Page 97 of Sold to Her Enemy

“Not as happy as I am,” Adrian murmurs.

With how I’m blushing, I’m happy nobody is around.

“Are you doing all right with Grant?”

Adrian gives his horse’s neck a good pat. “Yeah. He seems calm.”

“That’s my assessment, too,” I smile at Adrian, remembering him at the stables, giving Penelope a nuzzle after I had finished teaching.

“You don’t like horses, but you spent a lot of time at the stables.”

It’s true what they say, it’s like riding a bike. I mount up easily, slipping my feet into the stirrups. I chose an English saddle and take a moment to adjust my seat, feeling the irons on the soles of my borrowed boots.

Adrian mounts up. He might not love horses like I do, but he’s been around them his whole life and knows how to ride.

“One, just because I’m not obsessed with horses doesn’t mean that I don’t like them. Two, of course, I hung around the stables. It was the one place I could watch you without other people noticing or you making excuses for why you didn’t want to hang out with me.”

The butterflies swim from my belly to my throat. I concentrate on warming up Bogart, trying to put Adrian’s words out of my head.

But as I ease into a trot, I can’t help but smile.

He wanted me as much as I wanted him.

I loved how protective he was of Ava, even though she’s awful. He does the well-bred stuff, like opening doors for other people and offering to carry stuff.

But it’s that heart of his I know he buries under the cool professional his father wanted him to be.

Like a couple of years ago, two days before Christmas, we were both at the MM Industries offices, when Adrian took a phone call from a charity. Their bins had been broken into and they’d asked if Adrian would be willing to make a last-minute donation?

“Come play Santa with me, Mckenna.”

I didn’t hesitate because I was always eager to spend alone time with him, where Ava wasn’t. Laughing, we ran down to the parking lot and had the best time in Walmart, filling the cart with toys as we went.

He was the one I called when my car broke down on the freeway. He told me to keep my doors locked while I waited for service to get to me, and ten minutes later, he pulled up behind me.

“I didn’t want you out here waiting,” he said and drove me home like it was no big deal.

From my viewpoint, he was the caring, protective older brother who I had always wanted for myself.

I shift my weight from my pelvis to my seat bones, and at the next corner, I signal a canter.

Lost in the rhythm, my mind stops thinking, but my heart can’t stop feeling. I feel like I’m going to burst with happiness and, simultaneously, fling myself into a ball and cry.

Because I love Adrian McIntyre and I have always loved him.

But that day, he walked into the board meeting to tell us to get out? That was his settling into his don’t fuck with me or else face.

It’s like all the years between us, all the time we spent where we were orbiting each other’s family, didn’t matter.

It all turned to dust with his icy, hurting words.

From my peripheral, I see Adrian trot over to the next ring. I focus on the back-and-forth motion, loving how the air feels on my face and appreciating this horse under me.

Bogart has a nice, smooth canter, and it’s easy for me to give myself over to it.

After several more turns around the arena, I ease Bogart out of the canter and settle back into a walk.

Adrian comes back over to our ring.

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