The Grump Whisperer (Morningsong Farm #1)

One

B ronwen stood with a wheelbarrow handle in each hand, staring at the overflowing manure pile, and it occurred to her that the universe’s idea of a metaphor was a little too on the nose.

Somewhere back inside the barn a horse whinnied, impatient for breakfast. Bronwen raised her bare hands to her lips and blew hot breath on them. She’d optimistically dressed for spring that morning, and yet again, April in Massachusetts was being a real bitch about things. The water buckets were frozen, the dirt road down to the turnout fields was slippery with frost, and her gloves were somewhere in the tack room instead of on her hands where she needed them.

With a sigh, she picked up the wheelbarrow and began shoving it to the top of the pile. Manure was already starting the inevitable creep toward the barn—if she wanted to have any hope of keeping it contained until it could be hauled away, she needed to dump as far back as possible.

“Nothing like starting the day by climbing an actual pile of shit!” a voice behind her called.

Despite her frozen hands and gloomy mood, Bronwen smiled. “Living the glamorous life!” she called back over her shoulder.

She finally made it far enough up the pile to safely dump the manure where it wouldn’t simply spill back down and onto the path behind the barn. Slowly, she maneuvered her way back down and set the wheelbarrow on the ground with a sigh.

“This is getting out of control,” she groused. “It’s not like I can tell the horses to stop pooping until the manure is removed.”

Her friend Olivia looked dubiously at the mountain of shit threatening to overtake its designated space, dark braid over one shoulder topped with a thick, fleece-lined knit hat. “Don’t the manure guys usually come every couple of weeks?”

“They should ,” Bronwen replied. “But I wouldn’t come, either, if I hadn’t been paid.”

Olivia frowned. “They haven’t been paid? Ruth was always so on top of that stuff. She’d never let this happen.”

Bronwen sighed again, irritation rising for the hundredth time that day. And it was only 7:00 a.m. “Yeah, well, Ruth sold the farm in a big rush and is currently across the country visiting her sister, and she never gave me access to the farm account to pay bills—you know how she is.”

Olivia nodded. “Too used to doing everything herself.”

“Yeah. At least she set up direct deposit so Abigail and I can still get paid as long as I keep depositing the boarders’ checks.” If Ruth hadn’t done that much, Bronwen and the barn assistant would have truly been up a shit mountain.

“She said just to coordinate with the new owner, but the phone number she gave me is out of service,” Bronwen continued. “And now I can’t get any of the bills paid, we’re low on feed and hay, and Martha complained yesterday about the footing in the outdoor ring.”

“Martha complains about everything,” Olivia said with a grimace.

“Yeah, but this time she’s right. I can drag it with the tractor, but it really needs to be replaced. It’s just dirt and clay packed solid. And I can’t authorize that big a project—I’m the barn manager, not the owner. Never mind that I can’t pay for it.”

Olivia glanced toward the old farmhouse, sitting forlornly at the top of a small hill. “I’m guessing the new owner isn’t here yet?”

Bronwen grimaced. “No. I keep trying that phone number, and I’ve been up to the house almost every day, but nothing. Totally empty. Ruth moved out two months ago!”

Bronwen began pushing the wheelbarrow back to the barn, and Olivia fell into step beside her. She took a few deep breaths, taking in the earthy scent of the fields of damp grass, their frosty blanket melting in the morning sun. The trees surrounding the farm were still bare, the cold spring holding them to their winter barrenness. Blue-gray sky stretched endlessly overhead, vast and silent without the birds who in a few weeks would turn morning from quiet melancholy to a cacophony of celebration every time the sun rose.

Bronwen couldn’t wait. She loved snow, loved the coziness of the barn with its dozen furry and warm residents in the winter. But she didn’t love breaking ice in the water buckets. Or dragging herself out of bed in her sparely heated apartment over the barn, only to face a long day of chores with hardly a minute to warm up in the tack room that doubled as a lounge for the people who boarded their horses at Morning Song Farm.

She was ready for spring, but spring was in no hurry this year.

