EMMETT (The Corbin Brothers Book 3) (11 page)

“Well, that’s that,” Peyton panted. “People will be lined up down the road waiting for our expert services. That was a good luck christening. Our business is going to take off immediately, so you better get that shed up.”

“And you better finish calling that list of people and getting our system set up,” I said, giving her a sloppy kiss I knew she’d pretend to hate, wiping it off dramatically.

But business wasn’t good. Not at first.

Through much flirting and cajoling, Peyton was at least able to get a few horses in for grooming sessions. She grumbled throughout, braiding the manes with a ribbon for a special touch as I trimmed the hooves.

“They could do this themselves if they weren’t so damn lazy,” she said.

“Hey, business is business,” I replied, glancing up at her. “This is how it starts. A trickle. Soon, it’ll be a flood — you’ll see.”

But that was just optimism — or naïveté. Whole weeks passed without a horse even coming in for a good grooming. It was hard to stave off despair, the thought that this was all just a stupid waste of time. The only positive I found from it was spending time with Peyton.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do such a good job grooming them,” she suggested, poking around at the laptop we brought to our office.

“That would be bad business,” I said, looking up from my phone at her. We had open hours when anyone could walk in, but we also took appointments. I’d have to talk to her about seeing if she could staff the open hours herself and call me if anything came in. I was too afraid I’d start being missed around the ranch.

“Well, we might get some repeat customers if you didn’t do the hoof trimming properly,” she tried.

“Peyton, I couldn’t willfully do a bad job on our clients.”

“I know,” she sighed. “I’m just frustrated. And bored.”

And that’s when we usually had sex, tempted by the idea that perhaps a walk-in client would happen up the path, unsure whether we were there or not. It was a pretty fantasy — and one that made the hookup sexier — but no one ever came.

Until the day they did.

A truck and trailer crept up to the office, and Peyton and I nearly pushed each other out of the way to greet them.

“You need a good grooming?” Peyton asked.

“No, it’s bee stings,” the panicked owner said. “I was out riding him, and we upset a nest or something. I didn’t get so many stings, myself, but he did. You’re closer to me than the vet. Please tell me you can help.”

I opened and closed my mouth. Our plan for the rehab facility was horses that had experienced traumas, horses in need of lessons on relearning how to wear a saddle and carry a rider, horses that had been injured and needed help getting back up to full strength. Bee stings were really something the vet should take care of.

“We can help,” Peyton said firmly. “Let’s take a look at him.”

The horse had indeed taken the brunt of the swarm’s fury, and a few bee carcasses littered the bottom of the trailer, bereft of their stingers. The creature was remarkably calm, though, until I touched one of the many swellings on its body. It rolled its eyes back at me and stomped in warning, snorting several times.

“Okay, okay,” Peyton soothed. “Those hurt. Ouch. How about we get out of this trailer, huh?”

There had to be several dozen welts along the horse’s coat that I could see in the sunlight.

“These have to come out,” Peyton said, continuing in the singsong voice that calmed the horse. “It’ll be so gentle you won’t even notice. Emmett, could you get some ice and the aloe vera plant by the door of my cottage?”

“Sure,” I said, scrambling to comply. I wasn’t sure what the plant looked like, but it was thankfully the only potted plant by her door. I threw as many trays of ice as she had in her freezer into a shopping bag and dashed back down to the office.

“It’s the strangest thing,” the owner said, agape as Peyton worked over the horse. “I tried to get some of these stingers out myself but panicked when he panicked. He bucked and kicked and was just impossible. But he’s just as calm as he can be, now.”

Peyton flicked the stingers away from a grouping of welts, then held her hand out. “Ice, please.”

She dabbed it over the welts, then worked backward to tend to the other sting sites. Then, she broke off several limbs from her plant, slit them open with a fingernail, and wiped the electric green goo on each and every welt.

“What you’ll be watching for, now,” she said in that same tone, but directing her attention on the owner, “is signs of allergic reaction. Tongue swelling. Listlessness. Things like that. Then you need to get him to the vet immediately. Good news is, nothing so far. He’s a good boy. Just had a little scare.”

“Thank you so much,” the owner gushed. “I couldn’t imagine going all the way to town with him like he was, stressed out like that.”

Peyton gave a half shrug. “Well, tell people who need help that we know our shit. Stuff. Excuse me.”

“You can say whatever you want as far as I’m concerned,” the owner said as we helped him load the horse back in the trailer. “You saved him.”

