Toby licked his lips. “It’ll do.”
The laugh escaped.
Toby grinned back, and the remaining sandwich was so far from my mind that my stomach thought my throat had been cut. I snatched another breath, but the vibrating screech of my phone cut off whatever lunacy had been about to leave my mouth.
I turned away and fumbled my phone from my pocket. It was Callie. “Hey.”
“Morning,” she said. “Settled into your new place?”
“Getting there. How’s Ella?”
“She’s fine. My dad took her for a walk.”
Jealousy lanced my heart. I’d never even met Callie’s dad and he spent more time with my baby than I did. “That’s nice.”
“Yep. Anyway, I need to know what time you’re picking her up on Saturday.”
“Um...”Shit. I hadn’t even thought about it. “Ten? Is that too early?”
“After a week of her teething? Hell no. You can have her the night before if you want.”
I’d have her every night of the damn week if I could. But this was the one time I’d have to say no. “I can’t. The place I’m staying is still being painted. It won’t be aired out until Saturday.”
“Shame. Oh well. Ten it is.”
Callie rang off without any further pleasantries, and I couldn’t blame her. After all, we barely knew each other.
The sinking feeling in my chest came back. I spun slowly to face the kitchen counter again and set my phone down, almost forgetting about Toby until he cleared his throat.
“Is Ella your kid?”
I flashed him a glance. “Yeah.”
The single syllable came out like it always did these days, almost like a challenge. As though daring him to ask more questions or judge me for already failing to give her the family life she deserved.
Toby shrugged. “Cool.”
He returned to his work before I could formulate a response.
3
Toby
“What’s the new bloke like?”
I glanced up from trimming Mani’s hoof under Joe’s suffocating supervision. Mani was his oldest horse, and he was only letting me touch him because I needed the practice and Mani was the most chill horse ever. “Dunno. He doesn’t speak.”
“Sounds like my kind of person.”
“Liar.”
Joe grunted and I took it as a victory, but I wasn’t joking about Cole. The thought of him and Joe locked in a room together when they were both in a bad mood was kind of terrifying.
Not that I knew Cole well enough to know if his habitual silence was a sign of a bad mood. Perhaps he was just already sick of my company. I’d been holed up in his house all week long, and since the first day when he’d seemed to be someone else entirely, we’d exchanged approximately three words. In fact, that was a high estimate, as he left every room I entered. I was trying not to take it personally, but given that he was more drop-dead gorgeous each time I saw him, it was hard.
I pushed him from my mind and concentrated on trimming Mani’s hoof. I possessed the kind of brain that could only truly focus on one thing at a time, so for a while, blocking Cole out was easy, but when I was done, the skin at the nape of my neck tingled, like it had done all week every moment he was close by. I’d yet to figure out what wasupwith that shit. I was pretty well-versed in losing my composure in the presence of hot dudes, but this was off the scale.
Joe took Mani back to his stall. I made a meal out of gathering the tools and returning them to the tack shed and fetching Mani fresh water, all the while not glancing up, but the tingling remained. Of course it did. Joe called my name. I followed the direction of his voice on instinct born from years of obeying his instructions and found myself snared by a collective of him, Harry, Rhys... and Cole.