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“I don’t...”
“I know the horses. How many are you going to get out?”
“Three. This is just going to be to familiarize her with the method and the animals.”
“We have three that are really chill with each other, I’ll go get them.”
He turned on his heel and went into the stables, and she could only stare after him. He wasn’t going to listen to her, apparently. She went into the stables behind him. “I really do have this.”
“I said it was fine.”
“I said it was fine,” she said.
He grinned, and her heart did something funny, but so did the rest of her body. And as he put his hand on the door to the paddock, she got a visceral image of his hands on her skin. That dream that she’d had last night moving to the forefront of her mind. And it left her speechless.
Her whole body felt like it had been lit on fire. She was... She was not okay.
And she wanted to say something to get rid of him, but she knew that that would only make things more obvious.
If only she were...
If only she were a more normal person. Someone who’d maybe had experience with dating. She hadn’t been approachable in school. The only person who had shown any interest in her was Carter, and once that happened, she had latched herself on to him.
Her skin crawled, as she remembered her own pathetic gratefulness at him wanting to be with her.
There was so much dark stuff in that particular barrel, and it was best kept covered.
And when he led the horse out, his large hand moving over the animal’s neck as he stroked him, then gave him a pat, her body jolted.
“Which other horses?”
“Strawberries,” he said. “You already know her.”
She went down to the pretty roan’s stall and opened it up. While she did that, Brody got the third horse, and then they led them out to the arena. She took Strawberries off the lead rope, and Brody followed suit with the other two.
“That’s Black Magic,” he said pointing to the black horse with white socks. “And Carl.”
“Carl?”
“Sometimes, simplicity is a good thing, Elizabeth,” he said.
And the way he said her name, that vaguely mocking tone, lazy and laconic and unconcerned, did something to her.
“I’m all about simple,” she said, watching the animals mill around the space.
“Really? You seem fussy.”
“I’m not fussy,” she said, blinking rapidly.
She didn’t own a single article of clothing that she hadn’t taken with her from her marriage. She had learned to live with little, and she had learned that early. He had no idea the level of simplicity that she could exist with.
And she could tell him. But she wasn’t going to.
If she seemed...in any way smooth or sophisticated, even now, with only the things that she had taken away from her marriage, it was because she’d cultivated this image and she had done it with intent.
She had been so determined to match her husband, to fit into their life, and she’d taken it with her when she left.
She didn’t need to talk to him about it now. She didn’t need to talk to him about it ever.
