Chapter 4
Alyssa
By the time I push the fourth bag of shavings to the ground, Brody is carrying the third into the barn. I climb down carefully from the stack and head that way. He passes me as I enter the barn, heading back out for the last one, but we don’t say a word to each other.
Grabbing a pair of work gloves out of the small storage closet to the left of the stall, I put them on and pull my knife out of my back pocket. Brody walks in with the last bag as I bend over and start to slice into the plastic holding the shavings. I ignore him, although I can feel him there watching me.
I’m unbelievably grateful for his help today. I had been just shy of a full-fledged meltdown when he told me Hunter wasn’t home. But I’m not forgetting for a moment what a prick he is. The fact he called me a snotty, rich bitch heiress—yes, those were his exact words—still stings a hell of a lot.
Honestly… I hadn’t seen that coming. Ever since Brody returned home, I’ve been thinking about him a lot. I wasn’t that close to him before he got arrested, but friends enough that we hung out some in the summer. I mean, Gabby, Casey, and I were five years younger than him, Hunter, and their friend Wyatt, but there were plenty of times that we all happened to be at the Markham house at the same time.
He was such a good guy. Nice, funny, and smart as hell. Oh, yeah… let’s not forget smokin’ hot. I expected he’d be different when he got out of prison, but I didn’t expect him to attack me the way he did. I was blindsided and incredibly hurt.
Now I’m just pissed at him, and his little act of charity today doesn’t erase that.
I lean over, pulling handfuls of the shavings from the large bag so I can spread it around the stall and, to my surprise, Brody steps up beside me and starts doing the same to another bag that he merely rips open with his fingers.
“There’s another pair of gloves in that closet,” I tell him, jerking my thumb over my shoulder.
He doesn’t respond, but he does get the gloves. We work side by side, spreading the pine, and, just as we finish, I can hear a truck pulling up outside. My Corolla horse is here and I shake out the last handful, beyond excited to get my first up-close look at one of those beauties. Slapping my gloved hands on my thighs to dust them off, I head out of the barn.
Brody walks out and stands beside me as we watch the truck and horse trailer back up to the barn.
“Where do you want the rest of the hay? I’ll get it moved,” he asks me.
I turn to him, my eyebrows raised. “You don’t have to. I’ll get it taken care of after I take you home.”
“Just tell me where you want it,” he says in exasperation, already walking away toward the bale-stacked trailer.
“In the second stall,” I call out.
I assume he heard me, because he gets to work. I watch him for a moment, appreciative of his help and more appreciative of the bulging muscles that flex and bunch under his t-shirt as he hauls bale after bale off the trailer. Brody filled out in prison. He was tall to start out, but had always been on the lean side. He clearly had been working out a lot while he was away, and as a female who can appreciate male beauty, Brody has it going on. His brown-gold hair could use a trim, coming down all one length to his shoulders, but he wears it tied back at the top. I’m guessing it hasn’t been cut since he got sent away.
His face is a contrast, covered by a beard that he keeps trimmed short. So handsome, and I remember his blue eyes used to be filled with light and mischief. Now, they are hard and bitter.
Brody glances up after throwing a bale off the trailer, and our eyes lock. For a brief moment, I see something unusual on his face. More often than not, there is something negative he’s emoting my way, like anger or resentment. But now, right at this very moment, I see a flicker of curiosity spark through his gaze. It’s only there briefly before it vanishes. He turns his back on me and goes back to flipping the hay bales off the trailer and onto the ground. I turn toward the horse trailer, dismissing Brody Markham from my mind, filling my thoughts with the wild horse I’m getting ready to meet.
***
It doesn’t take long to get the yearling settled into his stall. The driver also brought some bundles of Spartina grass, which is one of the main staples of their diet. I would be mixing this in with his hay and oats until we could wean him off it all together. When Brody was finished moving the hay bales, he unhooked the trailer for me as Frank told me he’d come and pick it up in a day or so. Then he stacked the grass bundles in the second stall for me as well.
