A long time. These days she was just too busy with work and taking care of Chloe to cultivate a relationship. Even the casual but with benefits kind, so sex just wasn’t readily accessible. But here was Ryan Taggert rising up out of the water like Poseidon. Okay, probably not Poseidon, but maybe rising up like a really good-looking man pretending to be Poseidon. He could totally pull that off. And speaking of pulling it off, he handed the reins to Emily and proceeded to pull off that wet shirt.
Emily heard a soft, faint little sound, like the coo of a baby dove, and realized in an instant that it had come from her own throat. She coughed and turned around to hand the reins to Chloe as Ryan twisted up his shirt to wring it out.
“Well, that was refreshing. That water is not warm,” he said, using the knotted shirt to try to wipe droplets of water from his skin. The air was balmy enough, but the breeze was strong, and Emily could see goose bumps cover his skin, and that gave her goose bumps of her own.
That damn horse had nearly rolled over his father, and then she’d nearly drowned him. Ryan did not like that horse. Now he was standing on the grass in wet clothes praying that the frigid water hadn’t reduced him to prepubescent sizing, because he couldn’t exactly pull at his jeans. He couldn’t take them off to wring them out. He just had to stand there, dripping, trying to pretend that he didn’t feel stupid for having slipped in that water. He hadn’t expected it to be so rocky, and his bare feet had given him zero traction.
“Thanks for getting her, Ryan. I could have done it, you know,” his dad said. “Do you want my dry shirt?”
Oh. Yeah. That wouldn’t make this worse, him taking the shirt off his father’s back. “No, I’m good. This will dry. Eventually.” He flapped the shirt in the wind a few times. “See, practically dry.” It wasn’t. Not even a little.
Periwinkle had the audacity then to bump her nose against his shoulder and offer up a friendly little nicker as if they were pals. Stupid horse. “You know,” Ryan said, “if she’d farted in that water, she could have jet-propelled us to shore in a heartbeat.” She bumped him again, and he waited for some laughter at his joke. It was sort of lame, sure, and maybe a little off-color, but he’d expected at least a bit of a chuckle. At least from Chloe. Didn’t all teenagers love fart jokes? But he looked over her way as Periwinkle’s nose bumped him even harder this time.
“Oh. My. Gosh.” Chloe’s big blue eyes went round, her voice squeaky as she looked past Ryan.
“Oh good Lord!” Emily exclaimed, looking in the same direction just as Lilly started shouting, “No! No! No!” and waving her arms. Periwinkle made another noise, this one not so much a friendly nicker as an insistent whinny, and Ryan turned around to see what everyone seemed to be staring at. And there they were, in all their horsey glory. Periwinkle, fresh from the lake, being thoroughly romanced by Duke. If Ryan had felt insufficient from the cold water, he felt doubly so after seeing what Duke had to offer, and Periwinkle seemed a pleased and willing participant.
“Holy shit,” he heard his father say, but Ryan couldn’t say anything at all. He just watched, fascinated and oddly intrigued. Was that weird? And gross? It seemed weird and gross, so he tucked those thoughts away and tried to adult for the moment. But nonetheless, it was pretty fascinating, and there was certainly no stopping it now. The whole thing only lasted for a few minutes anyway, and at least in that area Ryan felt superior. He had far more stamina than Duke did, and he left his partners with a little more to smile about. So . . . there was that.
Duke hopped off Periwinkle, his long, horsey face looking neither smug nor abashed. In fact, all the horses looked chill and relaxed. Nothing to see here. Just move along.
Not so much the humans. They were all standing there looking as if they were waiting for a bomb to be defused.
“What the hell do we do now?” Lilly finally said.
“Light them cigarettes?” Tag said.
Ryan chuckled, but the women didn’t.
“That was legit crazy. Did I just see what I think I just saw, Mom?” Chloe asked.
Emily’s voice was hesitant. “Um, what do you think you saw?”
“I think I just saw Duke hittin’ that with Periwinkle.”
Ryan chuckled again, but he probably wasn’t supposed to.
“Okay,” Emily said calmly. “Okay, well, then, yes. You did see what you thought you saw, and we are very much going to discuss all the aspects of that very soon, but now is not really the best time.”
Chloe nodded, still staring at the horses as if one of them might sprout wings. “I’m good with that.”
“I think maybe I should call Percy,” Emily said.
Chapter 17
“So, that was your big plan? To have my horse violate my dad’s horse?”
It was Saturday morning, and Emily and Ryan were back at Joe’s Cuppa Joe to debrief about yesterday’s horse-riding/orgy debacle. “No, of course that wasn’t the plan! Percy swears he didn’t know that mare was in season.”
“How could he not know?”
“I guess she didn’t tell him? I don’t know. Percy’s not that bright. Anyway, he said she was notorious for walking into the lake, but she hardly ever rolls anyone off, and he had no idea that Duke would . . . take advantage. Percy seemed genuinely surprised.”
“I think we were all genuinely surprised, including Periwinkle. Talk about associations. I’m not sure if that one was negative, positive, or just . . . educational.”
“It ended up being pretty educational for Chloe. We had quite the conversation last night when we got back to Gigi’s.”
Ryan chuckled. “I’ll bet. I think the thing that surprised me even more, though, was how good of a sport my dad was about the whole thing. Actually, what he said to me last night was, ‘Now that’s what I call horsing around.’ He seemed to think it was all pretty funny, so as far as negative associations go? Yeah, we failed.”
Emily sighed and moved her chair slightly so the sun wasn’t shining right in her face, and then she pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head. “Lilly didn’t seem that upset, either. She was annoyed with Percy, and I’m pretty sure she thinks I put him up to it, which, of course, I did, but she sure wasn’t angry. I think in spite of everything, Tag and Lilly still had a great day. So I agree with you. We failed at that whole negative association thing.”
Ryan shook his head sadly. “My brother says it’s the chemicals in their brains and they can’t help it.”
Speaking of brains, her own was turning to mush because Ryan had on a white golf shirt that made his tanned skin look downright sinful, and she now found herself staring at the fingers he had wrapped around his coffee cup. She’d hardly slept a wink last night because every time she closed her eyes, she could see him standing near the lake with rivulets of water trailing all over him. If men had wet T-shirt contests, Ryan Taggert would surely win.
“Chemicals in their brains,” she repeated back. “Is he a doctor?”
“No. But he watched a TED Talk once,” Ryan teased.