“Have to give you a massage later,” Walsh said as she drew up alongside them, and she blushed.
“Did you just get back?” she asked, her eyes speaking to larger worries. She knew he’d been on a club errand, and that it was worrying him, even if she didn’t know the particulars.
She also knew they couldn’t discuss it in front of Becca.
“Yeah,” he said. “Everything okay here?”
“Yeah.”
Becca seemed to catch the vibe. “I better get back to stalls.”
“Thanks,” Emmie told her, expression tense as she watched her student walk back toward the barn. When the girl was out of earshot, she slid down off the horse and pulled his reins over his head. “I need to walk him out,” she said, and Walsh hopped the fence so he could walk alongside her.
They fell into step beside one another, ears filled with the sounds of Tally’s heavy breathing and the sand shifting under their feet.
“You’ve been worried,” Emmie observed, “but I’m guessing this is one of those things you can’t tell me about.”
A sideways glance from under the brim of her helmet, wry and questioning.
He grinned back, echoing her expression. “You’re sharp, you know that?”
“Hmm. And you’re easier to read lately than the horses. What’s going on with you?”
He exhaled deeply. What was wrong? He wasn’t entirely sure, but he thought it had something to do with one morning a week ago. The night before at dinner, Bea had been harassing them good-naturedly about giving her grandchildren. He hadn’t put much stock in it until the next morning, just before the alarm sounded at six, when Emmie rolled toward him through the sheets, voice heavy with sleep in the darkness.“Do you want to?”she’d asked.“Have kids? I…I want to, King.”
She was feeling safe now, secure in the knowledge that she could take a little maternity leave and not lose her job. Delighted by the prospect of loving and being loved and making children together.
But she couldn’t conceive of the burden already placed upon him. He had her now, and his new employees, his mother, his half-brother, who he’d thankfully placed in a job at the Dartmoor auto shop working on cars with Michael. Marriage had given Emmie wings. Walsh didn’t regret it for a second, but with the dead dealers, with the threat of Ellison – he was stressed, and that was putting it mildly.
He took another deep breath and let it out. “I said I’d tell you all I was able to, didn’t I?”
He sensed a sudden tension in her. “You did.”
Here went nothing… “The man who had you kidnapped,” he said, and watched her eyes go round, “he’s still in town, and he’s still trying to get to the club.”
She reached out and braced a hand on Tally’s steaming shoulder.
“It was never personal about you, love, I don’t want you to worry about that part of it. He was trying to force the club’s hand – and I think he’s going to keep trying, only I don’t know how, and I don’t know which direction he’s going to come from.”
She swallowed, slender throat working, and glanced ahead of them, across the blinding white sand. The breeze played with the trailing end of her ponytail and lifted the scent of sweaty horse to his nostrils. “Okay.” She was making a supreme effort to keep calm, for his sake and Tally’s, and he loved her all the more for it. “Well, what does this guy want? Is it revenge?”
“Maybe at this point, after…but no, not really. He’s just ambitious, and he wants our territory. Powerful people don’t like for other powerful people to stay in business.”
“Guess sometimes it sucks to be the big dog in town, huh?” She snorted. “No pun intended.”
“Yeah.”
“So. What do you need me to do?”
He glanced over at her with surprise, and she stared levelly back at him.
“I know I can’t ride around on a bike, doling out ass-whoopings. I’ll leave that to you.” Quick grin. “But I’m serious. What do you need from my end? What can I do to help?”
She had floored him, completely, and he suddenly didn’t have the businesslike grace to express that properly. He put an arm around her waist – her clothes clung to damp skin; she smelled faintly of clean perspiration and horse hair – and drew her in close as they walked. “Just have my back, yeah?”
“Always.”
He kissed the shiny plastic side of her helmet and hoped she understood the love behind the gesture.
