Part 3 (2/2)
Not that he'd had a choice in the matter.
”Hey.” His brother's voice floated over his shoulder, fast-tracking Hunter back to reality. Approaching from the side of the main house, Owen covered the gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce, leaning both palms against the top rail of the fence and gesturing to the field in front of them with a lift of his chin. ”I thought you had three more weeks on desk duty. What're you doing out here?”
Hunter blew out a slow exhale. Might as well come out with the truth. There wasn't much point in lying, and anyway, even if he tried, his brother would know he was chock-full of s.h.i.+t.
”Honestly? I don't know. But my eyes popped open at o'dark-thirty just like always, and staying in bed seemed kind of pointless if I wasn't gonna sleep. So here I am.”
”Ah.” The short response was pretty much par for the course from Owen. The guy was as frugal with his words as their other brother Eli was loose with 'em. ”Dad and I just finished breakfast. We'd have made room at the table if we'd known you were out here.”
”It's all good.” Hunter waved Owen off with ease he had to work for. He'd been awake with plenty of time to make the six a.m. family breakfast where the four of them planned their daily work schedules together. But talking work was kind of pointless when he couldn't do any, and as much as Hunter had wanted to keep to his routine, hearing the rest of them talk shop f.u.c.king stung. ”You said breakfast was you and Pop. What about Eli?”
Owen's irritation escaped by way of a snort. ”What do you think?”
Dammit. Eli didn't have the best relations.h.i.+p with timeliness, especially in the morning. ”I'm sure he has a good reason for running behind.”
”I'm sure he doesn't,” Owen said, letting a minute tick by before shaking his head on the subject. ”Your shoulder feeling any better?”
Ah h.e.l.l, Owen was batting a thousand with all the hard topics this morning. ”I'm doing everything I'm supposed to,” Hunter said, cherry-picking his words in order to stick with the path of least resistance.
Owen opened his mouth, presumably to throw the bulls.h.i.+t flag on Hunter's verbal evasion, but his words stopped short at the bang of the screen door and the thump of work boots on the porch boards behind them.
Owen's auto frown sent a fresh twist through Hunter's gut, but he kept his expression as laid back as possible. He was getting way too used to doing double duty as a referee between his brothers lately. Hopefully, they'd cut him a break by actually keeping things civil this time.
”Morning, Eli,” Hunter said after a beat, aiming the words at a bleary-eyed, sleep-rumpled version of his younger brother approaching from the side yard of the main house.
”Morning,” Eli replied into his coffee mug, although the drowsy murmur suggested he might as well still be hogging the covers and snoring like a lumberjack.
”Nice of you to join us.” Owen sent a pointed stare at the sky, where the brightening shades of pink and orange signaled a good six thirty a.m.
But Eli met the obvious censure in Owen's voice with a slow smile that was just as challenging. ”My pleasure.” He hung on to Owen's stare just long enough to hammer home the unspoken kiss my a.s.s in his tone, and Christ, Hunter so wasn't in the mood for this.
”Thanks for helping me out in the south barn yesterday,” he said to Eli. Maybe the mention of the two hours Eli had spent hauling around feed and equipment while Hunter had done nothing but make nice, neat check marks on their inventory lists would knock Owen's irritation down a rung.
Not today, big man. His older brother's frown refused to let up. ”You don't have to cover for him, Hunt,” Owen said. ”His actions speak for themselves.”
A muscle ticked in Eli's clean-shaven jaw as he looked at Hunter with a humorless laugh. ”And his actions are always perfect, of course. Our brother here is so flawless, his s.h.i.+t is nothing but roses and pure gold.”
”Look, you guys-” Hunter tried, but Owen lifted one palm with a noise of disgust.
”No, you know what? Let's not sugarcoat this. He's always thought working the farm is a joke, rolling out of bed whenever the spirit moves him, doing the bare minimum to sc.r.a.pe by while you and Dad and I bust our a.s.ses day in and day out. I get that you're trying to be the peacekeeper, Hunter.” Owen took a step back on the gra.s.s, his frame rigid, limbs locked beneath the denim and cotton covering them. ”But I'm just about out of slack for someone who doesn't give a rat's a.s.s about anything other than himself. If you need me, I'll be in the cornfields with Dad. Working.”
Eli waited until the sound of Owen's footsteps turned into the soft rumble of his truck engine, watching the taillights fade up the dirt path before lifting his shoulders in a shrug. ”Looks like he's got me all figured out.”
Whether it was his lack of sleep or his br.i.m.m.i.n.g frustration with the matter at hand, Hunter couldn't be sure, but something made an uncharacteristic thread of anger tug at his belly. ”You've gotta admit, you didn't really help matters by oversleeping.”
”Guess not,” Eli said after a heartbeat's worth of a pause. ”Anyhow, I'd better find something to do before Mr. Stick Up His a.s.s strokes out over tomorrow's Watermelon Festival.” He turned toward the barn adjacent to the main house, making it exactly two paces before Hunter's voice brought his movements to a halt.
”Whoa.” Hunter's gaze raked over the cl.u.s.ter of angry red scratches showing on Eli's triceps from beneath the sleeve of his T-s.h.i.+rt. ”What'd you do to your arm?”
