Until the Tequila (The Killers #3.5)(12)

“Nice try. I’m on to you.” I glance over at her before I turn and pull up to the gate, rolling down my window. “I memorized your schedule. You don’t go in ‘til tomorrow afternoon.”

She shakes her head. “I have another headache.”

I can’t help but smile. She’s ridiculous. “How about I promise to make you ache in other places?”

Her gaze jerks to me, her vibrant long hair flips across the back of her seat as she widens her eyes. I don’t know whether to laugh or kiss her.

“Where are we?” she asks.

I key in the code and wait for the gates to part. “My parents’ house.”

“Evan, please. I don’t want to be here.”

I pull through the heavily-secured entrance onto the property. “We’re not going to their house. I’m taking you to the barns. I still don’t know everything about your dad, but if it’s as bad as you make it out to be, he won’t find you here, not that he could step foot on this land, it’s so secure.”

She doesn’t say a word but sits beside me looking so worried, you’d think I was driving her to the guillotine.

“Relax, Mary. My parents aren’t home, not that we’d see them if you didn’t want to.” What I don’t tell her is they’re in the South of France for the next month. I park and move to get out. “I promise there won’t be any other humans in sight.”

When I go around to open her door, she’s sitting there with her arms crossed and her leg bouncing with nervous energy. She’s biting her lip in a way that makes me jealous. I hold my hand out. “Come. It’ll be just you and me. I want to show you something.”

She closes her eyes and sighs. “Okay, but you have to take me home tonight.”

I don’t agree to that, shut her door, and take a second to enjoy the view as she walks ahead of me toward one of the barns. She’s downright tiny and her hair is so long, it swishes as she walks even pulled back. Her fine ass, that I’m now well acquainted with, fits in my hands like it was made for me, and makes me hungrier for her now more than ever.

I grab her hand. “Had you not turned instantly wet for me yesterday, I might think you don’t like me.”

“Can we not talk about that?” She doesn’t try to pull her hand from mine and a blush creeps up her fair skin. “Wow. I had no idea barns could be so fancy.”

This farm has been in my family for three generations. Hargrove Farms is one of the largest thoroughbred breeders on the east coast. I lived here my whole life until I moved out for college, so I rarely think about the opulence I grew up around. Sliding the door open, I lead her through the bay with stalls on either side. “All barns probably smell the same, so I apologize for that.”

We walk through the long aisle to my target. I let go of her long enough to slide open the door to the stall and we hear him before we see him—our newest foal born just last month.

I go to his mom first and look back to Mary. “Come meet Narnia. She’s mine and so gentle, she was made to be a mom. She comes from impeccable blood lines. This is her ninth foal.”

Mary approaches slowly. Since I doubt she’s been around horses before, I take her hand and lift it to Narnia’s forehead.

“See?” I move behind Mary and wrap my arm around her. “Let her smell you and then she’ll trust you around her baby.”

Mary strokes Narnia and, despite her actions earlier, leans into me and sighs. “I knew you came from a lot, but not all this.”

I put my lips to her ear. “We’re not that different, you know.”

Mary huffs and shakes her head. “Said the guy who grew up on an estate and is the son of a horse breeder.”

The colt appears, dipping his head under his mother’s neck and nudges at us with his nose, giving us a nicker. Mary laughs for the first time since she was drunk and loose the other night. “He’s so cute. What’s his name?”

“He’ll be given a formal name for the jockey club when he turns one. I’m sure he’ll earn a nickname as his personality develops.”

The foal crowds Mary, nuzzling her, and I step back to watch. Standing there in her flip-flops and cut-off jean shorts, topped with a vintage Nirvana T-shirt, she might seem out of place. After last night, I know for a fact she’s worried about our worlds colliding. But I’ve never seen anyone I want more.

I lean against the stall and stuff my hands in my pockets. “When I was five, my mom OD’ed on painkillers.”

She turns her head, giving me her big blue eyes. “What?”

I shrug. “I was the one who found her. She was lying naked on her bathroom floor. Luckily, the maid was there. I guess she’d been strung out for years but I was too young to know the difference. I figured everyone’s mom slept their days away. She spent years in and out of rehab. I got old enough to realize that wasn’t normal.”

Mary’s face softens. “I’m so sorry.” She turns back to the foal who’s demanding her attention. “Why did you tell me that?”

“You think we’re different. You think we don’t belong together. And, by the way, in your drunken state, you told me I wasn’t weird enough for you.”

The foal grows bored, moves away, and Mary turns to face me. “Well, that wasn’t a lie. You’re like,” she throws her hand out to me, “barely weird at all. Whereas my weirdness is off the charts.”