Page 22 of The Brave and the Reckless

“Oh, really?” He laughed and leaned on the paint roller, raising his brows at me. “Are you able to tell apart a salad knife from a butter knife?”

“That’s not common sense, that’s just rich-people nonsense.”

He hummed a non-committal note. Sinan had gone to college in Nashville and had started working in the park shortly after graduating. Sure, when I’d met him, he’d been a bit clueless about living in a small town, but he’d already lived in a dorm for a few years then. I didn’t actually know what he’d been like straight out of high school, silver spoon still in his mouth.

“If my mother invited you for dinner at seven, would you know to arrive half an hour earlier because it’scommonin their circles to have an aperitif before dinner?” he asked.

“Are you just making shit up to make me feel like a small-town hick?”

“I wish I was.” I was saved from more quizzing on etiquette by the buzzing of his phone. Sanny wiped his hands off on his overalls before pulling his phone from his pocket. He flashed me the caller ID, the photo of a middle-aged version of his sister. “Speak of the devil.”

Sinan clicked a button on his hearing aids and disappeared down the narrow stairs at the backend of the hallway. His voice carried up from the kitchen, but with the call being in Turkish, I couldn’t make sense of anything but his tone. He sounded like I did when approaching an agitated horse, both hands raised, every step toward it calculated. I chuckled. His mother probably wouldn’t appreciate the comparison…

By the time he reappeared, his dark hair stood up high and had a couple of paint flecks in it.

“You good?” I asked.

“Yeah…” He plastered on a smile and shrugged, but just when he grabbed the paint roller to keep working, he turned on his heels. “You know my parents have called me more often in the few months since Esra dropped out of med school than they did in the four years I’ve worked here. I actually counted in my phone log.”

“Shit. That sucks.”

“Yeah.” He pursed his lips, eyes narrowing on the paint bucket. There was something else he wasn’t saying, but I realized that I didn’t actually know enough about his family to figure that part out– and he clearly wasn’t ready to spill.

Sighing, I grabbed the beer bottles from the top of the folding ladder and held one out to him. “If it makes you feel any better, my parents haven’t called in years.”

Sinan blinked at the bottle in my hand, then up at me, and it took a moment, but he barked a chest-deep laugh. “Are you kidding? That’s dark.”

“Does it make you feel better though?”

“Yeah,” he chuckled, and took the beer. “Dark, man.”

I shrugged and dipped my brush back into the paintto cover up the pencil marks by my door that marked my height growing up. My father had left me this place and not a cent to maintain it when I’d been way too young to take on the responsibility. Almost a decade later, we were finally on track to get it back up and running. Sanny had even offered to invest his trust fund, but friends and loans usually didn’t mix well. Instead, we painted, and we refinished the floors, and we fixed the fences on the paddock.

By the time we opened for business, this place was going to look nothing like the miserable house I’d left.

Chapter Eight

Ace Ryder. Bad To The Bone. FanEdit

00:47– 145902 views– posted 8 months ago

LILLIIPAD96: I’m no better than a horse. I’d let him ride me too.

YOURMISSINGSOCK: the number of times I’ve watched this feels illegal…

STL100990: BRB convincing the hubs why we have to take the kids to a theme park in TN when we live in Florida.

ANNIERYDER5EVER: chat can we talk about the arm flex when he pulls Annie on to the horse???

ESRA

“What do you think?” Vivi leaned back, blush brush in hand, to let me admire her work.

My reflection somehow looked like I belonged on a pop music stage in a sparkling leotard, while simultaneously oddly like I just sprang fresh-faced from the last season ofBridgerton. “I’ll never be able to replicate this on my own.”

I wasn’t bad at makeup, but this kind of full beat was levels beyond my winged liner, shimmery highlighter and contouring stick essentials. Even the guys masked in bandanas had sat down at the brightly lit vanity tables to dotheir foundations and brows in layers. They’d been so much quicker than me, who had to be tutored step-by-step. They were all off to get their staff photos taken within minutes. Picture day saved me from the humiliation andpainof horseback riding, but this was yet another part of the job that I was not equipped for.

“I filmed a tutorial, don’t worry,” Vivi said.

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