EMMETT (The Corbin Brothers Book 3) (5 page)

I swiftly settled my tab and left through the back, unwilling to endure the stares and whistles I was certain to get if I made my way through the front and past all the other patrons. They all knew what Peyton was. I was the one who’d tried to see something different in her.

The air in the alley was just as stuffy as the air had been inside of the bar. I needed wind on my face. I needed somewhere else to be. Peyton had crawled underneath my skin and made herself at home there. I was uncomfortable, hot and bothered, disappointed in her and in myself.

"Hey, Corbin."

I whirled around. "It's fucking Emmett."

Peyton smirked at me as she let the door close to the bar behind her. "I know it is. I just liked the way you looked when you were all worked up about your name."

She approached me, sinuous, dangerous, a completely foreign experience, until I could practically taste the perfume she'd chosen — a citrus that melded well with the hot night. She tilted her head upward, and I felt like I didn't have a choice. I kissed Peyton Crow and wondered how much more money it would cost me.

The worry of money and prices quickly melted away. She tasted like fruit even if she hadn't been eating any at the bar, something related to pineapple and another item I couldn't figure out.

I broke the kiss as soon as my brains returned to my skull.

"All I wanted was horses," I said. "Nothing more."

"Uh-huh." She looked amused. "What about what I want?"

I'd never considered the possibility that Peyton Crow actually wanted anyone she slept with. Or sought to sleep with. I didn't know. I was drunker than I usually was, fuzzy with promises and whispers. I'd told her. I'd told her all I wanted was to talk about horses. Fucking horses. That was it.

And yet we were out here, in the alley behind the bar, which was the preferred location for a majority of her business transactions. What did she really want? Another handout? She couldn’t actually want to sleep with me, could she?

“How much is the kiss going to cost me?” I asked, only half joking.

“Depends on what you want with it,” she said. “The kiss was on me. How you choose to continue is up to you.”

“I’m going home.” I ached with exhaustion, all the way down to my bones, as if I’d put in a full day at the ranch. I hadn’t at all — I’d ridden Sugar for the first time in a long time, gotten shut down by Dax Malone, and been humiliated by his daughter. It was perhaps an emotionally tiring day, but nothing I should feel this physically tired for.

“Emmett, wait.”

I paused in the mouth of the alley, already on the way to my pickup truck along the street. I was done with this — done with Peyton’s games. I hated the way she made me feel, like I was helplessly attracted to her, drawn to her even as I had much more important things in mind, things I needed to do. She made me want her and know I could never be good enough to truly have her. It was perplexing and frustrating, and I was done.

“You seem like an okay guy.” Peyton picked her way around the debris littering the alleyway, the broken bottles scattered like painful stars across the pavement, her boot heels scraping along the loose gravel. “I mean, as far as men go. You didn’t try to take advantage of me. You didn’t try and push to see how far you could get without paying. I … I did that.”

I watched her warily, trying to guess what game she was playing now, not trusting that any of this would come from a genuine place. With her line of work, it was hard to imagine that Peyton Crow had a single genuine bone in her body.

“The ideas I have for horses … they’re good ones,” she said. “Ones we should actually talk about. I can tell that it’s your passion, and it’s rare to find someone who truly has dreams and is doing something to actively pursue them.”

Any minute now, I expected the punchline. Peyton was working on getting me vulnerable, backing me into a corner, and then she would launch her final attack on me. Everyone would probably come pouring out of the bar to watch it happen, and I’d be unable to show my face in this town for the rest of my life. Perfect. This was about how I expected today to end.

“I don’t really think the bar is a good place to discuss the ideas I have for horsing operations, anyway,” Peyton said.

“You prefer the alley?”

“I prefer that maybe tomorrow or the next day, or I guess just whenever you’re free, we should really talk about it.” She cocked her head at me and smiled. “And I mean just talk. Bounce ideas off each other. No cash required.”

“You told me your time was money,” I said, confused enough to let my guard down a little. “Why would you do anything for free?”

