I capped the concealer and slipped it into my pocket. Then I looked in the dusty mirror one more time, comparing my left cheek to my right. The right was still a little darker, but it wasn’t terribly obvious. If anything, it would look to anyone who noticed like a smudge of dirt. Ironically.
Once I was put together, I stepped out of the tack room.
Dustin was in the aisle, clipping a young paint to the cross-ties. He glanced at me, and something in his expression said he knew what I’d been doing. Maybe he’d seen me, since the door had been open. Or maybe it was just that obvious. Either way, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if, when he’d turned his attention back to the muddy colt, he rolled his eyes.
And fuck you too, Mr. King.
I left him to groom the horse and continued with my daily tasks. On my way out, though, I threw a few glances at Dustin. He was busy with the horse, so he didn’t look at me, but I sure looked at him.
It would have been awesome if he’d been one of those crusty, tobacco-chewing cowboys who were a hell of a lot harder on the eyes than they liked to think. The ones who grinned lecherously at all the ladies while they strutted around like their spurs weren’t actually bigger than their dicks. It was so, so much easier to glare at the backside of a man when just looking at him warranted a wrinkled nose.
Not Dustin. My God. He may have irritated me and made me a little nervous, but he sure was easy to look at. He’d thrown me off balance from the first moment I saw him when John and I had stepped out of the barn yesterday, and even if he’d put me off shortly thereafter, he was still pleasant to look at. Okay, more than pleasant to look at. I couldn’t remember the last time I got goose bumps just from glancing at a man, and it had happened at least three times since I’d been here.
He’d still irritated me enough I wouldn’t have minded seeing a horse take a bite out of him just for spite, and he had perhaps inadvertently tripped some instinctive revulsion, but that didn’t change the fact that he was the clean-shaven, well-rested version of the man who’d screwed up my blood pressure yesterday. Or that jeans were invented for a butt like that. Lord help me when the time came and I saw him in the saddle.
I shivered, then banished the thought because it made it that much harder to tell myself he was an ass, and went back to doing all the things I was paid to do, which didn’t include ogling my new boss. After I stole one last look at him just for the hell of it.
Throughout the sweltering afternoon, as I cleaned stalls and moved horses around, heat more than exertion made me sweat, which meant three surreptitious trips into the tack room to fix my makeup like a vain high school kid.
Only a few more days
, I reminded myself as I self-consciously looked to make sure no one saw me,
then I don’t have to bother with this crap anymore
.
It would help if the bruise faded instead of getting darker, but I had enough concealer with me to keep the discoloration hidden until it was finally gone, so I tried not to worry about it too much.
Around six thirty that evening, my to-do list was done for the day, and there was nothing left except the late-night feeding, so I went back up to my house. As soon as I’d closed the door behind me, I released my breath and looked around, smiling to myself. Though Dustin lived under the same roof, a wall kept him on his own side, and this tiny half of the duplex was something no place had been in years:
mine
. Rented or not, this space was mine and mine alone, and I loved it.
Even if it was backed up against the place where Dustin slept. Slept, and maybe—
I rolled my eyes and laughed at my own thoughts. Guess I was getting desperate for any thoughts that weren’t about being miserable. At least having impure thoughts about Dustin was better than stumbling around in an emotionless daze like I’d been doing recently, and these days, I’d take anything I could get that wasn’t numb and dragging. I figured my new boss was kind of like that football player in high school I used to lust after. A complete and utter douche bag I wouldn’t have touched for a million bucks, but he sure was nice to look at. Made that nauseatingly boring calculus class a lot more bearable. Okay, so Dustin wasn’t that bad. Just a little moody for my taste. And he
was
that hot. Maybe the occasional glance at Dustin’s butt or those beautiful blue eyes would make shoveling his horses’ shit while taking his shit a little more appealing.
Giggling to myself, I rolled my eyes again and went to the refrigerator to get something to drink. Which reminded me, I really needed to take a trip into town and buy a few groceries, because there was nothing in the fridge except a couple of bottles of water I’d had in the truck on my trip. Definitely needed to go shopping, and I had just enough time right now to make the trip—forty-five minutes each way—into town.
After downing half the ice-cold bottle, I went into the small bathroom and rinsed the sweat, dust, and makeup off my face. As the dirt and concealer smeared off my skin and onto the washcloth, my good humor faded. And it faded a heck of a lot faster than that stupid bruise on my cheekbone insisted on doing.
I lowered my hands, resting them on the sink as my bruised reflection looked back at me.
Screw it. The grocery store could wait. Staring at myself now, focusing on that blue-green reminder of things I didn’t want to think about, I didn’t feel like going anywhere or doing anything. My stomach turned to lead. My shoulders slumped under an invisible weight, and I made a mental note to make sure that eventual trip for groceries included a stop at the liquor store. Though alcohol had played a nasty part in my recent history, including that bruise, I wasn’t above drowning in a bottle when I needed to escape all things painful. And as heavy and impenetrable as this numbness seemed to be, I knew it would break eventually, and when it did, it would hurt. A lot.
What a lovely contradiction. I wanted this numbness to go away but didn’t particularly want to be there when it happened.
Well, which is it, Amy? Do you want to feel it or not?
God. Yeah. Mariah was right. I
was
going off the deep end.
And if there was anyone left on the planet I could talk to…
I dropped onto my bed and speed-dialed my sister.
“Hey, you,” Mariah said. “How are you doing?”
“I’m…doing.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
Fixing my gaze on the barn outside my window, I said, “Just adjusting, I guess.”
