If I was right, he’d grown up less well off than he was now. He’d also had a tricky family situation. Being sent somewhere for two weeks andthatbeing the best time of your life? Yeah. Home life must’ve been difficult.
I could vouch for the healing power of horses firsthand. My dad was a horseman through and through, and I’d learned a lot from him and Russ. I’d also absorbed their work ethic, just like all of my siblings.
There wasn’t a person in the family who’d gotten anything easy. Sure, some of the nasty gossip back in the day about how Mom and Dad “took advantage of poor Fern Harrington” suggested that Gigi Fern had just handed over things to them.
In a way, she had. But not because of charity. No. It’d been because of love and because she’d been a good person. I only had stories, of course; she’d been gone before I was born. But it was her spirit of love and generosity that had been instilled in us kids. It certainly wasn’t anything our parents had been taught by their own parents. Hell, I couldn’t even remember the last time I saw any of my grandparents.
We’d never had a proper relationship with any of them, and none of us really needed that, either. We’d had everything we needed on the ranch that Gigi Fern had helped our parents purchase back when it was still mostly undeveloped and worth so much less than it was now.
I didn’t know how Carter had grown up, but if two weeks with a pretty, kind horse had changed something for him, I could respect that.
As long as he respected what I did and would do as I said, because I was the professional and he really needed to learn.
I could admit—if only to myself—that I’d been a bit too short with him. But he was also in pain already, as much as he’d tried to not show it, and he wouldn’t benefit much from taking care of the horses after the ride.
If I were completely honest, I also felt like I needed to get away from him. Apparently his honesty and this glimpse of who he actually was messed with my brain a little.
Logically I knew that the preconceived notions I had of him weren’t all true. But I had my reasons to dislike him. Well, not necessarilyhim, but I knew men like him, and I wasn’t going to repeat my past mistakes.
So I’d keep things professional. I would try to be friendly. That’d be enough.
He called me the next morning as I was doing some of the more annoying parts of my job—the monthly reports I did for each horse I was training. Some of them were for the owners, especially those who didn’t want or need the more casual messages. Most of them were for the ranch.
We had files for every horse on the ranch. The system was really handy and we had information on injuries, training, behavioral changes, hoof and teeth health, vaccinations and dewormings, the mares’ cycles, pretty much anything you could think of, sometimes going back more than a decade for the older horses.
It was something everyone was grumpy about on occasion. It wasn’t easy to remember to add the small details sometimes, but when that one detail from two months ago explained why something else was happening right now, well, the system had its perks.
Plus if the clients we had, whether one of mine or someone else’s—we’d had a lot of positive feedback from buyers for our recordkeeping—were happy with it, it was definitely worth the hassle.
That said, it was still annoying trying to remember details when you accidentally-on-purpose forgot to update something and—my phone rang.
I grunted and scowled. Of course it was Carter.
“Yeah?” I tried to hold back my tone without success.
He snorted. “Is that how you greet all your clients?”
Only the annoying ones.“What do you need? I’m in the middle of something.”
“I wanted to know when would be a good time to come hang out with Ramona? I read that it’s a good bonding activity, just being around them.”
He wasn’t wrong there. “I’m working with her in”—I looked at the time—“a couple of hours. After lunch. Whether you want to see what we’ll do is up to you. It’s going to be about an hour of work at this point.” I didn’t want to overwhelm her, after all.
“So two hours if I want to watch, three if I don’t.”
I turned the chair to look out of the window. “Right.”
“Will I get an actual goodbye and see you later today?” he asked, and I couldn’t read his tone well enough if he was joking or not.
I snorted. “Depends on how well you take instruction. I don’t have time for games and I don’t give a fuck about how much money—”
“I’ve gathered that you’re not impressed by wealth, Hawk.” He let out a sound that could’ve been a huff of amusement as easily as frustration. “But I’m paying you well. I would appreciate it if I wasn’t treated like—”
I could almost hear the way his mouth clicked shut. Like what? I wasn’t going to ask.
“How about this,” I said slowly into the silence. “I’ll try to be more…politeif you try to trust that I know what I’m doing, and that I also have the rest of my business to run. You might be my highest paying client right now, Carter, but you’re not my only one. I also work for the ranch. My schedule is insanely tight, and I rarely take time off because there’s just no possibility to do that.” Before he could comment, I added, “And that’s not a complaint. I love my job. When I can do it at my own pace.”
The “without anyone trying to mess with me” was implied.Heavily.
