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  “He’s coming by later, isn’t he?” James said, as if he weren’t watching the clock. “You should ask him.”

  Tilly raised her eyebrows. “Can’t I rely on my only brother to put in a word about my difficulties in this time of need?”

  “Nope. I’ve got a strictly professional relationship with Archie,” he said. “Sorry.”

  Tilly’s laugh echoed in the kitchen.

  ARCHIE ARRIVED at the farm a little after noon to speak with Tilly and Sanjit about training Illustrious Ruckus and their other horses.

  By one o’clock, he and James both had hay in places James would rather not discuss.

  “I thought we were keeping things ‘professional,’” James said, adjusting Archie’s crooked glasses. “I’m getting distinctly mixed messages here.”

  Archie rolled his eyes. “Smug isn’t a good look on you.”

  That was a blatant lie. Smug was an excellent look on James. He said as much, and Archie shook his head, leveling a mock glare at him.

  “You’re lucky you’re as cute as you think you are, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “Then I think we’re both lucky, don’t you?” James said, ducking when Archie made a playful swipe at his head. The swipe turned into a grab for James’s lapel as Archie reeled him in for a kiss, starting sweet and quick, turning hot as their mouths slid together and Archie pressed himself against James in a hard line.

  James could feel his dick making a valiant effort to stir despite its recent efforts as Archie ground his hips against James’s in small motions, before Archie broke away with a gasp. He pushed on James’s shoulders, and James took a step back, raising his eyebrows.

  “What?”

  Archie ran his hand through his hair. “Professional, James.”

  Crap, that was right. There wasn’t much professionalism in a literal roll in the hay. Unless you were a horse, ha. Was it too early to use that excuse?

  It was too early. James stopped licking the remnants of Archie’s taste from his lips and took another step away from temptation. He gestured vaguely toward the stables they’d just left.

  “So I should go and check the feed. Or something,” he said. He’d intended to do so earlier, but two steps into the stables, Archie had shoved him down onto the bales and proceeded to conduct an extremely in-depth interview with James’s body.

  “Good plan.” Archie smoothed down his shirt and checked his cuffs. “You do that, and I’ll go speak with your sister. The photographer is due to arrive at two. Do you think you could have Illustrious Ruckus ready for then?”

  Shit. James pulled his phone from his pocket and checked the calendar, giving himself enough time to create a reason why he and Ruckus couldn’t be seen in the same place. He pocketed his phone and nodded at Archie, trying for a considering kind of manner. Like he needed to think about it.

  “Two sounds fine, I’ll go and get Ruckus from the fields. I’ve got appointments in town this afternoon, but you don’t need me here for the photos right? That’s just Tilly and Ruckus. And Sanjit, I suppose.”

  Of course Sanjit got to be in the article.

  Archie nodded, but reluctantly, like that hadn’t been the answer he wanted. “That should be fine. I’m going to the city straight after, though. My editor wants an update. This series of profiles is her pet project.”

  “Will you be coming back to the farm?” James asked, resisting the petulant urge to dig the toe of his boot into the dirt. It wasn’t as if he wouldn’t see Archie again—Illustrious Ruckus would see him in less than an hour—but James had always been one to fall hard and fast. The habit had got him into trouble more than once, and it seemed like he wouldn’t grow out of it any time soon.

  “Not sure,” Archie said. He darted in and pulled something from James’s hair—hay, this time—grinning as he took a couple of steps backward. “I’ll keep this as a souvenir, in case I don’t see you later. I’ve got your number in case I need to, you know, fact check.”

  That was right, Archie had James’s number. Because Archie had thumbs, and could use his thumbs and his phone to contact human people. The future was great.

  Waving Archie off, James whistled as he returned to the stables. He checked the feed and grabbed the hayfork from its place in the corner, beginning to clean the mess he and Archie had enthusiastically made.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Kirby.”