“That was amazing,” I said, watching the truck and trailer make its way back to the road. “Where did you learn how to do that?”

“It’s happened to me before,” she said. “Just experience. You can’t be afraid, or the horse will feel it. Calm works every time.”

Word got around so swiftly that I considered it a small miracle that we didn’t hear anything from either of our families. I supposed it was a blessing that they rarely got into town to hear the gossip. But the bee incident was the first indication to people that Peyton and I were serious about our operation.

We received more requests for grooming, then a request for additional training for a horse that tended to shy away from obstructions on the trail. Next came a lame horse that simply had a rock lodged beneath the shoe that had gone unnoticed. When the next gossip got around that I could shoe horses — a skill I’d picked up from an old farrier a couple of towns over once — more people came with their horses because we were more conveniently located.

One day, though, we were really challenged. Peyton and I both winced at the horse as soon as we saw it, helping to lead it to one of our little stables. The stables were built to be tight so injured animals couldn’t move around too much in them, but we could tell that something was seriously wrong with the leg.

“Is there anything you can do?” the owner asked, white-faced. “We’d be just devastated if we had to put her down.”

“This horse has a broken leg,” I said after a quick examination. “You didn’t take her to the vet?”

“The vet wanted to put her down,” the stricken owner said. “I just couldn’t. Call me sentimental.”

“We’re going to have to look into this,” Peyton said. “You can leave the horse here. We’ll make sure she stays comfortable while we see what we can do for her.”

The owner left, and Peyton and I looked at the horse.

“Do you think we can really do anything for her?” I asked. “I can’t say this is my area of expertise. Or anyone’s.”

“I can make a splint,” Peyton said after thinking for a while. “That should buy us some time to at least do some research.”

But it was hours later, poring over articles and books in the office, when we came close to admitting defeat.

“I’m not so sure I know what we would do in this kind of a situation,” I said. “It makes sense for a horse to rest in the case of an injury like that, but then wouldn’t some kind of light exercise be in order eventually? If it could even handle having a broken leg? What about pain management? It wouldn’t be good for it to be lying down all day, but that’s all I could tell you.”

“I’m not sure,” she said, flipping through a couple of books we’d moved to the office before making a small grunt of frustration in the back of her throat. If I hadn’t been just about at wit’s end, I would’ve thought it was cute. Hell, I did think it was a little cute, but I was quite sure she wouldn’t appreciate that observation while we were trying to figure everything out.

“Can’t we ask someone?” I suggested. “We could see if the vet knows anything about it.”

“Hell, no,” she said. “If the vet knew we were up to something like this, all he’d do is show up with a shotgun to do the ‘humane thing.’ Humane. Huh. All it’s doing is keeping someone from feeling guilty for fucking up in the first place.”

“Well, what about your father?” I said, treading as lightly as I could. “Do you think he might have any insight? I know you’re not super close with him …”

“As an understatement,” she muttered. “He wouldn’t be a good source of information. He breeds horses. He doesn’t care one way or another about healing any of the sick or injured. All he’s looking to do is pair up the right matches for superior foals — horses with important lineages he can sell to idiots for a lot of money.”

“But what if you posed it as a hypothetical?” I asked. I’d done the same thing, though it had gotten me nowhere fast. Maybe he’d treat his own daughter a little better. “Say you were just wondering if there was a way to let a horse recover from an injury like that. If it was possible.”

“We’d be better off consulting Google. Or, I don’t know, God. Or something equally unreliable.”

“I’d rather we try to glean at least some wisdom from someone who’s been in the business for 50-odd years,” I said. “You don’t think he’d tell you a single detail — not even a stray idea or musing?”

“My father’s cagey,” Peyton said.

“I was wondering where you got that from,” I said playfully, and received a not-so-playful wallop on the shoulder. It stung for minutes after, and I rubbed the spot ruefully.

“I probably won’t learn everything he has to know until I’m reading it in his will,” she said. “He hates competition.”

“You’re not competition. You’re family.”

“I am competition,” she corrected. “He just doesn’t know about it yet. Or at least he doesn’t have any proof.”

“You can’t honestly think he suspects anything.”

“He’s suspicious of everyone. He won’t tell me everything about the operation. Of course he suspects something. He suspects everything, all the time.”

I guessed I hadn’t understood just how silly it was of me to show up at Dax’s operation at the beginning of all of this, looking to pick his brain about horses. I hadn’t grasped just how big of an asshole he was then, and I was only just beginning to get it now.