As the transport carrier pulled away, I stood at the stall gate and watched the horse munch on some of the grass. The wild horses are much smaller than domestic breeds of horses, and their coats are shaggy. He didn’t seem too perturbed to be in this new environment and even let me scratch his head a bit as he fed.
Taking my gloves off, I throw them down on a bench that sits between the two stalls and head out, closing and locking the barn door behind me. Brody is leaning against the fender of my truck, his hands tucked into his jeans pockets. His face is a blank mask—no clue what he’s thinking—and it makes me want to shake him and find out what’s going on in that head of his.
“Ready to go?” I ask him as I walk up to the driver’s door.
He doesn’t move, but his head turns to follow me. “How come you didn’t have anyone to help you do this today?”
Shrugging my shoulders, I say, “Just didn’t have any volunteers scheduled. They’re hard to come by.”
I climb in the truck and, as I close the door behind me, I watch as Brody just sits there for a second, then he pushes away from the fender and walks around the front to climb in the passenger side.
Putting the truck in gear, I do a wide turn and head back toward the road that runs beside the main kennel. Glancing at the dashboard clock, I let out a muttered curse, seeing that it’s almost five o’clock and I need to get my ass in gear.
“I need to feed the animals really quick and lock up. I’ve got to get Gabby’s cake for tonight and didn’t realize this would take so long.”
My tone is apologetic because I am sorry I monopolized his time today, but the look on my face dares him to make a big deal out of it. The animals getting fed take precedence over his need to get home.
He just says, “No problem” as I bring the truck to a stop by the back door to the kennel.
Brody gets out of the truck and follows me inside, which surprises me. I suppose that means he has an interest so I start talking as I unlock the door and walk in. “This is the kennel that houses the dogs. Next small building over has the cats. I’m hoping to build an aviary at some point and take on wounded birds, but that’s probably way down the line. I sort of have my hands full right now.”
“The cages are huge,” Brody says as I walk down the main aisle, toward the storage room.
“Yeah… technically, I can hold a few dogs in each cage, but I haven’t had to do that yet. Been successful in finding good homes for most of them pretty quickly, so that helps.”
The dogs know it’s feeding time so they all start barking as I walk by, tails wagging happily. All but Jethro, of course. He stays lying on his side but lifts his head up wearily as I get closer to him.
“Is he sick?” Brody asks. As I look over my shoulder, I see him looking at Jethro.
“Yeah, poor guy is heartworm positive, which we’re treating him for, but he’s just old. I don’t think he’s much longer for this life.”
Unlocking the storage room, I step in. I efficiently fill up my wheelbarrow with dry kibble and back it out of the narrow opening. Brody silently watches me as I turn it toward Jethro’s cage first.
Taking the old gallon milk jug that I cut the bottom off and fashioned a large scoop out of, I fill it up and unlatch Jethro’s cage. He usually gets his creaky bones up when he sees food coming, but he doesn’t make a move. His sad eyes just follow me as I dump the food in his bowl and eyeball his water dish. I don’t have to fill up the water bowls because when I had the kennel built, I had each unit plumbed with a pipe that would fill their bowls automatically when it dropped below a certain level. It was expensive as hell, but at least it took away one task I needed to do several times a day and saved me time, and time is money. All I had to do was keep an eye on the bowls and make sure it was working properly so they had plenty to drink.
I walk over to Jethro and squat down next to him, running my fingers behind his ears. “Not hungry, buddy?”
His tail gives a weak thump against his bed, but he doesn’t move. I stand up and look at him worriedly, wondering if this is the beginning of the end. I question if I should call a vet in to look at him, but then I talk myself out of it. He just seems tired, and I’ll come back by later tonight after Gabby’s party to check on him.