“The new owners have to show up, right? Or at least contact you?” Olivia’s dark eyebrows knit together in concern. “What happens if they just...don’t?”

Bronwen thought about the horses she spent every day caring for, and their owners, who had become almost like family—well, some of them, anyway. She thought about her little apartment, snug and simple and safe. She thought about the fact that she got to see her best friend, Olivia, every day. Her own horse, Charlie, was happy and settled here. And she loved most of all that every day followed the same dependable routine of feeding, mucking stalls and tending to the endless issues the enormous but fragile animals loved to toss her way.

Managing a boarding barn might not be the most fulfilling job she could imagine, but it was hers . Morning Song Farm had been her refuge when she needed one. When she’d been lost and untethered from the life she’d thought she’d wanted, the life she’d thought she could have. When everything changed, Morning Song had been a soft, sure landing. The farm gave her a life she could feel good about, even if it wasn’t what she’d wanted before. She’d built something here, out of all the turmoil and breaking apart of her world. She made connections, friends, earned their trust and gave them hers. She knew every quirk and need of every horse, and those of most of their owners. They depended on her just as surely as she depended on them, not that anyone but Olivia knew why she needed the stability and comfort of the farm’s unvarying rhythms so much.

The people and horses here were her responsibility, whether she owned the farm or not.

“They have to,” she replied grimly as they entered the barn. A chorus of whinnies and snorts greeted their arrival. She smiled despite herself, once again shoving down the panic that rose up every time she thought about the farm’s invisible new owners. “We’re popular this morning.”

Olivia laughed. “Only because we have opposable thumbs and access to the feed room.”

“Want to help?”

“Always,” Olivia replied with relish. She’d grown up obsessed with horses, but didn’t start riding until college, where she was assigned a freshman-year roommate in Bronwen, who’d promptly dragged her down to the school’s barn for a lesson. Olivia stopped riding for a while after college, but had fairly recently started up again, and currently rode Bronwen’s horse, Charlie.

Which was perfect, because Bronwen certainly wasn’t getting on him again.

As they passed the tack room, the sound of voices caught her attention and she stuck her head inside the door.

“Bronwen!” Brian greeted her with his usual cheerful grin. He was seated on the ancient couch in the corner of the large room, a mug of coffee in his hand and curly dark hair flopped over his forehead. “Another lovely morning.”

Olivia rolled her eyes and edged past Bronwen to head toward the coffee maker. “Yeah, if you want to live in Antarctica,” she said. “Where is spring this year?”

“We’re in for a hot summer—that’s what this cold spell tells me.” Martha sat on a folding chair with her own mug. She was an older woman, short and stout. An opinionated person but a bit of a timid rider. Her horse, Percy, was a mischievous gelding who loved to stop dead while someone was riding him, refusing to take another step until he was steered in a tight circle and sent back the way he came. Martha believed he could do no wrong.

“I don’t think that’s scientifically accurate,” Olivia murmured.

“Where’s Scott?” Bronwen asked Brian. The two men had been married last year inside the barn surrounded by all the other boarders, family and friends. The event had gone off mostly without a hitch, except for Brian’s horse, the Mountain, or Mount, slobbering all over him right before the vows.

“A little under the weather,” Brian said. A sheepish look crossed his face. “And also, you know Sugar doesn’t like the indoor ring, but...”

Bronwen groaned inwardly. Sugar was an ex-racehorse whose legs needed a lot of extra care—and decent footing. She much preferred—and therefore behaved better—being ridden in the outdoor riding ring, but she’d come up lame afterward at least twice due to the hard ground. They were lucky to have an indoor ring with good footing, but that didn’t do Scott any good if his horse misbehaved the whole time she was in there. Scott wasn’t a competitive rider; he just wanted to have fun. And for him and Sugar, that meant having a usable outdoor ring.

If the boarders couldn’t ride their horses, the farm was going to be in trouble.

“I’ll try to call the new owners again,” she said, even though she knew she’d just get the out-of-service message. “Maybe I can get in touch with Ruth so she can give me the name of the real estate agent for the buyers, and I can contact them that way.”

