EMMETT (The Corbin Brothers Book 3) Read Free

was their loss and my gain. She was a pretty thing, too, gray with a white mane and tail I kept brushed to a glossy shine.
    “Hey, there, sweet girl,” I crooned as she nuzzled the palm of my hand. “You want to go for a ride?”
    Riding horses had been expressly forbidden by Hadley, but I figured if I galloped up to the clinic that doubled as the house she and my baby brother shared, she’d be persuaded to end my medical leave of absence from the ranch.
    Securing a saddle to Sugar was like second nature to me. Most horses fidgeted or kicked or blew up their bellies so you couldn’t get a true fit, but she seemed to like the attention and activity, waiting patiently until I fastened all of the buckles.
    Now came the true test.
    I’d wrenched my knee and torn some tendons fetching a calf out of the gorge several weeks prior, which necessitated rest and the enormous brace on my leg. Hadley had warned me against overexerting myself and doing further damage to my knee, but she also said there was a possibility that I could return to my normal duties today after a quick checkup down at the clinic.
    I wasn’t going to drive down there when I had a chance to ride.
    My knee gave a couple of twinges of protest, but I mounted Sugar with relative ease, confident that I would be even less awkward without the brace, and set out.
    It was going to be hot today. It was already uncomfortably warm outside, a lazy wind doing little to cool my face as I urged Sugar forward alongside the road leading down to the river. It was very nearly finished thanks to the dedicated efforts of the paving crew, but I knew the realities of maintaining such a road. If we had freezes and snowstorms come winter, it would require scraping and salting. With the change of each season, it would likely need repairs to cracks and potholes as the pavement expanded and contracted according to the weather. I wasn’t sure Chance understood what he had signed on for with this road, though maybe he did and that was one of the many reasons he despaired so much lately.
    The road forked off in another direction — that was going to be the way to the barracks for the dude ranch. That had been a surprising brain child from Avery of all people, but Chance and Paisley agreed it was a great way to bring in more money and educate people about life on a ranch the way it was supposed to be done. The idea was that if people understood how happy the cattle stayed and how well taken care of they were, they might be more likely to support ranching operations like ours and buy beef from us or others like us. It cost just a little more in stores, but that was because so much more effort went into the care for the herds — unlike other operations that were little more than feed lots. Those operations were loath to invite the public onto their ranches because of the foul conditions the cattle endured to turn such a pretty profit.
    The dude ranch would benefit us. I wasn’t about to rain on the parade that was Avery’s sole major contribution to the ranch. He’d dug his heels in for whole years about working here, so it was good he finally was experiencing some form of ownership and investment in the ranch.
    I just wished I could contribute in the same way, in something highly visible that would finally distinguish me in the Corbin family legacy. I already worked so hard — well, prior to my injury — around the ranch. I was the superior horseman, I knew how to read the herd, and I could run a fence line and fix it better than anyone. I was more meticulous with logs than any of my brothers, neatly and carefully making notations and then helping analyze them. On top of that, I cared for everyone’s horses. But did I get any recognition for that? Did Chance or anyone ever take me aside and tell me just how important all of my hard work was for the survival of the ranch? Nope.
    “Emmett Corbin, I better be hallucinating. I hope that I can rub my eyes and not see you on a horse I