Work Text:
Daybreak
Tom knocked on Mena’s door the next morning when it was still dark outside, a little too eager to get her out of the house with the ulterior motive of learning more about her. Well, at least learn more about her without the Spanish Inquisition via his father bearing down on them. He thought, perhaps, she might be more open to him than his father’s characteristically harsh questioning and brusque personality.
He did concede to his father, however, that not knowing anything about her was a particular disadvantage. He’d not taken the appropriate amount of time to consider how his straight-laced family would view a complete stranger showing up on their doorstep, much less a stranger who turned out to be everything his father despised in a person. After all, there was nothing his father hated more than drifters or people who moved from one place to the next, whether it was for a job or not, without putting down roots and truly making something of themselves. Okay, making something of themselves as defined by his father, which was a fairly limited definition.
More than that, though, Tom wanted to understand what happened as he had said his goodnights to her. There had been that moment after he showed her to her room. A very unexpected moment, if he were being honest, and one that could only complicate matters further. They were both standing by the fire; he tried to puzzle her out and she gave him a frank and thorough assessment. He felt the pull. That one that somehow latched onto something inside of him and tugged every time he thought about her—the same tug that somehow made it feel like he’d known her forever.
But he didn’t know her. Not yet, at least. So he dashed those thoughts early on in a night of fitful slumber, telling himself the only reason he was interested was because she was the only viable option in a fifty kilometer radius other than Olivia, and he couldn’t stand Olivia’s—and his father’s—unceasing attempts to pair them off.
Still, there was a fire of excitement in his belly when Mena finally opened the door.
“Morning,” she croaked, pulling yet another layer over her already voluminous, oversized clothes. He didn’t understand her love of garments too large for her body—or wearing so many layers—but he just chalked that up to being another question that needed answering.
“I thought you said you’d be up early,” he said.
Mena shrugged and finally grabbed a puffy coat from the chair by the door. “I was up an hour ago.”
“You were?”
“Yes, I was,” she said. “It takes me awhile to wake up, okay? Why are you so fucking chipper?”
He laughed. So she wasn’t a morning person.
“We’ll grab a coffee on the way out,” he offered.
Seemingly satisfied with that, she stepped out into the hallway and motioned for him to lead on through the halls. He wanted to talk more, but he knew better than to wake up the rest of the family. The last thing he needed was to make them more grouchy than they already were.
By the time they made it out to the stables, both of them cradling mugs of steaming black coffee in their hands, the sky had changed from midnight velvet to a brighter periwinkle, though the sun still hadn’t crested over the horizon. Thankfully, the snow had stopped at some point in the night, and though a lot had fallen, it wasn’t deep enough to prevent an early morning ride around the grounds.
Mena sipped her coffee and held the mug to her face, allowing the steam to warm her nose. She looked around the cavernous, state of the art barn his father had built after purchasing the place a few years before.
“This is nice.”
“Home away from home,” he laughed.
“Are all the horses yours?”
Tom shook his head. “Oh, goodness, no.” He waved his hands to the stalls lining the left side of the barn. “Those are all boarders. And then the first three on the right are boarders, too. The other five are ours. They run a riding school up here during the warmer months.”
Mena sipped her coffee. “Does your dad live up here all year round?”
“Since his retirement, yes,” Tom said. “Lillian is an estate agent and convinced him to buy with the intention of building a business into it. So they do the riding school, and weddings, and they let the rooms and cottages during the times the family isn’t using it. It’s really the only way to make owning a monstrosity like this worth it.”
“Seems like a headache,” she said and stepped over the black gelding that had stuck his head through the upper bars of his stall. She held her palm out flat so the horse could snuffle it. “I’m sorry I don’t have any oats.”
She was certainly confident enough around the beasts.
“That’s Midnight. He’s my horse.”
She giggled and stepped in closer to the animal after his acceptance of her, brushing her hand up the side of his face. “Nice to meet ya, Midnight.”
Midnight pushed his head further out and knocked Mena’s shoulder playfully. Tom smiled. “You seem to have made a friend.”
“I make them wherever I go,” she said. “Can I ride him? Or did you have someone else in mind for me?”
He shook his head. “No, Midnight is okay. He’s great in the snow if you’ve got a good seat.”
Mena stepped back from the horse and patted her ass. “I have the perfect seat, baby.”
He couldn’t verify the veracity of her statement because of the amount of clothing she wore, but he decided to take her word for it. If she was a truly a dancer, like she had said, then it had to be pretty amazing.
“You know what I mean,” he said.
“Of course I do,” Mena replied. “Where’s the tack?”
Tom quickly showed her to the tack room and they began the process of hauling bits of it out into the barn and dressing their horses. He wanted to watch Mena work with Midnight, but quickly found out that Brig, his father’s ten-year-old hunter, was not at all happy to be woken from one of his horsey naps so early in the morning. As such, he made it extremely difficult to saddle, which, Tom figured, shouldn’t have been a surprise. The horse was just as ornery as its owner.
