She huffs. “I did.”
After our kiss this morning, I took a cold shower and sent her a message to meet me in the barn. Today, I want to take her out of the office and show her the land in full. If she’s going to help me save this place, I want her to see it in its entirety.
“Do you remember how to ride?”
Tessa looks at the horse and back to me. “I do.”
“How about we skip going through papers that don’t make sense and go see the land?”
Her long lashes flutter a few times and she smiles. “All right.”
I glance down at the sundress she has on. “You may want to change.”
“Right! Shit. Okay, I’ll be back.”
I help Gary saddle the horses and head inside to grab a few things to eat. We’re going to be gone most of the day. I put the stuff in the bag, and Tessa comes down the stairs. She’s wearing a pair of skintight jeans and a white shirt, pulling her hair up as she’s descending.
I swear, the air feels thin as I look at her.
She stops when she gets to the bottom. “Hey, sorry I took a bit. I got a call.”
I shake my head and put on my cowboy hat. “No problem. It allowed me to pack lunch.”
“Oh! We’ll be gone all day?”
“Yes.”
“All right then. The call was from Brynlee—she wanted to see how things were. I gave her an update, and we brainstormed the ideas I had about ways to bring in some profit at the same time as getting people in to see the available horses. I’m assuming you’ll do some auctions?”
“Yes, I have one set for next week.”
I have no fucking choice. I have to sell at least four horses this month to not be completely screwed. One of the biggest issues I have is that Travis was supposed to take a deposit for each sale, he assured me he was doing that, but it turns out he wasn’t doing that or if he did, it was never deposited into the bank.
I never noticed it because we had such an influx of sales.
Now all the pending sales for the next six months are gone with no recourse.
“Hopefully the auction proves fruitful. You do have a very high success rate. I did a lot of reading yesterday and I think it’ll be good. In the meantime, we’ll talk about some options we can do here.”
I have no idea what options she thinks I have. This is a breeding, training, and boarding ranch with no trainer and all but three promised sales are canceled.
There’s really nothing I can do to bring income into the barn unless I can get some locals to board with me.
I extend my arm back to head to the barn. Tessa smiles and we make our way to where the horses are tied up after Gary saddled them.
She immediately walks to the chestnut mare, extending her hand. “Hi, girl. What’s your name?”
“That’s Billie-Jean.”
“You’re just a girl, huh?”
I laugh. “She’s not my lover, that’s for sure, but it seems she’s taken with you.”
Seems to be a trend on this farm.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Billie-Jean.”
She looks over to me. “You’re not going to ride Midnight?”
