“That's nothing.” Booker pointed his glass of beer at me. “Ask Ty how many miles are on that old Chevy he drove us here in.”
Isaiah did as he was told.
I glanced up. “Two-fifty.”
He almost dropped his beer on the table. “Two hundred fifty thousand? That can’t be right.”
Any other time, I might have been up for a lengthy discussion on my vehicle maintenance routine, or how Shaun shouldn’t be surprised his truck needed an overhaul when he cared more about how it looked than anything under the hood, but tonight was not that night. I took another long pull from my glass, calculating how early I could leave a party when I was technically the host.
“Oh, it’s right.” Travis slipped his phone into his back pocket. He’d been fielding texts from his girlfriend all night. “It’s because he’s running an engine that isn’t dependent on computers.”
Shaun groaned. “Can we not start that?”
“I’m just saying, all I do is repair machinery whose tiny little computers are on the fritz, while thirty-year-old tractors and harvesters without all that run just fine.”
A heavy equipment technician with a grudge against computer chips, Travis never passed up an opportunity to get a dig in against them with tech guru Shaun.
“Call the help line next time you’re stumped,” Shaun said with a grin. “My rate is fifty dollars an hour.”
Travis shook his head. “What a racket.”
Isaiah looked between the two of them. “Is that good money around here?”
Travis cut a glance to me. A big shot out in San Antonio, Booker’s old college buddy Isaiah had looked down his nose at Magnolia Ridge all night. Guys like Travis and me, who worked with tractors and horses, didn’t seem to rate with him.
Travis leaned an elbow on the table, ignoring Isaiah’s question. “I want to know how the Unbreakable Ty Hardy finally got kicked. There has to be more to that story than you said.”
I’d given them the bare-bones, three-point story at the restaurant: Kick, pain, hospital. They’d laughed a little, commiserated a little more, and then the whole subject had been dropped, for good, I’d hoped. Unfortunately, the more they drank, the more interesting my injury became.
“I got distracted. Bullet spun away and kicked out before I could do a thing. It happened so fast, I’m not sure I could say exactly what happened.”
Just a blur in my memory, like an old videotape paused mid-action. The only thing I remembered with any clarity about the kick was the sound of my bones cracking. Well, that and the pain. Couldn’t forget that, since it still rattled around inside me.
“You got distracted?” Travis said. “I didn’t think you ever got distracted.”
I didn’t. Part of the reason I’d always done so well working with horses was that I let them know I was in charge, but I never forgot they were still powerful beasts with minds of their own. Aside from a few wild ones I had to reform, horses weren’t naturally aggressive, but they sure as hell could get violent in a blink. I always kept my eyes on the animals, watching their responses so I could adjust my methods, making sure the both of us were safe at all times.
Except when a beautiful woman turned up out of the blue and made me forget every last thought in my head.
“It happens.” I glanced at Booker. He had his eyes turned up to the ceiling, a little too intent on counting the rafters to look entirely natural, proving he had his suspicions about June. Just what did Booker suspect, and how long had he suspected it? Was I that damn obvious?
“How long are you going to be laid up?” Shaun asked.
“A month or more.”
“Must be nice to have that kind of time off work.”
Sitting around with my chest on fire, the idleness driving me crazy, didn’t count as a vacation. The only bright spot were the visits from June, even though I’d told myself from the beginning I should put her out of my mind entirely. I hadn’t been able to so far, but I hadn’t exactly been trying.
“So what happens with your business?” Isaiah asked. “Do the horses just twiddle their thumbs while they wait for your bones to heal up?”
“Pretty much.” I wasn’t about to tell them how Seth Jenkins had jumped ship at the first opportunity, or how every time my cell rang, dread coiled through me at the thought it might be another client ready to do the same. Nobody wanted to hear that, and I sure didn’t want to share it in the middle of a party.
“Did you find some high school club to come out and take care of the daily chores like you said you were going to?” Booker asked.
I took a long drink from my beer. “Something like that.”
I didn’t want to mention anything about June to this table of guys. She was green as all get out, but she worked harder than I’d expected her to. I thought she would quit in the first two days sure as anything, but she hadn’t. I’d been waiting for her to complain about the work, grouse just a little, but she hadn’t done that, either. She tackled every chore I threw at her, no matter how much it hurt or stank. The woman knew how to push all my buttons, but I couldn’t fault her determination.
