This morning I went looking for her at her cottage, thinking that she’d had enough space to think about our kiss, and maybe she was ready to talk about it and invite her to come out into the paddock to drive the tractor while I drove the truck and stacked the bales. When I got there though, the place was quiet and dark, much like it had been all night last night. After Mallory left, I stood back by the window looking for any indication she was in there, but nope there was nothing. Maybe she stayed up in the main house with Mum. Thinking about it now, I was kicking my arse for not going in search of her and confronting her about what was happening between us, but instead, I listened to Mallory’s stupid advice and waited. Next time, I wasn’t going to listen to her, no matter how poetic or educated she sounded on the subject.
Growling under my breath, I shoved a hand in my jeans pocket and yanked out my phone.
“Fucking ten hours unsupervised, I shudder to think what shit she is getting herself in,” I mumbled, pulling up Fenixx’s number.
“Yo Hendrixx, you aren’t going to believe what I am watching right now,” Fenixx told me the second he answered his phone.
“Nixx, I don’t give a shit about your porn categories. Can you do me a favour and go find Blake and see what she is up to?”
“No need brother of mine, I already know what she is doing, and I have to tell you she is getting really good on that trick saddle mate. Hercules is a natural trick horse.”
Blood drained from my face as I listened to Fenixx. Blake, my Blake was—Jesus, standing on the back of a horse and not just any horse. Hercules was a three year old gelding with a mean temperament, he stood just over fifteen hands and loved to buck. We bought him from a sale in Macedon sight unseen. Blake heard from one of the sales auctioneers that the big bay had been mistreated by his previous owners, and after he bucked off and bit their young daughter, they decided to put him into the sale. Most equine dealers didn’t like to handle broken or mistreated animals, mainly due to the headaches that came with selling them responsibly. Most dealers didn’t want to be liable for any accidents happening in the sale ring, which is why many of the horses went straight to abattoirs.
Blake, of course, wasn’t going to let that happen, so that is why I found myself the owner of a nasty, biting, kicking and bucking sabino Arabian.
“She is doing what?”
“Daxx is here with Noxx, he brought the little man over so Mack could have a sleep in peace and quiet,” Nixx replied as if that was supposed to explain why Blake was standing on the back of an animal that could crush her under his four hundred kilogram weight.
The sound of my nephew clapping and shouting in the background, then a female’s big pitched whoop gave me more chills.
“Tell me she isn’t,” I demanded of my brother, the same time jumping off the tractor to the ground.
“Yep, she did, almost landed on her feet too,” Nixx told me sounding very impressed, but I was anything but impressed. Hercules had come a long way in the three years Blake had been working with him–she had retrained him to wear a saddle and have a rider on his back. When she announced she wanted to train him to be a trick horse, I of course, put my foot down and forbid her to do anything of the sort, Blake naturally ignored me. I had to admit her patience with the flighty beast was admirable. Her prowess and determination two things I loved most about her, but that didn’t mean I could handle her being on his back while I wasn’t there to control the situation.
“Fenixx, I expect you to watch after her when I’m not there. I can’t be in two places at once,” I shouted down the phone, jumping into the farm ute and firing it up.
Out of the windscreen, I could see Eddy laughing outright, his head shaking back and forth, and I could make out Blake’s name coming from his lips.
Yeah, he knew the laughing prick.
“Hendrixx, I can’t control Blake any more than you can. And why would we want too? She knows horses better than any man on the Triple H, she is the best horse breaker in the state, and you know as well as I do, she has the gift. She doesn’t get on a horse she doesn’t trust and no horse has ever thrown her.”
Quickly, placing my phone in the cradle on the dash, I hit speaker then jammed the car into gear. Fenixx had a point, Blake knew her shit when it came to horses, her old man taught her how to break the old school way. The only way. Blake inherited her dad’s ability to heal a damaged animal, the gift of horse whispering.
I’d seen her turn a beast other people considered hopeless too many times not to believe. I believed so much in her gift, my brothers and I set aside a part of the property for her to work with horses from all over Australia. Owners at the end of their rope and desperate to heal their animals brought them to the Triple H … to Blake.
At first, she did it for free, not charging the owners who only wanted to have their horses back to the way they used to be. But when the word spread, I convinced her to set a fee depending on the amount of work she had to put in. I wasn’t going to have her taken advantage of, all money she made she kept, I insisted on that.
Despite my confidence in her skills, it didn’t stop the beads of sweat forming on my brow and the