“What exactly are you adjusting to?” she asked. “I mean, what on earth are you doing wherever you are?”
“I’m, well, just doing odd jobs on a farm right now. Something to keep my hands busy and a roof over my head while I get my head together.”
“You have a roof here, sweetheart, and—” She paused. “Wait, you’re a
farmhand
?”
Heat flooded my cheeks. “You could say that.”
She laughed. “Amy, what in the world are—”
“I just need a break, all right?” It came out sharper than I’d intended, and I sighed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Listen, I just need a little time to regroup, and when I saw the ad for this job, I jumped on it.”
“You’re picking up shit and feeding someone else’s horses to regroup?”
“It means I’m around the horses all the time.” I lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “But there’s no pressure to work with them.”
Mariah was quiet for a moment. “Huh. I guess…I guess that makes sense. I think?”
“It probably doesn’t.” I rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. “I’m not even sure it makes sense to me. But I’ll see what happens.”
“How is it going so far?”
I thought about Dustin’s weird demeanor. “Probably too early to decide one way or the other.”
“That bad, huh?”
I laughed halfheartedly. “No, it’s not that bad. Just an adjustment.”
“I guess it would be. Going from Ms. Trainer to horseshit-removal specialist.”
“Something like that.” I swallowed hard. Absently, I pulled my ring out from under my shirt and turned it on its string between my fingers. “So, um how was the funeral?”
Silence hung over the line for almost a full minute before Mariah said, “Honey, do you really want to wallow in that? It’s only been forty-eight hours since you couldn’t make yourself show up.”
I sat up and idly picked phantom burrs off my jeans. “I should have gone.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed. “I just…couldn’t. I couldn’t deal with hours of listening to all the reasons Sam was the most amazing human being ever to walk the earth.”
“I guess I can’t blame you for that.” She paused. “How’s your face?”
My reflection flickered through my mind, and I groaned. “Oh, it looks
great
.”
“Is it healing?”
“I think so.” I absently touched my discolored cheekbone with my fingertips, flinching from my own light touch. “It’s a little darker today than it was yesterday, though.”
“Darker? Oh, lovely.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, it’ll probably fade soon,” she said. “You know how bruises are. They get worse before they get better.” She paused. “There’s no swelling, is there?”
“No. It wasn’t that hard, don’t worry.” I laughed humorlessly. “You know me. I bruise if the wind changes.”
Mariah didn’t laugh. “Just keep an eye on it. Make sure it really is just a bruise.”
“It is. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry. Yeah right.” She exhaled hard. “Honey, that’s about all I’ve done since you left. I’m working twice as many horses right now, remember?”
I winced. “Sorry…”
“Don’t be. I’ll manage it, and I have Tim, Curt and Dena to help when I need them. I just want you to be okay, that’s all. And where
are
you, anyway?”
I continued turning my ring back and forth between my fingers. “It doesn’t matter. Just…don’t worry about it.”
“Baby, we’re all worried about you,” Mariah said. “Your husband died, and you just disappeared. We all just want to know you’re okay.”
“I am.”
“Are you?”
Watching my gold ring catch the late afternoon sunlight, I sighed. “I really don’t know, honestly.”
“And is it helping, being wherever it is you are?”
I gritted my teeth, glaring out at the barn as if it was the reason for my frustration. “Not really.”
“Then why not come home?”
“I don’t know.” I shifted my gaze back to the ring between my fingers. “I’m thinking about it, to be honest.”
“Then do it,” she said. “Baby, this is your home. We all miss you.”
“I miss you too,” I whispered. “Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she said. “Go ahead.”
I chewed my lip, unsure exactly how to word it and if my sister would think I was an idiot no matter how I phrased the question. Finally, I said, “Do you still, like, connect with the horses?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, like do you have a bond with the ones you work with?”
She was quiet for a moment. “Well, not with every horse, no. It’s kind of hard to get that when you’re only working with one for ninety days.”
“True. But what about your own horses?”
“Yeah, I suppose I do. Probably not like I did when I was a kid and only working with two horses at a time, but…yeah.” She paused. “What about you?”
“No,” I whispered. “Not at all.”
“Really?”
I swallowed, my mind wandering back to the babies visiting Dustin and me at the fence yesterday, which made me that much more aware of that numb void deep in my chest. “I look at them now, and I feel…nothing.”
“You’re probably just burned out, sweetie,” she said. “Riding every hour of every day, what do you expect?”
Sighing, I shoved my ring under my shirt. “I don’t know. I have no idea what I expected. But…it wasn’t this.”
Mariah fell silent again. Then, “Maybe this really is what you need. What you’re doing right now. Some time away until you get your feet under you again. You’re burned out, you’re grieving.” She paused. “You take as much time as you need, sweetie.”
“Are you sure?”
“Definitely. I’ve got things under control on this end. Just do whatever you need to do to get yourself together.”
I closed my eyes. “I owe you so big.”
“We’ll settle it up later,” she said with a playful grin in her voice. “Just take it easy and don’t stay out there forever, okay?”
“I will,” I said. “And I won’t be here forever.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Chapter Four
Dustin
I’d known Amy for all of twenty-four hours, and already something about her didn’t sit right. Like the tour of the property had been the polite beginning of some kind of utter disaster.
By the time we’d been over everything from feeding schedules to the quirks and idiosyncrasies of some of the horses—like Snow’s Houdini-like efforts at escaping enclosures or Mesa’s preference for grazing instead of walking—I was less certain of Amy than I was of Blue’s future. I didn’t get her. At all.