But according to the website, they covered all that. Before I could change my mind, I filled out the foster volunteer form on their website. If they weren’t coming out, then I wouldn’t foster, but I was pretty sure Natalie was ready to get her kid out of LA for a while. It made me really mad that some kids hurt him for being gay, and I was proud of him for coming out and being that brave. I hadn’t been at his age, but Sam had always been the kind of kid who was pretty sure of who he was and what he wanted. I admired that about him.
It was nearly noon when I looked away from my laptop again and cheap pasta and fake cheese didn’t really sound all that appealing. Normally I loved macaroni and cheese, but the boxed stuff just wasn’t going to do it for me right then. I got off the stool, rubbed my sore back—I’d spent far too much time leaning over the island—then left the house to go to Rosie’s for lunch. I figured I’d stop by the store and get some more essentials afterward, and maybe I’d even see Trent there with the other cops.
I was right. He was there, and he was surrounded by other people. Still, when I came in, he raised his hand and waved to me. I waved back, shot him a smile, and then followed a waitress over to a booth. Pulled pork, sweet potato fries, and sweet tea sounded like a good lunch, though not particularly healthy. It was a good thing I wasn’t trying to be healthy, then, I supposed….
Halfway through my lunch, Trent pulled himself away from the guys at his table to come join me. He stole two of my fries, which I guessed was fair since I remembered taking a few of his before, but when he reached for my pulled pork I nearly stabbed him with my fork in defense of my lunch.
Laughing, he shook his head, then finished up with a grin at me. I was the center of his attention for that moment, and it was nice to have all of him focused solely on me. “How’s work going?” I asked.
Trent shrugged and rested his arms on the table. “Decent, I guess. I spent most of the morning answering e-mails so I can’t complain. How’s designing going? Anything fun?”
I thought over my morning and how I’d applied to be a foster, but I didn’t want to tell him that in case I was rejected. I thought he would have been really excited, and I didn’t want him to get his hopes up. Maybe, if I did get to foster a horse though, he could take care of it too. As if he needed another reason to be over at my house most nights. “Nothing too major,” I finally said. “Grandfather wanting to make a website for his family. Easy stuff.”
“Have you ever designed anything really fun?” He leaned toward me, and I figured I knew exactly what he was asking. Fortunately I did have a story for him.
“Well… there was this one college-boy porn site once…,” I quietly told him with a wink.
He groaned and we shared grins. “We still on for tonight?” he asked.
I nodded. “A movie sounds good.” I had the suspicion that I should have clarified that porn wasn’t a movie, especially after revealing I’d built a porn site for a client once, but I didn’t think that was really necessary. At least I was pretty sure I didn’t have to tell him that.
I wanted to ask him if he’d be going out after, if he had a date with one of his nameless guys after our movie, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I didn’t want to know about that and I didn’t want to embarrass him in the middle of his mom’s diner. It was enough that I knew he had guys lined up and waiting for him, and that if I wanted to be, I could have easily been counted in that number. But that’s all it would have been. Friends who had sex, friends who screwed around, watched movies, drank beer, shared fries at a diner, but nothing more.
It was tempting. Oh God, it was so tempting to just accept that kind of friendship from him when he was that close to me and wearing that ridiculously unflattering police uniform that he still managed to somehow make look really good. But I had to have a bit more self-control, and I needed more from him. The sex would be great, I was sure of it, but I couldn’t pretend it would be anything more than that. Not when he wasn’t willing to commit to me. And really, I reminded myself, we’d known each other for a little over a week. Asking anyone to commit after such a short time was insanity.
“You okay? You look kind of upset,” Trent said as he reached out and briefly brushed his hand over mine.
I nodded and tried to put on a happy face. It didn’t work so well. “Yeah. I’m good. I was just thinking.”
He gave me a little smile and I smiled back. “You’re not reconsidering getting together tonight are you?”
“Of course not.”
“Good. Didn’t want whatever was upsetting you to get in the way of the fantastic action-slash-horror movie I plan to bring over tonight.”
