hands in front of her face and mocks an explosion with her fingers while she blows her cheeks out.
Keeping a straight face, I look down at the computer I was working on before I saw her. “I don’t have time for your shenanigans today, what can I do for you?”
She hmpf’s and chuckles, “More shenanigans are exactly what you need in your life.” She unfolds her arms and steps into the tack room, her face becoming serious, “I wondered if you saw the weather warning yet.”
I’ve been so tense watching Lainey Rai while working on orders that I haven’t even looked at my phone. “No, but since you’re here, save me the hassle of looking it up and tell me.”
“Well, all this niceness today is going away tonight, they say sleet and ice might start overnight and get worse over the next day or two. Just make sure everyone is covered.” She is talking about the horses, even though they can withstand cold temperatures, we put their quilts over them when it gets below freezing for long periods of time.
It’s not unusual to get an ice storm or two in January and February, the last bad one we got was in 2007 when a large portion of this part of the state lost electricity for a week or two because the ice was so thick. I’d never been more happy to see overhead lights when they finally came back on.
Leaning back in the squeaky, practically antique chair Dad has always kept in here, I roll my head from one shoulder to the other, “Great. Okay, thanks, I’ll keep an eye on it.”
Boots on the wood floors sends Marley back a couple of steps and she looks out into the walkway, her face lights up, “Hey!”
Sloane, my brother, Mason’s, fiancé, steps into view, her long black hair is pulled into a ponytail and hangs between her shoulder blades, “Hey, I thought I would enjoy some of this sunshine before the storms come in tonight.”
She’s practically glowing as she looks between me and Marley, she’s a couple of months pregnant but the glow is the only indication since she isn’t showing yet.
Sloane came to work for us almost a year ago, but when Mason came home because of Dad’s heart attack she was able to do the one thing that no other woman has been able to do, he fell ass over heels in love.
“How are you and my nephew feeling?” Marley softly lays her hand on Sloane’s arm in true Marley fashion, she’s always gentle. She also says that she just knows it’s a boy already, she’s never wrong about the foals so we are taking bets.
Sloane’s green eyes light up under Marley’s attention and she puts her palm over her flat belly, “We’re good! I thought I would say hi to Mason, but it looks like he’s not in here.”
Lainey Rai’s voice breaks into the conversation, “He took Felix for a ride,” she tosses the grooming brush into the bucket next to her stepstool and steps down to take the hobble off the stallion’s leg. “He said that Felix is getting fat and needs some exercise.”
“In other words, he wanted to get out and enjoy the sunshine?” Sloane asks, humor dances in her eyes and she tilts her head to the side as she looks at Marley.
“Exactly,” I say and shake my head. It’s nice having my brother home, before he met Sloane, he lived in Tennessee close to the black ops team that he works with. Now he says he’ll just fly there when they need him for a job, but he sometimes needs to get out of the barn and get some air.
Strange footsteps coming into the stable make us all look at each other, it almost sounds like dress shoes on the wood floor. Sloane starts to walk to the sliding door, but Marley grabs her arm and pulls her back before she looks at me.
Marley doesn’t care for strangers or surprise situations, ever since she was attacked by a boy the night of her senior prom she stays in the shadows. Lainey Rai starts to walk out of the grooming stall with the stallion and stops when she sees the owner of the dress shoes.
“Oh, hi! I’m looking for Mr. Harlow.” It’s a woman’s very chipper voice.
I come around the door and stop dead in my tracks. There is a woman who can’t be more than five feet four in a tight skirt that comes to her knees and high-heel knee-high boots, bundled up in a coat and scarf. She’s probably a hundred pounds soaking wet.
Her shoulder-length brown hair is in big waves and her smile is stretched across her face. Something in my chest squeezes as I look into those big brown eyes, I step toward her, “I’m Mr. Harlow.”
She takes a deep breath, and excitement lights up her eyes, “Oh good! It’s so nice to meet you.” She steps up to me and holds her hand out, “I’m Ellyot Royce, I’m with Royce Enterprises.”
