Toby
“What’s the new bloke like?”
I glanced up from trimming Mani’s hoof under Joe’s suffocating supervision. Mani was his oldest horse, and he was only letting me touch him because I needed the practice and Mani was the most chill horse ever. “Dunno. He doesn’t speak.”
“Sounds like my kind of person.”
“Liar.”
Joe grunted and I took it as a victory, but I wasn’t joking about Cole. The thought of him and Joe locked in a room together when they were both in a bad mood was kind of terrifying.
Not that I knew Cole well enough to know if his habitual silence was a sign of a bad mood. Perhaps he was just already sick of my company. I’d been holed up in his house all week long, and since the first day when he’d seemed to be someone else entirely, we’d exchanged approximately three words. In fact, that was a high estimate, as he left every room I entered. I was trying not to take it personally, but given that he was more drop-dead gorgeous each time I saw him, it was hard.
I pushed him from my mind and concentrated on trimming Mani’s hoof. I possessed the kind of brain that could only truly focus on one thing at a time, so for a while, blocking Cole out was easy, but when I was done, the skin at the nape of my neck tingled, like it had done all week every moment he was close by. I’d yet to figure out what was up with that shit. I was pretty well-versed in losing my composure in the presence of hot dudes, but this was off the scale.
Joe took Mani back to his stall. I made a meal out of gathering the tools and returning them to the tack shed and fetching Mani fresh water, all the while not glancing up, but the tingling remained. Of course it did. Joe called my name. I followed the direction of his voice on instinct born from years of obeying his instructions and found myself snared by a collective of him, Harry, Rhys . . . and Cole.
“It’s dinner time,” Joe said. “I’ve called you five times.”
“Have you?”
Joe stared at me like I was a mutant. Rhys elbowed him. “Leave the boy alone.”
Boy. Still. Always. I rolled my eyes and wheeled off towards the house on my own. There was no one in the kitchen, but on the stove was a huge pan of sausage casserole. I brought it to the table and fetched stacks of bowls from the cupboards.
Harry and Joe wandered in a few minutes later.
“There’s nine of us,” Harry said.
“No Angelo?”
“Not today.”
Frowning, I dumped cutlery on the table and dropped into the nearest chair. It had been weeks since I’d last seen Angelo. I knew his condition sometimes knocked him out for days at a time, but this was fucking ridiculous.
Joe ruffled my hair. Annoyed, I ducked out of his reach just as Rhys and Cole came inside.
Cole seemed as irritated as I felt, but I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or just the way his handsome face fell. To cheer myself up, I let my gaze run over him while he wasn’t looking my way. His hair was, as usual, tied back in a messy bun, and he was wearing his standard outfit of a white tee with the sleeves folded back and loose trousers with colourful patterns. I chanced a glance at his feet and instantly resented the flip flops obscuring my view until Joe kicked me under the table.
“What?”
Amusement danced in Joe’s dark eyes, but he said nothing, which irked me even more. Joe wasn’t a bloke who held back, ever. He always said what was on his mind whether it was the right time to say it or not.
I turned away from him, leaving me face to face with Cole. They were evenly matched in the hot-dude stakes, but despite days of sweating every time he was nearby, Cole seemed the safer option.
Still wearing his troubled frown, he took the seat next to me. His proximity made my heart skip a beat, but I ignored it and stood to start serving the food as Harry brought a giant bowl of greens to the table.
A collective groan went around the room.
“Shut it,” Harry said. “You’ll thank me when you’re older.”
Rhys snorted but helped himself to whatever devil’s vegetable Harry had steamed in the weird contraption he kept on the kitchen counter. Joe followed suit, and I glared at him. Traitor. Gone were the days when I could rely on him to have my back on this shit.
Still scowling, I passed bowls of casserole around. Cole first, and by the time I served myself, a pile of green had appeared in my bowl. Harry was distracted pulling hay from Joe’s hair, and Rhys was the king of minding his own business. Which left . . .
I raised an eyebrow at Cole.
He shrugged. “They’re good for you.”
What do you care? But I couldn’t say it. Didn’t trust myself to speak without giving away the fact that he was making me sweat again just by meeting my gaze for a split second.
I sat down and started to eat, skirting around what I was now fairly sure was a gigantic heap of cabbage. Conversation was a low hum and I stayed out of it without bothering to eavesdrop. I knew everything I needed to know about farm business already.
Cole didn’t speak either. It made me ponder why he’d decided to venture into the house for dinner when he’d spent every night since he’d arrived by himself—to my knowledge, at least. I also had to wonder what he’d been eating up until now, because I knew full well his fridge was still empty. His cupboards bare. Cole Maguire was a man who lived a frugal life. I liked that—material shit meant nothing to me—but at the same time, Cole’s lack of self-care unnerved me. He seemed to have forgotten about himself.
Psychic now, are you?
As if. Cole was impossible to read, and I had a feeling that had nothing to do with the fact that I’d known him all of three days.
He reached across me as the thought completed and scooped half my cabbage onto his plate. I took the compromise and ate the rest, mixing it into the casserole to mask the bitter taste, all the while musing that my life would’ve been a helluva lot easier if I’d liked only girls. Or, if Cole’s eyes had been the same colour as the cabbage instead of the bewitching green that coloured my vision even when I wasn’t looking at him.
I need to get out of here.
I took my empty bowl to the sink. Rinsed it and dumped it in the dishwasher I’d installed for Joe’s birthday. As luck would have it—or not—Cole did the same. “Are you going home?”
He grinned a little. “Where else would I go?”
I had no answer to that. “Fair enough. Do you mind if I cme with you? If I can touch up the skirting in the living room tonight, I can start the walls in the hallway in the morning.”
A beat of silence passed between us. Then Cole nodded. “Works for me.”
We left the house and strolled across the yard. Horses called out. I went to each of them in turn and shut their doors while Cole waited, his face hidden by shadows. Tauna was last. She was my favourite old girl—she’d been here as long as me. Her companion, Carric, had died a few months back, so I always made sure to make her feel special.
I fed her a few sneaky peppermints and closed her door.
Cole was leaning against the tack shed. “I didn’t know you worked with the horses too. Until this afternoon, I thought you were the maintenance man.”
“I am. But I was a stable boy first, so I guess I always will be.”
“Why do you say boy like that?”