“But at least she’d be here, trying.” Peyton sighed and settled back in the cushions, letting her head droop a little. She really was exhausted. “Maybe you’re right. If she’s not here, she can’t make things difficult as far as decisions. Once she’s here, she’ll probably try to take shit over that she has no business sticking her hands into.”
“Like what?”
“Like painting the barn pink. Or giving all the horses bedazzled halters. Or something else stupid.” Peyton scowled when Trace laughed. “You think it’s funny, but you know it’s true.”
“That does sound like something she’d try when she was younger,” Trace admitted, wiping tears of laughter away. “But she’s older now, probably more mature.”
“One can only hope,” Peyton muttered.
“And you know this isn’t the life she wanted. She ran off at eighteen for a reason. So I don’t think you need to worry about this at all. She’ll come when she’s ready, she’ll stay until she’s bored, then she’ll leave again and not look back. This ranch isn’t in her blood like it’s in yours.”
“And yours.”
He shook his head. “The ranch, no. Riding, yeah. But this place . . . it’s a house for me. I missed you when I was gone, and Emma. And dad, though he was already gone when I left. Even little Bea-Bea. But I didn’t crave the roots this place gives like you did. I didn’t have big dreams, big plans for the land. I can work here. But it’s not mine. It’s yours. Always was.”
She nodded, knowing it was true. “Why’d you leave? Permanently, I mean. I know this place didn’t hold much for you, but you just . . . walked away.” It was one of the great heartbreaks of her childhood, watching the brother she’d idolized since she could remember walk away and not come back.
His face hardened, the moonlight bouncing off the planes of his cheekbones, his furrowed brow. “I had to get away.”
“But if you—”
“I had to. Let’s leave it there for now.” Clapping hands on his knees, he stood, then held out a hand to help her up. “We need some sleep. I have a lot of work to do tomorrow. And I’m sure you do, though that doesn’t really distinguish it from any other day of the week for you.”
“I want to keep the ranch, so I do what’s necessary.” And if she wished she could have a girls’ night out, just once in a while, that was her problem. Making dreams come true didn’t come cheap. Not that she really had that many girlfriends anyway. Or any, come to think of it.
She walked to her own room, smiling to herself when she heard the soft sounds of Trace crooning to his son in the bedroom-turned-nursery. He might act like a hard, tough cowboy. But that man was mush for his son.
And if she wondered, just for a minute, how quickly Red might turn to mush if he had a son of his own, she pushed the thought aside. Because it wasn’t for her to worry about.
She had bigger fish to fry.
Red scowled as he watched Peyton and Ninja workout. She was pulling just a little too hard on the reins. Not painfully so, but ineffective. “Legs, Muldoon, use your legs.”
She flipped him the bird as best she could through her leather gloves and adjusted quickly, running Ninja through the course as fast as possible without knocking over any of the obstacles he’d set up. It wasn’t a perfect way to practice cutting, but mixing up the workouts helped keep the horse and rider both sharp. Not to mention that practicing with actual cattle was a pain in the ass.
In a live competition, she’d be working with fresh cattle who hadn’t been trained or around horses. Cutting one out from the herd and keeping the single animal away from the rest for a set amount of time took nimble footwork and quick reaction times. But it wasn’t always practical to practice with the real deal. So footwork drills were used.
When she came to a halt, both she and the gelding were breathing heavily. “How’d we do?”
He liked that. That she asked how they did collectively. So many riders assumed it was their glory alone and ignored that the animal had any part of it. “Not bad, but not great either.”
She rolled her eyes and used one finger to flick her hat back farther on her head. Strands of hair damp with sweat stuck to her forehead, curled down around her ears, frayed out from the double braids she always wore. “That was about as helpful as a tornado siren in the middle of a cyclone.”
He snickered. “You sounded just like Emma.” The housekeeper had a way of creating a phrase that stuck with you for the rest of the day.