When I turn around to let myself out of Jethro’s cage, I see the wheelbarrow is gone… taken by Brody down to the next unit and he’s already inside, putting food in the dog’s bowl. It’s a little Beagle I received a few days ago, and she jumps up and down in excitement over her dinner. Brody dumps a full scoop in her bowl, which is too much given her size, but I don’t say anything.
As she dives into her food, her tail wagging furiously while she eats, Brody reaches down and scratches her back a few times. She lifts her head from the bowl, grins at him happily, and then goes back to eating. When he turns my way, he has a smile on his face. I mean a big f*cking smile… something I haven’t seen once since he got back.
I avert my eyes before he can see me staring at him, pick up the handles on the wheelbarrow, and move it to the next unit.
For the next fifteen minutes, we work silently, side by side, feeding each of the dogs. When I’m inside one of the cages dumping food, he’s moving on to the next one. We work in tandem and, before long, we’re done. Brody then quietly follows me over to take care of the cats, again helping me fill all of their bowls with food.
When we’re finished, I lock up the cat’s building and we head back toward the truck. I’m impressed with how good Brody is with all the animals. He didn’t do like some volunteers do… just rush in, dump the food, and rush back out again. He took a moment with each animal, giving them a scratch or a pat, sometimes a soft word. There is no doubt that he loves animals, and I have to wonder why he wouldn’t agree to volunteer here for his community service. It’s certainly not the work he would be opposed to, so it has to do solely with the fact he doesn’t like me. The snotty, rich bitch heiress comment tells me where he’s coming from, but not why he feels that adequately describes me. I mean… he got the rich heiress part right, but I am not snotty, nor a bitch.
Unless you cross me, then I can be quite a bitch. But in an understated, classy way.
Brody is an enigma, for sure, but one that I don’t have time to try and figure out. I made my offer, and he refused.
It’s done.
We’re silent for most of the ride back to Hunter’s, and I don’t expect anything out of him. So it’s with surprise when he asks me, “How come you opened the shelter up?”
“It’s just something I always wanted to do. I knew I wasn’t going into the family business and I had all this money just sitting around, so it seemed like the right way to spend my time and money.”
“So you run it pretty much by yourself?”
“Yeah… I mean, I get a few volunteers each week that will come in for a few hours here or there. Mostly high school students that want to get some community service on their record, so it will look good on their college apps. I have a regular volunteer, Bobby Jenkins, who works on Saturday for me so I can have some personal time, but past that… I’m pretty much here from sunup to sundown, six days a week.”
“You should hire someone,” he says. “That’s a lot of work for one person.”
“Nah,” I say as I glance at him with a quick smile. “I love doing this stuff. It’s not a hardship.”
He just stares at me, and I can’t hold the look long because I have to put my eyes back to road, but he’s clearly confused. Why, I have no clue. But he doesn’t get me, that’s for sure.
When I pull into Hunter’s driveway, I grab my purse from the floor and pull out forty dollars. Handing it to him, I say, “Here… for helping me today. I really appreciate it, and you saved my butt.”
Brody stares down at the money for a moment and when his eyes come back up to mine, they’re hard. “Keep it.”
“No, seriously… I want to pay you for your time. You didn’t have to do that, and you really were a lifesaver. I know you had better things to do today and… I know I’m not your favorite person to be around…”
My voice trails off because that was far more than I should have said, and why I even mentioned his antipathy toward me, I have no clue. His eyes pin me in place… hard, unyielding, and angry. Lips flattening out in a grim line, he growls, “I don’t want your f*cking money.”
I open my mouth to argue yet again, because I don’t like him doing a favor for me. He’s been an ass to me repetitively, and I prefer him to stay in that category. Brody being nice just seems weird at this point.
But before I can even get a word out, Brody opens the passenger door and hops out, shutting it behind him without a backward glance. I watch him walk up the crushed-shell driveway of Hunter’s house and disappear inside.
Huh.
That was just strange, but then again… there’s not much normal about the Brody Markham that exists in the world today.