Page 20 of Coming to Grips
“Who was who?” He follows the direction of Kyle’s gaze. A couple of cowhands come around the corner, and who’s he trying to name? The blond woman. “Oh, uh, Bethany? She’s one of the vet techs. Took care of Jewel. After.”
Kyle winks and waggles his eyebrows. “She’s pretty.”
Chase stares in the direction she’d gone. “Yes. Yes, she is...” If you liked petite blond women with green eyes, pretty smiles, and nice figures. Which he presumably had at some point in his life, hadn’t he? But now, apparently, it’s eyes the color of his favorite chestnut mare, a smirky grin, and a broad chest. And what the fuck? His chest constricts and heart starts beating like a horse in full gallop. He gulps in a breath. “Hey, I gotta go.”
“You all right?” Kyle asks, concern etching a vee in his forehead.
“Um, yeah.” No. “I’ll see you later.” Chase nods and hightails it down the stairs.
“See ya…” Kyle’s voice settles on the air after him.
Chase turns down a wide path between a couple of ranch buildings and out of Kyle’s sight. An old white pickup moves to one side. Rust laces the wheel wells and the wide blue stripe down the side is faded. It slows to a stop and the window rolls down. “Hey, Chase, good to see you,” says Mick, one of Chase’s fellow wranglers. “How are you?”
“I’m good, thanks. You going to town?” Chase suddenly needs to be away from the ranch, away from everything associated with Kyle.
“Nah, sorry, man. You okay?”
Shit. Chase must look as out of sorts as he feels. “Yeah. Fine.”
An expression of doubt crosses Mick’s face, but he doesn’t say anything other than, “I think Jessie might be headed to Ten Rigs though. She’s at two.”
“Thanks.” Chase smacks the side of the truck. “Have a good one,” he says and cuts through and around various outbuildings toward the second horse barn. The one Mick, Jessie, Joe, and Chase himself work from and manage the horses in. Monahan Ranch has a dozen horse barns to house and care for the hundreds of horses it owns.
Jessie’s just exiting the barn, plopping her black Stetson on top of her equally black hair and pulling keys from her jeans pocket. Small puffs of dust trail in her booted wake.
“Jessie—”
She looks up and smiles. “Hey, you, how’s it going?”
He shrugs. The fact that she’s his age and wearing braces usually amuses him but he barely lifts his lips to return her smile. “Mick said you might be going to town?”
Something flickers in her brown eyes. “Yep. You need something?”
“A ride?”
She doesn’t ask him if he’s okay, but it’s a near thing; he can tell. With a nod, she says, “Let’s go.”
They climb into some sort of compact SUV that’s seen better days, or probably too much life on a ranch. The deep orange color is camouflaged by dust and bird crap. Receipts and fast food containers litter the inside. Spare change dots the floorboard. Country music blares from the speakers when she cranks on the motor, and she twists the volume button hard reducing the volume to a tolerable level.
“Sorry,” she says, grinning. “My song was on this morning. You know how it is.”
He nods. He does.
Ten Rigs is a fifteen-minute drive from the ranch and Jessie sings along to the radio and leaves him to his silence. Her energy and slightly off-key singing keep him from disappearing completely into his head though.