  James dropped the fork with a clatter and clasped his hands to his chest. “Jesus shit, Sanjit, you fucking creeper! What the fuck are you doing?” The bastard. James’s heart was galloping to escape his rib cage. “Were you waiting there purely to make me piss myself?”

  “You’re more dramatic than Jessica,” Sanjit said, laughing. He picked up the hay fork, passing it back to James. James took it with a glare. “She’s four. What’s your excuse? Stop pouting.”

  Anger provided good fuel for shoveling hay. The scrape of tines against the ground made James grit his teeth as he tossed forkful after forkful toward the corner. Sweat prickled between his shoulder blades, and an ache started to niggle in his lower back. He could feel Sanjit watching him.

  “Did you want something?” James asked, panting slightly.

  Sanjit’s boots appeared in the corner of James’s vision, and a heavy hand touched his shoulder. “Just checking in on you, Jamie. You’ve been taking this retirement business hard, both of you have, but now you with this journalist… I worry about you, kid. We both do. After all that business with Simon, you know?”

  James shrugged off Sanjit’s hand, but stopped shoveling hay. He scrubbed his hair back and sighed, stretching out his back as he exhaled.

  “I don’t want to talk about that. Sorry, I know I’ve been a bit of a mess. It’s all—I’m moving out tomorrow, though, so that’s something,” his mouth said without consulting his brain.

  “Tomorrow? Are you sure?”

  James nodded. He smiled, even. Shit. “I’m sure. Tomorrow.”

  Sanjit clapped James on the back heavy enough that James stumbled before recovering to elbow Sanjit in the side. Built like a brick outhouse, Sanjit didn’t flinch from James’s pointy elbow but only grinned more broadly.

  “I’ll go and tell Tilly, this is great news! We can finally redirect those flower deliveries,” Sanjit said, heading toward the house. “Don’t forget to tell Ruckus to look nice for his photos!”

  The hay fork clattered when James tossed it aside. His stupid bloody mouth. Why had he told Sanjit he was ready to move? Now he had to pack his stuff and take it back to his cold flat, where there was no room for any four-legged creatures, and work out what the hell he was going to do next.

  The future sucked.

  ILLUSTRIOUS RUCKUS and his rider posed for the photographer from Eventing Quarterly, Ruckus showing off his flatwork and Tilly doing her best to avoid rolling her eyes when Ruckus chewed on Sanjit’s hair for the third time.

  “He’s playful,” she said.

  “He’s a pain in the arse,” Sanjit muttered.

  Ruckus didn’t say anything. Because he was a horse.

  JAMES KICKED his unopened mail aside when he got to his second-floor flat in the market town of Alnwick, a few miles from the farm. The flat had been their parents’ holiday let before they passed, and James had taken the flat while Tilly took the farm with her growing family in mind. He’d thought about converting one of the bedrooms into an office for when he finally did his degree, but so far the closest he’d gotten to an office was flicking through the relevant section in the IKEA catalog.

  There would be more than enough time for home improvements without a training schedule ruling his days. He’d still be at the farm more often than not, helping Tilly and Sanjit with the horses until Tilly decided what she wanted to do—breeding, selling, training for other competitors—but it wouldn’t be as all-consuming an activity as in the past. He had a chance to discover what he did when he wasn’t literally living and breathing horses.

  For the first time since wa
king with hooves where feet should be, James was master of his own destiny.

  As aforementioned master of his own destiny, James decided on ice cream for dinner. Screw the establishment. Plus, he hadn’t gone grocery shopping since before Gatcombe, and there was nothing else to eat.

  Half a bowl in, he admitted to himself that sometimes the establishment had a point; his brain was frozen, and he’d rediscovered a cavity he’d been ignoring, which was far from a perfect beginning to his new life as a competent adult human.

  As James prodded his tooth with his tongue, his phone rang. The number wasn’t in his contacts, but that didn’t mean anything; his number was on the Kirby House Farm website, listed alongside the farm phone, though most of their business came by e-mail these days.

  “Yeah?” he said, having been homeschooled to be polite and well-mannered with exceptional business acumen. “This is James Kirby.”

