The party ran another hour. The kids rotated through the animals, the parents took photos, and Al Pacacino spat on two more people, both adults, which the children found even more hilarious than the first time. By four o’clock, the energy was winding down, and the animals were ready to be done.
Loading was easier than unloading. Tired animals walked into the trailer without argument. Even Al Pacacino went up the ramp without his usual theatrics, which I attributed to exhaustion and definitely not being reasonable.
The birthday girl’s mother found Lark by the trailer as we were securing the last gate. She had a check in her hand, and she had a look on her face that said more than money.
“This was beyond what I expected.” She pressed the check into Lark’s hand. “My sister-in-law is already asking for your number. She wants to book you for August.”
Lark took the check, and I saw her glance down at it. Her thumb ran along the edge of the paper, and her expression did something complicated and quick that she covered with a smile.
“Thank you. We’d love to do it again.”
“I’ll have Laura call you this week.”
We pulled out of the Hadley driveway at half past four. I drove. Lark sat in the passenger seat with the check in her lap, her head tipped back against the headrest and her eyes closed. She wasn’t asleep. Her thumb was still moving along the edge of the paper.
“That covers the missed payments,” she said after a few miles.
“Yeah.”
“It doesn’t fix the mortgage for good.”
“No.”
“But it’s something.”
I reached over and put my hand on her thigh. She put her hand on top of mine, and we drove home.
The ponies came off the trailer first. Snowball went back to the goat pen. Al Pacacino descended the ramp like he was gracing us with his presence after a long international tour and took his sweet time walking to his enclosure, pausing twice to contemplate the short distance. Lark took the rabbits to the barn while I dealt with the rest of the gear.
The last thing left was the second pony. I clipped the lead and walked her across the yard toward the east paddock. Behind me, I heard the barn door slide shut and then Lark’s boots on the gravel, following.
She caught up at the paddock gate and reached past me to unlatch it. Her arm brushed mine, and she smelled like hay and sweat and sunscreen and I was done.
I’d been carrying it since the first hour of the party. The strip of bare skin above her waistband every time she bent to pick up a rabbit. The way her jeans sat on her hips when she stood. The way she pushed her hair out of her face with the back of her wrist because her hands were full of animal.
I’d been filing it away all day, and now she was close enough to touch, and every inch separating us was a problem.
I walked the pony through the gate. Unclipped the lead. Lark swung the gate shut behind us. I hadn’t stepped back. There was no fucking way I was moving away from her. I couldn’t.
She looked up at me, and whatever she saw in my face made her breath catch. Her lips parted and her eyes went dark and she didn’t step back.
“Logan—”
I kissed her. I stepped into her and took her mouth. The kiss landed hard, no warm-up, all the want I’d been sitting on since the first hour of that party pouring into it.
I walked her backward to the fence and pressed her against the rail with my hips between her thighs. The heat of her through denim made my breath catch and my hands grip the wood on either side of her.
“We should go inside,” she said against my mouth.
“Too far.”
She laughed, low and rough, and bit my lower lip. “It’s thirty yards.”
“Way too fucking far, little bird.” I pulled up the hem of her shirt and pressed my palms flat against her stomach. Her skin was hot from the day and cool where the evening air hit it.
I dragged my hands up her ribs, my thumbs tracing the underside of her bra, and her back arched off the fence and her hips ground into mine hard enough that I felt every detail of her through two layers of denim.
Her fingers found my zipper and pulled it down, and she slid her hand inside. She wrapped her fingers around me, firm and sure, and my hips pitched forward and my breath left me in a rush and I had to grab the fence rail to keep my balance.