“I don’t know, Emmett Corbin.” Peyton rubbed her nose playfully against mine. “Maybe I think you’re cute.”

And, punchline.

“I’m leaving,” I said, turning away again.

“I’m serious,” she said. “About the horses, I mean. And I like guys with long hair, so I guess I’m serious about you being cute.”

“You don’t have to patronize me.”

“I’m not.” She took me by the shoulder and pulled until I turned around, reluctant. “I have ideas — good ones. If you think you really want to make a go of it, to actually make a horsing operation that you can be proud of, if you’re really serious, then I want to talk about it.”

“I told you. It’s only theoretical.”

“Yeah, yeah, your ‘research.’” She didn’t curl her fingers into air quotes, but I could see them all the same in the way she pronounced it. “I told you once, and I’ll tell you again. I’m good at keeping secrets. Very good. It’s practically my job … well, part of it.”

My face colored. “I really, really need to be going.”

She sighed heavily, looked away briefly, then flashed her dark eyes back up at me, as if she’d come to a decision. “Rehab.”

I blinked a couple of times. “What?”

“You heard me. Rehab.”

“You’re going to rehab?” I was so confused.

“No, idiot.”

“You’re suggesting I should go to rehab?” I frowned. “I don’t go out drinking every night.”

“I’m saying that it should be a horse rehab facility,” she said, exasperated. “That’s the idea I have. And that’s the knowledge I bring to the table.”

I inhaled deeply, and it was as if I was breathing for the first time this evening. That simple statement had ignited all kinds of synapses in my brain, and I was thinking about how that would work, what we would need to learn or amass or do or commandeer in order to set something like that up.

“Does your father do something like that, or anyone else in the area?” I asked. “What kind of knowledge, exactly, would you say you have about rehabbing horses? Is it something anyone can learn to do? Can I learn how to do it? Do you think it would work? What kinds of things are we prepared to do, here?”

Peyton held her hands up to my rapid-fire questions. “Like I said. The bar’s not the place to discuss things like this, and neither is this alley. You stick around back here long enough and people really are going to think that you took your pleasure in me.”

“Jesus.”

She waved my quiet exclamation away. “Oh, people talk. They’re probably already talking. If you’re seen leaving too soon, they’ll say you don’t know how to handle yourself around a woman. That you’re a minute man.”

“If this is supposed to be making me feel any better …”

“You’re so sensitive,” she said, smiling like this discovery pleased her. “All I’m trying to say is that we should meet and really talk about this. Are you serious about wanting to do this horsing operation the right way, in a way that would be truly effective?”

The only words that I could even think of right now were “horse rehab.” I couldn’t quite place why it made me so excited, but it did. Probably because it was something I’d never considered before, some possibility that had been outside the realm of my experience. This was exactly what I had wanted out of Dax Malone, and the fact that I was getting it instead from his daughter, Peyton Crow, was even stranger. But I had to temper my enthusiasm with caution.

“You said you’re good at secrets.”

“That’s right. I did say that. Glad it stuck with you.”

“If my brothers find out that I’m going behind their backs, talking to people about horses instead of cattle, all four of them would probably gang up on me and beat my ass in for me.”

“Well, I won’t tell your brothers about us discussing horses if you don’t tell my father we’re doing the same thing.” She raised her eyebrows at me. “You tried to go talk to him earlier today, didn’t you? Don’t lie to me. I can smell it from a mile away. He turned you down. You wouldn’t have approached me, otherwise.”

“You think he’d be pissed if he found out you were talking to me?” I asked. “He seemed pretty hostile.”

“He would never give away even a scrap of information if he thought it might give someone the leg up over him,” she said. “I’ve had to yank every bit of knowledge from that old fart like it was pulling teeth, but I know enough — and then some. Yeah. He’d hate it if he found out I was talking to you — especially since he turned you down first.”

“I guess we both have secrets that need keeping, then,” I said.