This is the Ellyot from the letter, I thought it was going to be a man with one of those stupid spellings they think is trendy. Of course they would send a woman, they think they can put something pretty in front of us and we will fall over ourselves to give her anything she wants.
Her soft perfume wraps around me as my hand swallows hers, as soon as it registers that she is behind the letters we have been getting, all pretense of hospitality falls away. I pull my hand back like she is the devil himself and take a step back.
She doesn’t give me a chance to respond before she starts looking around the stalls, “I knocked on the door of the house,” she points over her shoulder in the direction of the main house, “but no one answered, and wow! On the walk down here, I saw just how beautiful it is here, the landscape is breathtaking! I see why you haven’t responded to our letters. ”
Anger bubbles up as I realize that she is putting on an act and I slide my hands in my pockets, “We didn’t respond to the letters because we are not interested in selling.” I tip my hat at her and start to turn, “Have a nice day.”
“I get it! I totally get it, there is a lot of history here,” She keeps talking in her upbeat happy way as I walk away from her.
Sloane is standing in the doorway of the tack room and is looking at her, but her glowing smile is gone. I glance at Lainey Rai who looks confused, and I gruffly say, “Put the stallion up and go up to the house with Marley and Sloane.”
“But Dad…”
I stop her before she can say anything else, “Don’t make me say it twice or the iPad goes away.” I feel bad for being so curt with her, but I don’t want her hearing any of this and worrying about it.
She looks at the woman and then at me again, my gruffness is confusing her and I see the hurt in her eyes, I will have to apologize later. Her eyes go to the floor and Marley steps out of the tack room and puts her arm around her to guide her and the horse to his stable.
When they are all out of earshot, I turn to the tiny tornado that just ruined our afternoon, with hands on my hips and shoulders squared, “Look, you can take your friendly act and leave. We are not interested in selling and that’s the last we are going to talk about it.”
Her smile falters for just a second but she takes a step toward me and clasps her hands, “Mr. Harlow, I think we got off on the wrong foot. It was not my intention to make you angry.”
I cut her off, “I’m going to go out on a limb and say your intent is to come in here to sweet-talk us knowing that we ignored the many letters you sent.
That was our polite way of letting you know we are not interested in selling; the right foot would have been for you to accept that, not come out here. ”
Taking another step toward me, her head is tipped back to look up at my six foot three, she’s almost like a doll. The friendly smile never leaves her face, “What if I can double the last offering price?”
“Lady…” Just as I start to give her a piece of my mind, I hear my brother walk into the stable with Felix.
“There are ‘No Trespassing’ signs posted on the fences around our property, you are trespassing, and I am nicely asking you to leave our property before I call the sheriff.” Mason’s voice is calm as he walks Felix to the door of the grooming stall and loops the reigns.
She starts digging in her giant bag and pulls out an envelope to hold out to me, I look at it, but I don’t reach for it.
Her eyes move between me and Mason and then she looks around before she moves to one of the shelves on the outside of the tack room and sets the envelope down with a pat of her fingers.
“I have a proposal here that I would like for you to look at and I will stop by tomorrow and see what you think, just a simple conversation.” She looks at Mason but behind the pretty smile, I see her swallow nervously.
For some reason, I feel sorry for her, but that’s what they want, isn’t it? Why would they send her by herself? Just thinking about what could happen to her if we were not good people sends heat up the back of my neck.
In my peripheral, I see Mason cross his arms over his chest and stand in his usual ‘at ease’ stance with his hands under his armpits, “Don’t come back.”
She clasps her hands together under her chin and pastes on the smile again as she takes a step back. Unclasping her hands she points at the letter and says, “Just take a look at it. Please.”
Neither of us says anything as she pauses, her eyes moving from Mason to me, and then she turns on her heel and walks out of the stable.
I turn to Mason, and he shakes his head, “Can you believe that?”
Turning my head to watch her little body walking to her rental car, I take a deep breath, “Nope.”