I groaned just at the sound of the combination. “Great. Two of my favorite genres put together. If the movie is awful, though, you have to bring beer the next time you come over.”
“And if it’s not and you end up loving it, then I get a kiss,” Trent countered with a pretty evil grin.
I glanced around the diner to see if anyone had heard, but no one was paying attention to us. Well, not no one precisely. There was one older gentleman in a suit who had been sitting with Trent and who was now openly watching me as if I were a teenager at some expensive clothing store and he was worried I was going to shoplift.
“Who’s the guy with the grayish hair in the suit over there?” I asked as I finished off my pulled pork. He’d taken most of my fries, so I ended up pushing the rest toward him anyway.
Trent glanced over at the table and nodded to the man I’d asked about. “Him? That’s my dad. Can I have some of your tea?”
“No. Get your own. And your dad?” I looked over at him again and lifted my hand to give him a wave. He waved back to me, and I turned around to face Trent, who was drinking my tea. I rolled my eyes and chose to ignore that part. I had more important things to focus on. “Do you want me to meet him?” I asked.
Trent finished drinking my tea, thankfully leaving me a little, then shrugged. “Sure. I mean, if you want to. Everyone in town knows him, so you might as well.”
The way he’d said it reminded me that we weren’t together; we were just friends. He’d seen me practically naked, and I’d had my hand around his cock, but we weren’t anything serious, and if I wanted to meet his dad, I could. I got up from the booth and walked over to introduce myself to the father of the man I wanted, the man I was starting to care about, but someone I could only know as a friend.
“Hey, I’m Caleb Robinson. I’m friends with Trent, and I moved into the big cabin on the hill down the road,” I said as I stuck out my hand.
He gave me an assessing once-over before hitting me with a big smile that told me just where Trent got his. “Good to have you in Thornwood,” he told me as he got up from the table and shook my hand. “Come over sometime. I’ll make burgers,” he tacked on.
“Thanks.” I dropped his hand as Trent came up behind me.
“We gotta go,” he said. There were groans around the table, and I stepped back to give them all space in the crowded diner. I went back to my table, ordered a slice of apple pie, and watched Trent get his keys and wallet together while I waited for it to come.
He was ridiculously good-looking, and if I just gave in, I could have him whenever I wanted. The temptation to do just that was never greater than when he smiled. He was talking to the guys as he walked past me and out of the diner, so I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t say bye. But he did squeeze my shoulder as he walked by, and I reached up to briefly touch his hand.
Dean called me as I was leaving the diner and getting back into my SUV. “Hey,” I said, answering the call.
“Hey. Is it still okay if we come out to visit?”
He sounded uncertain like maybe my invitation had had some sort of time restriction on it. “Of course it is. You all can come out whenever. Or just send Sam out to me if you can’t get away. It’s a tiny town, and there isn’t too much he could actually get in trouble with here.” He could have gotten lost in all the government land that ran behind my house, but I didn’t say that to Dean. He didn’t need another reason to worry about his kid.
“Two weeks from today okay?”
I was already in the grocery store’s parking lot. “Yep. Want me to pick you up at the Denver airport?”
“Is it really far?”
I shrugged. “Not really. Let me know all the details, and I’ll come get you. If you want, I could cover the plane fare too.” He hesitated, and it was like I could hear the dilemma play out in his mind. I had plenty of money I wasn’t using. We’d been friends for years and his refusal of my help drove me absolutely nuts sometimes. I could help and I didn’t mind doing so, but I did get being proud and stubborn too, and Dean was both of those things.
“Sure. I mean, if it’s not a big deal to you.”
I was practically stunned that he’d actually allow me to do that for him and his family. I tried to play it cool, though. “It’s okay. Totally fine.” I rolled my eyes at myself. I wasn’t good at playing things off at all.
Dean chuckled, and I was sure he knew what I’d been trying to do. At least he didn’t call me out on it, though. “See you in two weeks, then.”
“For sure.”
