“Right. Tex. Um, do you mean your name is Tex? Because I don’t know if you know this, but we’re literallyinTexas. Not that you can’t call yourself anything you want, but Tex isn’t exactly original, is it?”
“Here’s how it works,” Tex said, ignoring his prattling. “I’ll be taking you through various exercises, mostly ranch work, for purposes of evaluating your physical condition and testing your mettle. That’s what your trouble is, right? You lack mettle.”
Mettle was an old-fashioned word, but it was accurate enough. “I guess.”
“Youguess?” Tex clapped his hands directly in front of Peyton’s face, making him flinch. “No more wishy-washy bullshit, no more hiding from reality. You lack mettle—yes or no?”
“Yes. Definitely yes.” It was just an answer, an answer he’d been forced to give, but he did feel better for giving it without equivocation. He lacked mettle.
“Mettle. Courage. Determination. Stick-to-itiveness. Whatever you want to call it. Way I hear it, you’re not good for much.”
Now that wasn’t fair. He gave a helluva blowjob, which he would happily demonstrate for Tex at any time.
“So we’re gonna fix that,” Tex continued, referring to Peyton’s lack of mettle, not his blowjob technique, because he couldn’t read Peyton’s mind. “By the end of your stay with us, you’ll have a backbone and know how to use it. You’re also going to have bigger guns, but that’s a by-product.” He pinched Peyton’s upper arm between his fingers, as if measuring it. Actually, more like crushing it.
Peyton pulled his arm away with a yelp. “Okay, but does it have to hurt? Go easy on me. It’s my first day.”
“Every day counts. Every minute counts. Every action counts. And yes, it’s going to hurt. This isn’t a spa, Peyton. I’m not here to coddle your ass. I’m here to work it.”
Peyton didn’t like the sound of that much, even though it was what he’d signed up for. He heaved a giant sigh, imagining the dreariness of the weeks ahead.
Tex was sure nice to look at. He had a chiseled jaw and dark eyes under heavy brows. A couple days’ worth of stubble dusted his chin, and his cheekbones were highlighted with the golden brown of a tan that hadn’t come from a bottle or a heat lamp. His 501 jeans cupped his groin in much the same way Peyton would like to cup it, and there was plenty there to be cupped. Tex was more than a handful—an inch or two taller than Peyton and sturdy, like Peyton could climb him and he wouldn’t even waver.
But the things Tex wanted to do didn’t sound like fun, and Peyton was remembering that he really preferred having fun and taking it easy to whatever Tex had in store for him.
“Where do I get a cowboy hat?” he asked to delay the inevitable.
“Sun in your eyes?”
“A little.” Mostly he just thought they looked cool, though the sun was pretty bright considering it was only nine in the morning. Hot too. How was Tex surviving in that long-sleeved shirt? Hopefully he would take it off soon.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about the sun because our job is in there.” Tex pointed at the barn, which looked reassuringly cool and shady. “You’re going to be mucking out stalls.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. It was like he’d made it happen by imagining it. He couldn’t muck out stalls because… because he had no idea what that even meant. He took a step away from the barn, toward the guest house where they had air conditioning and soft things to sit on, but Tex barred his way with a steely arm across his chest.
“You’re not quitting on me already, are you?”
“Maybe?” He would love to impress Tex, then let Tex have his way with him over a bale of hay—or perhaps something less prickly—but impressing Tex wasn’t what would happen if he went in that barn. And neither was sex.
“No, you’re not.” Tex’s hand swiped up his chest and around his neck to cup the back of his head. “You know what your problem is, Peyton?”
“Lack of mettle,” Peyton answer despondently. They’d already gone over that.
“Yeah, sure. But what’s behind it? Where does the lack of mettle come from?”
Peyton shook his head. He would like to blame his genes, but his mother was a doctor and his father ran his own business. Neither of them had ever shied away from hard work.
“Fear,” Tex said.
Peyton threw a quick glance into the dark recesses of the barn, where it was true that anything might lurk but probably nothing worse than horses and hay. “Like fear that it’s going to smell bad? Or that a horse might kick me?”
“Fear you won’t be able to do it. When you set these goals of yours, the ones you never meet, do you ever come close to meeting them?”
“I usually don’t even start.”
“Exactly. That’s fear, Peyton. You’re afraid you’ll come across as foolish if you can’t do something, afraid everyone will see it, afraid that if you try—and fail—then it was wasted effort, wasted time. It’s easier to not try, isn’t it?”
Peyton thought about the ideas he’d had for product upgrades, the ones Bettina had helped him sketch out. The reason he’d never brought any of them to his manager was exactly what Tex was saying. He was afraid his manager would laugh at him, would label his ideas as useless or naive or outright impossible. He was only in marketing after all. He wasn’t an engineer.
