There was humour in his faded eyes that I’d hopefully understand over time. I peered at the newspaper he was reading. The headline alarmed me until I realised that the paper was a month old.
“Terrible business,” George said when he saw me looking. “What humans can do to each other.”
“Who cares what humans do to each other?” A new voice—female—came from behind me. “There’s too many on the planet anyway. It’s what humans do to horses that we care about.” A petite, dark-haired girl who looked and spoke exactly like Joe slid into the seat opposite. She picked up a fork and pointed it at George. “And don’t go lecturing me on empathy again. I’ve heard it all before.”
“Then you should know it already,” George returned mildly before returning to his paper.
The exchange was fascinating... and kind of lovely. In the city, anyone younger than thirty tended to stick together, like herds of sheep following the latest craze and trend. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten dinner with such a diverse age range. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten dinner with anyone that wasn’t Rhys or Angelo and Dylan. Shit. When had I become such a loner? And how was that even possible when I never seemed to have a minute to myself?
Sal dished up. Perhaps my size had given her the wrong impression about my appetite, but I was a little horrified when she heaped my plate with more carbs than I’d usually eat in a week. I wondered if there was a dog around that I could pass some off to on the sly, but Joe’s arrival distracted me from the ghost of my calorie-counting, protein-obsessed uni days.
He didn’t look at me. Just accepted a plate as full as mine and dropped into the seat beside the new woman in the room.
She elbowed him. “All right?”
Joe grunted in response, apparently preoccupied with a stack of envelopes, so she turned her attention to me. “Hi, Harry. I’m Emma. I took your booking.”
I smiled, hoping she wouldn’t notice me hiding potato under my pie. “Nice to meet you. You were right about the room. It’s perfect for writing. Lovely views.”
In my peripheral vision, Joe’s head jerked, but I forced myself to keep my eyes on Emma, noting that her eyes tightened a notch too. “It was my grandpa’s room,” she said. “He loved the big windows. Said he could keep watch over every creature on the farm.”
“I love it, too,” I said. “It’s such a calming space.”
Joe got up from the table, his chair scraping the flagstone floor. This time, I gave in and looked at him. His back was turned to me, but tight shoulders were my bread and butter, and the urge to put my hands on him was again so strong that I choked on the tiny mouthful of food I’d put in my mouth.
Emma’s gaze flickered to Joe too, but her expression was unreadable. Perhaps it was a family thing.
I wiped my mouth and drank some water. No one seemed to have noticed my foot-in-mouth moment or that I was struggling to look away from Joe as he pulled a six-pack from the fridge and popped the top on a can of Stella.
He turned as abruptly as he’d left the table and offered me a can with a jerk of his chin. I shook my head. “I’m good, thanks, mate.”
He grunted and gave the can to George. Then he picked up his plate and left the room.
His departure did odd things to me. Things I couldn’t quite decipher, let alone explain. I’d met people like Joe before—aloof and moody—but I’d always seen a glimmer of something else in them. A light, perhaps. A way in. It had taken me weeks to get Angelo to talk when we’d started working together, but I’d absolutely believed that he would... eventually. Joe was different. Not a client or even a friend—but his silence still bothered me.
A little while later, Emma swapped places with George. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to meet you. I had grand plans to greet you with some homemade cake or something and show you around, but I bottled it at the last minute.”
“Bottled it? Not that scary, am I?”
“No. It’s not you... it’s—never mind. I’m sorry you got stuck with Joe. He’s not always so rude.”
So I hadn’t imagined it. Or the strange compulsion to defend him. “He was perfectly pleasant to me. Showed me the house. There was no cake, though.”Like you would’ve eaten it.
Emma took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking enough to mirror the horribly familiar disquiet in my own gut. I stared at them, wondering if I was imagining the buzz of anxiety coursing through her, and pushed my half-empty plate away. Great. I’d been here five minutes and I was already having some kind of meltdown.
“Do you want to see the horses?”
I jerked back to the present. “What?”
“The horses,” Emma repeated softly. “I can give you that tour now, if you like?”
I didn’t know much about horses, but curiosity got the better of me, and lacking any better ideas, I nodded and got to my feet. “Lead the way.”
Outside, I felt much better. The jitters I’d worked so hard to escape floated away on the summer breeze, and I gazed around the working yard with new eyes. Buildings I’d mistaken for barns were clearly stables, their half-doors open, revealing a horse or two in each one.
“We don’t double many up,” Emma said. “Most of them are too cranky to share, but Tauna and Carric bunk up together. They’ve never been apart.”
“Are they rescue horses?”
