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Julie always found something so soothing about a little bit of chaos in life. She never felt like she could relax if she was surrounded by complete order and tidiness all the time. She was even notorious for losing things when she put them in responsible places.
Yes, Julie positively thrived in a little bit of chaos.
Until it came to the tack room.
Which had reached “unfathomable trainwreck” levels, and Julie was one tangled lead rope away from a total conniption.
Unfortunately, Luke was vehemently pretending he didn’t hear her as he lunged Sarge around the round pen.
“Luke,” she called quietly from her spot standing on the fence, “we can barely move in there, we’re constantly knocking stuff over, and I’ve almost fallen three times! We have to clean it out.”
Luke just adjusted the lunge line in his hand, giving Sarge a little more leeway. “It’s fine the way it is,” he insisted, holding up the long lunge whip in his hand and encouraging Sarge into a trot.
Here we go a-freaking-gain .
Julie couldn’t for the life of her understand how Luke, who kept the aisle and stalls completely immaculate, could leave the tack room in such a state of disarray. And it hadn’t always been that way. Up until a week ago, he’d kept it organized with at least some sense of order. But ever since that evening he fell asleep mixing Lily’s food, Luke had been very weird about the tack room. He’d just throw equipment in instead of going in and hanging it up, and if Julie stepped in there for something on the rare occasions he went in, he would immediately make some stupid excuse to leave. And any time she even mentioned cleaning it out, or at least just straightening up, Luke would get flustered and immediately come up with something for them to do outside and far away from the barn.
Yet another quirk to add to the ever-growing list of Luke-isms she was discovering day after day.
Julie tried and tried to understand this particular idiosyncrasy, but she finally concluded that it was a) stupid and b) really starting to annoy her.
“Someone, namely me, is going to die in there.” She held onto the fence and leaned herself back. “Come on, Luke, it won’t take that long to at least get stuff off the floor and somewhat back into its proper place.”
He ignored her and kept urging Sarge around the ring, raising the lunge whip in his hand every once in a while to instruct the horse to change direction.
Okay, logic clearly wasn’t working.
Time for Plan B.
She hopped off the fence and quietly pushed her way into the ring when Sarge trotted past the gate, then walked quickly up to Luke’s side. “Luuuuuke,” she cooed, batting her eyelashes.
He shot her a tight glance but kept ignoring her.
She clasped her hands in front of her chin and poked her bottom lip out, following him as he walked around, guiding Sarge in circle after circle. “Please help me clean the tack room?”
After another minute, he squared his shoulder to the side, both to look at Julie and signal Sarge to a stop. “You know,” he said, looping the lunge line around his hand and drawing the large blue roan toward them, “it’s rude to just pop in and interrupt when someone’s working in the ring.” He took hold of the where the lunge line hooked onto Sarge’s bridle and patted him on the side. “You’re lucky Sarge is so well-behaved, or you may have gotten hurt.”
The severity in his words sobered Julie a bit, but she refused to cow down. “And had it been a less experienced horse, I would have stayed outside. But-” She reached out and tickled the thin whiskers under Sarge’s chin, giggling when his soft lips brushed against her cheek in greeting. “-since it was this good boy, I figured it’d be okay to join you just this once.”
Luke huffed a sharp breath, then rolled his eyes and brushed past her, leading Sarge toward the barn for a rub down. “Let it go, Julie.”
That was it.
“Fine, be that way,” she snapped as she followed him into the barn. “I’ll do it myself. In fact, mucking duty for the next two days says that I finish tidying up in there before you finish up with Sarge just to prove that you’re being ridiculous.”
The snarky laugh that escaped Luke’s lips said it all. “Fine, Pop Star. You’re on,” he said, raising the hem of his Screams in the Attic t-shirt to wipe the sweat off of his forehead.
Oh, dear.
Now, Julie wasn’t unaccustomed to handsome men. The industry was jam-packed with arm muscles the size of guava melons, legs that could put tree trunks to shame, and abs hard enough to crack a walnut. Yes, the pool of attractive men in the realm of the rich and famous was deep and wide…
And boring.
Those muscles weren’t good for much more than showing off, six-pack abs were a dime a dozen, and she couldn’t count the number of times she’d asked some guy about his hobbies only for the conversation to jump straight to working out, counting calories, and sponsorships for the next fad diet. And Julie knew it wasn’t totally their fault; the industry expected much and forgave little, and any sign of “softening up” could cost these guys their next job. They had to be a little obsessed with their appearance if they were going to succeed, so they had to stay hot.
Didn’t mean “hot” interested Julie in the slightest.