“I guess we do.” She stepped back and stuck her hand out. “I’ll keep yours if you keep mine.”

I only hesitated a moment before putting my hand in hers and shaking it. She had a strong grip — stronger than any woman I’d ever shaken hands with.

“It’s a deal.”

I hoped I knew what I was getting myself into.

For weeks, it was all I could think about, all I searched on Google when I got a spare moment, though those came fewer and farther between now that I was back to working full time on the ranch. I knew I would have to play hooky from the ranch in order to devote as much time as was necessary to the project with Peyton, and I thought about how I’d manage that, too. But my head was full of dreams, and for the first time in a long time, I was really excited about everything, launching myself out of bed every morning, running myself happily ragged.

Peyton and I corresponded cautiously at first, and then constantly, both of us finally settling on a morning we could both carve out to meet in person. She’d come here, to my trailer. I’d be missing a scheduled assignment, but I didn’t think I’d be missed. There were too many moving parts on this ranch for one to draw any sort of extra scrutiny.

That morning, though, after a night of anxious tossing and turning, I had to stop and laugh at myself. I was trying on shirt after shirt like I was nervous about my appearance. She knew what I looked like, and she’d still agreed to this meeting. Anything would be fine.

But after that personal pep talk, when I heard the crunch of gravel outside the trailer, I jumped, tossing off the shirt I had been sure I’d decided on and pulling on the first one I’d tried. I shoved the rest of them in the chest of drawers, pushing my hip against them until I forced them shut, shirts bulging. That would have to do. I wasn’t going to make her wait.

I bounded out of the trailer with a grin, ready and not ready at all to greet her, looking at where her car should be, and saw nothing. What the hell? I’d been certain that I’d heard her out there, even if she was a little early — though not by much. Was that how anxious I was about this meeting, that I’d hallucinated the sound of someone approaching the trailer? I shook my head at myself for not the first time that morning. It was like a first date, or something, only it wasn’t. This was a business meeting. No dating. Business only. Forget pleasure, how nice it would be to lay eyes on her again.

“What’s up, Emmett?” Avery asked, clapping me on the back and making me jump. He chuckled at my surprise. “Don’t tell me I startled you. I thought for sure you heard me coming. Why else were you out here?”

I couldn’t say that I was out here waiting for Peyton Crow. How else could I get rid of my younger brother as quickly as possible? Peyton should be here any moment, and I needed him gone.

“I did hear you,” I said. “I just have a lot on my mind right now.”

“It’s a crazy time for the ranch,” Avery sympathized. “Then again, it’s always fucking crazy around here.”

“True.” I coughed, ran a hand through my hair, realized it was still down and quickly piled it on top of my head and secured it with the ever-present rubber band I kept around my wrist for just that purpose. I wore it down more in the winter, when it was actually nice to have something guarding my neck, but summers, it was always up. It was too hot, otherwise.

I also thought it looked better up, and that’s probably the real reason I did it. Something in me wanted to look nice for Peyton. A part of myself that had thrilled instead of cowered when she’d kissed me in the alley because she wanted to. That same part wanted to impress her today, even if this was a true business meeting, the day we’d hash out all of our ideas and hopes and expectations for a horse rehab project.

I’d have been lying if part of me didn’t also hope for something more. It was idiotic. Peyton had offered me more — as much as I wanted and then some — and I had refused her. But that kernel of desire was still inside of me, begging for attention. I wasn’t sure what would extinguish it.

“You really do have a lot on your mind,” Avery said, dragging me painfully back into the present.

“Sorry, you’re right,” I said.

“I was asking you — several times — how it felt being a part of things again,” he said. “You know. Now that you don’t have to wear the brace anymore. Now that you’re back in action.”

“You know, it’s good,” I said, resisting the urge to check the time on my phone, or to see if I had a missed call or a text from Peyton I hadn’t noticed, informing me of her imminent arrival. “I guess I was a little bored, not doing anything.”

“Are you kidding me?” Avery laughed. “I swear to God, getting shot was like the best thing to ever happen to me. No lie.”

