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“Austin, don’t use that tone with me.”
“Fine. I’ll ride her over now. Bye.” And he hung up. He looked at me and he said, “Looks like you’ve been summoned to the river for a picnic.”
“Wow. Okay. Sounds fun.”
“Really?” he raised an eyebrow.
“What? Why are you angry at me?”
“I’m not angry at you. This is just absolutely ridiculous. Come on, let’s go,” he said and marched past me out of the door. He jumped onto his horse and then looked back at me. “You think you can get up by herself or you’re going to need help?”
“Well, I can try,” I said uncertainly, not sure why his attitude had completely changed. We’d just been having a really fun, engaging, interesting conversation, and now he was acting like I was some sort of enemy.
“Fine, I’ll help.” He jumped back off of the horse and then came towards me. “Grab onto the horse and I’ll give you a boost up,” he said.
I grabbed the saddle, put one foot in the stirrup, then looked at him over my shoulder and our eyes met. There was an emotion in there that I didn’t recognize, an emotion that I thought was strange. I didn’t know what to say or what to do.
“Let’s go, Lucy. My brother is waiting on you.”
“I just don’t know what your problem is.”
“There’s no problem here, Lucy. I’m just not your Prince Charming. I’m not your knight in shining armor.”
“Okay, then.”
“But don’t worry, you’ve got Beau for that. I’m sure he’ll treat you like a princess. What with your picnic by the river. Maybe he’ll feed you strawberries and you can drink champagne together.”
“Maybe he will,” I said finally. “And maybe he’ll have chocolate and we’ll lick it off each other’s bodies.”
His eyes narrowed and for a moment I wondered if he was going to kiss me again. Then he grabbed me big the hips and pushed me up and suddenly I was on the horse.
“Giddy-up,” I said loudly and kicked Sally in the side. She seemed to know exactly what that meant because off she went running with me holding on for dear life.
“Well, bye, Austin,” Beau said sarcastically as his brother went galloping away from us. “Glad to see he’s back to his usual cheerful self.” He rolled his eyes at me. “Sorry I had to leave you with him earlier.”
“Oh no, it was fine. He showed me the log cabin and it was really beautiful.” I could feel my face flushing because vivid memories of my dirty thoughts when I’d seen the bed were flashing in my mind. I really didn’t want Beau to ask me too many questions about my time with his brother. “So, this is really beautiful.”
“Yeah.” He smiled at the view. “This here is the Bitterroot River. It runs all the way through the property.” Beau nodded towards the water. “We like to go kayaking here, and a little further down you can go whitewater rafting. We have some class 4 and 5 rapids, actually.”
“Oh, I don’t really know what that means,” I said apologetically.
“Oh, just that they’re really exciting. I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said.
“Yeah. I love skydiving, hang gliding, roller coasters, that sort of thing.” He sounded really enthusiastic.
“Oh, wow.” My legs trembled at the thought of doing any of those activities. There is no way I would ever go skydiving.
“Maybe you and I, we can go bungee jumping sometime?” Beau suggested. “There’s this place—”
“Maybe,” I cut him off quickly. I really wanted to say Hell no! but I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t open to any of the activities that he enjoyed, even though I really wasn’t. “So, those mountains look amazing.”
“Yeah, those are the Montana Rockies. We’re actually quite close to Yellowstone and Glacier National Park. I’ll have to take you there sometime.”
“That would be really cool.” Just then, my stomach rumbled audibly. “Oh, I guess I’m hungrier than I thought.”
“Perfect!” He lifted up the little picnic basket. “I brought some sandwiches and some stuffed mushrooms.”
