After I filled my belly in town at the Texan, I drove home and rested my feet on the porch, my paper in one hand and coffee in the other. Riley was curled up next to me, snoring peacefully. I looked up at the sound of an approaching vehicle, expecting Lacey, who came in anytime between eight and ten, depending on how late she stayed the night before.
But it wasn’t Lacey. I didn’t recognize this car.
“Who’s that?” I whispered to Riley, who didn’t even lift his scruffy head or twitch an ear. So much for a guard dog. Somebody could run up on the farm with a gun, and he wouldn’t even open his damned eyes.
I set my paper aside and stood, leaning onto the porch railing to watch the sporty, bright-blue sedan approach. It looked mighty out of place here. The brightest thing was usually Lacey’s fire engine red truck. The car came to a stop, and a woman got out. She saw me watching from the porch and started my way.
She was young, maybe twenty, twenty-two, with long brown hair worn loose down her back that swung when she walked. As she got closer, I could see the bottom few inches had a reddish tint to them that looked natural. She was dressed simply in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, but the jeans hugged her curves, and I found myself staring hard at the sway of those hips as she walked up to the house. She moved with an easy, confident grace that was hypnotic to watch.
“Can I help you?” I called out.
She stopped right in front of me, looking up to stare me in the face while I looked down to stare into hers. She had blazing green eyes and clear, tanned skin.
“I came about the job,” she said, her voice firm and as confident as her walk. “The one posted in the Register.”
I grinned. I’d just won that bet with Lacey. She’d put up five dollars, betting me that no one under seventy would answer that ad in the paper.
“Can I speak to whomever placed the ad?” she asked.
My grin got wider. I must’ve been the only person under thirty who had no use whatsoever for technology. I didn’t have a computer, a web page, or any social media accounts. The only reason I had a cell phone was because Lacey’d forced me into it. But I didn’t do a thing with it besides make and receive calls.
“You’re looking at him,” I said.
Her dark eyebrows scrunched together slightly before smoothing out again. I couldn’t read her expression. It was serene and pleasant enough to look at, but it didn’t tell me anything. This girl was a mystery. I liked mysteries.
I stepped down off the porch to shake her hand. “My name’s Pete Gains.”
She shook my hand with a firm grip, her face not giving me one damned hint as to what she was thinking. “I’m Emma Flowers.”
“Nice to meet you, Emma. Can I show you around?”
“Sure,” she said, nicely enough, though she didn’t smile. She handed me a single sheet of paper. “Here’s my resume.”
I folded it up and stuck it in my back pocket without giving it a glance. “Thanks.” I directed her to the barn first, and we walked the few hundred yards from the main house to the stables.
“I have ten horses on the property right now, one I just brought home last weekend. Do you have experience with horses?”
She nodded once, still exuding that easy confidence, her green eyes meeting mine without blinking. “My daddy raised us with horses. I’ve been riding since before I could read.” She didn’t say any of this in a prideful way. It was what it was. I liked that, too.
I took her inside the barn. It smelled like fresh hay in here, which was my favorite thing about it. The horses stuck their heads out of the stalls as we approached, as curious as I was about the new arrival. Emma Flowers. I liked the sound of that name nearly as much as I liked the look of the woman walking beside me.
“Two of these are mine, but the rest I raise, train for racing or riding, and sell,” I said as we walked down the alleyway between the stalls. The horses watched us, keen for treats, whinnying and stamping their feet. They were due to be fed in about thirty minutes, whether Lacey was here or not.
“We turn over more than a dozen horses a year. That and hay sales keep the ranch going. We’re doing better than alright, actually, but I’d like to expand. The trainer and I can’t keep caring for the horses and the stable ourselves. It’s too much work.”
Emma’s pretty eyes wandered over the tidy interior of the barn, the clean stalls, fresh buckets of water, the clear run from one entrance of the barn to the other. Lacey and I busted our asses to keep this place clean, scrubbing out stalls and surfaces in between caring for the horses and baling hay. It was hard work, but rewarding. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. But I couldn’t keep ignoring how much help we needed now that we were planning to expand the operation.
I took Emma to the tack room next and watched from the corner of my eye as she took in the saddles, bridles, blankets, and gear for our horses, all neatly arranged and organized. Her expression didn’t change much, but I could see she appreciated the display, the whole room smelling of rich, worn leather.
We went to the feed room next. I showed off the bags of grain and the fresh hay kept free of mold and dust.
She nodded her head a single time at the sight of the room and turned to look at me, her appraising green eyes seeming to like what they saw. “Very nice.”
“We can go out to the paddock next.” I led her out to the small fenced-off corral just beyond the barn where Lacey liked to do the better part of her training with a new horse. But even older horses were exercised in here. It just depended on what she had planned for the day.
Emma listened to everything I had to say without saying much herself. I kept waiting for her to laugh at one of the many jokes I cracked, but her face never changed. I hadn’t even seen the woman smile once. I pointed out the far pasture at the western border of the land where we put the horses out to graze and the field beyond where we grew most of the hay for our horses, stacking the bales in another, smaller barn past the one with the horses.
At the end of the tour, we ended up back where we started, close to Emma’s blue sedan.