AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Well, what was I supposed to do?” Gus asked. “It was hot up there. Way too hot for them.”
“Gus is a softy,” Tag said.
Gus glared.
Alaina thought of when he had plucked her out of the pond, and really, just thought of the two of them. Everything she’d seen of him.
“That’s Gus,” Lachlan said, his face suddenly flat. “Saving anything and everything.”
She shifted, feeling somewhat uncomfortable. Because she knew that was true. He had saved her. And it was Lachlan that he’d saved from their father, and she looked at Lachlan closely, wondering if he would mention that. Wondering if he would bring that up.
He looked at Gus, but he didn’t say anything. And it made her wonder how much of it was that they had an agreement not to talk about those things.
“Gus used to read us stories,” Hunter said. “And he always did all the voices.”
She looked over at Gus, who was glaring down into his beer bottle.
“Yeah,” Brody said. “We made a tent. Up in our room. And we’d read really late. He’d put a flashlight on his face and make it really scary.”
“I admire your restraint in not finishing that joke,” Gus said, tipping his beer bottle up for a long drink.
“Oh, there was no real restraint involved,” Brody said. “It wasbefore.”
Gus just stared straight ahead. “I know.”
And she couldn’t quite pin down the tension coming off of Gus just then. But it passed quickly, as he took control of the situation. “All right. So you remember when I rescued the kittens from the hayloft. But do you remember the time that I rescued Tag from the roof?”
And then he went on to tell the whole story of Tag getting stuck up on the roof when he was eight or so, with the ladder kicked down to the ground with no one realizing, leaving Tag stranded for hours. It ended with Gus finding him exhausted and crying, resituating the ladder and carrying Tag down like he was a sack of potatoes.
By the end of the story, everyone was laughing. Even Gus.
Right then the music kicked up, and Hunter stood, extending his hand to Elsie. “Come on. Let’s dance.”
“All right,” Elsie said, taking his hand and bounding up behind him. Tag and Nelly got up along with them, and Lachlan did too, but Charity didn’t follow. He went and grabbed a pretty redhead who was standing in the corner, and Brody followed suit, picking up a brunette.
That left Alaina, Gus and Charity sitting in proximity to each other.
Charity forced a smile, then looked away. Alaina didn’t really know Charity. She was Lachlan’s best friend and she didn’t socialize with everyone else on the ranch much. She hadn’t gone to school with them; she’d been homeschooled as far as Alaina knew.
Alaina could never quite figure her and Lachlan out. Charity was wearing a floral dress with a turtleneck underneath, her blond hair held back with a big headband. She looked almost comedically demure. And Lachlan was in no way demure.
“So,” Alaina said. “You’re...a veterinarian?”
Charity blinked her wide pale blue eyes. “Yes. Didn’t we just do that checkup together?”
“Well, yes,” Alaina said. “But this is awkward. And I’m making clumsy conversation.”
Charity laughed at that. “Right. And you...”
“Help with the horses. That’s all really.”
“You do a damn fine job at it,” Gus said, and Alaina practically flushed with her pleasure at being praised.
“Yeah, I’m having a lot of fun helping out. It’s really great. The whole gardening thing at Sullivans’ wasn’t really my thing.”
Feeling bad for Charity, she scanned the room. Maybe there was a guy that would ask her to dance.
Of course, Alaina’s own husband hadn’t asked her to dance. But she felt like it was pretty poor form of Lachlan to bring his friend out and then leave her sitting there without a partner.
