Chapter 11

Emma and her four ex-best friends had reconnected because of Austin. She was preparing breakfast in the Montgomery kitchen when she received a message. It was a group chat with Shea, Steph, Mia, and Simone.

Mia: “Emma, I told them I’m getting back with Noah and that Austin is fair game.”

Shea: “What’s he doing right now?”

Emma: “I’ve no idea. He hasn’t gotten out of bed yet.”

Steph: “WOMAN?!? Quit talking to us and go see what he’s doing. My fantasy has you finding him in the shower!”

Shea: “Don’t let them bully you. Only do it if you want to.”

Emma: “Okay! I’ll do it. Give me a sec.”

While on her way to the third floor, she received a flurry of inappropriate suggestions via message.

Emma slowly opened Austin’s door, only to be greeted by Max. Either Austin had forgotten to close the pup’s crate, or he’d escaped. She bent down and rubbed the wiggling fur-ball’s head. She stood up and walked over to the bed.

Austin had tossed his covers off and lay on his stomach. She took a picture of him in just his boxer briefs, making sure not to get his face in it, and sent a group message.

Simone: “For a white boy, he has a fine a$$!”

Austin cracked his eyes open.

Emma: “Holy Crap!”

Shea: “Good holy crap or bad?”

“Morning,” Austin said. “Did my grandmother send you to wake me up?”

“Not really,” Emma said.

Her phone pinged.

Mia: “Are you all right? What’s going on?”

Steph: “Did he roll over? Asking for a friend.” (With a winking emoji.)

Shea: “Does he have morning wood? That’s a thing, right?”

Austin’s arm snapped out and snatched Emma’s phone out of her hands. She tried to get it back, but he rolled out the other side of the bed and began to read. Emma did see that Austin had morning wood as the monster in his shorts stretched to the side past his hipbone.

“Want to make their day?” Austin asked after he’d read the thread.

“This was a bad idea,” Emma said, trying to extract herself from whatever this was.

“I’ll let you take one of my front.”

“You sure? You realize it’ll be all over town by noon, right?” Emma asked.

“With Mia reunited with her bad idea, I might need a date or something,” Austin said.

“Or something,” Emma mumbled.

He handed her phone back and flopped on the bed. Max took that as an invitation and tried to jump up, but failed. Austin reached down, lifted the pup up, and received kisses for the assist. While Austin fended off his dog, Emma took the picture. Max blocked Austin’s face, so there was some plausible deniability.

“Does this work?”

Austin looked and nodded.

“You want to go outside?” Austin asked Max.

The pup bailed off the bed. Austin grabbed a pair of shorts and slipped them on before following Max—who was bounding down the stairs—out the door.

Emma: “Any ideas?”

She attached the picture and sent it.

That was followed by a full two minutes of silence until the chat melted down. Emma turned off her phone to get back to work without a million questions interrupting her day.

Austin was setting up for class. His primary topic that day was horse safety. You only had to be kicked once because of not paying attention to never do that again. He wanted his charges never to have to experience that.

Austin also planned to teach them how to open and close a gate without getting off a horse. This would help them learn to maneuver their horses in ways that didn’t involve straight riding. Learning to back your horse and move sideways are valuable lessons, and dealing with the gate was an easy way to teach both.

Austin saw a new girl with a cleft lip. One of the ranch hands in Montana had one, so Austin knew it was a birth defect where the tissues in the baby’s face and mouth didn’t fuse properly. The ranch hand said that when he was born, they did an operation to close it, leaving him with a scar.

One of the younger boys spotted her and said, “Gross.”

“I’m not gross,” the girl said, bursting into tears.

’Welp. That did it,’ Austin thought.

Miss Sandy had seen the confrontation and looked ready to rip into the boy, who now looked ready to cry.

“I’m going to remove him from the class. We can’t have that sort of stuff,” Miss Sandy seethed.

“Before you do that, let me talk to them,” Austin said.

Austin pulled them into a stall where no one would see what was happening. He put one arm around each of them and crouched to be at eye level.

“You do know that she can’t help what happened to her lip?” Austin asked the boy.

The boy teared up and wouldn’t look at either of them. Austin turned to the girl.

“And you know that kids say whatever’s on their mind, good or bad, right?”

The little girl wailed, “But he was mean to me.”

“Yes, he was,” Austin said. “How do you think we should punish him?”

“I’ll tell my mom,” the little boy said.

“You do, and Miss Sandy will remove you from the class,” Austin said.

“But—”

Austin cut him off. “Or you two could get past this poor beginning and become friends.”

“You’ll still punish him?” the girl asked.

“I’ll make him ride Stinky. She ate something bad and farts,” Austin said.

Saying that a horse farts always amused young kids, and these two were no different.

“I’m not scared of horse farts,” the boy said.

“But you’ll be a smelly boy by the end of class,” Austin said.

“My sister says I smell, anyway.”

“If he rides Stinky today, can we call it even?” Austin asked.

“If I get to call him Smelly Boy.”

Girls had called Austin worse, and the boy didn’t seem fazed, so he said, “Okay. Shake on it so I can teach you how to open a gate on horseback today.”

Miss Sandy had been eavesdropping. She shook her head when they left the stable but said nothing more about the incident. Austin doubted the two kids would become friends, but hopefully, they’d at least tolerate each other. It was hard to come back from calling a girl gross.

Miss Sandy was more amused that Mia’s friends were waiting for Austin with big smiles. Shea had sent him a message that they would be in class, so he’d saddled three of her horses to ride to Blackwater.