  “Jim,” said the voice James had last heard screaming obscenities at him at last year’s Burghley Horse Trials. “Long time. How’s tricks?”

  The cavity wasn’t the only thing James had been ignoring. Fuck.

  “I hope you’ve been getting my messages, Jim. We need to meet and—”

  James hung up, switched off his phone, and went for a second bowl of ice cream.

  “NO, TILS, you’re not listening. He called me,” James said, gesturing at his reflection in the kitchen window. His kitchen was pokier than the one at the farm, and the window looked onto Alnwick High Street instead of acres of well-loved land, but the people-watching paid dividends.

  “How the fudging heck did he get your number? I thought you’d blocked him?”

  Tilly had been in the yard with Jessica when James called after spending a restless night stewing on Simon motherfucking McAllister’s latest unwelcome reminder of his existence. Her vocabulary of child-acceptable curses was impressive.

  “My number’s on the fudging website. He called me ‘Jim’ as well. You know I hate that. Should I be worried? I mean, he’s not a bad guy.” Sure, he was possibly trying to expose James’s four-legged secret, but still.

  “James.” Tilly’s voice was low and stern. She sounded like their mother. “He tried to dope you.”

  And there was that, of course.

  A woman outside, perfectly poised despite her burdens, carried four coffees and a small dog. James bet she had her life together. He swirled his own coffee, cold in its takeaway cup. Four coffees seemed like a lot of responsibility.

  “He didn’t try to dope me. He tried to dope Ruckus, and in fairness, he didn’t know we were the same person. Horse. Whatever. No wonder he was angry when I finished with him. How the hell could I explain that?”

  Tilly’s sigh made the speaker fuzz. “On the one hand, yes, I see your point now as I saw it then. On the other hand, when you finished with him, he smashed your fu—fudging window, you monkeyfudging moron!” James heard Jessica giggle in the background, her high voice repeating, “Monkeyfudging!”

  The reminder made James wince. Simon had smashed the passenger-side window of James’s car, using his phone as a hammer, after James calmly explained their relationship didn’t seem to be working. They hadn’t spoken to each other in nearly a year.

  The breakup had been a shadow in the corner of their lives for a while. Simon wanted to breed horses to sell for enormous profit abroad and was particularly keen to send Illustrious Ruckus to stud, the thought of which repelled James on so many levels it was a fight to stop himself throwing up whenever Simon mentioned it. James, on the other hand, was content to work on his family farm and maybe, eventually, apply to university. They’d exchanged heated words once or twice, about James’s lack of ambition and Simon’s cutthroat attitude, and it was obvious there were no legs to the relationship.

  James could have had better timing, with Simon glum due to missing out on a prize at Burghley, but James’d been riding a wrathful high after narrowly evading being doped by his own fucking boyfriend. He’d said quiet words about wanting different things, how he’d enjoyed what they had and wished Simon well both personally and professionally, and then he’d ducked out of the way to avoid getting safety glass in his eyes.

  Sanjit had dragged Simon halfway across the car park and returned with grazed knuckles and a somber expression that Tilly kissed from his face with great tenderness. Glass stuck in James’s boots for weeks until he cleaned out the car and threw away Simon’s phone in a satisfying act of petty revenge.

  Which explained why Simon’s number wasn’t blocked. “I just realized, he obviously got a new phone when I binned his old one. Probably changed his number to dodge somebody, you know what he’s like. And it’s not like my number is hard to find.”

  He couldn’t see her, but James could hear Tilly rolling her eyes at him over the phone. “Make sure you block that one, then, okay? And look after yourself. Speak soon, got to go, Jessica’s trying to get Gem to jump.”

  James laughed at his silent phone and set it to recharge, checking the street as he did so. The woman with the coffee and the dog had gone, no doubt off to do something productive with her day.

  Irritated at himself, James tossed his cold coffee down the sink and the cup in the recycling crate. He could be productive. Just watch.