“You’re an idiot,” I said, one of the more common responses we all had for Avery. He was rotten in a way that only children who had been the babies of the family long enough to get comfortable could be. Then Hunter had come along and stolen all of his thunder, and I didn’t think Avery had ever completely forgiven him.

“A happy idiot,” Avery agreed, grinning like a fool.

“Tell me about things,” I said, trying my best to push Peyton from my mind, to focus on my brother, to show him the support and interest in his affairs that I wished everyone else would give me. Maybe, someday, the universe would see that I’d been making an effort and not getting a fair return in exchange. Maybe karma would even things out at some point. Hopefully.

“Things are really good,” Avery confessed, sounding a little surprised himself. “I don’t know. You know how I was.”

We all did. Avery didn’t want to be here — at least, he used to not want to be here. He hadn’t wanted to marry Paisley Summers, either, but that move had saved both of our families’ ranches.

“So what changed?” I asked. “Was it the honeymoon that made you change your mind about things?”

“Yeah, our long-delayed honeymoon,” he said, laughing. “I don’t know. It seems like everything’s been a honeymoon since getting shot. I couldn’t work, so we traveled. Got to know each other better.”

“Made business plans,” I said, only a little bit jealous. Okay, fine. I was stupid jealous. It was ugly to be this jealous of my brother. But Paisley, as the CEO of the Summers side of the Corbin-Summers Ranch, had a lot more pull than, say, Tucker or me, and Avery enjoyed a certain privilege being married to the CEO. When he had proposed a dude ranch as a way to bring in extra money — and appreciation and awareness campaign for ranching, in general, the right way it was supposed to be done — Paisley had thought it was a great idea and pushed it through with Chance.

“The planning with the dude ranch is insane right now,” Avery said, his eyes widening. “I mean, I kind of thought it would be a lot more straightforward than this. You know? If you build it, they will come? That kind of idea.”

“Not so much, right?” I said, forced to laugh at him. He was seriously such an idiot sometimes that it would almost have been adorable, if he hadn’t been a grown man and married. “Marketing to do, packages to plan, social media campaigns to organize …”

He shuddered. “You sound just like Paisley. You haven’t been talking to her, have you? She’s trying — and succeeding — to light a fire under my ass for this thing.”

“Well, the barracks will be ready to go soon,” I reasoned. “It would be stupid for them to be complete and then just to stand there, vacant, taking up room on the property that could’ve been used for something else.”

“Fuck, man, now you sound just like Chance.” Avery looked a little spooked. “I mean it. What you said right now is the last conversation I had with them. An executive meeting, Paisley called it. Jesus.”

There was a time he would’ve been bemused — irked, even — to make a statement like that, but I noticed he looked vaguely pleased with himself, like he’d hitched his wagon to something pretty great. I loved my brother, but I did feel like Paisley was a little out of his league. She was so motivated, and he was just … Avery. I wasn’t sure how they worked together, but they did. For a little while, though, we’d all doubted whether they would. But something seemed to have changed after that night Avery had gotten shot. It had shaken them both up, shown them just what could’ve been lost.

And somehow led Avery to his big revelation about a dude ranch, probably the second time he single-handedly saved this place.

Maybe I’d get my chance to help this place in a visible way like Avery or even Hunter by teaming up with Peyton on the horse rehab project. The thought of Peyton made me sweat even harder than I already was in the morning sun.

“So what are you doing over on this side of the ranch?” I asked, shifting my weight from foot to foot. And what could I do to get him to go away? I left that thought hanging unsaid between us. I didn’t want to be rude. That wasn’t really my nature. Being rude to try to drive him away would be so out of character for me that it would pique his curiosity and he’d insist on hanging around to figure out what was making me act like such a weirdo.

“Can’t I come back over to the Corbin side every once in a while?” he joked. “This was my home, too, same as the rest of you.”

