Blaine looked down the aisle, wishing a solution would present itself. “Yeah, I get it’s not that easy.”
“Yeah, or else you’d have a girlfriend,” she said, her voice lightening a little.
“I doubt it,” he said.
“Listen, I have to run, but I don’t want you to worry about this. I’m not going to talk to him.”
“I’m already worrying about it,” Blaine said, blinking to get his focus back. “Can you come help me tonight? I can text you the details.”
“Sure,” she said. “We can talk more then about my getting-a-boyfriend strategy.” She laughed, but Blaine knew she did that to cover up awkward moments.
He chuckled anyway and said, “Okay, come by whenever you can. If I’m not in the front shed, I’ll be at the house.”
“Okay, bye.” Just like that, she was gone.
Blaine stayed where he was, his mind moving through the numerous things he needed to do before Tam showed up that night. He didn’t want to talk to Spur, because he was already dealing with some hard things. He could save that conversation for their morning meeting tomorrow.
“Start with Harmon,” he said, pushing away from the wall. Harmon Hall was the field manager, and he’d be able to tell Blaine which pastures they could move the cattle into so they could purge the infected field and get the hoof rot off the ranch.
* * *
Blaine pickedup the last piece of his peanut butter sandwich and popped it into his mouth. He didn’t mind eating sandwiches and chips for dinner, though he had some pickier brothers. Conrad refused to eat anything but a hot meal for both lunch and dinner, and he was definitely the biggest diva when it came to his food.
Blaine was fine with bread and peanut butter, and he kept a stash of both in the front shed. He operated from there a lot of the time, so he wasn’t in the way in the stables, row houses, or training facilities. He did a ton of work with the racehorses the family actually owned, but Spur kept up with them too, as did all of the brothers. They each managed something to do with the champion horses they raised, and Blaine’s contribution was to monitor their health as they grew into the running powerhouses they all wanted them to be.
The Chappells didn’t make much money on horses that couldn’t run, and a healthy horse trained faster and better than an unhealthy one.
He finished putting together his plan for his meeting with Spur in the morning, realizing that Tam hadn’t stopped by yet. A quick glance at his phone told him it was past eight, and that was pretty late for her to not be done with her work.
He picked up his phone at the same time a text from her arrived. They’d joked in the past about how she could tell if he was thinking about her, and he could tell if she was talking about him. A smile crossed his face as he read her message.
I can practically hear you wondering where I am. I’m just leaving. Be there in ten.
Great, he said, neither confirming nor denying that he’d been thinking about her. She wouldn’t believe him if he denied it anyway. Meet me around the northwest side, he typed out. I’m headed to the pasture there.
She didn’t confirm, because Tam was super strict about not texting while she drove. Her mother had been in a car accident about five years ago, caused by someone texting and not seeing the red light. They’d ran it and hit her mother. She’d made a complete recovery, but once Tam seized onto something, she didn’t let it go very easily.
He rode an ATV over to the northwest side of the ranch and parked beside the pasture they’d be vacating in the morning. He had Harmon ready to go, along with his crew of three cowboys. If Blaine could get Tam to come, they could move the cattle all at once, in under an hour.
Then he could take her to lunch and ask her if she wanted him to be her boyfriend.
A sigh escaped from his mouth, because the unsettling thought was just there in his mind. It had been popping up all day too, and he couldn’t help the way he felt about her.
“You don’t like her,” he muttered. “At least not for more than your best friend. You’re just worried about her.”
He was just being overprotective. Mothering, Trey called it. Blaine had taken the teasing from his next oldest brother, because he couldn’t really argue with him. Blaine was the most “mothering” of all the Chappell men. He couldn’t help it if he wanted everyone to have what they needed to be happy, and his own mother had told him never to apologize for thinking about and caring about others.
“It’s your dear heart that makes you amazing,” she’d told him once.
She didn’t think he was all that amazing now, especially after he’d ended things with Alex. His mother had loved Alex, as they both served on a fundraising committee to rescue mistreated horses. They’d gone to lunches and events together, and as far as Blaine knew, they still did. The difference was, he didn’t have to hear about them. He didn’t have to smell another man’s cologne on Alex’s skin when she returned from an event. He didn’t have to listen to her lie and then stay awake at night and wonder what to do.
Yes, he’d taken control of his life, and he was doing just fine.
“Better than fine,” he said to the cows in the distance. “I’m happy. I know who I am, and I’m happy.”
“That makes one of us.”
Blaine yelped at the addition of another voice to his solace. He leapt right, away from the sound and looked at the woman who’d arrived.