And he could only hope that he wasn’t going to be complicit in spoiling her in some way. But the thing was, Elsie was going to do what she was going to do. And her brothers weren’t going to help with this. No one would. The last thing he wanted was for her to get hurt. And, anyway, he didn’t have time for her to mope around. He had a program to get up off the ground.
Rather than worrying too much about it—because it wasn’t his way—he took her hand and shook it.
“All right, Elsie Garrett. You’ve got yourself a deal.”
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU SHOULD HAVE stayed last night,” Elsie said, maneuvering her horse up behind Alaina’s.
“Why exactly?” Alaina asked without looking back at Elsie, her eyes firmly fixed on the trail ahead.
“I ended up talking to Hunter.”
Scenes of the night played through her mind. Dancing with him till she was hot. Drinking a Sprite he’d bought for her.
The way he’d touched her chin.
And it was strange, but she had trouble getting a clear picture of her interactions with Travis.
“That’s not weird,” Alaina said. “You always talk to Hunter.”
“At the bar. That means that you could have talked to him.”
“I thought you were leaving,” Alaina said, dodging a tree branch that was sticking out into the trail. They were each taking the afternoon off and enjoying the nice weather.
“I was going to. But Hunter said... Well, horrifically, he was aware that I was pouting because Travis was flirting with that other girl.”
Alaina’s shoulders shot up to her ears, her recoil visible from behind. “Well, that’s terrible.”
“I know.”
She wasn’t sure if she was ever going to be able to recover from that particular humiliation. She had been pretty certain that she wasn’t all that obvious. But apparently her emotions were a whole lot easier to read than she thought. Not very fair considering she wasn’t sure she had the best read on her emotions on a good day.
But Hunter seemed to know. And even though Hunter drove her nuts, the thing about Hunter was...he’d always told her the truth.
Sawyer and Wolf wanted to protect her. They’d been her real guardians most of her life and they’d done their best with her, but they wanted to shield her.
When she’d asked all the time as a little girl if her mom would come back, they’d dodged her questions. Hunter had sat down with her one day and said: Hey, Sawyer’s mom hasn’t come back, has she?
No.
Wolf’s?
No.
Mine?
No.
They don’t come back, Els.
It had hurt bitterly. And she’d hated him for it for a few days. But then at some point she’d realized the hopeful ache in her heart was gone. She missed it for a while. But then in its place came closure. A sense of finality and peace.
He didn’t spare her feelings.
And he hadn’t here either. Maybe that was why she wanted him to be the one to teach her to flirt. She knew he’d teach her right and true, and he wouldn’t let her embarrass herself.
He wasn’t blunt for the sake of it. He spoke plan, and then he offered solutions. Maybe she wasn’t as nice to him as she could be.
But on a daily basis he got under her skin.
For big things, though, he was pretty good to have around.
“Did he leave with that girl?” Alaina asked.
Elsie shook her head. “No. Oh wait, do you mean Travis or Hunter?”
“Hunter,” Alaina said. “Sorry. It does matter if Travis left with that other girl, I’m being... I’m being selfish.”
“Hunter didn’t. Travis did. But you know, it doesn’t matter. You know how they are.” It didn’t matter for them. That was the thing. The men seemed to trade partners around like it was nothing.
“Cowboys,” Alaina agreed.
“It’s not fair,” Elsie said. “If I acted the way that Sawyer and Wolf did before they got married they would have put a leash on me.”
“I don’t have brothers,” Alaina said. “I’m free of that kind of nonsense.”
“Sure,” Elsie said.
She wasn’t going to argue with her friend, but the real truth was that any guy from the other three families would happily play the part of overprotective older brother for Alaina if the moment presented itself.
The Sullivans were all girls. The McClouds were all boys. The Garretts and the Kings were mixed. But there was definitely a level of protectiveness that all the men put on the Sullivans.
Gus McCloud was acting patriarch of the McCloud clan, and it seemed to her that he had always been around to bail the Sullivans out when there was drama. In fact, she could recall him plucking Alaina out of the pond when she was five years old, like an angry kitten.
Elsie had also been five, and terrified that they were going to get in trouble for playing around the pond.
So, she had hid while Gus rescued Alaina.
One of her poorer showings as a friend, but Alaina hadn’t been in danger, she’d just been soggy.
“And you don’t think your sisters would have a thing or two to say?” Elsie asked.
“No,” Alaina said. “I don’t. Because we respect each other as women. Hotheaded women who are to be respected and feared.”
That made Elsie laugh because that was definitely true. You didn’t mess with a Sullivan unless you wanted to get it in the neck.
She and Alaina had been best friends their whole lives. And she had always been grateful for the Sullivan family, without which she would have had spare little exposure to femininity. Not that it had taken. But Elsie’s mother had run off when Elsie was just a baby. And her dad had been...well, no good, really. There was a reason he had run off three baby mamas. There wasn’t a full sibling to be had among the Garretts.
She’d had her grandmother up until she was six. The most steady, stable influence in her life. But then she’d died, and with it, she’d taken Elsie’s deepest concept of affection and love.
And it had taught her that everything was fragile, so you couldn’t afford to be.
She’d learned to shore herself up. To be strong.
And to hold on to the people she had.
“So, did he just make fun of you?” Alaina asked, shifting the conversation back to Hunter.
“No,” Elsie said, frowning. “He didn’t. He made me stay. He...he made me stay and danced with me.”