“Or...” Martha began with a knowing glint in her eye. “You could just go up to the house and talk to the owner there.”

Everyone in the room turned to stare at Martha, who sat quietly on her chair with a smug smile, sipping her coffee. No one loved gossip—especially gossip no one else knew yet—more than Martha.

“But the house is empty!” Olivia exclaimed. “Bronwen’s been going up every day to check. Right?” She turned to Bronwen.

“Well...” she replied slowly. “Yesterday, the day sort of got away from me. The vet was here, and then Percy chewed up his halter—sorry, Martha, I found a spare—and Olivia wanted me to help her with Charlie...”

“Oh sure, blame it on me,” Olivia muttered.

Bronwen winced. She’d been trying to give Olivia lessons on Charlie, who wasn’t a beginner’s horse by any stretch of the imagination. Olivia had been taking weekly lessons at a nearby barn before accepting Bronwen’s not entirely altruistic offer of a free horse to ride. But the match wasn’t exactly working. While she could feel in her body exactly what Olivia needed to do, she hadn’t found a way to articulate it.

“I just—I’ve been up there almost every day.” Bronwen stared at Martha. “Are you saying someone moved in?”

It must have been in the middle of the night, and quiet, since Bronwen lived on the property. She would have noticed a moving truck, or any sort of action up by the house during the day.

“I saw him,” Martha replied with satisfaction. “When I drove in yesterday, he was on the front porch—went inside as soon as he caught sight of my car. Tall. Young. Did I mention tall?”

“Hmm... Was he good-looking?” Brian asked with interest.

“You’re married!” Martha reached over and swatted his knee.

“Not for me —Bronwen!”

“What? No. Definitely not for me.” Bronwen glared at Brian. “I’m not in the market for a...whatever.”

“Is that what we call them these days?” Olivia smirked at her.

“You’ve worked here for four years and there’s been no sign of...whatever,” Martha remarked.

Bronwen shook her head. “I don’t need the new owner to be good-looking. Or tall, or young. I just need them to be here , and ready to throw money at this place. The outdoor ring, manure removal, hay...” She broke off.

She generally tried not to unload her worries about the barn onto the boarders. It wasn’t their problem, and she also didn’t want anyone getting cold feet and moving their horse to another barn. They’d already lost two boarders recently, and a small farm full of recreational riders like this one always needed as much income as possible.

“Well, you can go talk to whoever he is and get all of those fixed up,” Martha said, as if everything was settled.

Which...maybe it was. But if the new owner was on-site, why hadn’t they stopped down to the barn? Didn’t they want to know their own boarders? The horses? Ruth had said that the new owner hadn’t mentioned any plans to turn the barn into a private operation. That as far as she knew, it would continue as a boarding facility. Which meant that the owner should want to familiarize themselves with the running of the farm.

It was absurd, really, that they hadn’t at least introduced themselves to her, the barn manager. It was mismanagement, pure and simple. They’d knowingly taken on responsibility for the farm and the horses, and they had an obligation to make sure that everything was running properly. Infuriating.

“Uh, Bronwen, are you okay?” Olivia asked, nudging her with her elbow.

Bronwen realized she was scowling into space. She glanced around at the others in the room, who were all looking at her expectantly.

Okay. If the owner wasn’t going to come down to the barn, she’d have to take matters into her own hands.

“Let’s feed the horses,” she said, “and muck out. Then...I’m going up to the house.”

Bronwen wasn’t above a little light breaking and entering.

After feeding the horses, turning them out into the chilly fields snug in their blankets and mucking out the stalls with the help of Olivia, Martha and Brian—who were as eager as she was for her to discover more about the farm’s new owner—she marched up to the old house.

The building was a mishmash of styles, formal and elegant in the front with neat, symmetrical windows and a large wood door in the middle. Bronwen guessed that this section dated from the early nineteenth century, with a later Victorian section tacked onto the back, complete with a curved two-story bay window and an unbalanced roofline that made the addition look a little tipsy. At the far end of the house was a relatively modern greenhouse that Ruth had always kept stuffed full of plants and flowers. It looked empty now.

