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1
Blaine Chappell rode along the northernmost fence on the ranch, just him, the June Kentucky sunshine, and his horse Featherweight. There was no traffic out there, as there were no roads that bordered this side of the ranch. Only long, straight, white fences, characteristic of every horse farm in the state.
Emerald green grass waved in the slight breeze, and Blaine wished the wind would pick up a little bit to cool him down. He loved Sunday afternoons like this, with the pastor’s words flowing through his mind, his thoughts wandering where they wanted, and only a sense of beauty in front of him.
Today, though, his thoughts seemed a little stickier than usual. Featherweight plodded along, her hooves barely kicking up any dust from the grass that had settled in the last week. Blaine felt more at home in the saddle than anywhere else, and had he been shorter, he’d have been the one riding the horses he and his brothers raised to run in the races.
As it was, he oversaw all the medical care of the horses and other animals at Bluegrass Ranch. He’d left the ranch for a couple of years to get his veterinarian technician license for large animals, but the time to invest in veterinary school was too much. The ranch had a team of vets they called on daily, and Blaine didn’t need to get the doctorate degree to work with the animals.
He monitored the cattle, the chickens, the sheep, and the goats, as well as the horses. Their main source of income was the championship horses they raised to win the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont stakes, but there were dozens of other races with tidy prize pots too.
Blaine scheduled all the breeding, and he had seven studs coming in this week to breed with their mares. He, Spur, Duke, and Cayden named every horse, with a lot of the input coming from Cayden, as he was the public face of the ranch. Whoever bought the horse could and usually did rename them, but for a while there, when the Internet headlines ran about the birth of a possible future champion, it was the name the three of them chose.
“What do you think?” he asked Featherweight. “The ones with three or four words sometimes hit the best.”
With a gestation period of eleven months, he had plenty of time to pick out names for any foals they might get. There were races for fillies and mares only, some for colts and geldings, and some where they raced against each other.
His favorite race was the Kentucky Oaks, and while most people hadn’t heard of it, there was still over a million dollars to be won. Every time a Bluegrass Ranch horse won a race, their bloodlines became more coveted. They could sell their horses for more money.
Spur managed all of that, and Blaine helped when it came time for breeding. They owned one of the former Derby winners who could stud, and that didn’t cost them anything. Getting the other males to come to the ranch cost a pretty penny, and besides advertising their two-year-old sale every spring, that was the bulk of the money the ranch spent.
Ian was the numbers brother on the ranch, and Duke was the one who dealt with procuring all the studs. He’d been preparing for this week for the past month, and Blaine had been right at his side for most of that.
He needed to stop thinking about horses, horses, horses. He woke with horses on his mind, and dreamed of horses. He went to bed with horses in his brain, and sometimes he even counted horses when he couldn’t fall asleep.
The problem was, if he wasn’t thinking about the ranch, his job on it, or horses, he obsessed over Tamara Lennox.
She was ten times as dangerous to let into his mind, especially because he couldn’t seem to have an innocent thought about her. She stuck around, needling him, making him question the last two decades of his life. He felt like he’d wasted the last five at least, since she’d turned thirty then, and he’d completely forgotten about their agreement.
She’d reminded him of it last week. They’d agreed that when she turned thirty, if neither of them were in a relationship, he’d ask her out and they’d try something romantic. He’d given her a deluxe set of car mats instead.
“Stupid,” he muttered to himself. He’d started dating Alex about six months after that, and that had been his last relationship. He’d thought it would be his last relationship ever, but Tam had him thinking again.
He could picture her in his mind without even trying. They’d been friends for a little over twenty years, and there was no one on this Earth that he knew better—not even one of his brothers.
He could feel the way her lips pressed against his, as he’d kissed her last week in some insane moment where he’d told Spur to follow his heart, and then Blaine thought he could follow his. If only his heart hadn’t led him down such a twisted path.
“She likes you,” he told himself, which seemed surreal and natural at the same time. She had admitted to a crush on him, but Blaine still wasn’t sure what zone they were in. They’d argued a lot on their last date—which was over a week old now—and he hadn’t kissed her when they’d gotten back to the homestead.
She’d thanked him for dinner, and he’d said he’d call her. She’d rumbled away in her beat-up pickup truck, and he’d somehow made it to his suite in the house without encountering another Chappell.
That alone was a miracle, as he’d expected Trey to be lying in wait, a dozen questions on the tip of his tongue.
Trey hadn’t said anything to Blaine about going out with Tam. Not one thing. Red flags existed all over that, but this past week had been exceptionally busy at the ranch. Even Duke and Conrad hadn’t seen their girlfriends, and Spur had only spent one evening with Olli.
He’d gotten engaged on Thursday night, so he’d had a really busy week.
Blaine had had to hear all about the engagement from his mother when he’d gone for breakfast on Saturday morning. That was probably why Tam had lodged herself in Blaine’s mind and refused to be moved out.
“Let’s head back,” he said to the horse, and Featherweight seemed to understand English. He barely had to point her in the right direction; he just told her where he wanted to go, and she got him there.
He spent a long time brushing her down and cleaning her tack. Once she was back in her stall with a few extra treats in the form of apples and carrots and oats, Blaine started for the homestead. The ranch was massive, spanning hundreds of acres, and they had row houses, walking circles, a full-size track, administration buildings, selling courts and stadiums, arenas, and parking lots for when the buyers came.
There was always someone around, doing something, but Sunday was their slowest day of the week.
Blaine took a long, deep breath, and held it before pushing it from his lungs. Conrad was the best cook out of all the brothers, but Blaine put Sunday evening meals together more than anyone else. Momma usually fed everyone for lunch after church, but she hadn’t today, because she and Daddy had gone to see her mother.
Gramma was getting way up there in years, and she lived in an assisted facility in Dreamsville now. Most of the Chappells lived on the ranch until the day they died, and one of Blaine’s favorite places was the cemetery.