  THREE HOURS later James had cleaned his flat, gone grocery shopping, started laundry that had been moldering since July, bought a second takeaway coffee from the place down the street, and begun organizing his small book collection by title and genre. Sure, he had no idea what he was doing with his life, but at least no one could tell by looking at his flat.

  He lay on the couch, contemplating a third coffee—a poor idea—when Archie called. James fumbled his handset, answering the phone with a curse.

  “Has the magic gone already? That’s disappointing.” Archie’s voice was dry.

  James felt himself blushing and was grateful Archie couldn’t see. “Sorry. Almost dropped the phone.”

  “That would be inconvenient, as I wouldn’t be able to ask you out again. My last appointment at the farm is tomorrow, so we can pick things up officially. If you want. I know I’ve been a pain.”

  Because he was worse than an actual little girl—he knew Jessica, and she would never do anything so embarrassing—James covered his face with his hand in reaction to Archie’s words. He was glad he’d moved back into his flat; Tilly would never let him live it down if she saw him act like such a tit.

  “I want,” James said. He dug his toes into the seam between the couch cushion and the armrest, hand still pressed over his face. He could feel the shape of his grin under his palm. “Where did you want to go? When were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking Newcastle, if you wanted to come down? I know it’s a fair drive, but there’s this place on the quayside I think you’ll like.” It was hard to tell, but James thought Archie sounded nervous, which was adorable. “Tomorrow night, maybe? If you’re not busy.”

  James looked around his front room and the pile of as-yet uncataloged books. “Yeah, I think I can find some room in my schedule.”

  They arranged a time to meet the following night and hung up after awkward good-byes that made James press his face into the couch cushion to cool off. He lay there for a few minutes, congratulating himself on his foresight in doing laundry, before rolling off the couch and jumping to his feet with a grin that was probably manic.

  He headed to his proto-office, inspired.

  JAMES SPENT the next morning at the farm making preparations for winter, clearing the trail routes, and heaving sacks of hay and feed until his spine was in knots. The day had brought another bouquet from Simon, who was certainly investing a small fortune in fragrant harassment, and James had returned the latest offering to the earth by stomping it under his boots by the mouth of the trails.

  In the initial moment of recognizing that black card, James’s gut had twisted with nerves. The message demanded a meeting in more sloppy handwriting than Simon’s usual, and James had considere
d agreeing; what harm would it do to find out for certain what Simon was after? But then Jessica had danced through the kitchen on her way out with Sanjit, and James’s nerves had rolled over into hard edges. How dare that creep send his insinuations—true or not—into Tilly’s home? Whatever he was planning would affect her and her family just as much as James, if not more. Simon McAllister was a prick.

  Stymied on his course of action, since James could see no way to confront Simon without putting himself in a position to do something stupid, James channeled his anger into the farm. The sky was gray and overcast, clouds thick with the promise of rain, and he kept one eye on the weather as he went about his chores. He avoided the main house where Archie was speaking to Tilly, not wanting to jeopardize his chances by being “unprofessional” prior to their date that evening. Their track record wasn’t the greatest, and there was an awful lot of hay available to roll around in.

  James had made decent inroads on winter prep when the first drops of rain started to spit. He dashed across the yard to take shelter in the stables, watching as the rain began to come down heavy. Gem, the good-natured mare who was teaching Jessica to do more than just stay on, nickered and nuzzled against James’s face when he leaned against her stall. Rain didn’t bother her. She didn’t care about colds or squelchy shoes.

  Rain wouldn’t bother Illustrious Ruckus.

  The idea crept across James’s mind; shake off his skin and stretch out into something roomier for an hour or two. Shake off his nervous energy, his anger. A shift would be productive, even, since he could check the trails were clear for four legs and not only two.

  His rational, grown-up mind pointed out the risk in changing shapes while Archie was at the farm. The part of James forever five years old, trying to tackle jumps bigger than either of his bodies, said there was no reason for Archie to come to the stables; if James hid his clothes in the corner of an empty stall, no one would ever know.