She thought for a moment, then carefully huffed a few times against his neck without touching him. Finally, she stepped closer, so she didn’t need to stretch her neck as she lowered her head until her nose was next to his shoulder. Not on him, not behind him, but next to him.
After a few moments of her relaxing further, he moved slowly and carefully, the grace in his wiry body as surprising as it kind of wasn’t. He stood and turned to her, digging a piece of carrot from his pocket. He gave it to her and patted her neck, murmuring something to her.
She huffed again, then shook herself a little. She carefully lowered her head to show Hawk she could use another treat. He chuckled and gave her one, then started to walk toward us.
“Hey,” he said, smiling. “Now that I have the two of you here, we should have a meeting.”
My eyebrows popped at the phrasing. “Oh, okay.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t know what he wants, either.” Gemma handed Hawk the lead rope hanging nearby.
The mare had followed him, so he told us to meet in his office once he had returned her to the paddock.
Hawk’s office was in the old hay loft. There was still hay on the second half of it, but the office was cozy and had a comfortable looking, well-worn couch, a desk and a visitor’s chair, and a desk chair that must’ve cost as much as everything else combined.
A large window behind the desk had a view of the paddocks.
“Do you share this space?” I asked Gemma as I peered over the desk and into the gorgeous view.
“Coffee?” She was gesturing at the Keurig at a little wet bar in the corner.
“Yeah, sure. Black is fine.”
She started on drinks for us all and shook her head. “Not really. I don’t need an office and if I want to work on a computer, I can borrow his desk. Hawk mostly meets clients here. Or sleeps on the couch.”
“Hey, I don’t do it that often,” he said as he climbed up the last few steps.
“Are you two twins?” I asked, because they looked very much alike.
Hawk took off his ball cap and tossed it on the desk. “No. She’s number six, I’m seven. The twins are Demi and Emery on the older end and then Judson and Keegan who are the youngest of us all.”
“Right,” I said, the explanation I’d gotten at the cookout returning to me slowly. “There’s quite a few of you so excuse me if I don’t remember everything anytime soon.”
Gemma snorted. “Oh no. It’s definitely not a requirement. Half the time I need to think about it if someone asks how old each of us is.”
She handed me a coffee and then another one to Hawk.
I went to sit on the couch and sighed happily.
“Surprisingly comfy, isn’t it?” Hawk grinned as he joined me. “I get shit about it all the time.”
“I can see how you’d sleep here.”
“Don’t you start enabling him.” Gemma shook a finger at me.
Soon, she sat in the visitor’s chair—a nice leather one that had wheels and must’ve been a desk chair once—and turned around to face the couch.
“So,” Hawk started, then took a sip of his coffee before continuing. “I have an assignment from a new client. I need to find a horse that works for what he has in mind but alsolookslike what he wants.”
Gemma and I both winced.
“You’re not saying that he wants a standard bay, are you?” she made an educated guess.
“Not in the slightest. He wants a snowflake appaloosa. Black base. Not brown. Not red.Witha fair amount of spotting, but not too much. Mare that’s at least four years old, but not older than ten, and at least fifteen two but bigger is better.”
I whistled. “That’s going to be hard to find.”
“Yeah. So that means going to auctions for a bit. I have a few months to find this horse, plus training time on top. He just wants a bomb proof horse, more or less, so it should be easy enough—I know, famous last words—but it’s the finding that’s going to be… tricky.”
