Free Racing Hearts by Melissa West Page B

have.”
    She waved good-bye to Kate, but instead of going inside, drowning in her thoughts, she jumped in her Jeep, desperate to be around someone else who’d disappointed the Carlisle family. Funny how as humans, whenever we were bad, we wanted to be around someone who was just a little bit worse. Make the whole thing a little easier to digest. And no one did bad like Annie-Jean Carlisle.
    Emery drove as close to the one mile an hour mark as she could down the old gravel road, which was less gravel and more dirt and holes and other things capable of ruining a perfectly good car. Finally, she pulled up to the detached garage and stepped out of her Jeep, eyeing the peeling paint and cracked window in the second story. Well, at least she was consistent.
    Up the front steps, Emery didn’t bother knocking on the door— Annie-Jean wouldn’t hear her anyway—and went on through the screen door, following the chorus of a woman belting out to Diana Ross and the Supremes. Emery rounded the corner into the kitchen and stopped, her eyes going wider with each new observation. It looked like someone had bombed the place. Flour decorated every inch of countertop. Other places were covered in dough (Clearly, the flour had morphed into something at some point.) And then, in other places, there were dozens of cookies, cooling on racks.
    â€œYou overbooked again, didn’t you?” Emery asked her aunt with a sigh. “How many and when?”
    Annie-Jean pushed her glasses up high on the bridge of her slightly crooked nose and ran a hand through her black hair, sprinkling it with flour. “One hundred. Nine a.m.”
    â€œTomorrow?” Emery squeaked. “One hundred cookies due by tomorrow morning?”
    Annie-Jean laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. One hundred dozen . Now, are you going to keep staring at me with exasperation—I swear, you were carved from the same tree as your daddy—or are you going to help? I assume you came here to pour your soul. Might as well bake while you do it.”
    With another sigh, Emery grabbed a spare apron from one of the hooks by the doorway and draped it over her neck, unsure if it would do her any good, but Annie-Jean had her rules, and aprons and hair ties were two of them. Emery pulled her hair back into a ponytail and motioned to her head and the apron. “Okay to enter, Chef?”
    Annie-Jean flashed the smile that had broken hearts all over town in her day—still to this day, really. “Enter, and hurry. I’m only at three dozen.”
    They spent ten minutes scraping the first three dozen from their pans, the work providing the silence Emery needed to think. Until finally, Annie shut the oven door and twisted around. “All right, spill it, before that sour look of yours seeps into my cookies. What happened? Did Beckett say no again?”
    â€œActually, no.”
    â€œHe said yes?”
    â€œWell, no. Not exactly.”
    Annie set down the wooden spoon in her hand. “Look, honey, I’ve never been a fan of carousels. So can we quit this cycle and you just get on with it?”
    Emery closed a package and pushed it across the counter to meet the other two. “Trip Hamilton’s agreed to hire me on at Hamilton Stables.”
    â€œAgreed?”
    â€œWell, see . . . I sort of... blackmailed him into it.” She closed her eyes tightly and dropped her head onto the counter, refusing to face her aunt’s judgment. But Annie-Jean was never one to dish it out by look alone.
    â€œI guess it’s good I have a spare bedroom.”
    Emery peeked up. “Is it that bad?”
    â€œYes . . . if he finds out. He’ll be devastated. But the thing is, honey, it isn’t his life. It’s yours. What does your gut tell you to do?”
    She rested against the counter and stared out the large bay window of Annie’s breakfast nook. “He’s working one of our colts, Annie. It feels like