EMMETT (The Corbin Brothers Book 3) (4 page)

“Take it or leave it. I don’t give away anything for free. Maybe you Corbins can afford to, but others aren’t so fortunate.”

“It’s Emmett,” I said, exasperated with being lumped in with my brothers like I was so often throughout my life. “Just Emmett. I’m a lot more than just a Corbin.”

Peyton’s dark eyes drifted downward and back up again, and I knew she saw right through me and always would. It was a penetrating and judgmental stare, one full of contempt.

“That’s the thing about privileged people,” she said, her eyes not shining with amusement any longer. “They go through such lengths to convince themselves and others that they aren’t privileged after all. That they’re right down there in the mud with you. So they can take advantage of you.”

“I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

“Twenty bucks, then.”

I exhaled sharply and gave her another bill. Her demeanor instantly switched, smiling pleasantly. I’d bought that face, at least for the next fifteen minutes, and the feelings inside of me clashed and conflicted and swirled unpleasantly.

“You want my ideas,” Peyton said. “Because you have everything else you need to know.”

“I’m sure I don’t know everything there is to know,” I said, holding my hands up to stave off another disagreement — and try to keep our conversation on track so I wouldn’t waste any more time or money. “I’m just trying to figure out what it takes to run a breeding operation. Maybe sometime in the far-off future, it’s something I want to do with my time. Just not right now. This isn’t immediate.”

“Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why not right now?” I’d forgotten that she could see right through me, that she knew that this was much more than simple research. What could I say to her that would protect my interests and my privacy? I was sure I would already be tasked with explaining to my brothers tomorrow why I was seen in the company of the … well, the town prostitute.

Though putting it in those words sounded a little cheap right now. She was wily, but I had a tough time categorizing Peyton like that. She seemed deeper than that, somehow, though this was really the first time I’d interacted with her before. She’d been a grade behind me in school, and this town was so small that everyone remembered everyone else from getting our public educations. But even back then, Peyton had kept to herself. She was different from everyone — looked different, held herself differently, acted differently — and it made her stand out terribly. People wondered openly why she didn’t just go to school on the reservation, but it was more than an hour’s drive away, and she was living with her father, who fell into the same school district as me and the rest of my brothers.

I wasn’t so sure, now, that she would’ve done any better for herself at the school on the reservation. She was so otherworldly that I didn’t think she could fit in even if she tried. That probably was why she didn’t try, walking down the hallways of the high school, nearly floating instead of walking, not even aware of the stares that followed her wherever she went. I saw her walk like that sometimes through town, not so much as flinching at the honked horns and catcalls of passers-by. Peyton was self-possessed, and I was sitting here in front of her, tongue-tied, unable to plunge forward with finding out what I needed to know even though I was paying more than a dollar every single minute for the privilege of not speaking to her.

“Are you still there?” Peyton looked at me with barely contained amusement, studying me with eyes that sparkled deeply. “It seemed like you went somewhere very far away.”

“I’m still here.”

“If you’re having trouble gathering your thoughts, trouble focusing, I know an excellent remedy.” She grinned at me, showing all of her teeth. “Join me in the alley if you want it. Hand job. Five minutes tops, though I bet I could get you off quicker. You’d be amazed at how focused you’d be after that. Your mind would be razor sharp.”

“No, thank you,” I said, certain that the color of red my face was would make the rounds in town by tomorrow. Emmett Corbin, reduced to stammers and blushes and long periods of silence by Peyton Crow. Fantastic. Just fantastic.

“I was asking, before you went off into la-la land, why you don’t follow your dream now.” Peyton seemed like she relished watching me squirm on that one. I just didn’t trust her with my truth.

“I don’t even know if it’s a dream,” I lied. “It’s just something I’m interested in. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Because I know you know things about horses. Because of your father.”

“Because of my father,” she echoed, then snorted. “Maybe. But because of other things, too. Not just because of him. Because I wanted to learn.”

