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The blood had dried at the end and where her incisor had pierced his skin.
That gave him an idea.
“Have you ever heard of blood brothers?” It wasn’t something he ever heard anyone doing. He just read it in books, but it might be worth a shot.
“Blood brothers? Like, where you cut your hand and someone else cuts theirs, and you push them together and exchange blood?” She had stopped what she was doing long enough to look up at him, like she wasn’t quite getting what he was saying.
“Yeah. That’s exactly right. If you and I do that, we wouldn’t be blood brothers, since you’re a girl. You’d be my sister.”
Her brows went up, and he could tell she was interested, then she looked at her sandwich, as though sizing it up, but he figured she was thinking.
He supposed it shouldn’t matter to him whether she agreed to it or not. But he found himself hoping she took him up on it. After all, he didn’t want her to have to lie, and it would be a lot easier to get her a job if he claimed she was his sister. He could clean her up, and they could make it look like she just loved horses and wanted a job.
He wasn’t sure why he was so all fired set on helping her, but he realized he was holding his breath as she thought.
“I guess that would work,” she said slowly, then she shrugged. “But I’m not lying.”
“You didn’t have a problem lying to me about your age.”
“That’s different,” she snapped, taking a big bite of her sandwich, bigger than necessary, like stuffing her mouth full was going to get around having to explain why she lied to him.
“That’s different. So lying to me is one thing, but lying to...anyone else isn’t okay?”
“That’s right, Dixie. Because you’re a rich boy.”
“Oh. And you’re Robin Hood.”
“I can’t stand thieves.”
“Really? So you were hiding around the bushes, wandering around my house, because you were studying architecture?”
“Shut up.”
“That seems to be a favorite phrase of yours. Did it ever occur to you that maybe if you want to have a good argument, rather than trying to shut up the other side, you should have facts and examples to back up your position? And if you can’t out-argue the other side, maybe... Just maybe, that means they’re right.”
He thought she was going to tell him to shut up again, but she took another bite of her sandwich instead.
He didn’t need her to tell him that he was right to know that he was. A lot of people didn’t want to hear the other side, because they couldn’t win an argument, so they focused on shutting them up instead. Sadly, some people were so brainwashed into thinking that their side was right, despite the fact that they couldn’t defend their position, that they never thought to actually hold their beliefs up to logic to see if they held water.
Maybe, if nothing else, he’d teach the little brat that before she left. After all, there was no guarantee that she would follow him down to the beach and actually ask for a job at the stable.
He realized that there was no guarantee that she would actually do her job at the stable or even show up for it.
He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to put his name on the line for her like that. Strawberry Sands was a small town. Even though his family was new, there was still the potential that the people he would be going to see would recognize him and know that he was an only child. He still thought they might get away with it because yesterday when he’d heard the people talking, they had said that the stable owners were new residents in Strawberry Sands.
Maybe they wouldn’t know about the people who lived in the mansion on the hill.
He could hope.
“Why do you want me to have a job?” the girl finally thought to ask.
“Well, Bekpek, I kind of figured you like horses. I also kinda figured that you wouldn’t be sneaking around my house if you had money to buy whatever it was you were looking to steal.”
He said that deliberately, because he knew it would irritate her. Sure enough, thunderclouds entered her eyes, and she opened her mouth, but before she said anything, she snapped it closed. After all, they’d already established the fact that her telling him to shut up wasn’t a logical argument, and as he figured, she didn’t have a logical argument.
She ate the rest of her sandwich with gusto. And chewed with her mouth open.
“I can’t figure out whether you actually have no table manners, or whether you’re chewing with your mouth open and eating like a pig on purpose, just to irritate me.”
