The Skeleton King (Dartmoor Book 3) (8 page)

              After her shower, she dressed in cutoffs and a tank top, not worried about saddle time today. Today was all about muddling through and handling the inevitable fallout with the Richards clan.

              She only made it as far as the bottom of her apartment steps when the shit hit the fan. Becca was waiting, nibbling at her lower lip, bouncing one foot with the toe braced on the concrete. Her eyes flared unhappily.

              “Amy and Manny are in the office waiting on you.”

              All the muscles that had relaxed under the hot water immediately tightened. “Awesome.”

Eight

There were five Richards siblings, it turned out, each one more distraught than the last: Manfred, Junior, Gail, Jan, and Amy. Manny and Amy, from what Walsh could tell, held one another in extreme contempt, and had been shouting, screaming, crying – on Amy’s part – for the better part of an hour.

              They wanted the sale contested on account of Richards’ mental stability. They wanted to see all the documents, talk to the lawyers. They thought Walsh was a swindler who’d used grifter-magic to talk their father into selling to, as Manny eloquently put it, “a fucking white trash loser who couldn’t even fucking talk right.”

              It had been halfway amusing at first, but now, Walsh was done with the lot of them.

              He put thumb and forefinger in his mouth and whistled loud enough to burst their eardrums.

              “Ah!” Amy yelled, clapping her hands over her ears. She was a beautiful woman in a physical sense, but she’d cried off all her makeup and her face was blotchy and swollen beneath. Listening to her talk to her siblings had turned her truly hideous in his eyes.

              “Who the hell do you–” Manny started.

              “Shut up,” Walsh said in his calmest, flattest, most emotionless voice. With his accent, it always got under Americans’ skin. It was the voice that had launched prospects into action. The voice that had sent club sluts stumbling out of his bed in search of their clothes.

              “If you wanna cry about it, do it somewhere else,” he continued. “This place – not yours. And you” – he pointed at Manny – “and you” – the rest of them – “just lost your goddamn father, and you’re bitching about where his estate ended up? Shame. Shame on all you assholes. Take the money I gave him, and get the fuck off my property before I call the cops.”

              The women stared at him agog, mouths falling open.

              “Go on.” He gave them a little wave. “Off you go.”

              They fumed a moment, but ultimately turned around.

              Manfred lingered, glaring.

              “Oh,” Walsh told him, “and if I hear of you down there yelling at my manager again, you’re gonna find out the difference between a biker and a
real
biker, mate. We clear?”             

              Manny said something that sounded like “fuck you,” and stalked off after his brother and sisters.

              Walsh was then alone, in his new front yard, looking down at his new farm, more than a little stunned with the turns of life that had led him to this point.

              Technically, it was the club’s farm, and the Knoxville crew was going to do a major run as favor to Texas for their loan.

              But in this moment, he felt proprietary and peaceful inside. He did love farms. Oh, how he loved farms.

              It was evening, and the low sounds of horses nickering floated up from the barn. He watched the Richards all leave in their various cars, and then climbed the porch steps, went into the expansive house, its industrial kitchen, and found the champagne he’d left in the fridge earlier.

              He glanced around the room as he stripped off the foil. The appliances would probably stay, but the table, the dishes, the pots and pans – all of the furniture in the rest of the house – would no doubt be hauled away by Richards’ children. It was theirs, after all. The house hadn’t been sold furnished. And Walsh wouldn’t miss any of it – it was just stuff. But he would be in the lurch furniture-wise. His own bed, table, and TV wouldn’t go far toward filling this cavernous home.

              Any regret he felt over Davis Richards’ death was slotted in his usual Unpleasant Things mental drawer, and he went back out to the porch to enjoy his chilled champagne on the porch, overlooking his new domain.

              He’d just gotten settled in a rocking chair when he noticed a lone figure cresting the driveway, cutting across the flagstone path toward him. Emmie had swapped her riding outfit for short cutoffs and another tank top, this one navy. Instead of boots, she wore a pair of those ugly leather Dansko clogs every chick at every barn wore.

              Her hair was down, and that pleased him into a momentary stupor. It was sheared straight off at the ends just below her shoulders, and was a tangle of tight curls, a dozen different shades of blonde.

              He liked for his women to look like women, and her combination of curvy and fit, small but emotionally sharp-edged was pushing all of his buttons.

              She reached the base of the porch steps and paused, looking up at him. “Can I come up?” she asked.

              He bit back a smile. “You don’t have to ask that.”

              “I always did before…not because he asked me…I just…” She shook her head hard and walked up the few steps, clogs loud on the wood. “Sorry. Old habits.”

              “S’alright.”

              She came to the chair beside him, hesitated, then sat, arms braced on the chair arms that were really too tall for her, looking stiff and uncomfortable.

              “No lessons tonight?”

              “They all canceled. Because of what happened.”

              “Figured.”

              She looked down at her lap and fiddled with the frayed hems of her shorts, then gathered a breath and looked over at him. “I realized there’s some things we didn’t talk about. Important, boss/employee stuff. I think we ought to walk through it.”

              He couldn’t help it: it was a small disappointment that she hadn’t come up here just to see him. Then again, he wouldn’t have wanted her if she’d been that kind of girl, would he?

              “Yeah.” He fitted a thumb at the base of the champagne cork and sent it flying with a fast movement. Emmie gasped at the loud
pop
. “I’m celebrating,” he explained, taking a long swig of the foaming crystal bubbles. “I can drink and listen at the same time.”

              She looked flustered. “Okay.”

              He gestured for her to continue.