“So even if you had a legitimate question about how something worked, or why he did one thing and not the other, he wouldn’t help you?” I asked.

“Of course not.” Peyton looked at me like I was an idiot, and maybe I was. “He’d just do it himself. Probably wouldn’t even let me watch. I told you how things were. The moment I turned eighteen, I was on my own. I can’t honestly tell you whether or not I’m really going to inherit all of this once he’s gone. He’s just a son of a bitch. He doesn’t even like me.”

Anyone else who would’ve given voice to those realities would’ve been in tears by now, but Peyton was as dry-eyed as I’d ever seen her. If the truth of her relationship with her father irked her, she made no outward sign of it. I had to think it stung a little bit, not knowing where you stood with the man who had a part in creating you. But maybe Peyton had pushed it from her mind long ago. It wasn’t my place to judge — or speculate.

“But you have an idea,” I said. “Right?”

“We need answers,” she said with a half shrug. “I know where we might get them.”

“Where?”

“It’s not going to be fun.”

“I’ve spoken to your father personally. I know just how little fun these things can be.”

“It’ll probably be even worse than asking my father for help,” she warned.

I chuckled. “It’s hard to imagine who in this whole wide town is more unpleasant than your father.” I hoped she wouldn’t take it as an insult, and she didn’t seem to. However, when I looked into her eyes, I realized that she probably hadn’t even heard what I’d said. She was far away, a dread weighing heavily on her shoulders, making them slump forward a little bit.

“Peyton? Who are we going to go talk to?” Now I was starting to get pretty worried.

“The only person in this whole wide town who’s more unpleasant than my father,” she said, then met my gaze. “My mother.”

We sat in the truck outside of the weathered trailer for a long time, Peyton studying it, inscrutable, a tiny wrinkle between her dark brows belying her doubts. It was smaller than my trailer, in dire need of repairs, and so battered looking that it was tough to imagine that the inside was even livable. But this was the spot Peyton had directed us to, isolated on a hill, the hot, dry wind making it seem like the trailer walls were so thin the entire thing swayed at every gust.

Who knew? Perhaps it did.

I opened my mouth and closed it for perhaps the fifth time since we’d been sitting there, the engine of the truck killed, silence ruling us except for the breeze that moaned against the windows. What was I supposed to say to make any of this easier? I’d always had a good relationship with my parents — easy communication, tons of support for whatever cause I decided to take up, and all the love in the world.

Until, of course, the wreck.

But to sit there in the quiet truck with Peyton, contemplating the home that was never hers, I felt as if some of her uncertainty leeched into me.

“We don’t have to do this,” I said, then lapsed again into silence, wondering if that had been the wrong thing to say. Peyton didn’t so much as glance at me when she answered.

“You don’t have to do anything. But this is something that I have to do.”

I wondered what this would cost us — not in a monetary sense, or anything a person could really measure. This was the first time that I could really perceive Peyton’s anxiety, and it was unnerving. Not even when we were stealing land, clients, and resources from her father did she even give off the slight whiff of nerves. What was it about that trailer — and its contents — that made her so uneasy?

“Do you know whether your mother is here?” I asked, if only to say something. The hush in the truck was starting to unnerve me.

“Of course she’s here,” Peyton said, distracted. “Where else would she be?”

Something about that statement propelled her to action — she threw open the door and seemed to hurl herself out to the unkempt grass, the longer strands of which waved in the wind. I followed almost helplessly, nervous because I didn’t know quite what we were doing here, why Peyton saw fit to pay a visit to a long-estranged relative, even if that relative was her mother.

Peyton sniffed out my trepidation almost instantly, stopping in her tracks so abruptly I bumped into her.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“Maybe you should stay in the car,” she said, not looking at me.

“Hey, we’re partners in this,” I reasoned. “I’m here to get answers, same as you. I’d like to meet your mother. Maybe she’ll even like me.”

Peyton didn’t dignify that falsity with a response, but resolutely strode forward. It was probably a stupid thing to say. Nobody’s parents liked their significant others — or whatever Peyton and I happened to be. Business partners. Fuck buddies? It was a conversation I didn’t think either of us wanted to have.

Peyton hesitated only a heartbeat before rapping sharply on the door to the trailer.

“Who is it?” someone hollered loudly from inside.

Another hesitation, and I held my breath, afraid, somehow, that I’d have to introduce the two of us.

But Peyton spoke up. “It’s your daughter. The one you didn’t want. Peyton Crow.”