Bronwen traced the same path along the side of the house as she had so many times before, when she’d headed to Ruth’s for dinner or tea, or just to put her feet up on one of the comfy footstools after a long day. Ruth would bring her a glass of sherry and they’d discuss horses until the sun had long set, and Bronwen would make her way back to her apartment in the dark, happy and tired.

Her heart gave a little twist as she thought not for the first time how much she’d miss those nights. How much she already missed Ruth. The older woman had been a bit eccentric, but there was nothing she cared more about than horses, and the farm had always run smoothly under her ownership.

She walked past the darkened windows. Ruth’s beloved roses along the side wall were still brown and frozen, leaves from the past fall banked against the side of the house like an extra layer of protection for whoever was inside. Everything was cold and the unknown hung in the air like thick fog. Bronwen shivered in her heavy coat as she stepped up the creaking front stairs to the door.

Knocking on the door, she remembered all the times she’d just pushed her way inside when she visited Ruth, whose radio was always too loud for her to hear the door. It felt wrong, somehow, too formal, to stand and wait for someone to answer.

And...no one was answering.

She knocked again and looked around. A fancy SUV sat in the driveway on the opposite side of the house from the barn. No wonder she hadn’t noticed it. She craned her neck to try to peer into one of the first-floor windows, and was rewarded with the barest hint of light from a lamp in one of the rooms. Someone was inside.

more knock.

Then she tried the doorknob, just to see. Unlocked.

She rubbed her bare hands together, making a mental note to look for her gloves when she got back to the barn. It really had no business being so cold in early April, for God’s sake. Especially not when she was standing still, frustrated, in the chilly shade of the house.

Bronwen knocked one more time, and then that frustration got the best of her and she shoved the door open.

“Hello?” she called, trying to sound friendly and not at all like a burglar.

She hoped against hope that the new owner would be a friendly old lady like Ruth. Except Martha had said “he.” And young. And...tall. Maybe he was just overwhelmed with the move. Maybe he was shy, and needed an invitation to visit the barn. Maybe he needed help, a friend...

She crept down the hallway and poked her head through the sitting room doorway.

“Who the hell are you?”

The man’s deep voice startled her, rough and rusty and loud in the silence of the old house. Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t this.

The big great room where she’d spent so many hours in front of the fireplace chatting with Ruth was nearly empty, although the fire was lit. The space spanned the width of the house, windows on the two short sides and doors to various other rooms opening along the long sides. Only now, all of the doors were closed except for the one where she stood. No radio cut through the silence, no scent of Ruth’s cooking wafted through from the kitchen. What was once cozy and comfortably worn and alive was now...sad and unfamiliar. Ruth’s old couch sat directly in front of the flames, while an old armchair that Bronwen recognized as one that used to sit in a corner of the kitchen was placed perpendicular to the fireplace. small table lamp perched forlornly on the floor, trying its best to light the large room.

And in the armchair, glass of something that looked alcoholic in hand, sat the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. It took her a moment to realize just how beautiful—a moment she spent blinking at him in shock while he scowled at her—because of the darkness inside the house, and also because he was a mess.

Untidy scruff tried and failed to cover over a strong jaw, while thick golden-blond hair waved wildly as if it hadn’t seen a brush or a good cut in a long time. His high forehead and long, elegant nose gave him an aristocratic air, which, combined with his overall unkempt appearance, made her think a little wildly of a prince who’d run off to become a pirate. A raggedy sweater and jeans did nothing to hide the height and lean strength of the man before her. He had to top her own not-insignificant height by half a foot, though it was hard to tell with him slouched in Ruth’s chair.

A man who did not look pleased that she’d just wandered into his house. Assuming it was his house. She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Who are you ?” she countered, hoping that offense really was the best defense. “Are you the new owner?”

Because if not, she was really going to wish she’d brought her cell phone with her, so she could call the police. She glanced back at the now-closed front door, the suddenly unfamiliar dark hallway, around the eerily empty room in front of her, and realized a little too late that it was highly unlikely anyone down at the barn would be able to hear her scream.

