32
RYDER
“Any luck with Ellie yet?”Jeff asked as I dismounted from Susie, patting her withers gently.
She jolted from the touch, then reared back when a mouse ran across the barn just feet from her.
“Whoa, girl!” I said, grabbing the reins gently, shushing her as I ran my hand over her mane. “It’s okay, girl. It’s just a mouse.”
She snorted in disgust, backing up from where the mouse had been.
“I told you she’s an interesting horse.”
“Interesting is one way to describe it,” I muttered, earning myself a grunt of displeasure from Susie.
“You never answered my question.”
Leading Susie over to the wall, I started unbuckling her saddle, ignoring Jeff.
“So, does that mean you haven’t gotten back on her good side yet?”
“I’m not discussing this.”
“Why? You know you were wrong. Just tell her.”
“I’m not sure I was wrong,” I sighed.
“Seriously? All you do is stare at that girl. You’ve been doing everything possible to spend time with her for the past two weeks!”
“And every time, she finds a way to make it perfectly clear that she’s not interested.”
“Well, yeah, if you don’t tell her you’re in love with her, she’s not going to?—”
“Wait,” I snapped, interrupting what I was sure would be some long, drawn-out speech on love. “Who said I’m in love with her?”
He snorted in amusement, taking the saddle from my hands and setting it down. “Um, pretty much the whole town.” He grabbed a brush, tossing it to me. “Hey, if you come down to the restaurant, we have a little backroom wager going on.”
“About what?”
“How long it will take you to confess your true feelings for her. Personally, I have another week. I’d really like it if you could do me a solid and make that happen. There’s a lot of money riding on this.”
“Don’t you have anything better to do than make stupid bets?”
“Not really. Although I do have this idea,” he said as I started to walk away. “It would be a great investment!”
“Not interested.”
He rushed past me, turning to walk backward to keep my attention. “You haven’t even heard it yet!”
“Because I’m not interested.”
“But how do you know you’re not interested if you don’t know what it is that you might not be interested about?”
I actually stopped in my tracks, trying to put that together in my head, which was the wrong move, because he seemed to think that was a sign or something that I wanted to hear his idea.
“Okay, picture this! We open a theme park on the outskirts of town, right past the mountain rescue.”
My brows pinched in confusion as I stared at him. “You want to build a theme park.”
