Page 20 of Property of Mako
“I thought you people couldn’t be out in the daylight?” I blurted out before pursing my lips and narrowing my gaze. I doctored up my coffee with copious amounts of cream and sugar. Honestly, I believed I was handling the fact that vampires were real quite well. Then again, I’d always believed in ghosts, demons, and witches. What was a vampire tossed into the mix?
He snorted what I thought was a laugh. “Old wives’ tales. That belief came about because that’s when it was the easiest to feed without exposing ourselves. Now we have more sophisticated ways of living. Well, most of us anyway.”
“Oh,” I said, at a loss for words. I wanted to bring up what had happened the other night, but I was a bit at a loss as to what to say.
So, uh, the other night when you bit me… did I taste bad?
Or maybe Did you use some kind of vampire mind manipulation on me? Is that why I couldn’t keep my hands and vagina off you?
Instead, I kept my mouth shut, drank my coffee, and grabbed a granola bar. As I put my boots on, I ate the bar and washed it down with coffee.
“That’s all you’re going to eat?”
I glanced over my shoulder and jumped, slamming my hand over my racing heart. He was right behind me, and I hadn’t heard him move. “You can’t be doing that sneaky vampy shit, asshole!”
He gave me a droll stare before he arched a single eyebrow. “Vampy… shit?”
First, I glared at him, then, when he continued to give me that judging look, I rolled my eyes and went outside.
“You need to eat better than that,” he continued in my ear, and I spun around again.
“Stop doing that! You don’t need to be up my ass! I have things to do,” I huffed out and continued on to the barn. I’d already fed everyone before he had arrived on my doorstep.
“My name is Calix,” he called out from behind me. “Not Asshole. But they call me Mako.”
I stopped in my tracks. Then I slowly spun back around to face him.
“Well, Calix, it’s not exactly nice to meet you. But if you’re going to insist on being underfoot all day, you might as well make yourself useful. I have chores to do,” I said with a sweet-as-pie smile. Then I resumed my trek to the barn, where I could hear the soft nickers and snuffling of the horses.
He was right on my heels, so when I stepped into the cool interior of the old barn, I grabbed a manure fork and held it out to him. The look on his handsome face was comical, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s not going to bite you. You mean to tell me that in all the years you’ve been alive, you never had to clean up after a horse? How old are you anyway?”
A low rumble emanated from deep in his throat as he snatched it from me. “Of course I did. But we didn’t exactly have these things.” He wiggled the fork in front of me.
“I need to turn them out first. Then I need to clean stalls. After that’s done, I need to exercise a few of them. I’ll start putting them out, and you can start on an empty stall.”
“Why don’t I help you turn them out, then you work the ones you need to while I clean? Things will get done faster that way.”
It was my turn to snort. “You probably haven’t cleaned a stall in ages—you still didn’t tell me how old you are—and you don’t know where the manure gets dumped.”
“First, no, I haven’t, but I think I can manage. Second, none of your business. Third, the manure pile is out back, and it gets picked up every other Tuesday.”
My jaw dropped, and I could only blink at his gorgeous, smug face.
“F-F-Fine,” I finally stuttered, trying to sound gruffly disinterested.
After putting the halters on the first two mares, I led Gertrude, the twenty-two-year-old flea-bitten gray, out. I stopped at Sally’s stall and grabbed her too since they were pretty much besties. Sally was missing one eye because her previous owner hadn’t had the cut she got seen to and infection set in. She was miserable when I went out to pick her up. They told me I could take her, so I loaded her up and swung by my vet to get her looked at. She lost the eye, but it didn’t slow her down. She was the sweetest little thing.
I removed their halters after taking them into their pasture and watched for a moment with a smile as they sauntered off to the shade and began to graze.
Bonnie, Hope, and Sadie joined them.
Then I moved on to the geldings. Clyde, Titan, and Fred went into the gelding pasture.
Winston got saddled up, and I went through his routine. I was confident I’d be able to place him once he had some more time on him. He was a sweet boy; he’d just been left to roam in a pasture for almost four years, so he needed some refresher work.
When I was done with him, I brushed him down and turned him out with his buddies.
Then I rode Sunny for a bit before letting her join the girls.
