Page 148 of The Last Second Chance
She was still pondering that when she strode into the stable through the side door. It wasn’t Ellery’s cousin standing outside her office with his hands stuffed in his pockets. It was her father.
She’d been had yet again by the B.C. and this meant war.
“I didn’t know you and Ellery were cousins,” she said evenly.
“More like old friends,” Forrest fibbed.
“Uh-huh. How old?”
“Oh, we go way back.”
Joey crossed her arms. “She tracked you down didn’t she? Diabolical B.C.,” she muttered.
“She didn’t come to me. Her services were recommended by…an acquaintance.”
“What acquaintance?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“I guess we’re not past the whole lying to each other thing, huh?”
“Oh for God’s sake. Jax gave me her business card if I needed help getting in touch with you. You haven’t been taking my calls.”
Joey added Jax back on to the shit list. “I haven’t wanted to take your calls. And since when did you and Jax get so buddy-buddy that you’re trading Ellery’s business card?”
“We’re not buddy-buddy.” Her father seemed to take great offense to that.
“What are you doing here?”
“That’s a fine greeting for your father. I thought I’d come by and maybe we could go for a ride,” Forrest said, scuffing his boot in the dirt. “Never did get to see the new horses last time I was here.”
“You mean when I found out that you’d betrayed me and our family friends by shipping off my high school boyfriend?”
Her father sighed heavily. “I’m no good at apologies. Ask your mother. Can’t we just go back to the way things were?”
Joey’s eye began to twitch wickedly. “The way things were, Dad? With you and Mom breathing down my neck over every life decision I’ve made since high school? Trying to keep me in some bubble of control—”
“If anything it was a bubble of safety,” Forrest interjected. “You’ll understand when you have kids of your own. We could have lost you that night.”
“But you didn’t because Jax paid attention in health class and knew how to tie a damn tourniquet. And instead of thanking him for saving my life, you blamed him for almost losing it.”
Forrest was shaking his head. “Maybe it wasn’t one of my finest moments. But I thought I was doing the right thing. You never let on that you wished things had been different. You’re happy now, aren’t you?”
Was she? Was she really happy with her life or was she just sitting behind the safety of her walls waiting for the next shoe to drop? Just like her father.
Joey didn’t have an answer for him so she changed the subject. “So you want to go for a ride?”
Forrest was one who generally appreciated horses from a distance, usually on the racetrack, but he’d always given in to Joey when she’d offered to go riding with him. Her love of horses had always baffled him, but the talent she’d displayed even as a kid had persuaded him to support her hobby.
He nodded briskly. “If you’re okay with it.”
Joey stared at him a beat, debating whether or not she should just throw him out. But that would probably make Thanksgiving awkward, she decided.
“Ellery’s paying me for it so I might as well deliver,” Joey said. Ellery would indeed be paying a steep price for her scheming.
“Who do you want me on?”
“You can have Tucker,” she said, nodding at the bay two stalls down. “He’s a lesson horse and probably won’t throw you.”
