“Why can’t I ride today?”
“It’s been raining for days. It’s too wet.”
“It’s not raining now.” She tapped on the glass of the window. “Look—it’s dry. Dry, dry, dry.”
“What part of no do you not understand, Rotten? The N or the O?”
“You shouldn’t call me Rotten,” she said, hands on her hips in the hopes he’d notice she had them. “It’s not nice.”
“I’m not nice. And I wouldn’t call you Rotten if you weren’t so damn spoiled rotten, so whose fault is it really? And again—the answer is no—N and O, no. Even you can spell that.”
He might have been right about her being spoiled rotten, not that Tamara wanted to admit that. Most days he was the only person in the county—other than her mother—who had it in him to say no to her.
“Oh, I can spell. I can spell frontward and backward, and no spelled backward is on, as in I’m on the back of my horse and on the trail for a ride.”
“And on my last nerve,” Levi said. He took his hat off and brushed his sleeve over his forehead. She wondered sometimes if he did this sort of stuff just to torment her because he knew she had a crush on him—not that she did much to hide it. He was a first-class gold-medal tormentor, that Levi. He was twenty-eight and she was only sixteen as of midnight last night, which meant there was no way in hell Momma or Granddaddy would let her date him even if he was more handsome than the men on TV. He had curly black hair and a crinkle-eyed devilish smile he aimed at her often enough to get her hopes and her temperature up. He had a good tan, too, all the time, even in winter, making her wonder how he kept his tan so good even in February...and whether all of him was that tan. These were important questions to one Miss Tamara Belle Maddox.
And when he called her Rotten, it made her want to jump on top of him every time he did it.
“You know, today’s my birthday,” she said. “You have to be nice to me on my birthday.”
“I don’t have to do anything but die and pay taxes. Unless you’re the grim reaper or the IRS, you don’t get any of my attention today. Today is my day off. I’m only here because this is the only time the farrier could come and see to Danny Boy’s shoes.”
She stared at him, eye-to-eye. Or as close to eye-to-eye as she could get. She’d come in at five foot six this year and he had to be at least half a foot taller than her. Still, she did her level best to stare him down.
“Levi.”
“Yes, Rotten?”
“I am the grim reaper. Now let me go riding or I’m going to tell Momma I caught you engaged in unnatural acts with Miss Piggy.”
“You mean your momma’s horse or the pig on The Muppets?”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters a helluva lot to me if I’m engaging in unnatural acts with one of them. I need to know who I’m sending flowers to after.”
“You are the meanest man ever born,” she said, shaking her head. “Where’s the pitchfork?”
“You finally going to clean out Kermit’s stall without me having to tell you twenty thousand times?”
“No. I’m going to stab you with it so many times we can use you to drain noodles.”
“It’s on the wall where it always is. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to do anything that involves not talking to you anymore.”
Levi stepped away, but she stepped in front of him.
“Levi...” she said, her voice cracking in her desperation. “Please let me go riding today. It’s my birthday and I’ll clean the stalls and it’s my birthday and I’ll do whatever you tell me to do and it’s my birthday and—”
He sighed—heavily—and lowered his chin to his chest.
“What crime did I commit in a past life that brought me to this point in my current incarnation?” he said with a heavy sigh.
“You’re talking weird again,” she said.
“Karma,” he said. “I’m talking about karma. Which you would know nothing about as you are obviously so young and so dumb and so naive that the only way to explain it is that this is your very first incarnation. You are a baby soul in this universe. Only cause for your soul to be so wet behind the ears.”
“You know you love me,” she said. “You know I’m your favorite.”
“I don’t even like you, Rotten. Not one bit.”
“Oh, you like me. You like me many bits.”
“Love you or hate you, you can’t go riding. I have spoken.”
“You have to let me go. You work for us. You have to do what I say.”
He stared her down and that stare felt like a rolling pin or worse—a steamroller. She gave him a steamroller back.
“You don’t sign my paychecks, Rotten. I work for your granddaddy, not you.”
“I wish you worked for me. I’d pay you to kiss me and fire you if you didn’t.”
“I realize I’m the last man who needs to be stereotyping anyone, but apparently everything I ever heard about redheads is true.”
“Levi.”
“What?”
“They’re fighting again.”
Levi gave her a tight-lipped look like he wanted to be nice to her but it went against his grain.
“What is it this time?” Levi asked.
“I don’t know. They won’t tell me. But I know Momma wants to move out and Granddaddy doesn’t want us to.”
“Didn’t y’all use to live in your own house?”
She nodded. “We did until Daddy died.”
“You want to move out?”
“I’d rather live in here in the stable than in any house when they’re fighting like this.”
“That bad?”
“Yeah,” she said, then she grinned at him. “Plus, you’re out here. I’d trade Granddaddy and Momma both for you.”
“Good God, go. Go away. Shoo. Ride your damn horse and leave me alone. But if Kermit gets a leg stuck in a mudhole and throws you and breaks your neck, don’t come crawling to me to fix it. Your head’ll have to hang there on your shoulders all lopsided.”
“Merci, mon capitan.” She grabbed him by the arms, kissed both his cheeks and saluted him like she was a junior officer and he her French captain.
“You are out of your damn mind,” he muttered as she raced to Kermit’s stall.
“Can’t hear you,” she sang out. “I’m riding in the wind with joy at my feet and freedom in my hair.”
Levi unlocked the door where he kept their saddles. They were too expensive, she knew, too tempting for thieves. Also, Levi knew if he didn’t lock them up, she’d steal them to go riding whenever she wanted, which wasn’t what she wanted, though she would protest otherwise if asked. Half the fun of going riding was bugging Levi until he let her go.
Once she’d saddled Kermit, she led him out to the riding trail that began at the end of the paddock. She hadn’t been too keen on the idea of moving in with her granddaddy after her father died. She’d loved their old house, a rambling brick Victorian in Old Louisville, but there wasn’t much horseback riding in the city. No horses meant no stables.