Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 128313 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128313 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Hallie Oakley, who had the most perfect seat on a horse I’d ever seen, was the angel who had found me on the worst night of the year. The angel who had sat beside me and stopped me from being so alone.
Fuck.
Chapter Five
Jasper
Tipping my head back as the cold night swirled around me, I jumped on the spot, shaking off the last of today’s hangover. Rolling my neck from side to side, I tried to iron out the cricks, then moved the crotch of my joggers away from my dick, urging it to calm the fuck down too.
Ten hours. Ten bloody torturous hours of looking at picture after picture of Hallie Oakley had made me hard as a fucking rock all day. The only reprieve I got was when we looked at color samples for the upcoming Knighton Equestrian shoot and not the models themselves. The shoot that Hallie would be at in a couple of weeks with her long raven hair and turquoise eyes, looking beautiful as fuck and wearing my designs.
Twenty-four hours ago, Hallie Oakley was blissfully absent from my life. She was a name I had swirling somewhere in the back of my mind as a rider who Leon was impressed by. It was a name I’d heard on people’s lips on the circuit as an up-and-comer, and someone many were nervous of competing against one day. Now Hallie Oakley was imprinted on my brain as the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, with an arse I desperately wanted pressed up against my dick and a face that looked like it had been painted by a Renaissance master.
If I hadn’t seen her this morning in the arena, if her striking eyes hadn’t met mine and revealed who she was, it would have only taken me a second of looking through the test shots my creative team did a few weeks back of this season’s models for me to recognize her from the night in the barn. I scanned my desk, image after scattered image of Hallie glancing up at me, her stunning, sea-blue gaze causing my hands to curl into fists. There wasn’t a bad picture amongst them. In each, she was beautiful—full lips, dimples, and radiating innocence until you saw the streak of wild that lived in her eyes.
Fuck!
She’d seen me drunk.
She’d seen me broken. No one got to see me broken. Fear washed through me. Had I said anything to her? Had I told her anything about what we were going through?
I groaned aloud and ran my hand down my face. I had to get her out of my head. Our riders signed NDAs. Even if I’d stupidly loosened my lips, she couldn’t share what she’d heard. But that didn’t make me feel any better. I didn’t like people seeing me crumble. I didn’t like looking weak.
“Fuck!” I called out into the quiet night, clenching my hand into a fist. But when I looked down at that fist, all I could see and feel was Hallie’s hand firmly gripped in mine.
I thought back to today, of how she couldn’t look me in the eye. Of how she kept her hat tipped down so I didn’t see her face when we were introduced. She couldn’t wait to get the fuck away from me. Good. She needed to. Last night shouldn’t have happened.
And why had she even been there? In the family barn? It was out of bounds for anyone but us.
I sighed, trying to clear my head. I’d thought of nothing else all day. With every picture of Hallie that crossed my desk, my dick got harder until I thought that it’d punch through the tabletop. To say she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life was an understatement. No wonder in my inebriated state I’d thought she was a fucking angel.
Unable to take any more of my own brain, I set off on one of the riding trails in a jog. The night was dark, but the lamps illuminating the trails and arenas were still lit, allowing me to see the way. I urged my body into a fast run, pushing as far as my legs could take. I might not have been competing on the circuit anymore, but I’d never let go of my fitness routines. I didn’t know why. Maybe I still needed to keep myself fit and healthy because I was so used to it. Or maybe—a truth I refused to admit—it was because I wanted to keep myself tour-fit . . . just in case.
Just in case, one day, I found it in me to ride professionally again.
I ran as fast as my legs would go, exorcising the last of the whisky from my system. When I couldn’t take any more, I drew to a stop at the fountain on the opposite side of our house and put my hands on my knees.