Herd That (The Valentine Boys 1)

“Fine. You keep her. She doesn’t like me anyway,” I mumbled, starting off across the pasture I’d just ridden across. “I want my old horse back. Is there any way to erase time?”

I wasn’t talking to anyone in particular, but the man at my back who was keeping pace with me obviously thought I was speaking to him.

“No,” he said. “You only get one life. You have to live it. Although you just almost died.”

I shot him an angry look, trying to ignore how hot he was in the process.

“Shut up. Nobody’s talking to you,” I muttered.

“You just did,” Ace retorted.

I shook my head. “Actually, I was talking to myself.”

“Like that’s any better,” Ace replied.

I ignored him. Or tried to.

It was hard to ignore those thighs encased in those chaps.

They were quite lovely.

“Why are you wearing those?” I asked without thinking.

“Because if I don’t, my legs chafe,” he replied just as quickly. “Where are you going?”

“Home,” I replied. “Maybe I can start this day over better tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow will be tomorrow, not today,” he said, all philosophical and shit.

I shrugged.

“It’s going to take you forty-five minutes to walk home,” he pointed out. “And that’s if you cut through the pasture, which you probably shouldn’t do since you’re not wearing proper boots. The grass isn’t cut down low enough for you to see any snakes.”

I ignored him.

I had on boots.

They probably weren’t the best ones in the world for what I was doing seeing as they were about two days old and stiff as a board, but they weren’t the flashy ones that I’d been wearing at the sale barn.

I hadn’t missed the eye rolls from Ace or his brothers as I’d made my way over the last two times.

For that reason, two mornings ago, when I’d gone into town, I’d decided to buy an ugly brown pair that were boring and blah.

“It is what it is,” I said. “If I die of a rattlesnake bite, I have good life insurance. It’ll serve my fish nicely. I left it all to him.”

His steps faltered. “What do you mean you left your life insurance to a fish? That’s impossible.”

“I actually left it to my best friend, who promised me she would buy my fish nice things after I die. Same thing, right?” I jumped over a fallen log and winced when the stiff leather of the boot scraped against my heel. “My best friend is actually watching my fish right now, too. Between you and me, she’s probably going to keep him. She’s already living in my house. She took over my lease.”

Yep, definitely going to have a freakin’ blister tomorrow.

Maybe two. On both heels.

“Your horse is following you,” the man at my side suddenly said.

I didn’t bother to look over my shoulder. “I don’t want her anymore. She’s no longer one I’m willing to ride, anyway.”

“I’m sorry, but is she yours to just give away?” he asked.

I shrugged. “My granddad won’t notice she’s missing. She was one of the few that he rescued from that farm that had about five hundred horses that they couldn’t feed. All except that one. She was the one that the farmer liked best and apparently treated her like the spoiled little asshole that she is.”

“The Greer farm?” Ace asked curiously.

I looked over at him and saw he had his hands shoved in his back pockets, accentuating his narrow hips and bulky biceps.

“Uhh.” I shrugged. “I have no idea. I just got here a month ago. I’m not really sure about the people he got them from. All I know is that I have to muck out all their stalls and I’m not very happy about it.”

His lips twitched, and he looked down at me.

“Too much for the city girl?” he teased.

I shrugged and thought about my city.

I’d been living in Dallas since I was eighteen, and I loved it there. I did not miss Kilgore at all. Not even a little bit.

What I did miss was Dallas and the fact that I could walk into a coffee shop and nobody knew my name.

I liked the faceless, nameless people who didn’t know who I was, or who my mother was. Who didn’t ask how my grandfather was doing, or how work was going.

“I don’t mind mucking out stalls… once,” I said. “But I don’t find the task very fun to do on a daily basis, and I haven’t had to do it since I moved away at eighteen. Let’s just say I’m spoiled.”

“Why’d you move away?” he asked as he looked around at the spread of property that we were coming up on—mine and my grandfather’s.

My parents, who’d owned the farm fifty-fifty with my granddad, had deeded me their portion of the ranch and had moved down to Florida two years ago. It wasn’t until Granddad’s heart attack that I had come home myself.