When they finally led the horses out of the barn, the sun was a half up over the horizon, making the fresh snow sparkle like a carpet of diamonds for as far as the eye could see. There were more threatening clouds in the distance—the second wave of storms to last through Christmas Day, but Tom fully intended to enjoy the time out from under his father’s thumb without worrying about another storm.
“Do you want a helmet or anything?” he asked, glancing down at her boots. They weren’t proper riding attire, but they were close enough.
“And ruin my hair?” She patted down the heavy knit cap she was wearing. “No, the cap’s fine. Just no crazy jumping or anything that might make me fall off, okay? Like I said, it’s been a few years.”
“You did say,” he replied. “Did you really grow up on a ranch?”
Mena stuck her foot in the stirrup and hoisted herself over Midnight’s back before he even had a chance to offer his help. He was impressed. Even the experienced riders in his family needed a block.
“My family owns a cattle ranch in Montana,” she explained. “I was roping cattle by the time I was five.”
He nodded.
“There’s not much riding in Manhattan, though. Unless you steal a police horse.”
“So I take it that means you haven’t been back in awhile,” he said. “Back to Montana, that is?”
Mena shrugged. “Are we going to go or are you going to stand there asking me questions all morning?”
He frowned at the woman, trying not to read too much into the brush off or the slight terseness in her voice—something he’d not heard in the eighteen-odd hours he’d known her. Family was, apparently, a touchy subject.
He pulled himself over the horse and shifted around once in the saddle to find the perfect position. When he glanced back at her, her dark eyes were watching him intently. She coughed into a gloved hand and turned Midnight with a slight squeeze of her thighs and gentle tug on the reins in her hands.
They were off down a snowy path only distinguishable by the tops of wooden fence posts sticking up through thick white powder. Unsure of their footing, the horses slowly plodded along, lifting their legs high and sinking deep with each step, gaining more and more confidence that they would reach hard ground to support their weight.
Neither he nor his companion spoke until they rounded the fence line and started a trek across an open field. Finally, amid crunching snow under heavy hooves, Mena cleared her throat and sighed.
“I’m sorry about that—I just, I know you probably want to know more about me to know that I’m not some loony you picked up, but I’d like to leave my family out of it. They haven’t wanted me in their life for awhile and I don’t want to think about it. Christmas is hard enough as it is.”
“You are who you are because of your family. It limits a lot of topics I could potentially ask you about because it might go back to your family. Like how you got your name or something like that.”
Mena chuckled lightly and scratched her head through her knit cap. He wondered if her hair was long or short. It was black, he knew that, but he hadn’t seen her without the cap. She hadn’t even removed it at dinner—which was yet another thing that had annoyed his father.
“My grandfather named me, actually,” she answered him. “I miss him.”
“Did he really love Greek mythology or something?”
Mena shook her head. “No, Oscar Wilde.”
“I don’t know which is worse,” Tom said. “The fact that you could have been named after a Greek princess that was raped and maimed by her psychotic brother-in-law, or a nightingale that gave its own blood so a fickle, stupid kid could have a red rose in the winter.”
She burst into loud laughter, launching the roosting birds in the trees nearby into flight. “I prefer to look at it that the nightingale killed herself for the beauty of love, not because humans are fickle and don’t see the beauty in it.”
“Ah, so you’re a romantic like your grandfather,” he replied.
“Always a romantic,” she said, a wistful dreaminess overtaking her voice as she looked up at the bright sun. “Maybe that’s what my problem is, my head’s always in the clouds and everyone else’s feet are firmly planted on the ground.”
He urged his horse to the side so they were riding side-by-side, legs bumping slightly. When she glanced at him, he smiled. It struck him, then, for the first time, that she was quite beautiful. Plain, but beautiful, like a marble statue in a museum.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a romantic,” he finally said. “Said one romantic to another.”
She grinned and turned to focus on the winter wonderland ahead of them. They rode again in silence. He enjoyed the company probably more than he should have, feeling as though it were completely natural to go on a snow-covered horseback ride through the Scottish Highlands at Christmas with someone he just met. It wasn’t natural, of course, but it certainly felt like it. Something about her seemed familiar and welcoming—affable in the best way possible. Cozy in the way a good book, a single malt, and a warm fire made him feel on freezing nights.
It was only as he thought this that he began to understand that his interest in Mena—his need to know everything about her—had little to do with his father, or that she was a stranger he invited to his family home, or because he was lonely and didn’t want to deal with Olivia. His interest had everything to do with the fact that he found himself genuinely intrigued by her mystery, but at the same time felt like he’d known her for years. She was comfortable. He liked comfortable. He didn’t always have to be “on” to impress her.