There was a long pause inside, and then the door opened, a screen still separating us. It was a much older woman, older than I’d thought, never having laid eyes personally on Mary Crow before. She was small and wizened, but with a glitter in her eyes that had nothing to do with joy.

“If you know you weren’t wanted, why would you think I’d want to see you on my doorstep now?” Mary demanded, jutting her chin out at Peyton.

Peyton, to her credit, stood her ground. “Because it’s taken almost thirty years for me to need anything from you, and now I’m asking.”

Mary’s eyes slid from her daughter to me, and then to the truck parked just beyond us. “I don’t have any money, if that’s what you’re here for.”

“Does it look like I need money from you?” Peyton asked, her sarcasm all the more biting without a sneer. “I’ve come for advice.”

“And him?”

Peyton didn’t so much as give me a backward glance. “He came to hear it, too.”

Mary chewed on this for a few long moments. “You getting married?”

“No.” Peyton’s voice was flat even as my heart fluttered. I shut myself down, wishing I weren’t so damned naive. I was thirty proper, and my spirit had soared at the idea of attaching myself to Peyton Crow for the rest of our lives. She’d have had a good laugh at my expense if she ever suspected what I felt for her. Sex was more than enough for now, anyway. Wasn’t it?

“Thirty years is a long time,” Mary said, by way of greeting, as she heaved the screen door open and nearly hit Peyton in the face with it. “I thought I had about everything figured out by thirty.”

The inside of the trailer was just as shabby as the outside, and the whole damn thing rocked when we walked to the little kitchenette. It might’ve felt a little more like a home if it had been given a good scrubbing, but there was a dinginess that no amount of elbow grease and bleach would be able to exorcise. It was just old, and more than old, it showed signs of not having been cared for. The Corbin family house had some problems with it that had persisted because for several years, we were five men living in a house together, too busy with running the ranch and hurrying through public school to think about things like cleaning regularly and slapping the outside of the place with a coat of paint every so often. Housekeeping had lapsed until Zoe and Toby moved in, but there was never a feeling of dinginess. Through all of our problems with the ranch, ourselves, and each other, the house was a place of love. It always had been, even after our parents had died.

This trailer, though, was a place of great sadness.

“We’re here to ask you a question about horse healing,” Peyton said. “We’re in business together.”

“Some business, I bet,” Mary said, fixing a knowing stare on me. I had no idea how, but she somehow knew that we’d slept together. That stare was invasive and challenging, and that was the exact impression I got from it. That she knew everything about me, that she knew our business partnership was a little bit more than simply business.

“It’s real,” Peyton said. “And I have a question for you. And you have answers for me.”

“You want answers?” Mary eyed her daughter critically, like she was measuring Peyton’s worth and coming up disappointingly short. “It’s not going to be free.”

“I know how things work,” Peyton shot back, haughty. “I’ll pay you for your time.”

“I don’t want your money.”

“You need my money.” For how nervous she’d been in the truck, Peyton was downright arrogant. I recognized that she’d drawn the feeling around her like a cloak, protecting herself from whatever weapons her mother was planning on launching at her.

“I need money,” Mary agreed. “Just not yours. I know how you get yours.”

“You do, do you?” Peyton asked, amused. “You too good for that kind of money, Ma? That’s not what I heard.”

If Mary Crow understood her daughter’s meaning, she didn’t let on to the fact. “I’ll help you with what you want to know. But you’re going to have to listen to what I have to say in return.”

“I came here to listen to you,” Peyton said, her voice gratingly polite, illustrating just how thin her patience was wearing with her mother’s game. “I’m asking you questions. You’re giving me answers. To get the answers I want, I’ll be listening to you. It’s a win-win.”

“What about the answers you don’t want?” Mary leaned back in her seat and looked out the window. “That’s what I want you to listen to. The answers you haven’t wanted to listen to for your whole life.”

Peyton pursed her lips, seeming to gauge her response before answering. “Who do I talk to about shipping you off to a nursing home, you old coot? The council on the reservation? Or the state of Texas? Emmett, do you know how that kind of thing works?”

I fought the urge to shrink back, to try and make myself invisible, and then simply shrugged, unable to give her any information. I was well beyond the point of regretting coming here. All I could think of doing was escaping, or trying my best to learn invisibility. Mary didn’t so much as glance my way.

“You think I’ve lost my mind,” she observed. “All young people think their elders are foolish. You’re the same, and more the fool for it. You never learned to respect those wiser than you.”