Luke, however…
All that hid under that t-shirt was smooth, firm flesh with just enough softness to tell the story of a life of hard work (on the ranch, not in a gym) that earned every bite of the delicious dinners he always enjoyed at the end of the day. And Julie had seen enough over the last few weeks to know that those muscles of his weren’t for show, either. They were strong enough to wrangle an ornery racehorse and gentle enough to offer their strength to her when Asher showed up uninvited.
Strength and gentleness… She knew they were supposed to exist as an intellectual concept, but experiencing what that actually meant?
Julie’d known plenty of hot guys in her career.
But she’d never met anyone as purely and genuinely attractive as Luke Patterson.
Who was currently lowering his shirt and about to catch her very obviously ogling him.
Oh, balls.
“And I’ll be reorganizing, too, so hope your scavenger hunt skills are sharp!” she called as she stepped into the tack room, praying her voice didn’t sound as tight and uncomfortable as she felt.
Luke yelped in protest, but Julie shoved the door shut before she heard what he said.
She leaned heavily against the door and did her best to catch her breath.
What the hell was that?
You know what that was.
She did.
It was obvious.
Didn’t mean she had to focus on it.
Moving on…
Julie walked to the middle of the room and perched her hands on her hips, studying the mess. The room was full of a colorful assortment of bridles and halters, and only a few hung on the wall of hooks designated for that kind of equipment. Most of them were just scattered on the floor, gathering bits of hay and dust wherever they landed when Luke threw them through the door. Saddles of various sizes and styles leaned against their racks, the shelves with the cleaning equipment were a disaster, and the floor was covered in straw and bits of food. She had no idea where to even start, but she’d already committed, and she’d eat horse feed before she let Luke think he was right, thank you very much.
She ran her eyes along the walls and noticed that at least a few bridles and halters were hung up, so she figured she’d start there.
That was very much the wrong place to start. Julie didn’t know there were so many different types of bridles and halters out there. There were leather halters, rope halters, nylon halters, and even halters that had thick white fuzzy wraps on the straps (what kind of ranch was this?). The bridles had even more variety, with straps in different places and more bits than Julie knew what to do with. She picked up one bridle from the floor with a bit that looked like Bane’s mask from the last Dark Knight movie and was suddenly very aware of just how thankful she was to not be a horse.
Eventually, she decided to group the halters based on what they were made of, and the bridles based on their bits. She one hundred percent got a few of them wrong, but some looked almost the exact same and completely different all at the same time. Sue her!
It took longer than she anticipated (crap, she’d probably be mucking out the stalls on her own for the next week at this speed), but she got the wall arranged in a way that was… Well, aesthetically pleasing, at least. If Luke had a problem with anything, he could deal with it. He should have gotten his country bumpkin butt in there and helped her.
She moved on to untangling lead ropes, hanging up reins, sweeping, and organizing the different chemicals and cleaners.
Finally, she stepped back and admired the work she’d done so far. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a heck of a lot better than before.
A triumphant smile was just curling her lips when the corner to her left caught her eye.
The saddle racks weren’t quite as much of a disaster as the halters and bridles, but that didn’t mean they were as organized as they could be. A few racks were screwed into higher spots on the wall, and those were all full of saddles covered in thick layers of dust. But the lower racks weren’t quite as tidy. The saddles they’d used working with Fin and the others over the last few days lay on the floor under the racks, most likely where they’d fallen because Luke wasn’t careful as he put them away. From what she could tell, the smaller English saddles were generally contained to the racks closest to the wall on the left side, and the rest were home to the less delicate Western saddles.
Okay, that seemed simple enough.
Famous last words…
She was on the last one, a dark English saddle with Caroline Marie Wilson graved onto a small metal nameplate on the back of the seat. Wow. Was that the saddle she saw in the photo of Carrie and Snapdragon winning the Bribona Spring Classic down in the office?
She reached up and ran her finger along the nameplate to clean it off a bit, but her shoulder bumped a saddle hanging on a wall rack and sent the heavy thing toppling down right on top of her.
A sharp pain ripped through the back of her arm, forcing her to drop Carrie’s saddle.
“Ow, crap!”
She clutched at her arm and looked down at the saddle, wondering what the hell could have possibly sliced her like she was butter.
The tack room door slammed open and Luke barreled in. “Julie?” He caught sight of her clutching her arm and immediately stepped over the fallen saddles to get to her. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah…” she moaned, annoyed that she once again looked completely incompetent.
He quietly coaxed her fingers away from her arm and examined the cut. “What happened?”
She nodded toward the two saddles on the ground. “Your tack room attacked me!”
Luke hummed thoughtfully as he took a look at the wound.
“How bad is it?”
