Page 24 of Wild Highway (Runaway 2)

Maybe if I pissed her off enough, she’d quit. Then I could tell Kat I’d held up my end of the bargain.

I turned and walked back inside, heading straight for Jigsaw’s stall. I’d saddled him when Katherine had texted me about this last-minute lesson. She hadn’t bothered to give me the client’s name. Another mistake. If I couldn’t avoid the schedule, I’d ask for specifics from now on.

“Come on, boy.” I hadn’t bridled him yet, so I took his halter and led him into the arena beside the stables. When I went back to get Gemma’s horse ready, I’d hoped she might have changed her mind.

But no. She was standing beside Sprite’s stall, stroking the mare’s cheek. I’d planned on taking Pepsi, one of our other mares and Sprite’s sister, but when a rider took a shine to a horse and that affection seemed to go both ways, sometimes it was best to go with it.

“That’s Sprite.”

“Hi, Sprite.” She smiled at the horse’s gray-speckled nose, her voice dropping to a sweet caress.

There’d been a time once when she’d given me that smile and talked to me with that same voice. The combination was a gut-puncher. But I refused to be jealous of a horse.

I yanked a currycomb off a peg beside the stall and nudged Gemma out of the way with my shoulder. The right thing to do would be to make her saddle Sprite, but that would involve a lot of close contact.

One of the other instructors could teach the woman how to strap on a saddle.

Not that I expected her to be here much longer anyway.

“When are you leaving?” I asked, sliding into the stall.

“Please tell me you’re nicer to other guests.”

I grunted and ran the comb over Sprite’s back as she hovered by the horse’s nose.

Actually, I was great with guests, not that I owed her an explanation. I wasn’t charming like Katherine or charismatic like Cash, but I had my own appeal. Guests loved that I was authentic. I was a Montana rancher who loved the land, my family and a marbled, medium-rare steak.

They liked me because I loved my roots. Something Gemma wouldn’t understand.

Gemma Lane was too wild for roots.

She’d run from here sooner than later, and this time, I wouldn’t let it wreck me.

I wasn’t sure where she’d been these past eleven years and I wasn’t asking. Clearly, she’d run into some money. One look at her clothes and that Cadillac and you knew she had cash. If she was a paying guest, she’d come here to spend it.

“I don’t know when I’m leaving,” she said. “I don’t really have a schedule.”

“What about your job? Don’t you need to get back to it?”

“I’m unemployed at the moment.”

“I thought you left here to be some hotshot real estate agent.”

“I was in real estate for a while. Then I invested in some other companies around Boston. Eventually I started a cosmetics company. I sold it three weeks ago so . . . unemployed.”

“You made a couple bucks and decided to quit on payday.” I scoffed. “Typical.”

That was exactly what she’d done here. Gemma had earned a good wage, but when the promise of something more came along, she’d bailed, leaving her best friend behind in tears. And showing me exactly what she’d wanted from me—a roll between the sheets and a couple orgasms—nothing more.

Gemma’s glare was waiting when I came out of the stall. “If you call twelve million dollars a couple of bucks, then yes. I quit on payday.”

My feet faltered a step at the number.

She saw it. The corner of her mouth turned up as I marched past her to put the comb away and grab a saddle blanket.

Twelve million dollars was quite an accomplishment for a kid who’d lived in a junkyard, not that I’d give her anything resembling a compliment.

Katherine had told us about her homelife as a kid. How she’d run away from home, scared and hopeless, until some other kids had pulled her into their fold—Gemma being one of them.