EMMETT (The Corbin Brothers Book 3) by Lexie Ray Read Free Book Online Page A

the bar to watch it happen, and I’d be unable to show my face in this town for the rest of my life. Perfect. This was about how I expected today to end.
    “I don’t really think the bar is a good place to discuss the ideas I have for horsing operations, anyway,” Peyton said.
    “You prefer the alley?”
    “I prefer that maybe tomorrow or the next day, or I guess just whenever you’re free, we should really talk about it.” She cocked her head at me and smiled. “And I mean just talk. Bounce ideas off each other. No cash required.”
    “You told me your time was money,” I said, confused enough to let my guard down a little. “Why would you do anything for free?”
    “I don’t know, Emmett Corbin.” Peyton rubbed her nose playfully against mine. “Maybe I think you’re cute.”
    And, punchline.
    “I’m leaving,” I said, turning away again.
    “I’m serious,” she said. “About the horses, I mean. And I like guys with long hair, so I guess I’m serious about you being cute.”
    “You don’t have to patronize me.”
    “I’m not.” She took me by the shoulder and pulled until I turned around, reluctant. “I have ideas — good ones. If you think you really want to make a go of it, to actually make a horsing operation that you can be proud of, if you’re really serious, then I want to talk about it.”
    “I told you. It’s only theoretical.”
    “Yeah, yeah, your ‘research.’” She didn’t curl her fingers into air quotes, but I could see them all the same in the way she pronounced it. “I told you once, and I’ll tell you again. I’m good at keeping secrets. Very good. It’s practically my job … well, part of it.”
    My face colored. “I really, really need to be going.”
    She sighed heavily, looked away briefly, then flashed her dark eyes back up at me, as if she’d come to a decision. “Rehab.”
    I blinked a couple of times. “What?”
    “You heard me. Rehab.”
    “You’re going to rehab?” I was so confused.
    “No, idiot.”
    “You’re suggesting I should go to rehab?” I frowned. “I don’t go out drinking every night.”
    “I’m saying that it should be a horse rehab facility,” she said, exasperated. “That’s the idea I have. And that’s the knowledge I bring to the table.”
    I inhaled deeply, and it was as if I was breathing for the first time this evening. That simple statement had ignited all kinds of synapses in my brain, and I was thinking about how that would work, what we would need to learn or amass or do or commandeer in order to set something like that up.
    “Does your father do something like that, or anyone else in the area?” I asked. “What kind of knowledge, exactly, would you say you have about rehabbing horses? Is it something anyone can learn to do? Can I learn how to do it? Do you think it would work? What kinds of things are we prepared to do, here?”
    Peyton held her hands up to my rapid-fire questions. “Like I said. The bar’s not the place to discuss things like this, and neither is this alley. You stick around back here long enough and people really are going to think that you took your pleasure in me.”
    “Jesus.”
    She waved my quiet exclamation away. “Oh, people talk. They’re probably already talking. If you’re seen leaving too soon, they’ll say you don’t know how to handle yourself around a woman. That you’re a minute man.”
    “If this is supposed to be making me feel any better …”
    “You’re so sensitive,” she said, smiling like this discovery pleased her. “All I’m trying to say is that we should meet and really talk about this. Are you serious about wanting to do this horsing operation the right way, in a way that would be truly effective?”
    The only words that I could even think of right now were “horse rehab.” I couldn’t quite place why it made me so excited, but it did. Probably because it was something I’d never considered before, some possibility that had been outside the