“How do you know that?” I snap back at him, raking my fingers through my rose-gold hair. It’s a bit longer now, and it’s starting to curl like Windsor’s does, right on the top.
“Because he loves you. Pity does nothing for the one being pitied. It’s an empathetic agony to the one doing the pitying. Now, come and see what I’ve got for you.” Wind turns around as my cheeks flush, and I exhale, following after him and finding a beautiful … rose-gold horse in the barn.
“Is this a horse to match the Maserati, Windsor? Because if it is, then I’m declining.”
He laughs at me, and strokes the nose of the beautiful animal as it lifts its head over the edge of the stall door to look at us with big, trusting brown eyes.
“No, I’m afraid it’s not. This is my mother’s mare. Her coloring is called amber champagne, but I thought you might like her.” He pats the horse, and then leads her out of the stall and outside where his own shiny black horse from yesterday is waiting.
There’s a set of steps for me to use to get on the horse’s back, the smell of the leather saddle in the hot sun reminding me of Windsor’s own leather polish and daffodil scent. He walks me around the paddock for a while and we start our lessons. Once I’ve figured out how to actually ride the damn thing without falling off, we go for a short trot around the property, sun streaming across our backs.
We get back to the house in time for lunch, and I find that my thighs are unbelievably sore.
“Happens to all first-time riders,” Wind tells me cheerily (and maybe with a touch of perv, too), letting my dad win at checkers. I take notice of that because I know for a fact that he hates to lose. Despises it. It brings out that awful darkness inside of him.
“Thanks for telling me that now,” I grumble, but it’s hard to stay mad when I’ve got an entire winery to myself, including a pool and hot tub in the back. It’s a ‘natural’ pool meaning there’s foliage around the edges, rock formations, and even waterfalls. It almost looks like part of the landscape.
Dad, Wind, and I spend most of the afternoon in the water and then use up the rest of the evening watching movies in the garden house.
It’s not until the next morning that everyone else shows up.
Zack is the first to get there, parking his orange sportscar in the small dirt courtyard between the two houses and lifting his shades up to examine the guesthouse.
“You led me to believe this was a shack,” he says when Windsor pauses next to the car and folds his arms over his chest. Zack gets a frisking like everybody else from one of the security guards before his car is valeted away to a spot up the hill, out of sight and out of mind.
“Isn’t that the damnedest thing?” Windsor asks, shrugging his shoulders. He pauses at the sound of Alexandra’s voice and then sighs. “Excuse me a moment.” As he passes me by, Wind teases his fingers along my bare arm, and I shiver.
Zack notices, his dark eyes taking me in appreciatively. I’ve got on a short yellow sundress with a sweetheart neckline. It’s made of a soft jersey fabric, and it’s beyond comfy. My only issue with it is that it’s a bit short when the wind blows.
“Hey,” he says, and the rough grumble of his voice makes it seem ten degrees hotter out than it is. “I missed you.”
“Did you?” I quip, and his full, lush mouth curves into a smile. I’ve forgiven him for the Jalen incident. We all make mistakes, surely. But … I can’t stop thinking about what he said, about his father and grandfather. They want him with someone who has better breeding, more money. Surely I’m none of those things. And Zack and I, we have a tumultuous history. Yet when I look up at him and into his brown eyes, I feel like a woman who’s wrangled herself a bear. He has teeth, but they’re not for biting me.
“I told you, Marnye, I love you.” He says it so plainly that I can’t help but blush. It’s just sitting there between us, this big statement of emotion. He’s the only one that’s said it to me outright like that. The only one. Zayd came close, but then he followed it up with yeah, pretty much and sort of blew the moment.
We don’t get a chance to carry the conversation any further because another car is on its way up the driveway, a blue Jaguar convertible with the top rolled down and Zayd’s tattooed arm waving at us from inside. He parks, and gets what I’d really consider a triple frisking before security is satisfied.