When she looked again at the man, he’d raised one single, perfect eyebrow at her. She’d never been able to do that herself, and it seemed unfair that someone could look like him and have full, individual control of their eyebrows.

“What if I said I wasn’t the new owner?” the man asked, mild curiosity infusing his deep voice. The tenor was what she imagined the amber liquid in his glass would sound like, if you could hear a taste. “What would you do then?”

“Uh...” Bronwen was not prepared for this line of questioning. She didn’t have her phone, and the house was isolated. “Um...run, I guess?”

corner of his perfect mouth turned up oh so slightly, as if he was amused against his will. Then the scowl made a quick reappearance, and he turned his face away from her, toward the fire.

“Then go on and run. Get out of here.”

But there was more resignation in his tone than anger or hostility. Some instinct told her that he wasn’t a murderous monster, although her instincts had certainly betrayed her before. Still... She had a mission , dammit. She needed answers. She could hardly head back out to the barn and tell everyone assembled that yes, there was someone in the house, but no, she didn’t know who they were or whether they could help with the rapidly mounting issues at the farm. She weighed the slim chance that he wasn’t, in fact, the new owner against her responsibility to the horses and their people, and decided to give him another minute before bolting for the door.

“Are you...are you saying you’re not the new owner?” She glanced around the mostly empty room and front hallway, once so cozy and cluttered when Ruth lived there. She could feel the heat from the radiator behind her in addition to the warm fire, but it still felt cold in the house. Freezing, even. She shivered despite her coat.

The man took a sip of whatever he was drinking, and Bronwen noticed a bottle sitting on the floor next to his chair. It was barely ten in the morning. She thought about everyone waiting in the barn, cheerful and full of laughter and whinnies and chatter, her favorite place in the world. What a contrast to this lonely scene. She’d almost feel sorry for whoever this guy was, if she wasn’t so annoyed.

“I am not,” he said firmly. “So feel free to see yourself out. I’m busy.”

Bronwen snorted. Busy drinking first thing in the morning, and nothing else. “Uh-huh. Listen, either you do own this farm and you’re just being weird about it—in which case I have things to discuss with you—or you really aren’t the new owner and I need to call the police. Which is it?”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest, still more than ready to beat a hasty retreat if he ended up being the least bit threatening. But if he didn’t own the house he was making himself...uncomfortable in, then she had a responsibility to deal with that situation, too.

He turned his head to look at her again, a spark of anger in his eyes. They were blue, crystalline light blue and cold as the water in the frozen water buckets this morning.

“My sister is the owner of this farm, and I’m here at her invitation,” he said, as if it was an enormous imposition to have to answer her. Which, given that she’d basically broken into the house, it might be. But...

“Great. Can you give me her contact information? The phone number I was given is out of service.”

The scowl returned in full force. “She’s out of the country, on some island somewhere, and she deactivated her old phone for...personal reasons. You won’t be able to reach her, not for a few weeks.”

Wow. So, this was one of those rich families she was dealing with, where people went AWOL to random islands because they didn’t have jobs or responsibilities. Any hope that she could get around having to deal with this surly man in favor of a more reasonable person evaporated.

She took a few steps forward into the large room, now that she was reassured he wasn’t someone who’d wandered in off the street.

“I need to talk to her—or someone who’s responsible. Bills aren’t getting paid, so I can’t schedule the farrier or get the muck pile taken away. And we’re going to run out of feed if the feed store account isn’t paid up.”

Now that she wasn’t afraid for her life, her anger at the absentee owner—and her brother—bubbled back to the surface. She needed to make this man understand the seriousness of the situation. Surely even the grumpy person in front of her would understand that things needed doing at a boarding barn?

He stared at her as if she was speaking a foreign language.

“Who are you?” he finally asked, those blue eyes intense. He really was gorgeous, but there was something unsettling about the stiffness of his body, even sitting down, a resigned tiredness in those intense eyes. Something that spoke of isolation and pain, two things she was familiar with herself. She almost felt sorry for bothering him.