“I mean, it’s not small. About the length of my finger. And whatever it was went down in its side, so it shaved a nice little trail of skin away. But it’s not super deep, so you shouldn’t need stitches.”
His fingers hit a spot that shot another stab of pain through Julie’s arm and she hissed. “Ow, nerd!”
“Sorry.” He guided her over to the sink with him and pulled a first aid kit out of the cabinet on the wall. He unwrapped a gauze pad and ran it under some warm water, then squeezed a heaping blob of soap onto it. “Here,” he said, lathering it up and guiding her to stand in front of him. “I’ll bandage you up, and then we can figure out what cut you.”
Julie kicked at the old saddle that fell on her. “This stupid hunk of leather staged a coup and attempted an assassination.”
He chuckled. “I told you the tack room was fine the way it was.”
“No one else had a problem with it. Just that stupid saddle.”
He laughed again. “Whatever you say, Julie.” He wrapped one hand around her elbow to hold her arm in place. “This is gonna sting a little,” he said, and then he pressed the soapy gauze to her arm.
He was wrong.
It didn’t sting a little.
It stung a lot.
“Ow, ow, ow! ” she whined as Luke dabbed at her cut.
“Sorry, sorry, almost done.” He poked at it for a few more seconds, then finally took it away. “Okay, soap’s done. Just the rinse and the bandage now, okay? Are you up to date on your shots?”
That was not a question she was expecting. “Shots?”
“Tetanus mostly,” he said absently, squeezing a clean, wet gauze pad over her cut to rinse all the soap off.
Julie thought about it. “Um…”
Luke sighed. “Guessing that’s as a no?”
“I got some kind of shot before I went to Guatemala, but I can’t remember if it was for tetanus or malaria…”
Luke ripped four long pieces of tape from a roll, then opened one more gauze pad and placed it over the cut. “I think I’m gonna take you to Doc Turner just to be sure. He can probably figure something out.”
They both fell silent after that as Luke kept his firm grip on her elbow to steady her arm again. The only sound besides the regular ranch noises was the gentle scratch of the tape as Luke’s fingers pressed it down into Julie’s skin, careful never to press too hard and hurt her cut.
Strength and gentleness…
Julie’s entire torso trembled at the soft brush of his skin against hers, and for one eternal second, she let her brain imagine how that whispering touch would feel in a slightly different context…
Julie Ivána Molina!
“There we go, all done.”
Oh, thank you, Jesus.
Julie released a breath she didn’t remember holding and finally relaxed.
That was a lot.
But it was over.
And she survived.
Victorious again.
Luke knelt next to the saddles and glanced up at her. “Which one fell on you?”
Julie picked up Carrie’s saddle, placed it on an empty rack, and pointed to the lighter saddle on the floor. “That one.” She plopped herself on the floor next to Luke as he examined the saddle.
“Ah, here we are,” he said, pointing to a small, rusty circle on the saddle’s flap. “The saddle nail wiggled its way out of the tree. That’s probably what… got you…”
Luke’s voice faded as he stared down at the saddle nail, his jaw tightening as he ran a finger around the circle once, twice, three times.
Whatever was going through his head, it wasn’t good.
And Julie hated seeing him hurt so much.
She put a hand on his shoulder. “Luke?”
He jumped, like he forgot she was there. “U-um…”
“What’s wrong?”
He did his best to set the saddle aside and shook his head. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” He nodded toward the door. “Come on. We’d better go make sure you’re still good on your tetanus booster, or you could be in trouble.”
Not so fast, buster.
Julie reached over him and tugged the saddle into her lap,
“Julie-”
She bent over and studied the nail head that cut her. Underneath the red-brown coating was a logo, a capitalized BR with the “B” facing backward. She traced the shape of the letters, then looked up at Luke. “What does that BR stand for?”
Luke took a deep breath. “Briar Ridge. It’s Ashley’s family’s stable. That’s her saddle. She must have left it here after… After…”
“Ashley? As in, Bang List Ashley?”
He nodded, refusing to meet her eyes. “Yeah.”
Of course that’s the one that fell on her.
“Why is her saddle here?” Julie did her best to keep her voice as soft and neutral as possible. The last thing she would ever do is judge him, and she didn’t want him to think that was what was happening.
He sat back and rested his head on a bent knee. “The Stantons have one of the nicest boarding facilities in the state. They have the capacity for up to sixty horses at any given moment, and Val, Ashley’s mom, only hires the best of the best when it comes to trainers and stable hands.”
