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I ignored him.
“Cut it off, goddammit!” he shouted again.
I clenched my teeth and did as he said before turning and bestowing upon him my most beatific smile. “Yes, sir?”
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I looked at the compost pile before glancing back at him. “Making dinner?”
His face was a deep, mottled red. The kind of angry that would have made me nervous if I didn’t have a feeling deep down in my soul that Boone would never lift a finger to harm me or anyone else. I didn’t know much about him, but I knew that much.
“You don’t have any idea what you’re doing.”
“Au contraire,” I said, my pleasant tone edged with ice. “I believe you were the one who pointed out my excellent shit-stirring skills.”
His eyes narrowed. “This isn’t just a pile of shit you can play in like a sandbox. It’s a delicate balance of microbes that will actually die if not kept at the proper temperature.”
I looked up to the sky and tapped my chin with a finger. “Really. Hm. That’s weird. I thought it was here for fun.” I shrugged and met his eyes. “I figured three days at a hundred-forty-five degrees means it’s just about right for building a castle.”
He opened his mouth to say more, but my words caught him up short. I lifted an eyebrow before adding, “Also, it’s just about right for stirring a compost pile, if I recall correctly.”
Take that, I thought, relishing the moment.
“Mpfh,” he grunted, putting his hands on his hips and closing his eyes long enough to haul in a deep breath. “I… I, uh…”
“Owe me an apology?” I snapped. “You’re right.”
His jaw moved back and forth, but he didn’t look up at me. “I’m sor—”
Unfortunately, before he was able to get the words out, Boone’s horse, Victory, came sauntering out of the barn without a care in the world and nudged Boone’s pockets, looking for mints.
Boone looked from his horse to me, one eyebrow raised in a silent question we both knew the answer to. I’d been the one mucking out the barn, which meant I was the last one to move Victory out of his stall, which meant I’d been the one to tie him back.
Or rather, I’d been the one who’d failed to properly tie him back.
I was the reason Vic had escaped.
Boone’s apology died on his lips, and his expression returned to a familiar, disappointed scowl.
I hated that scowl. I’d seen a similar one way too often on my father’s face growing up. I felt my cheeks heat, a familiar sense of inadequacy beginning to rise inside me.
Usually I’d bat the feeling away with a quip or offhand comment—deflect deflect deflect was my motto—but my mind was drawing a blank.
“Boone—” I started to say, knowing I owed him an apology for screwing up… again. Except he didn’t seem interested in listening. Instead, he shook his head and let out a bone-deep sigh before grabbing Victory’s lead and heading back to the barn without another word.
Tyler must have seen what had happened because he came running over to help. “Oh, hey, how did this guy get out? I’ll put him back, boss,” he said eagerly. “And then I’ll get to work restocking the calving barn.” Boone nodded and handed over the rope to the kid whose knowledge of all things horse and ranch was probably ten times greater than my desire for an Alexander McQueen thistle suit. Which was so, so great.
“Thanks, Tyler,” Boone said, clapping a hand on the kid’s shoulder. “You know, despite everything with your dad, I’m glad you’re here. It’ll be nice to have another hand who knows what he’s doing.”
The kid beamed, turning to the barn with a bounce in his step. Boone didn’t bother glancing my way before heading back to the house. He didn’t need to. We both knew that he’d been speaking to Tyler but that his words had been meant for me, the screw-up who couldn’t even tie a quick-release knot properly.
My cheeks flared red, a hot coil of shame twisting in my gut as I finished turning the compost with shaking hands. I knew I was lucky Victory had been the horse who’d escaped my bad knot because if it had been Mercy’s horse or the big black stallion with the Greek name I could never remember, they would have bolted. We would have spent hours trying to capture them again, and that was assuming they didn’t hurt themselves among the fences and equipment. I couldn’t even think about what would happen if they made it to the highway.
My mistake could have ended in disaster.
It was a stark reminder that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Not really. I might have let myself believe I was catching on, I might have been proud of everything I was learning—heck, a small part of me might even have begun to think that I could actually win the bet with Oscar and prove myself to him, my father, and especially Boone—but I’d been fooling myself.