“You mean those older than me.” Peyton crossed her arms in front of her chest as if to ward off those words. “You and my father were never deserving of very much respect. Lie to yourself all you want, but I won’t be lied to. I refuse.”

“Listening to the answers you don’t want to hear. That’s the price of admission.” Mary gazed out the window, and helplessly, magnetically, both Peyton and I ducked to see what she was looking at. The grass behind the trailer was long dead, windswept and crispy, and farther off, an untied horse nibbled at something still green trying to peek out from beneath the brown growth. It wasn’t a view that could be accurately described as beautiful, but it was something to look at — and worlds better than looking around at the sad state of the interior of the trailer.

“Where’s your other horse?” Peyton asked. “You know just as well as I do how much that one hates to be alone.”

“He’s not alone. I’m here.” The old woman packed an old wooden pipe with shavings of tobacco and obstinately lit it. One inadvertent whiff of the smoke that spiraled up from the bowl informed me that it wasn’t tobacco, after all. I’d kept my nose clean throughout my youth and up until now, but I wasn’t going to fault Mary Crow for smoking a little weed at her age. I couldn’t even guess how old she might be, her hair pulled severely back from her face in a bun that was more white than black. I didn’t see signs of Peyton anywhere in her appearance, though her daughter had inherited her apparent love for talking circles around the issues at hand.

“Did the other horse die?” Peyton tried again.

“No. Sold him.”

“Ma. At least get a goat or something. That horse is stressed out. Look at him. Lonely.”

“I’ll sell him, too, soon.” Mary took a thoughtful puff of her pipe. “When the money runs out. Then I’ll find something else to sell. The trailer.”

“You can’t sell the trailer. Where would you live?”

“Well, I’m not going to sell my body.” Mary squinted at Peyton. “I have too much pride for that.”

It was a sharp barb, aimed to maim, but Peyton deflected it with a harsh laugh. “Yes, you’re a very proud woman. You only fuck for love, don’t you? So noble. And what a love story, too. Mary Crow and Dax Malone.”

“You don’t get to say that name in this house,” Mary said, her order a jagged edge of glass.

“I get to say that name where I please,” Peyton said, nonchalant. “Half that name belongs to me.”

“Then it is time for you to listen,” Mary said, setting aside her still-smoking pipe. “Because once that entire name belonged to me.”

“Stop. I’m not going to sit here and subject myself to the tale of how you and my father hooked up and made me. I’m surprised at you. You’ve gone soft and sappy. It’s high time to turn you out to pasture.”

I couldn’t help but wince at some of the exchanges I was witnessing. It wasn’t the way normal parents and children communicated, but I’d come to the understanding quite some time ago that Peyton and Mary Crow weren’t your typical mother and daughter. There was a history here that I couldn’t begin to assume I understood, or think I might pass judgment on, so I just tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible. I’d always been a little afraid of Peyton, but I was one hundred percent afraid of her mother. Even if the old woman was diminutive, long past her prime, there was something that roiled just under her surface that kept me from making any assumptions about anything.

“I thought I loved that man, once,” Mary said, ignoring Peyton’s taunts. “I was lonely, though. I’d been alone for a long time. There was another man I loved, and who loved me, too, but he died. It was as if part of my heart died, too, or at least my good sense. I couldn’t see things the way I used to. And that’s why I thought I loved that man. Your father.”

Mary paused to gather her thoughts, and I thought Peyton might take the opportunity to land another zinger, but she stayed quiet. A quick glance revealed that Mary had her daughter’s rapt attention, Peyton’s dark gaze boring holes into her mother. This was apparently information that hadn’t been shared before. The answers that Peyton hadn’t wanted to know. The payment that would be required of her if we wanted to get answers about our problem horse from Mary.

“At first I thought I loved him. I thought he loved me. But one cross word, one disagreement, and he was a different man. If he didn’t get his way with words, he tried to smash his way with his fists and his feet. It happened once, and I thought maybe he got it out of his system. And then it happened again and again. I knew I had made a terrible mistake.”

Dax Malone was a wretched bastard, and everyone in town said so, but this revelation, that he saw no problem speaking with punches and kicks, simply confirmed what had previously been simple gossip, a pervasive belief that had wormed its way into people’s minds. Everyone knew he was a bastard, even if a person hadn’t had personal dealings with him. I supposed it went to show just how broken Mary Crow had been after the passing of the man she really did love. It was perplexing that anyone could think Dax Malone was worthy of love.