Almost.

“I’m Bronwen. The barn manager.”

He sat back in his chair as if he’d just received the worst news imaginable. “Barn manager...” he murmured to himself. “I thought I saw lights down there.”

“Um, and all the horses around.” She gestured vaguely toward the fields. “And the people coming and going?” He still stared off into the distance, trying her patience. “You do know that Morning Song Farm is a boarding barn...right?”

His gaze snapped to hers, sharp as wire cutters. “A boarding—” A bark of laughter escaped him, rusty like old hinges. “Of course it is. Anne...” he muttered, a twist to his mouth that on someone else would have indicated amusement.

She didn’t think he was amused. And honestly, neither was she. The problem was not complicated. His sister owned the farm. Unreachable, yes, but he was here in her stead. Horses needed feeding, things needed fixing. Someone had to take responsibility. Bronwen wanted to stamp her foot in frustration, like one of the horses when they had to wait too long for their dinner.

“Are you telling me that your sister bought this farm from Ruth, and you’re staying here in the house but had no idea this was a working barn?”

This was so much worse than she’d thought. No way to contact the owner, and only this man to deal with. Did he even know anything about horses? Did he have any way to pay off the mounting bills? What on earth was she going to do?

“I probably should have guessed, given Anne’s enthusiasm for letting me use the house.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” He focused on her again. “Well, Ms....”

“Jones. Bronwen Jones. The barn manager.”

“All right, Ms. Jones, barn manager. No, I had no idea that my sister’s new farm was a boarding barn. And I have absolutely no intention of getting involved with any of the operations, whatever they may be. She’ll be back in the country in a few weeks, and you can contact her directly then. Until that time, do what you need to do—but leave me out of it.”

She noticed that he hadn’t offered his name. Or his sister’s.

He turned to face the fire again, clearly dismissing her.

Frustration flared again, hot and urgent. This man would not get rid of her that easily. She stepped around his chair, directly in front of him, so he had no choice but to look at her.

“I can’t leave you out of it, not if you’re the closest thing to the owner. Ruth—the former owner—thought the new owner would be moving in immediately, and she didn’t give me withdrawal access to the farm account. I need the bills paid. There are horses out there depending on it, not to mention their owners. If we can’t keep up with feed and maintenance, people are going to move their horses out of here.”

And she’d lose the small family she’d gathered around herself, the familiarity of even the people who got on her nerves. The horses she cared for like they were her own. And if the barn went out of business, what would she do with her own horse, Charlie? Where would she go? The farm was her home. It was safe. She couldn’t let the boarders and their horses down, and she couldn’t lose the place she called home.

“That’s really not my problem,” the man said coolly, as if the whole thing bored him.

Which was infuriating. Absolutely infuriating . There were few things she hated more than people who refused to accept their responsibilities. In her experience, there were far too many people like the man in front of her, which was why she’d learned to depend solely on herself. Still, in this case she needed him to do the right thing.

“It is your problem if this is your sister’s farm and you’re living here in her place. Your family is responsible for the well-being of these horses and of the farm. You have an obligation to the people who trust the care of their animals to you.”

“To my sister ,” he contradicted, as if none of this mattered. As if he had something better to do than act like a responsible human being, when quite clearly, lounging around alone was all he had going on.

Must be nice.

“Your sister’s on some fancy island somewhere while you’re sitting in an empty house with a bottle and nothing else!” she all but shouted, her voice echoing through the vacant house.

Bronwen wasn’t usually a shouter, but she was desperate, and enraged at the dismissive attitude of the man before her. Even if he didn’t own the farm himself, even if for some wild reason his sister hadn’t thought to mention that the barn was full of boarders, how could he act like their care was beneath his notice? If nothing else, didn’t he want to maintain the business his sister had paid good money for?

Their eyes locked, hers no doubt shooting sparks of frustration, his deceptively cool but with dark fire beneath the chill. She’d touched something, some nerve, and she was finally getting the barest reaction.

Good.