              “Right. Okay. Well, we didn’t discuss salary before.”

              He shrugged. “It won’t change. I went over all that with Richards.”

              Her brows plucked in surprise. “Yeah, but I thought…” she trailed off, lips compressing like she’d thought better of it.

              “You thought I’d shaft you?” he asked.

              “No. I didn’t think – this is just a bit of a change, is all. I sort of…” She gestured around her head with both hands.

              “The salary won’t change. Not for you or the other two. How do you pronounce Fred’s real name, by the way?”

              “He won’t tell me.”

              “Well, I can copy it down on a check, at any rate. So it’s all good. No worries for you.”

              “I can’t help it. I’m a worrier.”

              “Anal retentive, are we?”

              “No.” She looked scandalized by the idea. “Practical.”

              Walsh nodded, trying not to laugh. Her presence left him in better spirits than anything had in a long while. “Alright, Miss Practical.” He leaned toward her and offered the champagne bottle. “Stop raining on my parade.”

              She looked at the bottle, then at his face. He was delighted to realize she’d put on lip gloss for this little chat. Not so practical after all, was she?

              “I don’t have hepatitis, love.”

              Still staring at him, her hand extended slowly.

              “You’re not one of those no-drinking religious types, are you?”

              Lips compressing, she took the bottle and lifted it to her mouth, took a healthy sip. His eyes followed the way her lips pursed around the bottle where his had been. The way her throat moved as she swallowed.

              “At least, I don’t think I have hepatitis,” he said, and she choked, eyes going huge as she fought to keep the champagne in her mouth.

              “Joking,” he said mildly. “I don’t fuck around with the club sluts.”

              Finally recovered, Emmie thrust the bottle back toward him, her expression angrier than it should have been. “Oh,
that’s
a nice thought. Excuse me, I’ve got to–”

              “Run go sit by yourself up in that apartment that smells like horse shit?”

              “It doesn’t
smell
,” she insisted. She was getting to that adorable, indignant state of annoyance. “And I–”

              “Just want to be a martyr?”

              “Would you stop it?”

              “Would you sit down and drink your damn champagne?” he countered, without inflection.

              Emmie had been pitched forward in her chair, and all but threw herself back, lifting the bottle and taking another swig.

              “You won, love,” Walsh added. “You’ve got your farm, your job, your students, and you never have to deal with those pricks again. Be happy about that.”

              She looked like she wanted to say something, but took another swallow instead.

~*~

There was a reason she didn’t drink very often. Two, actually, one being the fact that her father was an alcoholic and she was afraid that trait was hereditary. Secondly, because drinking always made her relaxed and chatty – and there weren’t many people she wanted to be that way around.

              Somehow, she’d managed to choke down half a bottle of champagne in the last half hour, and her worst nightmare was coming true – she was getting too candid with a hot stranger.

              Because as her inhibitions were stripped away one bubble at a time, she admitted to herself just how wildly attractive she found him. No, screw
attractive
– he was
hot
. The weathered lines on his face, the thickness of his hair, the compact musculature under his shirt – hot. And he was just her size, too, which was an added bonus.

              She stared at him, and he stared back with a narrow-eyed, unreadable gaze that she found unnerving at other times – completely enthralling now.

              “What are you doing?” he asked, and she thought he almost smiled.

              Shit, she couldn’t tell him what she was sitting here thinking. She’d have to come up with a convincing lie. “I’m wondering what part of England you’re from,” she said. “And if everyone there is as hot as you.”

             
Damn it!
She wasn’t supposed to say
that
part.

              His smile was slow, sly, and pleased.

              “Oh no.” Emmie turned away and slapped her forehead down into her palm. The darkening lawn before her swayed. Way, way too much champagne. “Is there any chance you can pretend I didn’t say that?”

              “Not in the slightest.”

              She groaned. Gapped her fingers and twisted just enough to see his smiling face through them. “I didn’t mean it, you know. It just came out. Like champagne-induced word vomit.”

              His laugh was quiet, but it did twirly things to her insides.

              “Here.” She thrust the bottle toward him, the liquid inside sloshing thanks to her unsteady hand. “Take this before it gets any worse.”

              “Worse? You gonna start telling me
why
you think I’m so hot?”

              “I said ‘hot,’ not ‘so hot.’”

              “Big difference?”

              “Huge.” And for some reason, the word huge heated her cheeks until she knew they had to be pink. What had he said before? Something about not being small where it counted? “Shit.”

              He laughed again – what a smoky, wonderful sound it was; she had no idea a laugh could have a British accent, but it was making her blush all the harder. God, she’d lost all self-control.

              She really did need to get laid apparently.

              But then Walsh seemed to take pity on her, grabbed the bottle back from her and said, “So how’d you end up at this place anyway? Why’s it mean so much to you?”

              A nice safe, non-sexual topic.

              Emmie lifted her head, squinted against the heaving of the lawn in front of them. Night was fast falling, and it made her vision even blurrier. “I was eight,” she said, “and I wanted riding lessons more than I wanted to take my next breath. Mom finally relented, looked up Amy in the paper classifieds – that was back when people went to the newspaper for information, you know.”

              “Hmm.”

              “And I had my very first riding lesson on an Appaloosa named Cheyenne. He was a hundred-years-old, but he was sweet, and I – God, even though I was on the longe line, and all I did was trot a little, it was like someone had given me wings. Like I could fly. Like who I was, and what I was, what I looked like, how small I was – none of that meant anything. It sounds hokey, but it was electric. It felt like destiny clicking into place.”