Page 10 of Stables Spurs Suits
“As long as for the rest of today—no, for the rest of your time here—you agree to remember just that.”
He scoffs.
“I’m serious,” I say, folding my arms over my chest.
He smirks, the corners of his hazel eyes crinkling.
“Okay, I’ll agree to remember that out here, you’re right.”
“It’s not exactly what I wanted, but I’ll take it. Come on, I’d like to have at least this side mapped out before lunch.”
I shove up the sleeves of my shirt and pull out the tablet from where I’d tucked it into the back of my jeans to bring up the map. Matthew moves to stand beside me, looking over my shoulder as I zoom in and mark the starting place and the ten feet we’ve moved through so far.
“Okay, let’s go deeper. The trees seem to grow a bit further apart up this way. We could probably have the ground cover cleared out in no time through here,” I say, as I wander up between two larger Eastern White Pine trees that have to be older than I am. It would be a shame to cut any of them down, but with how thick the trees get through the next section, we won’t really have a choice.
“I can mark this part in the map if you like,” Matthew says, and I turn to pass him the tablet. He reaches out for it, his gaze lingering on the scars that peek out from the bunched-up sleeves of my shirt. Is he going to ask what happened, or does he already know that too, like he seems to know so much about everyone else here? The company he works for, the Richmont Group, the one Connor now owns and operates, used to be run by Connor’s grandfather, and while Connor thought he had kept his identity hidden from the world, they always knew where he was and who he was working for.
“So, we’ll have to take out maybe that tree there, and the one beside it, do you think?” Matthew asks, drawing his attention from my scars and turning it to the map on the tablet.
“Yeah, I don’t think we can avoid it, really.”
“Maybe we can plant new trees in other areas of the ranch to make up for the ones we have to cut down,” he suggests, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of that first.
“Yeah, that’s a great idea,” I reply, and his smile spreads wide, a warm flush to his lightly freckled cheeks. The scattered beams of the sun through the canopy illuminate them like a fine glitter. Shit, am I staring?
Chapter six
MATTHEW
READY OR NOT, WE WORK
Atlas walks ahead of me, his hands out a little at his sides, fingers brushing against the soft tips of the long grass. The hint of what I’m sure are scars peek out from under his pushed-up sleeves, but I don’t ask him about them even though that was my first thought. I don’t know all that much about Atlas. I do know he likes to spend his alone time totally naked, though—a sight I now have embedded in my mind after I came to ask him about the stables we were having installed. I don’t remember seeing the scars then, though my gaze was sort of distracted at the time. Maybe they don’t run that far up his arm. It could be from anything, really. He could have fallen off a horse, been in a car wreck, been in a fight, anything.
“Are you getting this all down?” Atlas calls back.
“Sure am,” I lie and scramble to mark the last few sections we travelled through the thick brush.
He continues to lead the way and I follow close behind, dotting the path on the digital map, marking where there are trees we’ll need to remove with a little x. The ground is pretty uneven, and I make a mental note to ask Dean what kind of gravel they used for the walking paths through the property. It’d be nice to carry the same along the horse trail.
We’re out there for over an hour, when he decides we need to go back to the start and retrace our steps to make sure we’re not missing a better way. I don’t argue that with how slow we’ve been moving, if there were a better path, we’d have chosen it. I just continue along behind him back to the road.
“I’ll be right back,” he says, jogging toward the house.
“I’ll just wait here,” I say, as I lean against the railing of the horse paddocks and start scouting ahead on the map. There was a creek I saw on the maps I checked out back at my place that I think could be nice to take the trail across.
Something nudges my back, and I jolt, almost dropping the tablet.
“Holy shit, Loki, you scared me,” I gasp, and he shakes his head like he’s laughing at me. “Was that your plan, boy? Were you sneaking up on me the way people like to sneak up on you?”
I shove the tablet in the back of my jeans the way Atlas had it and run my hands up the sides of Loki’s long face. He lifts his head a little in approval.
“When we have this new trail ready, I’ll be sure we take you through it first. Would you like that?” I ask, and I hear a chuckle behind me and turn to find Atlas’s bright blue eyes on me. He’s holding two old scythes. Rust covers both the blades from years of probably sitting in some forgotten corner of a tool shed, but something tells me they’re still pretty fucking sharp.
“Are you ready to work?” he asks, holding one out.
“You want us to start clearing the grass already?”
“You got a better way to keep on top of where we’ve plotted out?”