“What kinds of things?”

“All kinds,” she said with a matter-of-fact shrug. “I know about everything there is to know about horses.”

“Now who’s the arrogant one?”

“It’s not ego if it’s true, and I assure you that it’s true. I probably know more about horses than I do about fucking.”

She’d said it to shock me. I knew that. But I couldn’t help blurting out the first thing that popped into my mind, and it was a doozy.

“So then why do you fuck for a living instead of work with horses?”

Peyton glared at me for a full minute as I tried to conceal shock at my own question and avoid sinking down into my seat. What was wrong with me? I knew how to behave in front of people. Why had I thought that my question would’ve fallen anywhere along the spectrum of acceptable conversation with Peyton Crow? I could only chalk it up to her picking away at me this entire time — and me finally losing patience with it. That didn’t mean that I wasn’t embarrassed, though.

Then, Peyton threw her head back and laughed — really laughed, not the derisive snorts she’d been ripping this entire time. I recognized she was laughing at me, or perhaps what had jumped out of my mouth at her, but her mirth was so genuine that I found myself wanting to laugh along with her, even if it was at my own expense. People were casting furtive glances over to our table to try and discern just what was so funny, but Peyton didn’t seem to notice or care.

“Oh, Emmett Corbin,” she was able to say at last, wiping tears from her eyes, “you have a lot more of a backbone than I thought. Good for you. Good for you.”

“I don’t really know what made me say that,” I said, feeling awkward. To me, backbone didn’t mean that you were impolite. There hadn’t been a reason to throw Peyton’s statement back into her face no matter how crass she was acting.

“Oh, don’t be a prude,” she said. “It was funny. You’re a man of many surprises, I’m beginning to realize.”

She looked at me appraisingly, and I couldn’t help but squirm a little bit. Something about her made it impossible for me to focus, let alone keep my mouth from going dry. My beer had long since dried up, and I’d still been knocking it back against my teeth, trying to eke out the last drops.

“Don’t you want another one?” she asked, watching me realize for probably the fourth or fifth time that the bottle was empty. “Horses are thirsty work.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Better not have any more. Have to make it back out to the ranch when this is all over.”

“Doesn’t stop most of the people in here,” she said, her eyes roaming the bar with disgust. “Pigs, all of them. Present company tentatively excluded.”

But I was a pig, no different from the rest of the clientele. I struggled to remember the reason for my visit here, just where my last forty dollars had gone and to what purpose, but I couldn’t help but be intrigued by all of the various things Peyton had to offer. She was a beautiful woman, and she understood what it took to tantalize a person.

She lifted two fingers in the direction of the bar without looking away from me, and within twenty seconds, the bartender carted two cold bottles of beer to our table. It was the strangest thing. If you sat at one of the tables crammed into the bar space, it was with the understanding that every time you wanted a refill, you bellied back up to the bar, squeezing between patrons seated on the barstools. The bartender never just delivered your order to you. And even when sitting at the bar, it was completely common to wait fifteen minutes or more just trying to get the bartender’s attention, who refused to acknowledge someone’s thirst if he was immersed in a conversation with another customer.

Peyton seemed to enjoy something of a VIP status here.

“These are both going on your tab, by the way,” she said, taking a long pull from her bottle. “Common courtesy to get a lady something to drink while you’re chatting with her. I have to keep this whistle wet.”

I shuddered involuntarily as she smiled and picked at the label a little.

“Um, I don’t mind buying you a drink,” I said hesitantly, picking my way forward cautiously. “But I don’t want this one. It’s like I told you. I’m going to be driving home, soon. It’s a long drive and an early morning for me.”

“Don’t make me drink alone,” she said. “I hate it.”

“You’re not alone. You’re in a room full of people drinking.” Red-faced ranchers blustering, gesticulating wildly, predicting the rain that remained so elusive, the cattle prices that were dropping, the sound of their businesses coming to an end. I’d come here for company, to forget some of the problems surrounding the ranch and my life there, but there were reminders everywhere of just what was at stake.