“If all of the boarders leave,” she continued, pushing for something more—any emotion, any sign that he cared at all, “your sister will have spent all her money on an empty farm—the business will completely dry up.”

That earned a smirk. “I doubt she cares too much about that.”

“Right.” She suppressed an eye roll. It didn’t matter if someone had money, but she had no patience for those wealthy people who seemed to think money excused them from being human. “And the horses? What about them?”

His hand tightened almost imperceptibly around his glass. Then he downed the rest of his drink in one gulp, leaned forward and set the glass heavily down on the bare wood floor. Gaze fixed onto hers, he rose from the chair, and she took an involuntary step back.

Martha was right. This man was tall . She wasn’t exactly short at five foot eight, but he easily cleared six feet. More. He wasn’t overly broad, but he had a lean solidity that spoke of strength and power. He loomed over her, glaring.

She glared right back.

“To hell with the horses,” he said fiercely, but with a shadow of his previous resigned exhaustion.

Who was this man? He was lurking around the empty old house like Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre , looking like a fallen angel, eyes chilly as the early spring sky and anger that came out of nowhere.

He took a step forward, and she took another step back.

“To hell with the farm,” he continued. “And to hell with you.”

He folded his arms in front of him, and Bronwen reminded herself to breathe. She wasn’t scared, exactly. But he made an intimidating picture, and she still wasn’t 100 percent sure she should trust that he wasn’t a danger to her.

“I told you to get out. If you’re the barn manager, that means you’re my sister’s employee, and in her absence I am telling you to get out .”

She wanted to; she really did. Her heart was pounding in her chest, whether from the confrontation with this strange man or from the fact that he’d stepped even closer—close enough that she could see the whiskers of his stubble, the way his jaw ticked with tension. She had the absolutely ridiculous urge to reach up and smooth away that tension, even as he was ordering her to leave.

Absurd. Probably she just needed more coffee. And a vacation. And for someone to fix the problems all around her.

She should leave and call...someone? She couldn’t call the sister, either to help with the barn’s situation or to confirm that this guy was, in fact, supposed to be here. A vague memory surfaced of Ruth saying the new owner was someone tangentially involved with horses. If that last part was true, shouldn’t her brother care a little more about what happened to the animals? Even someone who was just a casual rider should care deeply about the welfare of horses—certainly someone who purchased an entire boarding barn would. Was this man so distant from his sister that he didn’t understand how important good care was to most horse people? Or was he just a terrible person who didn’t care about either the animals or his own sister?

She wasn’t sure what she should do, to be honest. But one thing was for sure, and that was that she really didn’t appreciate this man looming over her, angry and bossy, uncaring about the farm’s problems and refusing to see reason.

She didn’t like it at all.

“If you can order me around on your sister’s behalf, then you’re admitting that you’re standing in for her while she’s away,” she snapped.

Faulty logic pissed her off, but in this case it worked in her favor. She raised a hand and pointed her finger at him, nearly jabbing him in the chest. He glanced down at it like she was filthy. Which, to be honest, she probably was. She’d started the day climbing up a pile of shit, and it had been downhill from there.

“You’re not my boss, but you are responsible. Or at least, you should be.”

Bronwen turned and marched back to the door to the room, then swung around. She’d retreat for now, but if this guy didn’t act soon, she’d tell the feed store and the farrier and anyone else needing payment to come right to the front door of the house. Nothing would stop her from getting things back on track, one way or another, even if it meant an army of cranky vendors invaded the man’s strange solitude.

He glared at her, mouth open as if he was stunned by her audacity. Or maybe he was just about to snark at her some more.

“There are nearly a dozen horses down there who are going to run out of food. The manure pile is out of control. The outdoor arena footing is a hazard. Someone’s going to get hurt, or go hungry, and if anything at all happens to any one of those animals, or to their owners, it will be your fault.” She pointed at him again for good measure. “Anything at all. It will be on your head.”

She turned and stormed out the front door, slamming it behind her, and tried not to slip on the remaining frost as she stomped down the steps and headed for the warmth and safety of the barn.