Page 6 of Home Hearts Hooves

DEAN

FROM AWKWARD TO PIE FIGHT IN UNDER TEN MINUTES

Ihangmyfavoritehat on the hooks by the door. It was my mother’s hat, and when she passed, my father shoved it on my head and said it was mine. I should have offered to share it with my brothers and sister. But I didn’t want to. I loved that it smelled of her lavender perfume, though I know it’s long gone. Every time I put it on, I get a hit of that scent, and I see her smiling face in my mind’s eye. Next, I slip off my boots and set them beside the mat because Sally-May will kill me if I track mud through the house. Sally-May is Perry’s wife, one of the ranch’s farmhands. They moved onto the property about six months ago after selling up the diner she used to run. Perry has been a farm hand on Beaker Brothers since before I could walk. He knows this property better than anyone else, even better than Nial and me, I’d bet. They used to live in an apartment on top of the diner, so selling the business also meant finding a new place to live. Good thing their nephew created a container home business and was happy to hook them up. That just left them looking for a place to put it. Perry is here at the crack of dawn every morning anyway, so it made sense to offer for them to set up on Beaker Brothers. It didn’t feel right putting them on the edge of the property, so we had it positioned right up behind the main house.

Sally-May was supposed to retire when they sold, take up crafts or knitting or whatever it is older people do when they retire, but I came in the first night after doing my final check on the animals to find her cooking up a storm in the kitchen. She insisted this was what she preferred to do to keep busy and insisted on being useful, so now she prepares the meals for the cabins and us, our dinner and breakfast anyway.

“Is there somewhere I can…?” Preston starts, and I nod.

“Umm, the bathroom is the third door down. I can…um, grab you a shirt, too,” I say, and his stare follows mine to the mud splattered across his chest and coating parts of one sleeve.

“Thanks,” he replies, and I grab my blue flannel from the hall closet and hand it over before heading to my bathroom to wash up for dinner. The water runs brown as I wash the dirt from my hands, but then I catch my reflection out of the corner of my eye.

“Urgh, I look like I crawled out from under a bridge.”

A streak of dirt mixed with sweat runs the length of my forehead at the hat line, and my dark hair is sticking up at all angles. People think cowboys wear hats to keep the sun from cooking them outside all day. Really, it’s to hide hair like this. My gaze moves to my neck. Great, more dirt, and I missed a button when I was getting dressed this morning. This is the man Preston Knight saw just a few minutes ago. My stomach churns. He must think me a full mess.

I strip off the shit and scrub my face clean, but no amount of scrubbing will erase the deep lines etched at the corners of my eyes. I can thank the days of arduous work out in the sun for those, and for the stained calluses on my palms. Grabbing fistfuls of water, I sweep my fingers through my hair, the cool drips run down my back, and bring a semblance of relief. Why did I have to invite him to dinner? I can hardly string more than one coherent sentence together around him at the best of times, yet there I was opening my big mouth. Do you eat? What the fuck was that?

Someone knocks on the bathroom door.

“Just a minute,” I call.

“Sally-May is setting the plates, and you know how she gets if we’re late,” Nial replies, and I shut off the tap.

“You just know she won’t let you eat until I get there.”

He thumps on the door with his fist twice more.

“Exactly. I’m hungry. Hurry up.”

I’m tempted to make him wait, but it’s not just him out there. The whole team gets together for dinner every night after we’ve finished the day’s chores, and again, there’s Preston out there, too. The sooner I get through this dinner, the better.

I hear them laughing before I set foot in the dining room. Preston has this laugh that fills a space and makes it brighter somehow. And it’s like a magnet, drawing me in, pulling me toward its melodic sound.

I scan the table. The yellow and white striped tablecloth is almost invisible under all the serving dishes, bowls, and dinner plates, and while Nial is usually sitting in the seat to my left, tonight he’s moved down a place to sit where Atlas normally does and Preston is in his place. He’s wearing my shirt, and fuck, it looks good on him. It clings to his thick arms, highlighting every bulge of his muscles, he’s got the collar unbuttoned a little, and his dark chest hair peeks out.

How am I going to be able to sit this close to him all through dinner? My seat is at the head of the table, right there beside him. Not because I chose it, but because Sally-May insisted that every house needed a head of the table, and since I was the oldest, it was only right that it be me. I could sit at the other end and make Atlas sit up here, but that would make it even more obvious that something is up. It’s bad enough that I seem to lose the ability to form full sentences around him half the time.

“Finally,” Nial says when he spots me.

“Everything okay?” Sally-May asks, setting the tray of glazed carrots down in front of Nial and batting his hand away when he goes to pick at them.

“Fine, darlin’,” I manage to say, grabbing the back of my chair.

“Atlas not joining us?”

“He’s…” My gaze falls on Preston, and I lose my train of thought. He’s looking up at me, his lips turned up on one side in a half smile.

“That would be my doing,” he starts, and Sally-May folds her arms over her chest.

“How might that be?”

Before Preston can answer, Nial pipes in.

“He brought us a dead horse.”

I grab a roll from the basket in front of me and toss it at his head. “It’s not dead, it just…plays dead.” Wow, that was an actual full sentence.

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