“You know what I mean,” Peyton said, pouting as she nudged the beer so close to me I had to grab the neck to keep it from slipping off the table and into my lap. “You’re not drunk. I can tell when a man becomes drunk. You’re not even tipsy. Maybe if you got a little more beer in your belly, you’ll be more honest with me, with what you need to know.”

But I didn’t want to be honest with Peyton. I didn’t trust her as far as I could spit, even as attracted as I was to her, fascinated with her mannerisms and her story. It dawned on me that I knew very little about her, which was atypical for us living in the same small town. She was accessible and inaccessible all at the same time. It was both frustrating and cloying.

“Who else taught you everything you know about horses?” I asked, taking the tiniest sip of beer to appease her. It did little to solve my dry mouth problems. I knew that I wouldn’t get rid of those until I found some way to escape Peyton’s presence.

“I picked up things here and there along the way,” she said, peeling the label from the beer bottle completely off and folding it into little rectangles. “People my father knew. People who worked at the outfit. People I slept with.”

There was always that element there. Peyton was what she was. There was no escaping that. When would I stop jerking in recognition of the facts?

“People talk to you about … horses?” I found myself asking.

“You’re talking with me about horses, aren’t you?”

“I mean, after they … you know.” I swallowed hard. “This is different. There isn’t any …”

“You know?” she mocked. “You mean there isn’t any sex? There can be. I’d be willing. I’m always willing.”

“That isn’t what this is.”

“Maybe not. Not yet, anyway.”

Peyton glanced down at her phone and smiled before showing me the timer that had expired again. My shoulders sagged. This was getting ridiculously expensive. And we had still somehow managed to completely avoid anything I actually wanted to talk about.

“What can I say?” Peyton batted her silken eyelashes at me. “Time seems to fly when I’m with you. That’ll be twenty more dollars to you, if you want to hear more.”

“I think I’ve heard about all I want to hear,” I said, suddenly intent on cutting my losses and running. If Peyton really knew anything about horses, she wasn’t being very forthcoming. Of course, I was occupying her precious time. No one had dared to approach the table while we were talking, making her lose out on any other business. She was looking to squeeze out whatever cash she could from me, probably. She’d said it herself. That was how she made her living.

“Oh, come on, Corbin,” she said, eyes dancing mischievously. “I thought we were getting along just fine.”

“I have places I need to be.”

“I know that we can have a nice time.” And just like that, pressure on my crotch, making my cock jump even as my shoulders did, startled. Peyton lifted her eyebrows at me, making fun of what was probably my expression of utter shock, and she put more pressure on me through my jeans, using the bottom of her boot. She was fondling me in public, right where anyone could see if they just looked the right way, and it both titillated and scandalized me. Jesus, if anyone saw … the fallout would be tremendous.

“Twenty dollars,” she cooed at me, and I realized what she was proposing. We’d go on like this, her boot at the juncture of my legs, talking about nothing things until I messed myself from her careful probing. My fingers constricted and flexed and were on their way to my wallet before I came back to myself and stood up so suddenly my beer clattered against the table, slopping sour-smelling suds everywhere before Peyton quickly righted it. She lifted her eyes slowly to meet mine, her grin widening as she lingered over my crotch and the obvious evidence of her influence in that area.

“I have to go,” I said, hating just how unsure of myself I sounded. “Thanks for nothing.”

“Don’t be a sore loser. We were having fun.”

But it wasn’t fun. It wasn’t even a novelty anymore, shooting the shit with one of the most infamous people in town. I’d had faith that Peyton would have some kind of insight that would help propel me in the direction I wanted to go, but I’d been wrong. I’d nearly been sixty dollars’ worth of wrong, but I’d stopped it at forty. That was at least some consolation, even if we had just wasted half an hour. At least nothing else had happened.