After, we lay sprawled together. “What time is the yoga woman coming?”
Harry sat up and reached for his phone. “Three. I haven’t got much to show her, but she seems keen.”
Of course she was keen. Every alternative therapist in Cornwall had been keen when they’d found out that Harry was setting up a holistic recovery retreat on the old stud farm site. Hell, I’d do fucking Pilates if it gave me an extra half hour with him.
“What about the physiotherapy equipment? When does that arrive?”
“Next week. The floor will be down by then, and the chalets are nearly done.”
I nodded, still awed by the progress Harry had made on the site since he’d bought it from me at the start of the year, using the money from hiswildlysuccessful book. Leaving his patients in London had wrenched his conscience, but having the retreat to focus on had brought him to life in a way I’d only dreamed of when I’d met him. And the financial boost to the farm had changed my life too. I now employed an accountant and a full-time stable hand, which meant the bills got paid, and I had time to stop for lunch and bang the love of my life.
We parted ways for the rest of the day. I tackled the perpetual chaos in the feed store, and Harry went down to the retreat site for a series of meetings I didn’t quite understand. Around four, I plucked Clyde and Bonnie—the old boy from the crazy cat house and the last mare from the abandoned barn—and led them down to the retreat. Both horses had proved so affectionate that we’d had a hard time letting them go, and somewhere along the line we’d come up with a potential way for them to earn their keep.
Harry was waiting for me in the space he’d designated for outdoor therapy. Beside him was a slender, olive-skinned man with piercing eyes and killer legs.Angelo—the patient-turned-friend who was fucking Harry’s brother at the sex club.City boys.He’d arrived last night, but I’d been caught up with spreading the muck pile to say hello. Such wasmylife.
I liked Angelo, though. I’d met him at Christmas when Harry had dragged me to London, and it was fucking hilarious to see his pristine designer kicks in my muddy field.
“Piss off,” Angelo said when I laughed at him. “Can’t look more freaked out than you in Lovato’s.”
He had me there. Harry and I had stayed in the sex club long enough for us both to decide that public sex wasn’t our bag—even if the eyeful we’d caught of Angelo and his boyfriend was something we still talked about now, low and dirty, when we were—
“Joe?”
“Hmm?” I blinked at Harry. “Sorry, what?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “I was saying that Clyde and Bonnie are the horses we’re going to use for balance therapy.”
Finally something I understood when it came to the work Harry was planning for the retreat. “Aye. Well, you won’t get any walking frames steadier than these two.”
“That right?” Angelo dodged Clyde’s curious nose. “I think we should test that theory.”
It was only then I belatedly realised that Angelo was leaning on a pair of funky black crutches. I searched my brain for what little I knew about him aside from his sexploits.Italian, dancer... ME.Yeah, that was it, though my knowledge of the condition stopped there.
Harry took Angelo’s crutches and set them aside while I fitted a special harness to Bonnie that would allow Angelo to lead her while she took most of his weight. It was a work in progress, but Angelo persisted as Harry and I looked on.
“We’ll be here all day if that’s how long it takes him to walk in a straight line,” Harry said softly. “Angelo’s a machine, even when he’s relapsed.”
“You’ll have to explain that to me one day,” I said. “I’d forgotten there was anything wrong with him.”
Harry hummed. “That’s why it’s so cruel. Look at Bonnie go, though. She’s so chilled.”
“Or too lazy to misbehave.” Not that it mattered. After three months training with a specialist equine therapist, Bonnie and Clyde had more than earned their place in Harry’s grand adventures.
When Angelo had done a round with Clyde too, I took the horses back to the stables and gave them a rub down. After settling them with extra feed, I went inside and found Emma at the kitchen table with travel brochures spread out in front of her.
“Going somewhere?”
“Fuck off,” she snapped.
Fair enough. I swiped a slice of Sal’s fruitcake from the tin and retreated to the living room. The french doors were open and one of the pygmy goats wandered in with some socks it had stolen from the washing line. I was still trying to get them back when Emma appeared a little while later.
“Sorry,” she said.
“What for?”
“The usual. Add it to my tab.”
I grinned. “Only if you tell what you’re up to.”
