Chapter 17
Cori
It was only seconds before Grant opened the door, and I was glad I’d put on nicer clothes.
Dark jeans, button-down shirt, and a day’s worth of scruff greeted me with a smile. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
All that anxiety just melted away.
“Come on in.” He held the door open, and I stepped into a waft of fragrance that had my mouth watering.
“It smells amazing.”
Grant smiled. “Hope I can prove once and for all that I’m a good cook.”
So he remembered that, too. I flushed bright red. A part of me had hoped he’d forgotten. But then again, he seemed to forget almost nothing when it came to me. So far.
“What is it?”
He shrugged. “Just chicken. But it’s a chicken that’s evolved with a lot of experimentation over time.”
“I can’t wait.”
Grant’s house was nearly the opposite of mine. Pure white walls and no clutter. A utilitarian space that definitely spoke of a military background. Dark furniture and masculine textures. It made sense, but at the same time, it didn’t fit the image that I had of him. Grant was warm and funny, and the sparse space didn’t suit him.
He tracked my gaze. “I should hire you to come over and make this place better. Of the things I’m good at, design isn’t one of them.”
“I wasn’t judging it.” Grant raised an eyebrow, and I laughed. “I wasn’t. I was just thinking that it doesn’t really suit you because you’re…warmer than this.”
Grant picked up a wineglass and poured white from a bottle. “Like I said, I need you to come fix it up. I don’t have the instincts for it.”
“I’ll think about it and see what I can do.” I took the glass of wine, jumping when our fingers brushed.
“Everything okay out at the Pearson place?”
Grant’s eyes were sharp, and I sighed. “No, actually. I mean, I’m fine. I didn’t see anyone, but that horse is dying. Almost dead. And I have no idea why. I sent an email to some colleagues and hopefully they’ll have some insight, but it’s strange all around.”
I left out the part where I kept thinking I saw Joel and was getting weird texts from him.
“I’m just nervous because Mr. Pearson was so incredibly adamant about leaving the horse alone, but she was barely breathing when I was there this afternoon. Why would you not want to help an animal that’s clearly suffering? Aside from the moral stuff, he only owns high-end horses. Racers and thoroughbreds. It’s not like this is a farm horse that’s expendable to him.”
“Yeah.” Grant frowned. “You have a suspicion?”
I looked at him and took a sip of wine. “You work with horses. Has any horse you’ve ever encountered smelled like cinnamon?”
“None that I can recall.”
“Me either. Nothing comes up in my research as a symptom. I’d like to think it’s nothing, but what if it’s poison?”
Grant walked to a small bar in the corner and poured himself a glass of what looked like whiskey. “Poisons aren’t my thing. I don’t actually think any of the Resting Warrior guys have that as an expertise, but if you need me to reach out to some people and find someone who knows, I can.”
“Thanks. I want to see what my colleagues say. If they don’t come back with anything, then I’ll be taking you up on that. For sure.”
“But you’re all right?” he asked. “Any more problems with Joel?”
“Yeah. I didn’t realize how nervous I would actually be. My heart was pounding the whole time. But it was like a ghost town. I didn’t even see any stable hands while I was there.” I winced. I needed to tell Grant the rest of what was happening, even if it ended up only being in my own mind. “And I thought I saw Joel following me a couple times, but the truck was gone before I could confirm it was him. It may be only my overactive imagination.”
I followed Grant into the kitchen, where he stirred the chicken and vegetables on the stove. He looked pensive. “I don’t like any of it, and if your gut is telling you stuff is wrong, you shouldn’t ignore that. I’m glad that I’ll be going with you next time, because this whole thing feels off.”
Hearing it confirmed made me shiver. “Yeah. It does.”
He turned and stepped closer. “And if you do confirm Joel is following you, you let me know. I’ll have a talk with him if it’s needed.”
I offered him a shaky smile. “Okay.”
He smiled, then turned back to the stove top. “This is ready.”
I watched him move around the kitchen with utter ease, plating the chicken alongside the vegetables. He was cooking for me. I tried not to let my head get too far ahead of itself, because I knew that he would have had to cook for himself anyway, but this was different.
Something about watching him utilize the kitchen made him that much more attractive than he already was to me. That was a dangerous thing. Because at least on the surface, it seemed like Grant Carter was everything I’d ever wanted. Those were the kinds of thoughts that could get me into trouble and end up breaking my heart.
“Here you go.” He set the plate in front of me along with silverware, and I inhaled the scent of rich spices. It was practically mouthwatering. Then I tried it, and it was, in fact, mouthwateringly delicious.
I looked up to find him smirking. “Holy shit, Grant.”
“Told you.”
He had every right to be smug. This was one of the best chicken dishes I’d had in a long time. “You know, I always thought about that night and cringed. I felt like I totally missed the mark on that joke.”
“You didn’t. But I also wanted you to know that I wasn’t just another guy who expected a woman to cook for him.” A faint smile appeared. “I guess I was trying to impress you even then.”
“I wish I’d been less…oblivious.”
“Cori—”
I held up a hand. “I was. It was a ‘comfortable’ relationship. The number of things that I let slide because it was easier than getting up the courage to actually change something? I should have left him much earlier.”
Grant sat back, slowly spinning his glass of whiskey on the table. “I want to ask you, and if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine… I just want to make sure that you’re okay.”
My plate suddenly became very interesting as the sheer embarrassment from the night of the breakup and everything that followed came rushing back up.
“Even before this, Cori, I knew you well enough to know that you’re not any of those things that he called you. And I can’t imagine what you possibly could have said or asked him for that would get that reaction.”
“You and me both,” I muttered. “Looking back, I know that his reaction shouldn’t have been the thing that was the wake-up call. But it was. I never anticipated that.”
He looked at me, eyes flicking over my face, dropping to my lips before coming back to hold my gaze. “I would never judge you.”
“I know.”
I did know that. Grant was the polar opposite of Joel. And I already trusted him more than I had Joel in our entire relationship. Taking a sip of wine, I focused on the food in front of me and started to talk.
“That day, I got a letter from my family with an ultimatum. My family—” I blushed. “They’re incredibly wealthy.”
“You can’t help where you come from,” he said softly.
I cleared my throat. “Right. Well, everyone in my family is a surgeon. Literally everyone. It’s practically a dynasty, the way they talk about it in the medical world. I never wanted it. So I became a vet. But that’s not good enough for them.
“They’re changing the terms of my trust—money I was hoping to use to keep the clinic afloat and maybe expand—so that I only get it if I go back to medical school for surgery.”
He sat forward now. “Are things that bad at the clinic? Do you need help?”
A smile broke out on my face. Of course that was where his focus was. Taking care of me. “No, we’re okay. But it would be nice to have that cushion, you know? I haven’t even really thought about the stuff with my family because I’ve been avoiding it. I don’t want to go back to medical school, and I hate surgery. Human surgery, at least. And I don’t want to leave Garnet Bend for that long.”
“So, don’t.”
“It feels that simple,” I said. “But it’s my family, so it’s not. And I can’t ignore the kind of good that money would do if I had it. Hiring a second vet, another technician. Everything about the practice would be better and more effective.
“Joel said I should suck it up and do it. Mostly because he hates my house and wanted me to move. We fought about it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I shrugged. “It is what it is. But that day, I was just…so overwhelmed. With work, with what they wanted, all their expectations, every single thing. The only thing I could think about was that I wanted to let go and not think for a while. Not make any decisions and just be.”