We hung up, and I opened my browser to the furniture store’s web page. I’d need a few more things before they arrived because my friend and his wife were not sleeping on my sofa bed for however long they wanted to stay with me. I hoped it was for a while. That might make things with Trent a little difficult to juggle, but I really needed to have my friends around me again.
Grocery shopping was easy, since it was just me and the biggest thing I needed was beer, but I tried to go for healthier options this time too. Like Greek yogurt and microwave popcorn. I was pretty sure that still counted as healthy, despite the woman at the register giving me a strange look as I checked out in her line. Maybe it was the handful of candy bars I’d added to my order at the last minute that did it.
Either way, it didn’t really matter. I had my groceries and when I got home there was someone in my driveway waiting for me. I got out of my SUV with my bags and went around the back of my vehicle to see a guy at least five years younger than myself holding a clipboard and jotting things down with a pen.
“Hi. Can I help you?” I asked.
He tucked his pen behind his ear and held the clipboard close to his chest so I couldn’t see anything he’d been writing. “Are you Caleb Robinson?” he asked.
I frowned since I had no idea what this was about, but I didn’t really like coming home to random people in my driveway. I moved from LA to get away from so many weirdos, not that this guy was one of them, but it was still odd to find someone waiting for me to get home. “Yes. You’re on private property. You know that, don’t you?”
He pushed his glasses up farther on his nose and pulled a business card out of his pocket. “I’m Eli, from Green Acres.”
“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” I said as I read over his card before letting it fall into one of the grocery bags in my hands. “I didn’t even get a response to my application yet.”
Eli nodded and looked at me briefly before going back to the clipboard in his hand. “We do surprise assessments. That way people don’t have time to put temporary fixes on things then keep the horses in unsafe conditions later on. I need to go through your property and see if you meet our requirements, which, I can tell you, are quite stringent. Very few people pass our inspections.”
He was a prissy little thing with his all-important clipboard and thick, dark-rimmed glasses, but I figured I’d have to go through some hoops to foster a horse. The experience was making me glad I’d never wanted to foster children, though, if people like Eli were who I had to look forward to on that front. “Well, I need to get these groceries inside and put away. I’ll be in the house when you’re done.” I could have left it at that, but I was feeling a bit put off. “Also, this holier-than-thou thing you’ve got going on is a bit of a turnoff. I didn’t put in a foster application to be treated like I’m going to abuse whatever horse you might potentially send my way. I know you have horses that need homes, and I’m not looking to steal one of them or anything sinister like that.”
He stared at me as I turned and went up to the house. I was half tempted to withdraw my application entirely, since I really didn’t like Eli or people like him. But then I thought about how happy Trent looked in the pictures, and with a sigh I decided to leave it there. I probably wouldn’t get approved anyway.
I had my groceries put away and was about to start drinking my beer when the doorbell rang. I decided Eli could wait a minute and popped open my beer before going to answer the door. “So, what’s your verdict?” I asked as I leaned against the doorframe.
“May I come in?”
He sounded a little less like the almighty horse dictator now, so I shrugged and turned around, letting him come in. He closed the door behind himself and we sat down at the island together. “Some of your fences could use a bit of mending or reinforcement,” Eli began as he showed me the clipboard. I found myself looking down at a perfectly drawn and exactly to scale map of my barn, pastures, and shelters.
“Did you do this?” I asked.
“Yes. I’ve marked the spots that have to be seen to in red. You’ll need to have those addressed.” He tapped the map in case I missed the giant red-marker circles that dotted the back pasture. There hadn’t been any attention to the pastures in months, so I wasn’t surprised some of them needed work.
“Are you an architect?” I was still surprised at the level of detail he’d managed to get into what was likely a fast drawing.
“No. Now, there is nothing wrong with your barn. I would like your driveway to be paved—”
“So would I, but I’m not doing that yet,” I said, cutting him off.
“It makes going up and down the driveway easier on the horses so that they don’t go lame after stepping in a rut left by our heavy snow run offs,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken.
I shrugged him off and took a sip of my beer. “You want one?” I offered, remembering my manners now that he wasn’t quite so annoying.
Eli shook his head at me. “I’m working.”
“I’m not.”