Page 38 of Tempting as Sin
Hailey was standing at the front of the store, supposedly getting ready to open up, with one hand on her ample chest. She was patting it, actually.
“Who wasthat?”she asked. “Lily? Hon?”
Bailey said, “That’s Clay. He’s cool. He’s sharing Chuck. Bye, Lily. Chuck and me are going to the lake.”
“Remember,” Lily said, turning the key and opening the door for them, “he needs lunch. Bring him back around one, OK? I brought a sandwich for you, too. We’ll have a little party.”
“OK,” Bailey said. “Bye.” She buckled the bike helmet Rafe had brought her, then headed out with Chuck, and Lily thought,Right. Right. Breathe.
Hailey said, “Wait. Lily. Whowasthat? He looks like—well, my gosh. He looks like sex on a stick, is what.”
“That’s Clay,” Lily said. “He just moved to town. He’s doing some training for a new job in…law enforcement. Bailey’s right. He’s cool.” She wasn’t sure how long Rafe was going to be able to hang onto his secret, sunglasses or no, but it wasn’t hers to share.
“Oh,” Hailey said. “Goodness. I’d say you don’t need books. Or Pinterest.”
Rafe was headed west, leaving the head of the long valley behind. The GPS lady told him, “In five hundred feet, turn left on Johnson Drive,” and he did it. Johnson Drive was gravel and took him uphill, away from the fields and up into the trees, and he thought,Wait.Wouldn’t an equestrian center be on level ground? Barns and paddocks and all?
A fork in the road. The GPS was mum, so he tossed a mental coin and took a right. Over the rise, maybe, and into another valley. That could be it.
More trees, the road narrowing and getting rougher, and a clear-cut area on the slope ahead. To the left, a dirt side road, marked with flags, headed up the mountain.
“Rerouting,” the GPS told him, and then, “Perform a U-turn when possible.”
“Now you tell me,” he muttered. He reversed a hundred yards and pulled into the side road, heard a rumble, and looked in the rearview mirror.
Holyshit.An enormous cab with a trailer behind was headed around the corner and bearing down on him, going too fast to stop.
The only stunt driving he’d ever done had been on a motorcycle. Didn’t matter. He was moving. He shifted into Drive faster than should have been possible and floored it, the blast of the powerful horn ringing in his ears. Theloggingtruck’s horn. The logging truck that had been about one second from flattening him like a pancake.
“Arsehole,” he said, and put his foot down a little more. This must be some kind of Montana version ofDeliverance.Probably the state sport, chasing unwary Californians. The GPS lady was still silent, but he didn’t care. When he came to the fork in the road again, he didn’t take the left one. Instead, he made it back to the main road fast, pulled all the way off it next to some mailboxes, and got a wave—the one-fingered kind—and a parting toot of the horn from the logging-truck driver.
He rang Martin.
When he finally made it up a mile-long, absolutely unmarked drive and stopped in front of a long white-painted stable block, he pulled on his navy blue West Virginia Mountaineers hat, summoned his inner sheriff, and climbed out of the car.
Martin gave him a cheery wave from the shade, where he was standing beside a tall, rangy woman, her faded blonde hair pulled back in a braid. Both of them were wearing jeans, which was no surprise. Martin was also, Rafe realized as he headed over, wearing new cowboy boots and a white button-down shirt, and had a red bandanna tucked into his back pocket.
“Morning,” Rafe said to the woman. “Clay Austin.” He asked Martin, “Is there a hoedown later, or will you need to cover your face when you rob the train?”
“Hi,” the woman said, seizing Rafe’s hand in an iron grip, giving it one fast pump, and dropping it. “Jo Schweitzer. You finally found us. If you’d called me, I would’ve told you not to follow the GPS. Doesn’t work so good out here. We go by country directions.”
“Uh…” Rafe said.
“Turn left at the cemetery,” she said. “Take a right at the old propane tank next to the Johnsons’ old place, then another right at the white barn. Country directions.” She stuck her hands into her back pockets and looked him over. “So. Tell me what you’re here for.”
“I filled her in,” Martin said, his bony face, behind the black-rimmed glasses, going for “serious” and not quite making it, “but she’d rather hear it from the source.”
“I’m not looking to ride in the Wild West show,” Rafe told Jo, ignoring his assistant. “Just the basics. Get on the horse, don’t look like too much of a fool riding it, and get off it again without it running away with me or going on strike. I’d like to do some trail riding. Up and down. Rocky. Fording the creek. That sort of thing.”
“Uh-huh,” Jo said. “What do you know how to do now? You obviously don’t have much sense of direction, so we better not send you up the mountain first.” That was clearly a joke, because she laughed, and so did Martin. “You’re also from Hollywood, which doesn’t exactly fill me with optimism, and you’re using a fake name. You really want me to use that? Because I’ll tell ya—if you’re doing something stupid on a thousand pounds of horse, I want you to hear me fast, not once you remember your name’s supposed to be Clay.”
Martin said, “Don’t look at me. I didn’t tell her. You’re too pretty. It’s the dimples.”
Jo snorted. “If you can’t tell one animal from another, you don’t belong in the horse business. And nobody in Montana except Ted Turner has an assistant. That’s what you’d call a clue. So let’s hear it. I’m not saying you don’t look good doing all that fighting in the movies, but I’m guessing that’s mostly fake. You ever been on a horse? Got any actual physical talents?” She looked him over from T-shirt to boots, so clearly expecting the answer to be “no” that Rafe had to smile. “Tomorrow,” she added, “wear a long-sleeve shirt. Horses itch. Cowboys don’t just wear jeans because it makes their asses look good.”
“Noted,” he said. “Cheers. Call me Rafe, then. I should answer to that fairly quickly. As for talents—I ride motorcycles. Do some surfing. A few things for my core, rings and so forth. Your basic fitness activities, running, swimming. That’s about it.”
“Your core,” Jo said. “Surfing. Huh. Balance, we’ll hope. I won’t expect too much, and then I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Because the first thing to know is that you don’t know anything. A motorcycle’s a fun thing and all, but it doesn’t go up and down at the same time it’s going forward, and it’s not going to up and decide to leave you behind. Let’s go meet a horse I know. We’ll start you out on Thunderbolt.”
