Page 70 of Smokin' Situation

Frowning at my phone, I tried to figure out what the hell that meant, until someone started pounding on the front door.

“Tripp, get your ass out here!”

Charley West was standing on my front porch, her hot pink tipped blonde pigtails riddled with pieces of straw.

“Finally,” she sighed, grabbing my arm and towing me onto the porch. “Let’s get moving. Hazel called and told me what happened. Time for damage control.”

“What?” I laughed, following along as she towed me toward the barn.

Seraphina was saddled up and waiting on the walkway outside the barn, the horse nickering softly when she saw me.

“Why is Phi saddled? She’s supposed to be resting,” I asked, running my hand down her mane.

“Because she needs to help with your grand gesture,” Charley replied, rolling her eyes.

“Grand gesture?”

She sighed, nudging me out of the way with her hip. “Annie is fully prepared to hide until she thinks this has blown over. She asked Hazel if she could stay at the apartment and implied that she’d already started over once this week and would do it again if she had to.”

“Fuck.” Maybe my hope that she’d come back to the ranch wouldn’t pan out.

“Yeah,Tripp, fuck. You kinda fucked this up if she doesn’t know how you feel about her. And don’t even get me started on your idiot brother.”

Turning toward her, I frowned. If she’d known who I was… “Why didn’t you tell her who I was if you knew?”

“Because not everything is about you, Tristan,” she shot back with a dramatic eye roll. “I didn’t know who you were until this morning. When my dad only referred to you as Tripp, I didn’t stop to connect the dots that you were Reid’s cousin. And I was kind of busy helping my dad get his ranch—my childhood home—ready for a fire to potentially burn everything to the ground.”

“Noted,” I replied, backing down. “I only thought she was someone who worked with him at the distillery. He never told me about her specifically. I knew he had a long-time friend who he hooked up with, but I’d have remembered if he’d ever mentioned her name.”

“And now we’ve got work to do since y’all seemed to only be communicating with your private parts over the last few days instead of sharing your family trees. So, here’s what you’re going to do…”

Tristan

Iseverelyunderestimatedthenumber of people that would be out wandering around downtown Sage Springs during a national holiday when Charley convinced me we needed to stop in town for flowers. And how many of them would take pictures of a man riding a horse down main street in the middle of the afternoon with his shirt unbuttoned and a bouquet tucked in his saddlebag.

Charley was in a West Peak Ranch pickup truck behind me, and every time I turned toward her, she’d just waved while simultaneously laughing her ass off.

Despite the early July heat, Seraphina seemed in good spirits, happy to be out of her stall. Charley and Marty had assured me that the equine vet was okay with light exercise, so if I didn’t push her too hard, a walk through town wouldn’t overtax her lungs.

As I moved her reins to the side, steering her toward the River Run Tavern where Annie worked, my eyes widened when I saw a handful of my fellow firefighters gathered in the drive of the fire station washing one of the three engines we kept there.

“Ow, ow!” a deep, masculine voice yelled right before a chorus of loud whistles tore through the air from the officers washing the truck. “Check out that hunky cowboy!”

Chief Wilson, who was typically a stoic man, held a wet cloth in his fist while he yelled loudly enough a few pedestrians stopped to watch. “Call the fire department, boys! We’ve got a blaze rolling through. Oh wait, we are the fire department. Better get the hose!”

Steering Phi across the road to the far side, I hoped my typically mellow horse wouldn’t be spooked by the spray of water when my chuckling boss aimed the nozzle of a garden hose toward us.

She nickered, turning her head to look at me, and if a horse could roll her eyes, I knew she would have. “I know, pretty girl. You’re being very tolerant of this nonsense.”

“Get a move on,” Charley yelled from the truck behind me, and the handful of firefighters waved, laughing as I turned Phi toward the bar.

The pedestrian traffic thinned out even more the further we got to the edge of town. But when I looked at the parking lot of the bar, it was more than half full.

I led Phi to the side of the building as Charley parked the truck, hopping out to run around the back of the building. She came back with an empty bucket, filling it with the spigot beside the side door.

“Remind me again why I agreed to this?” I asked as she put the bucket on the ground in front of the horse, running her hand down her mane while Phi took a drink.

“Because youluuurveher and you’re trying to make an impression.”

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