“You’ve joined the dark side, now,” I joked back, hoping that grinning and laughing would help conceal just how manic and anxious I was feeling right now. “You might as well have changed your last name to Summers at the wedding.”

“Very funny,” Avery said. “I had that meeting with Chance and Paisley, which was up at the house, in the laundry room — super embarrassing — and I decided to come out here for nostalgia’s sake and take a gander at the old trailer. You don’t mind, do you? This place brings back lots of memories for me.”

“Lots of memories? You were living here just a few months ago.”

“Recent memories, then.”

“It’s not that clean,” I said, trailing off, hesitant to let him stay any longer. By some grace of a merciful god, Peyton was running late, or else she and my brother would’ve already had the pleasure of crossing paths — to my chagrin.

“Oh, please,” Avery scoffed. “That place was a shit hole when I lived here. I’m sure it’s ten times better now.”

He stepped inside the trailer, and I had no choice but to follow him in.

“I had to use an entire box of disinfectant wipes on this place when I moved in,” I grumbled good-naturedly, still doing everything in my power to conceal my panic.

“Good thing, too,” he replied. “This was a bachelor pad if there ever was one. Lucky trailer, though.”

“Lucky how?”

“Well, right after I moved out here, I got married,” he said. “Maybe you’ll be the next of us to put a ring on it.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said, flushing in spite of myself at the thought of Peyton. God, I was such a dumbass that I couldn’t stand myself sometimes. Why would the idea of being the next to marry make me blush like some kind of lunatic? Did I think that Peyton would want to marry me? The idea was as laughable as Avery thinking his trailer was magic or something.

“At the very least, may this trailer get you laid.” Avery waved his arms around, looking like he was attempting some kind of wish or prophecy. “A night of pleasure for Emmett from the bachelor pad.”

As if on some kind of horribly timed cue, the crunch of car tires on gravel made the both of us look to my open door.

“Who’s that?” Avery asked, but I knew who it was. Peyton Crow, here to see me, in my lucky bachelor pad. I wished I could run away and hide somewhere, and ran through myriad possibilities for what I could do to deal with this situation. I could cold cock Avery and lock him in the bathroom. When he came to, eventually, I could let him out and tell him he fainted, hopefully sending Peyton off before that, our business concluded. Or I could play dumb when Peyton stepped out of the car and send her away in shame and scorn — except I couldn’t do that. I’d waited and waited as long as I could, and I’d told her to meet me here. I just hadn’t counted on Avery being here for the party, too.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” my younger brother said as he leaned out the door of the trailer before I could stop him.

“If you’re a son of a bitch, that would make me one, too,” I reminded him mildly. “Not a very nice expression to remember Mom with.”

“You know it’s just an expression,” Avery said absently, watching Peyton unfold herself and stretch while getting out of her beat-up car. She looked nice — slick black leggings with a deep magenta tank top that complimented her figure. Complimenting that figure, though, wasn’t hard to do. Peyton could’ve worn a paper sack and done it fashionable justice.

Avery shook himself as if he had been dreaming — hell, I felt like I’d been dreaming, watching her move in her languid way — and gave me a shrewd look, raising his eyebrow.

“You expecting someone?”

“In fact, I am,” I said, clearing my throat and easing past him and into the sunlight. “Hey, Peyton.”

“I’m running a little late, looks like,” she said, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. “Avery Corbin? I didn’t believe my eyes, but it really is you. How’s it hanging?”

Avery beamed and stepped forward to give Peyton a one-armed hug. “It hangs well. How are you hanging?”

“Bummed out, actually,” she said, pouting prettily. “You never go to the bar anymore.”

He laughed. “You never gave me the time of day at the bar.”

“Still, it was nice seeing you,” she said, her teeth so white in the sun as she smiled. “And I gave you that nice ride once, remember?”

“I don’t remember a single nice thing about this alleged ride,” Avery said, cracking up as he raised his hands, like he was being arrested, or found out. “We’ll speak no more of this. We’re making my brother squirm in his boots.”