Page 22 of Ropers Can't Tie Knots
My hand shakes as I reach over to touch where Hunter’s hand rests. Dixie’s big brown eyes stare at me as she stretches closer. She huffs, and I jump while pulling my hand back.
“What’s that mean? Does she like me?” My voice carries a hopefulness I hope Hunter doesn’t pick up on.
“Yeah, Gabe.” There’s no laughter in his voice this time. His expression is nothing less than tender as he strokes Dixie’s neck. “She’s just feeling you out, but she likes you. If she didn’t, she’d pin her ears back and not get so close. She trusts me implicitly, so she feels safe to check you out.” He turns his soulful brown eyes towards me. “Just like you should know that I’d not put you in danger.”
No, I don’t suppose he would. Hunter might present like someone who doesn’t care, but watching him now? The man has a heart the size of the Rocky Mountains.
Dixie snuffles around Hunter a little longer until he playfully pushes her away with a promise of seeing her later. He’s so relaxed here with his horse. He’s not like the Hunter from the rodeo ring or bar with a ring of barbed wire around him. There’s a definite change here in his demeanour.
Here, he’s perhaps a little softer than most people see, and he just gave me that glimpse into what he’s really like. The layers of this man must be plentiful, and I wonder if he’ll show them all to me.
“If you throw that little carrot towards Lewis, he’ll be your friend.”
“He’s not there.”
Hunter shakes his head with a small laugh and points to the grass behind Lewis’s hole where Lewis sits on his back legs, waiting.
“I thought they were called prairie dogs if they sit like that and not groundhogs.”
“That’s an entirely different animal and thankfully one I don’t get here.”
“Why?” I toss the carrot towards Lewis, and when it thunks on the ground, he waddles off his hill for it.
“Those are the ones I can’t let stay here. They dig all over and make too many holes for the livestock to step in and get hurt.”
“Oh. Lewis doesn’t do that?”
“Nope. That’s his only hole, and it’s outside the pasture area.”
I watch as the chubby animal eats the carrot, and he’s rather cute.
“Hey, now that we’re married, could we get a real pet? Like one that lives in the house and doesn’t intimidate me?”
Hunter walks towards the house, still in his wedding-day suit, and I follow.
“You think talking about pets is the most important issue we have to cover right now?”
“It seems like a safe place to start. What do you want to cover first?”
Hunter pauses as we reach the front door and glances my way.
“Sex.”
The air leaves my lungs, and I suppose that’s important enough. I mean…we all need it, right? God knows I’ve wanted it since I first saw him.
Hunter enters the house, and I follow. He leaves his boots at the door as he always does and heads down the hall to the living room.
“Gabe…” His voice trails off as I catch up to him and observe what Riley’s help accomplished for my dinner surprise.
“Oh. This is…more than I requested.” I laugh, a high-pitched squeaky noise, when Hunter stares at me. “I thought it would be nice to eat together out of the public eye while we figure out our next moves. Jackson said you like simple things, so it’s—”
“You asked my friends what my favourite foods are?”
Hunter’s gaze pins me in place, and thoughts of a sex talk evaporate. Have I offended him?
“Jackson said you love hot dogs even though they give you heartburn and that you’d appreciate all the toppings. So yeah, I asked and…I guess I delivered.”
We have to cook the dogs, but a table sits in the living room with every single hot dog topping possible in small containers or chilling on ice. A row of foot-long hot dogs sits on a silver platter waiting to be grilled, and it would all feel like a kid’s birthday party if it weren’t for the bouquets of roses all over the room and the banner saying ‘Husband and Husband.’
