AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Mommy, don’t be scared,” Jordan adds, making me look her way.
“Jordan, are you holding on tight?” I ask, even though the horse they’re riding on has a saddle that the girls are sharing.
“Duh.” She rolls her eyes. “Get on!”
Pierce chuckles and whispers, “I got you, Kels,” causing my entire body to shiver, despite how often I tell myself that the most Pierce and I can ever be is friends.
“If I fall off this horse, you’re a dead man,” I warn, shooting a playful glare his way.
His gaze meets mine, and the laughter that was just in his eyes disappears. “You’ll always be safe with me. I promise.”
His words slide through my veins like liquid heat, warming my insides. He doesn’t know my past and has no idea what those words mean to me, yet somehow, he knew I needed to hear them.
I nod, and he clasps his fingers together again, so I can step onto them and boost myself up. With his help, I swing my leg over and straddle the horse’s back. Pierce backs the horse up and uses a nearby hay bale to mount himself up. His muscular thighs slide along the outside of mine, and his arms cage me in so he can take control of the reins. He leans in, and his scent—masculinity mixed with comfort—envelops me. Being this close to him should be awkward, yet somehow, even though I’ve only known him briefly, his body wrapped around mine feels right.
I push the thought away immediately. He’s a firefighter. It doesn’t matter how comfortable I feel in his arms. I already lost someone I loved in a fire, and there’s no way I could survive losing someone else.
“You good?” he asks, his lips brushing against my ear since my hair is up in a high ponytail.
“Yep,” I squeak.
“All right, let’s ride.”
He lightly nudges the side of Jingle Bells, and the horse starts to move forward. I look for Jordan and find Jackson’s already walking them around the fenced-in area while the girls talk animatedly.
It takes a few minutes for my beating heart to calm, but once it does, I’m able to take in my surroundings. I’m in awe of Pierce’s family ranch. The property stretches far past where I can see, with trees and shrubbery surrounding the area. A gorgeous, modern, red barn is situated in the center, and the ground is covered with a thin layer of snow, making everything look picture-perfect.
We ride for a few minutes in silence, staying behind the girls, and I find myself relaxing against Pierce and enjoying the ride.
“What are you thinking about?” Pierce asks after a little while, breaking the silence.
I don’t know how he knows I’m lost in my own head, but I answer honestly without thought. “I can’t remember the last time I felt this relaxed.”
“Good,” he says. “That’s how you should always feel when you’re with me.”
Because I have no idea what to say to that or how to feel about it, I don’t say anything at all. Instead, I pull out my phone and snap a few photos of the girls on their horse, wanting to capture Jordan’s first time riding. After going around the fenced-in area a few times, the girls get bored and ask if they can go play in Tilly’s tree house.
“I can take them,” Jackson says. “You guys finish your ride.”
I let Jordan know we’ll be up to the main house soon and to behave, then Pierce takes off in the opposite direction. Unlike the way he was taking it easy while we followed the girls, he now picks up speed. With the cold air whipping around us, I get lost in the beauty of the ride and the scenery around us.
“That’s Jackson’s place,” Pierce says, snapping me out of the moment. The house he’s pointing to is a barn-style home, similar to their parents’, but a bit smaller and gray.
“It’s pretty.”
He makes a clicking sound, and the horse takes off again. We ride for a few minutes before we come across a single-story ranch-style home. It’s white with black shutters and a black door.
“This is Beckett’s place,” he says.
“Both your brothers live on the ranch?”
“We all do,” he says, making the noise that has the horse running forward once again.
We ride for a little while longer, around a large pond that Pierce tells me everyone swims in during the summer and past another barn that Pierce says holds a bunch of equipment.
“And this is my place,” he says, when we stop in front of the most beautiful two-story log cabin home, complete with a hunter-green roof, a large chimney stemming up the side of the home, and a wraparound wooden porch. It looks like the cabins you see online that advertise those expensive ski resorts. The ones I could never afford to visit, let alone purchase.
