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“Do you not hear the sounds coming from the kitchen or smell food cooking?” I asked, waving my hand in that general direction. The clanging of cookware and snapping of utensils trickled out of the room, the scent of Cajun spices and seafood filling the air. She glared at me.
“Tell me a little bit about yourself first,” I began, leaning forward onto the table with both elbows firmly placed on the glass surface, “and then you can eat whatever my chefs have dared to cook us.”
She looked between me and the kitchen, her straight black hair blowing softly in the ocean breeze. Part of me wondered if she had some sort of ancestral ties to the islands. She didn’t look entirely native, but there was something within her that made me think she might want to stay here instead.
“Fine,” she sighed. “As I said, I’ve been a stable hand since I was eighteen, but I’ve been around horses my entire life. I basically grew up strapped on the back of a horse. I got my bachelor's from Colorado State. I considered continuing on to a master's, but I was itching to get back into the field.”
“Do you have any experience in the breeding sector?” I asked.
“No,” she said, and the way her lips wrapped around the word was enough to make me imagine one of my fingers sliding between them. I didn’t give a shit about her answer. I wanted a meal, and not one that came from the kitchen. “I’m interested in it, though. But I don’t agree with show breeding.”
I shook my head. “We don’t do show breeding. Mostly we breed for competition or working horses, though we do occasionally breed just for riding. We don’t do miniatures or dwarfs.”
She nodded, her gaze lingering on the kitchen. I wondered how hungry she was. “Good. That makes me feel better about it.”
“Tell me what you want to know, Charlotte,” I said, letting my eyes scan over her chest while she wasn’t looking. Little freckles dotted her skin, right down from her shoulders to where her breasts came together?—
“Are you staring at my tits?”
I blinked away the haze of lust that had come over me and sat up straight, eyes flicking back to her face. Her cheeks had flushed, her brows stiff. “No,” I lied, the word slipping out too quickly.
“You were.”
“Did you grow up in Boulder?” I asked, changing the topic as swiftly as she had. She stared at me in confusion, the question taking a moment to process.
“Yeah.”
“Were your parents involved with horses?”
Her throat bobbed as she raised her chin. “Yes.”
There was something there. Something she wasn’t saying, something hiding just beneath the surface of her icy facade. “Why did you leave Boulder?”
“That’s personal,” she replied.
“You and I will be spending quite a bit of time together, Charlotte. Personal won’t be so personal.”
“I like to keep my work life separate.”
A little chuckle crept up my throat as one of the chefs rounded the corner of the kitchen, two plates in hand. She set them down in front of us. A hefty spoonful of what I could only assume was bulgur sat in the center of the plate with eight perfectly peeled and seasoned shrimp surrounding it, covered in a thin sauce.
I didn’t dare question it. Everything they’d served me so far since I had arrived was phenomenal.
“I don’t think you’ll keep it separate for long,” I responded once the chef had cleared the room.
She stabbed at a singular shrimp with her fork and popped it into her mouth. I could have sworn she was taunting me with it. “Why?”
“Because I saw the way you looked at me the other night,” I deadpanned. “I saw the way your body reacted to mine. I heard your breath catch, felt the little shiver that made those goosebumps flare.”
She stopped chewing midway through my words and forced a swallow. “You’re an asshole,” she coughed, reaching for the pitcher of ice water in the center of the table to pour herself a glass. I slid the bottle of wine her way instead.
“I’ll need a reference from your previous employer.” The words slipped from me like butter as I popped a shrimp between my teeth, collapsing the poor little sucker in one bite. “Have them email me.”
Her face paled while she poured herself a glass of wine. “My father can vouch for me.”
“I don’t accept familial references?—”
“My father is Brody Hammersmith.”