Eli angled his chin to examine the injury in question with the same expression he'd use to watch soybeans germinate. ”Ah, it's nothin' but a thing. I was working on the fence out by the perimeter of the east field after I helped you in the barn yesterday, and I got a little personal with the rough edge of one of the wood posts.”
Wait . . . ”You repaired the fence out in the east field after you hauled all that stuff around the barn yesterday afternoon?” Hunter asked, his thoughts clicking together like magnets. Mending fences was the most boring grunt work the farm could offer up. The one in question had been halfway to falling down for weeks, and that was before a nasty storm a few days ago had knocked down a handful of sections completely.
”Dad mentioned the thing was in bad shape, and he had both hands full with prep for the festival, so yeah,” Eli said.
”How many of the busted sections did you get to?”
One shoulder rose halfway. ”All of 'em.”
What the h.e.l.l. ”Jesus, Eli. That must've taken you 'til sundown.”
Eli's truck had disappeared shortly after they'd finished in the barn. Hunter-like Owen, and even their father-had just a.s.sumed he'd called it quits for the day.
”A little before,” Eli said. ”But, really, the scratches are no big deal.”
Hunter shook his head. ”Forget the scratches. Why didn't you say something to Owen just now?” After hauling equipment all over the barn and repairing the fence? Even Paul flipping Bunyan would need a little extra shut-eye.
”Because it doesn't matter. Owen's gonna believe what he wants. He always has.” Eli's words arrived with nothing more than honesty, hanging between them in the morning air for just a second before he boomeranged the subject. ”Meant to ask-how's your shoulder feeling?”
”It's okay.” Hunter was halfway through a shrug to match Eli's before he realized the movement fell into the Very Bad Plan category. Pain streaked across the back of his upper arm and neck, digging in hard enough to make his wince inevitable.
”Yeah, you look like it.” Mischief lit bright blue in his brother's eyes, spreading to a smirk Hunter knew all too well. ”Hey, speaking of which, I didn't know you were doing your physical therapy with Emerson Montgomery.”
”Ummm.” Hunter drew out the word in a caution-laden question. ”Who told you that?”
”Have you looked at Facebook at all this week?” Eli held up his iPhone, the backlit screen glinting in the morning sunlight. ”Amber Ca.s.sidy apparently ran into Emerson at the Corner Market a few days ago and posted all about it. I overheard a couple of the guys at the farming co-op talking about her when I ran over there yesterday for some fencing supplies, saying how she's working for Doc Sanders now. With her area of expertise, it wasn't tough to figure that one and one probably equaled the two of you doin' PT together.”
Great. No wonder Amber and Mollie Mae had been looking at him sideways when he'd walked past the Hair Lair to get to his truck after his therapy session yesterday. Between those two and Billy Masterson down at the co-op, more than half the town probably knew Emerson was back in Millhaven by now. Along with the fact that Hunter had seen her. ”Emerson's the only physical therapist in Millhaven, so yeah. I'm doing my PT with her. But it's really not a big deal.”
His brother shot him a look as if he'd just asked why someone would choose to breathe air instead of apple b.u.t.ter. ”Is your a.s.s on crooked? According to Amber, the woman came back from Las Vegas clear out of the blue, and word around the campfire at the co-op is that she's hotter than an August afternoon. I'm half tempted to bust something in my shoulder just to get her hands on me.”
Something unexpected and sharp turned over in Hunter's chest, sizzling a straight path out of his mouth. ”Keep talking,” Hunter said past clenched teeth, ”and I'll be happy to help you out with getting banged up.”
Eli's dark-gold brows winged upward, and s.h.i.+t. s.h.i.+t. If Hunter couldn't keep his own cool around his brothers, then they sure as h.e.l.l weren't going to keep theirs. ”Sorry,” he mumbled. ”Guess being on restricted duty is starting to get to me.”
”No worries, brother. I was just being flip. I didn't mean to overstep my bounds.” Eli readjusted the brim of his red baseball hat, but not before Hunter caught the genuine remorse in his younger brother's normally c.o.c.ky expression.
He forced his good shoulder into a shrug, although his usually easy-to-find nonchalance took effort. But the truth was, he had no claim to Emerson, no matter how in love with her he'd once been or how hard her leaving had smarted. h.e.l.l, for all intents and purposes, he didn't even know her now. ”That's past tense by over a decade. Don't worry about it.”
But Eli's half-c.o.c.ked grin didn't make a repeat appearance. ”I know you really used to dig her. You cool with her being back?”
”Yep.” Okay, so ”cool” might not be the first word Hunter would use to describe the way he felt about Emerson's return to Millhaven, but for Chrissake, all this high-intensity stuff was making him twitch. Emerson was back in town. Hunter needed her in order to rehab his shoulder. It was as simple as that.
Fortunately, Eli was about as comfy talking Deep Thoughts as Hunter was, and he went for a full-throttle subject swap. ”If anyone can get you patched up quick, I bet Emerson can,” he said hopefully. ”She always was really smart. Except for dating What's His Name, that running back.”
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