He glanced out at his main barn, which could only hold ten horses. She started to tell him he had nothing to be ashamed of, but he kept going before she could. “But a large number of horses brings less space and less training time. Most of the horses boarded at Briar Ridge were jumpers, so the training rings were pretty much always full. Ashley never felt like she had enough time to train. Back when we were… Whatever we were, she boarded her show jumper here so she had more time to train alone.”
“Where did she train here?” Julie was still super green when it came to the equine world, but she’d seen enough horse shows and movies to know what a jumping ring looked like, and Ferus Springs did not have a jumping ring.
“We used to have a pretty nice arena set up. I’d sit and watch her for hours while she trained. She and Apollo looked like they were flying.” He gave a bitter chuckle. “I really fell for her. As much as I could while I was so messed up, anyway. I thought it was real. I was wrong.” He finally met Julie’s eyes and shrugged.
Yeah. She knew the rest of the story.
“I took it down after… Well…”
After that night Carrie and Alex had to rescue him from Ashley’s party.
After Ashley tried to turn him into a point for some sick game.
“Anyway. Alex and Carrie dropped Apollo back off a Briar Ridge for me, and I guess they forgot to grab her saddle. I didn’t even realize it was still in here.”
Julie had to breathe against the simmering rage in her chest as she processed everything Luke said. What she wouldn’t give to punch Ashley right in the throat for hurting Luke like that. And she’d have to remember to have a saddle burning party when they got home.
Her gaze landed on a Sharpie sitting on a shelf.
Hm…
Or…
“Hey, are we going to pass Briar Ridge on the way to the doctor?”
Luke narrowed his eyes. “We’ll pass by the entrance. It’s about a mile back from the road. Why?”
Julie held up the saddle and quirked her eyebrows. “Ashley’s probably missing her saddle…” she said with disgustingly fake sympathy. “What do you say we return it to her?”
“Julie, I don’t know…”
“Come on, Luke. You don’t need to keep this here, and as much as I want to set it on fire, burning treated leather isn’t great for the environment, and she’s not worth another hole in the ozone layer.” She grinned. “We don’t even have to get out. We stop as close to the stable as possible, shove it out, and drive off.”
He bit his lip hesitantly for another second, then smiled back and nodded. “Okay, crazy lady. Let me go get my keys.” He held his arm out for the saddle. “Here, let me get that, too.”
Julie batted his hand away. “I got it.”
“But your arm-”
“-will be fine.”
Luke just shook his head. “I know better than to argue with you. Let me know if you change your mind.” He stepped out of the tack room, but turned before he walked away. “Oh, and mucking duty is on you for the next two days. I was finished with Sarge ten minutes ago.”
Julie wanted to be annoyed, but she just couldn’t manage it. She was too excited.
She stood and snagged the Sharpie, then flipped the saddle over and scribbled a message on the light tan suede underside.
She’d have to make sure Luke didn’t see it, but that shouldn’t be too hard.
When she and Luke pulled up as close to the front of Briar Ridge’s facility as he could, Julie’s excitement tripled. Ashley stood just outside of the enormous barn, tossing her high ponytail around as she talked to a mother and her daughter.
It couldn’t have been more perfect if Julie had planned it.
Luke braked just enough for Julie to open her door. “Hey, Ashley,” she called, kicking the saddle out into the dust.
The blonde yelped when it landed at her feet, and glared up at Julie. “What the hell-” she stopped when she saw Julie.
Whether she recognized her from the alumni game or just in general, Julie didn’t care. “You left that at Ferus Springs, and it was taking up valuable space. Have a lovely afternoon!”
Luke peeled away as soon as Julie’s door was closed, a triumphant laugh spilling from his lips. “Julie, you are completely insane!” he howled, giving the steering wheel a joyful smack.
“So I’ve been told!” she laughed back. “Flynn tells me all the time I’m certifiable. Guess she’s right!”
“Maybe so, but it’s the absolute best kind of crazy.” Another fit of laughs burst from his chest, and when he finally calmed down, he shot her a soft, soft smile. “Thank you.”
“Hey, I’ll always look out for you, Cowboy.”
She wasn’t even surprised when she realized how much she truly meant it.
He nodded once and then turned his attention back to the road. “Okay, now let’s get you to the doctor before your joints start freezing up.”
“Is that something that can happen?”
He just shrugged, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
Oh well. If he was really worried, he wouldn’t be playing with her, she knew that much for sure. And as they both settled into a comfortable silence, she thought back to the words she’d written on the saddle.
This saddle belongs to Ashley Stanton, who will hopefully treat it better than she treats other human beings. You missed a great shot your junior year, by the way, and he’s more incredible than you’ll ever know or deserve.
But he’s in better hands now.
Mine.
So bang bang, sweet pea.
Kisses,
JM