Braving the Rapids by Brandon Witt

Author:Brandon Witt [Witt, Brandon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay romance
ISBN: 978-1-63533-998-7
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2017-11-13T05:00:00+00:00

AROUND TWO in the afternoon, like clockwork, whether the sun was beaming down or hiding, Estes got a fifteen- to thirty-minute shower. We’d even scheduled the horse tours around them, making sure we were up to the enclosure before the rain. Every once in a while, Mother Nature was off, and the tourists smelled like wet horse for the rest of the day, but it was rare.

Honestly, it was good for business at Columbine Adventures. Most everyone took a break from golf, go-karts, and bumper boats, and used the time to get snacks. It was even built in to the schedule to cook double the normal number of soft pretzels, hot dogs, and churros at fifteen minutes till two. However, there were occasions, and it looked like it was going to be one of those days, when the refreshing summer shower brought dark clouds rolling over the mountains, ushering in atypical humidity, and thunder echoed through the valley. The crackling of lightning was the business killer, though. Can’t exactly have the tourists out holding metal golf clubs or playing around in bumper boats. At these times, the snack bar sales soared for about twenty minutes, people began to glare at the sky and then rushed through the rain to their SUVs and minivans in the parking lot. About a fourth of them asked for refunds. Yep, not good for business at all.

I was glad I was at Columbine instead of the stables, though, which was a rare sensation. I shared my father’s passion for the horses. Columbine was nothing more than another of his schemes to make money. I found it more and more soul sucking every year. Still, angry minigolfers were easier to deal with than wet riders on top of skittish horses. After the storm carried on for over an hour, there were no tourists left, and my employees started their tradition of not speaking to one another while they texted the rest of the teenagers in town as I continued to pay them minimum wage for nothing.

Despite sequestering myself in the office, I couldn’t claim I was being any more productive than a high schooler. The work of owning and operating two businesses in the middle of the high season piled up around me a little more each day. Okay, more than a little. I checked emails, shuffled papers from one pile to another, and didn’t do more than manage to look moderately busy. I spent half my time not thinking about what I was going to do about Mom. The other half was devoted to actively not thinking about Matt. The act of not doing both of those things was exhausting and encompassing. So much that I didn’t hear the knock at my office door and jumped when someone poked their head through and then stepped all the way in.

“Good grief you scared the cra—” I’d thought it was one of the kids, but it was a man in his mid- to late-thirties. I stood. “Sorry, you startled me.

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