Daddy Can You Teach Me Some Naughty Night Things? novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Rule One

At the breeding stand Ward sets her stance with his hands and one rule, and his body gives him away; he tells her to be back at five.

Ward came back into the barn an hour later with the teaser on a short lead.

The teaser is a small, loud, stocky pony stallion, and his only job is to find out which mares are ready.

He isn't allowed to do anything about it, which is why he looks so offended all the time.

"Lesson's not over," Ward said.

He didn't look at me.

He tied the grey mare at the breeding stand, a padded rail at the end of the aisle, and led the teaser up to her from the far side of a wooden partition.

The mare squealed and swung her hindquarters toward him.

She lifted her tail and braced her back legs.

"That's a yes," Ward said. "You'll see it in her ears, her tail, her feet. You write it in the ledger with the date and the hour."

I took the pencil from the ledger's spine and wrote it down.

My handwriting looked small under his.

He stood at my shoulder and read it.

"Good," he said. "Now you go stand where you'll stand when she's bred. Behind her, to the side, never in the kick line."

I walked up to the mare.

"Closer," Ward said. "Feet apart."

I moved my feet.

"Wider."

He came up behind me and put both hands on my hips.

Big hands, hard on the bone.

He shifted my weight an inch to the left and pressed down, setting my stance.

I felt his thumbs through my jeans.

I felt the whole front of him an inch from my back.

Then he stepped in to correct my angle, and something hard pressed against me for one second.

He went still.

I went still.

Neither of us said anything.

He stepped back so fast he almost knocked over the bucket.

"That's your stance," he said. His voice was rough. "Remember it."

I turned around.

His face was blank, and a muscle was jumping in his jaw.

His eyes dropped to the front of his jeans and came up again, and he swore under his breath.

"That's nothing," he said. "That's a body. Bodies do what they do when somebody's standing that close."

"All right," I said.

"It doesn't mean anything."

"I said all right."

I hadn't said what I was thinking, which was that I had felt exactly how much it meant.

I looked at the front of his jeans too, on purpose, and then at his face.

His ears went red.

"Louisa," he said.

"I'm only watching the mare."

He breathed out through his nose.

It was almost a laugh, and it scared him.

"Rules," he said.

He took off his hat and set it on the rail, and he looked at me straight for the first time that day.

"One. In this barn I teach and you do what I say. No arguing in front of the horses, no touching what I haven't told you to touch."

"And outside the barn?"

"Outside the barn I'm your stepfather and you're Carrie's girl and this conversation didn't happen."

"Carrie's gone, Ward."

It came out harder than I meant it.

Something moved behind his eyes.

"I know where she is," he said quietly. "I'm the one who stood at the grave."

I wanted to put my hand on his arm.

I knew what would happen if I did.

"Rule one," I said. "I heard it."

"Then say it back."

"In the barn you teach and I do what you say."

He watched my mouth while I said it, and then he looked away.

"Rule two," he said. "Not in the house. Whatever this is, it doesn't come into her house."

He had said whatever this is.

He had said it on purpose, or he hadn't been able to stop himself, and I couldn't tell which.

I picked up my pencil and wrote in the ledger, under the mare's heat: Ward said "this."

He leaned over and read it.

He took the pencil out of my hand and crossed it out, hard, until it tore the paper.

"Don't write that in here," he said.

Then, lower, "That book's going to outlast both of us."

He put the pencil back in my fingers.

His hand stayed over mine for a second, rough and warm, and I turned my palm up under it.

He pulled away.

"We'll breed her Tuesday if the swelling holds," he said. "You'll be at my side for all of it. You'll do it exactly right."

"Yes, sir."

I said it too sweetly.

His whole body went tight.

He picked up his hat, walked down the aisle, and stopped in the doorway with his back to me.

"Five tomorrow," he said. "Wear boots. Nothing loose."

"Why nothing loose?"

"Because I said."

He went out into the light.

I stood there with the ledger open to the torn page.

I flipped ahead without meaning to.

Every page for the next three years was already ruled and dated in his handwriting.

Most of the lines were empty, waiting for foals that hadn't been bred yet.

I put my hand on my hip where his had been.

The mare turned her head and watched me with one big dark eye.

"Don't look at me like that," I told her.

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