Page 3 of Story Of My Heart

Anything to get rid of this feeling of anxiety like ants are crawling across my skin. I need a diversion, and I can depend on Piper to deliver it.

“You live in a penthouse,” she points out.

The old childhood phrase that inspired my dad to name his pet parrot Captain Obvious flashes in my brain like a neon sign. “So? We need to do this. I’m feeling a tingle, and I don’t like it.”

Piper stares at me in silent contemplation, eyes narrowing into slits as her lips tighten so much that they almost disappear entirely. Then, she shakes her head, pushing her glasses up into her hair and rubbing at her temples.

“Let me translate. You heard something you don’t like, and now I get to entertain you until the pain goes away.” The look on her face and her posture on the couch opposite me reminds me of a therapist. Not another role I need Piper to play. Although, with the way I’ve been feeling lately, it’s not completely wrong. “Am I getting warmer?”

“See, this is why I need you.” My tone comes out whinier than I intended.

“Just one problem, boss man,” she shrugs, wrinkling her nose.

“I see no problem.” To the layman, this is a lie. There are many problems. However, it is simply Piper’s job to make them go away. Thus, they are not my problems, and therefore, I see no problems.

She lifts one shoulder in a totally judgmental way. “Horses hate you.”

“They don’t hate me,” I retort, running through a mental montage of all the animals that have taken their usual dislike to me. There are quite a few. There’s all the birds that have pooped on my suit jackets, the entirely too friendly squirrels on my university campus, dogs humping my leg, and the raccoon that launched out of the dumpster when I was taking the trash out alone at the resort when I was twelve. Horses though—they’ve seemed fine.

“The one in NYC…”

Oh. That one. I don’t usually count employed beasts of burden as animals, I guess. He had a bad attitude to begin with. As did that carriage driver.

“I’m sure they bite lots of people. It was an anomaly.”

Piper arches an eyebrow at me, before looking down at her phone, no doubt already determining the logistics of satisfying my ridiculous mid-afternoon whim. “The ride through the Rockies in Colorado? I thought the ‘tamest horse in the barn’ was going to throw you off the side of the mountain.”

I had forgotten about that one entirely. I think I burned it out of my memory to shield myself from the embarrassment. Not my finest hour.

“I failed to establish dominance,” I shrug, tugging at my collar. “This is why we need to do this. More practice.”

After checking our shared Google calendar, a small grin forms on her lips. “It’s your funeral. Any last requests?”

“That you stop referring to this as my funeral and just make this fun.”

“Unlike you, not only do horses love me but I know how to ride.” Piper stands, making her way to the elevator back down to her apartment, shooting me a glance over her shoulder as the doors slide open. “Oh, I promise one of us will be having fun.”

Chapter Two

Piper

Before we could even think about heading to the stable, we had to stop to buy Tate a pair of jeans. It’s not that my annoyingly high maintenance boss doesn’t have any. It’s that they’re all professionally tailored, designer jeans that lack the wiggle room required to sit in a saddle and cost entirely too much money to be rubbing on the hide of a sweaty animal. We took a detour to a western wear outfitter, and I rushed in and grabbed a pair of sturdy looking Wranglers in his size. Not to mention boots. And a comfortable shirt that didn’t cost upwards of two hundred dollars. All while he sat in the Mercedes, enjoying the air conditioning and a podcast about cryptocurrency.

So what if I snuck in a new pair of boots for myself? The little gift here and there is one of the very limited perks of being an assistant to someone with as much cash and as little regard for it as Tate Story.

Besides, like he’s constantly telling me, I’m indispensable.

The extra stop means we don’t arrive at our destination until late afternoon. I anticipated Tate’s customary lack of understanding of linear time and booked two time slots to ourselves as a precaution. I’ve gotten awfully good at anticipating Tate’s peculiarities over the years, for lack of a better or more flattering word. I could call them faults, instead, but before the thought crosses my mind, I look at the toes of my new boots and remind myself that there are far worse career paths I could find myself in. For starters, there was the guy mucking out a stall when we walked into the stable. Whatever Tate’s issues may be, at least he smells better than a horse manure. Most of the time.

“Hello, there folks.” A kindly woman approaches us from a makeshift office at the back of the building, a rope of braided gray hair swinging behind her shoulders with each step. Everything about her suggests that she’s spent every hour of her life outdoors. “You must be my afternoon appointment. I’m Janet. Mr. and Ms. Wright, I presume?”

She extends her hand for a shake, and Tate receives it with gusto, giving me the slyest of grins. I chose the pseudonym as a play on the deal he brokered with Mingle.com. I never intended for the joke to backfire so spectacularly on myself.

“Oh. No. We’re not—he’s not,” I sputter, trying to find a way to extricate myself from this. “Wright. We’re not. Wright. I mean, together, we are not Wright. We’re not married.”

Subconsciously? Maybe. The idea haunts me sometimes, whispering at the edges of my daydreams—could I ever be Mrs. Tate Story? But I shove that thought down every time it dares surface. It can never be like that between us. He needs me in a way that’s practical, indispensable, not romantic. I’m the cog that keeps his life running smoothly—his Pepper Potts—not the heart of his world. I have to remember that, keep my feet on the ground even when his smallest praise makes me want to float away. When Tate offers praise, it’s as rare as it is genuine—like finding a diamond in a sea of glass—making it all the more precious because it tells me he really does see me, not just the role I play.

Janet shakes her head with a small laugh. “None of my business, kids. I just hope you’re not this nervous on a horse.”

---