Alaina’s head whipped around, and her horse followed, the paint broadside on the trail now, stopping Elsie’s mare in her tracks. “He what?”
The jealousy apparent on her friend’s face shocked her. Elsie had never done anything that could possibly make someone jealous in her whole life. And seeing Alaina all het up over her and Hunter was just... It was weird.
Her stomach felt tight.
“Oh, don’t be like that. It’s Hunter. He said that I looked like I was going off in an obvious sulk, and he thought that if I really wanted to attract Travis I should stick around.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” she said, a little bit defiant. “That’s what he said.”
Alaina’s dander started to lower. “That’s probably advice I should take.”
Elsie didn’t want to say anything, but Alaina didn’t have a chance with Hunter. With or without the advice.
Not because her friend wasn’t beautiful, she was.
With her tangle of wild red hair and sea green eyes, she was stunningly beautiful. She was rambunctious, and precocious, but in spite of all that, she’d always seemed heaps more feminine than Elsie.
The essential problem for Alaina was just that there was a dearth of new men around these parts. Men who hadn’t known them all their lives. Men who didn’t see them as kids. But that was starting to change. They were getting older, and more and more of the single ranch hands that came for a summer were age appropriate for them.
But somebody like Hunter was not going to look at her and see anything other than a child. The King boys were even older. Gus McCloud was older than Hunter, Lachlan and Brody barely younger, but not enough to make them not older. It was just...not a thing.
But she wasn’t going to say that. Because what was the harm in a little fantasy, after all?
It was just that it wasn’t the same as her thing for Travis. First of all, she wasn’t in love with Travis. She was just starting to think that she wanted to try to date somebody. It was time. The upbringing on Four Corners was unconventional. And it made traditional dating difficult. The way that they were all thrown together from the time they were kids made them more like family than anything else. The town of Pyrite Falls beyond Four Corners wasn’t much bigger, and sure some of the kids there got bused into other schools, so they were a little more mysterious, but at the end of the day, most of the young people moved away. They didn’t stay unless they had a family ranch.
It was just difficult. And unless Elsie wanted to leave, and she didn’t, she was going to have to start picking up experiences somewhere. It was why she didn’t really mind Travis going off with someone else. It bothered her, but it didn’t devastate her.
She wasn’t in love with him. She just thought he was hot.
“Anything else?” Alaina asked.
Yes. There had been a bit else. But Elsie wasn’t sure that she wanted to share it. It was weird, the hesitation to share. But it was just that Alaina wouldn’t understand. Hunter offering to teach her to flirt would sound... It would just sound kind of weird. Elsie knew that it wasn’t. Because Hunter was Sawyer and Wolf’s best friend. And she had known him all of her life. Like family. She had grown up much closer to her than he had Alaina. He wasn’t just like a cousin or something. He was like another brother.
It was why they sniped at each other all the time. But at the same time, he wasn’t her brother, so he was distant enough to... Well, she didn’t really know why he had taken up her cause. But he had, and it was probably the least jackass thing that Hunter had ever done. So she was just going to keep it between the two of them. And keep it to herself. Even if it felt strange when she usually shared everything with Alaina.
“I’m just excited about the new horse program that Gus wants to get going. The therapy thing?” Elsie said, trying to get on a new subject.
“Right. That’s what you’ve been working on,” Alaina said.
“You know, we could probably use your help.”
“I appreciate that,” Alaina said. “Especially because I just think you’re trying to help me get in proximity to Hunter. But my sister is going hard on the garden this year, and we have to get the farm stand running. We want to get a place set up so that we don’t have to take everything down to the store. I mean, we still will, because if we take it off John’s store he’s going to get mad. But it’d be nice to be able to sell honey and nuts and all the fruit and veggies straight from somewhere on the property.”
“But is that what you want?” Elsie asked.
She knew Alaina felt like she owed it to her sisters to work with them, to go along with what Fia wanted, but Elsie didn’t like to see it. Wolf and Sawyer were fine with her working with the McClouds because the work suited her better. She thought Alaina should push to be where she wanted, not just try to make her sisters happy. They loved her. They would be happy with what made Alaina happy, Elsie was sure of that.
“I just have to be around to help with all that,” Alaina said, stubborn and insistent as ever. “We have to see just how much increased production we can get. You know it’s hard for us. We piece together our income leasing out our land and doing the gardens, and selling baked goods. We don’t have men to help out. And we’re strong women, Els, as you know, but have to work smarter or we’ll just end up working harder for our reward.”
“I get that.” She did, but it didn’t make her feel less sorry for Alaina. “But if you ever want to come and lend your horse expertise at McCloud’s Landing, you know there’s a place for you.”
“And that is why you’re my best friend,” Alaina said.
Elsie smiled and tilted her face up toward the sun.
Last night in the dark bar, things had felt a little bit grim. But now it all felt fine. Just fine. She sometimes questioned the logistics of staying here. There was a limit to what she could do here, who she could be. Or at least, it had felt that way before Hunter had asked her to work on the equine therapy at McCloud’s Landing.
The program Gus was working on was the kind of thing she would want to do anywhere. Horses had long been her greatest love. It was one of the things that bonded Alaina and her. And she had to think that in truth, she had been giving herself equine therapy from the time she could walk.
She had been an extremely lonely kid sometimes. With no mother that she could even remember. But now she had her best friend living right on the property with her. Her brothers. Her niece, and a nephew on the way. And there was even a real live actual guy in proximity that she was interested in...dating. Hooking up with. Whatever. Things felt like they were coming together. And that was a pretty damned good feeling.
* * *