“So, tonight,” she said, interrupting his thoughts, “You said it was a formal dinner?”
“Yes.” He shifted in his seat. “Dresses and smart suits, but not black tie or anything. Just refined. If you don’t have anything like that, though—”
Mena laughed. “I’ll be fine. Do you think I get up and sing at clubs in this getup?”
Tom shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe grunge chic is your thing. Maybe you’ve got a singer-songwriter type deal going for you.”
“I sing at jazz clubs and piano bars,” she replied. “And I’m not talented enough to write my own music.”
“Well, I guess that answers that, then.”
“What does?”
He waved to her body and the clothes she wore. “You don’t always dress like that. I was beginning to wonder...”
Mena rolled her eyes. “Do you like wearing your costumes around the house? I mean, I can’t image you wearing your horn helmet around the house.”
“No, I guess you’re right,” he said. “I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.”
“And just because I dress like this on the outside, doesn’t mean what’s underneath looks the same,” she explained. “You know, if you were wondering.”
He almost missed her cheeky grin, but laughed at her anyway. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”
“Aw,” she teased. “You’re blushing!”
“The wind is biting cold. That’s why my face is pink.”
If only she knew just how much she had intrigued him. What did she wear underneath it all? And would he like it?
“If you want to see, all you gotta do is ask to see it,” she said.
He pressed his lips shut to prevent inserting his foot further into his mouth. He refused to let his chin wag any more about the state of her dress or undress. Most of all, he didn’t need to started thinking about what she was wearing underneath her baggy clothing.
She leaned over until she was very close to him and whispered conspiratorially, “They’re a very light shade of blue, almost like your eyes. Lacy. The thong has cute little bows at the side. Very girly. Just so you know.”
An image instantly formed in his head that resulted in him having to shift uncomfortably in the saddle... and an even bigger blush to cross his face. What was he anyway? A prepubescent school boy embarrassed by ladies’ underthings? Or was he a cultured man of thirty-five who had seen more than his fair share of pretty underthings on and off women of all shapes and sizes, races and ethnicities? Yet he found himself suddenly uncomfortable thinking about her in a state of undress with cute little bows and icy blue lace.
Mena giggled. “And here I always thought your blushing in uncomfortable interviews was an act.”
He glanced at her, but then focused his attention ahead of them. “You watch my interviews?”
“They’re all over my social media,” she hedged. “I can’t help but run into them.”
“Uh-huh.” He squinted his eyes and pursed his lips as he looked her over again. “Now who’s blushing?”
“Certainly not me,” she replied.
Tom reached beside him and patted her thigh. The muscle beneath was remarkably firm. So she was a dancer. “It’s okay. You can admit that you’re a total fangirl and have a Tumblr side blog dedicated to my arse.”
She wagged a finger at him. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, mister. I thought you stayed away from Tumblr.”
“So you do have a blog dedicated to my arse?”
“No!”
“You do. Admit it!”
Mena grunted. “You wish I did, but I don’t. And you’re not answering my question.”
“My publicist keeps tabs on those things and reports back,” he said.
“Oh, come on,” she replied. “You can’t tell me you know what a side blog is without at least a little passing knowledge of how Tumblr works.”
Tom shook his head and kept his mouth shut. In one of his vainer moments, he had taken to the social media site to see what people were saying about him. He was curious, of course. But curiosity nearly killed the cat. Only nearly, though. After wading through a million posts about every muscle and appendage on his body, he promptly created his own blog and—along with the new recording equipment given to him while he was filming Hank—started making posts with voice readings. A little further tweaking of his voice in post and no one was the wiser.
But he wasn’t going to admit that to Mena. Especially if she wasn’t going to fess up to having her own blog.
Mena finally laughed again. “Oh, I’m so not going to let this drop. Maybe you won’t tell me right now, but with a few drinks in you—who knows.”
“I wish you luck, darling,” he said. “I’m a sphinx when I’m pissed.”
“I highly doubt it.”
Tom rolled his eyes and looked back toward the house. It was a small speck on the white hillside; he hadn’t realized they’d gone so far. He sighed. “We should probably head back. They’ll be wondering where we went and I’ve got some last minute Christmas wrapping to do.”
“I thought you would never say that,” she said. “I’m fucking frozen.”
“Why didn’t you say something? We could have gone back—”
She shrugged. “I didn’t want to interrupt our flow.”
“Yeah?” he asked, puffing up his chest. To be honest, he felt the same. It’d been a long time since he felt so happy to be up just before daybreak. “I’ve really enjoyed our morning.”
Mena nodded. “Me, too, Tom. Thank you for taking me out.”
“Anytime,” he said, signaling Brig to turn in the heavy snow.
Midnight followed the lead and soon they were moving back across the field with thoughts of warm fires and hot tea.