“Hey,” I breathed, watching up close as his eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled at me.
Nice!
“Hey, baby. You guys having fun?” he didn’t wait for me to answer, just looked at the phone I’d forgotten I was still holding. “Hey, Sadie. How’s it going?”
Given that it’d slipped in my hand at some point and I’d accidentally spun the camera back to me, she hadn’t missed anything Remy had just done.
“Hey.” Her voice sounded much like mine had seconds ago. “I love you,” she sighed, blushing when she realized what she’d said. “Baby hormones, they suck.”
Chuckling, Remy kissed me on the tip of the nose and then squatted down to check on Bub.
Hearing clicking coming from my phone, I looked up as Sadie mouthed, “You lucky whore!”
Rolling my eyes, I distracted myself from it by hitting the screen and turning the camera so she could see Marcus and Addy arguing again.
At some point during my Remy maybe-kiss thing, Addy had stood back up and was wagging her finger at him as she told him off for being a body hair bigot. This so wasn’t how I’d seen my day going, but I’d be damned if I was upset by it.
The hilarity of it all was too good to miss, even with her hairy man crack in my face.
TWELVE
SANTANA
Toby had fallen asleep early tonight, and with a list of notes and changes to make, I decided to get comfortable on my bed and work from there.
After I’d left Addy’s, I’d taken Bub and Wrecker to the main stable to help the guys out, and it’d been a fun day. Even at only nine months old, the little guy loved the horses and was eager to get close to them—something that freaked me out until I saw how gentle they were with him.
It’s funny, years ago, I would never have seen myself juggling jobs like I was. I’d been adamant I wanted to be a veterinary assistant, but then I’d gotten the job at TR Ranch, and I’d fallen in love with the equine side of the animal kingdom. They were large gentle giants and highly intelligent, and I loved learning not only about them but also from them.
A couple of the horses had PTSD from things they’d gone through before being rescued. From them, I’d learned a lot about body language between humans and animals. After looking it up online, I’d realized it was the same between humans, too. I also appreciated PTSD more because, before that, the closest I’d gotten to it was either reading or hearing about it online. Animals didn’t become ‘affected’ by their pasts and abuse, they were traumatized by it and needed similar help to humans to cope with it.
Focusing back on the document, I was just getting to a gory part when something cast a shadow on the wall, making it look like something was in the room next to me. In the next second, I was up and running out of the room with a squeal.
Instead of heading to Toby’s room and locking us in there, I braced both feet on either side of the door, keeping a tight grip on the handle, and pulled so that whatever was in the room couldn’t get out.
“Uhh,” a voice drawled from the end of the hall. “Do you need a hand?”
I hadn’t been expecting it, and I lost my purchase on the handle as I screamed. Obviously gravity took over.
The human body wasn’t made to be spider-like, so the second I let go of the handle, the upper half of my body went crashing to the floor. The impact winded me and rendered me immobile for a moment as my head hit the ground with a similar thud to the one my body had made.
Just to add insult to the injuries I’d sustained, my legs were still on the wall, except they got a little closer with a faint squeaking noise as my feet slid down the painted door frame.
“Fuck’s sake, Tana. Are you okay?”
A pair of knees dropped to the ground with a heckuva lot more decorum and dignity than I had, and a crotch covered in well-washed denim filled my field of vision. Given that the voice had sounded male, I figured the crotch would have to match it, so the bulge behind the material was most likely a penis.
“Tana,” they repeated, then gently turned my head to face upward instead of to the side. “Shit, I don’t think I was meant to move your neck in case you’ve injured the vertebrae. Don’t move, okay? I put my phone on charge when I got in, so I need to get it to call 911.”
Licking my lips, I squinted and focused on the face looking worriedly down at me. Ah, Remington.
“Were you named after a gun?” I rasped finally, watching as his expression morphed from concerned to confused. “Why didn’t you choose Ton instead of Remy as your nickname? Or maybe Ming, like the dude in Flash Gordon?”