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Description
The Mana Farms story line frequently contains mature language, topics, and situations. The characters within are fictional beings with weaknesses and faults, and I cannot promise you that you will like them for what they believe, say and do.

New readers, it is strongly recommended you begin this series from the very first story...which can be found here: [link] Thanks!

PREVIOUSLY ON:

“¡No puedo más! Estoy harto estoy hasta aquí estoy yendo a casa detrás donde los administradores no piensan con sus cabezas en sus nalgas, vale, se acabó, ya no te aguanto más, me voy. Puta el huevón.”

Music it was, coming out of her mouth like that, angrily pulling at the strands of hair being blown into her face by the wind, the rantings of a beautiful...furious...latin woman. He didn’t understand a word of it, but what did it matter...the woman had just knocked Freddy Sanchez, a man with whom the woman in question had a long history, off of his horse with her glove. It didn’t matter that he didn’t understand what she was saying and it didn’t matter that her smackdown smacked of too much recent French influence and it didn’t matter that the stewards of the New York Racing Association didn’t approve of retribution via five fingered leather. When this particular petite razor-tongued brunette raged down the backside as strong as the afternoon storm swelling on the horizon behind her, it was always music.

“¿Qué diablos haces?” she addressed him, looking up, and the French Horn in her voice...elegant and rounded and...dammit...there was the French influence again...boomed upwards at him. Brett returned her gaze and realized for the first time how very mahogany red those brown eyes could get around the edge of their irises. Brett smiled down at her, bemused by this recent discovery of his, and when she took the look on his face as permission to berate all mankind further, he sighed.

“Si es que se te van los ojos detrás de cualquiera que se te ponga por delante...todos los hombres sois iguales.”

He leaned over the bough of the tree, which moaned under him like a horse shifting its weight to the other foot, and he pleaded with her through a haze of bobbing maple leaves. “Santa...please oh please tell me what Freddy Sanchez did.”

“No, but I repeat,” Santa scowled, blowing through her teeth at the strand of hair that had fallen into her eyes, “in English this time since learning a second language seems to be too dangerous for hockey players...what are you doing up in that tree?”

“Hiding from you, of course.”

She crossed her slender muscled arms over her chest.

“When two hundred rats came fleeing up the breezeways-” 

“You counted them?”

“Of course I did, what kind of man do you take me for? When they came running up from direction of the stewards office, I ran with them until I found this tree. Rats are smart, you know, so I didn’t question their judgment,” Brett explained, grinning until he felt the dimples in his cheeks emerging. His mother had once said that those two dimples could win over the Queen of Scotts. He sure as hell hoped this was true, or no amount of tree climbing would save his ass.

“Rats, huh?” Santa repeated, glaring at him from below.

Brett mimed the blowing up of an underground mine. “Thank god for the scaly-tailed little bastards.” He smiled and she shook her head at him. Brett rested his elbow over his knee and pressed on, “You changed my opinion of gloves entirely, Miss Santa Castillo-Reyes. I wasn’t disturbed by their leather before today...but poor Freddy, bet he didn’t see that one coming.”

“You did.”

“I did indeed,” Brett concurred. “When the Saint of Santa Anita starts removing her glove a little deliberately in the middle of a gallop out, I figure I should probably gallop past her a little faster than Freddy did.”

“And what,” Santa replied, “miss out on the show?”

Brett shrugged, “Better than becoming collateral damage. What did he do?”

“Do you North boys ever shut up?” she suddenly blurted out.

Three months ago maybe the rats really would have run from that, but now, three months later, Brett knew that the little crease in the corner of her right eye suggested she wasn’t nearly as annoyed with him as she once would have been. “No,” he answered with a grin, “we simply continue to talk, but in other languages, you know, the ones we hockey players aren’t supposed to possess fluency in, but turns out we do. Comprenez-vous? French, you know, for obvious reasons,” he taunted from fifteen feet up, “Capite che cosa significo? Italian...that would be due to an Italian mother who willfully chose to marry a hockey player and had a hockey playing son who played hockey in Italy...and Russian? Teammates. Lots of them over the years. bы понимаете?”

“Well, learn Spanish,” Santa growled in defeat.

“Trabajo en él,” he replied with a wink, pulling out the small pocket-sized Spanish language book and waving it to her. When she suddenly smiled, he briefly considering dropping from his tree. But then...

“Laurence!”

It may have been the clap of thunder fifty miles away that ran through him in that instant, or the sound of her voice making out the other man’s name, but Brett swayed a little in the tree as she ran underneath the latticework of branches that had just begun to rustle in the wind.

Catching himself, he turned about and watched as she threw herself into his arms. From this distance he could just barely make out Laurence Leclerc’s raised eyebrows and the sudden light that came into his face. He could hear, even, with the rising wind drowning out a few syllables here and there, the man’s inquiring exclamation at her presence and her passionate reply.

“I have been suspended!” she declared with a shrug of delight that did not properly dovetail with her statement.

Brett smirked, catching the curious, confused and disapproving glances from a few nearby tracksiders, their swollen righteous headed brows furrowed in her general direction. It was one thing to tear up and down the barns while frothing at the mouth in the torrid language of El Cartel, and another thing, it seemed, to be shameless about it. Brett cupped his hand over his mouth to stifle the chuckle. After all, he and the man whose arms were now encircled around that unblushing spirit, were hopelessly in love with those sorts of spontaneous declarations. It was simply part n parcel with being in the spell of the witch and it was apparent, from the tragic view of Brett North, that Laurence Leclerc was unashamed to be in association with a newly suspended saint and even from the wide smile spread over his features, that he took his own pleasure in it. This, of course, suggested that Laurence Leclerc wasn’t completely stupid, but it didn’t make him any more deserving.

Brett pulled knees to his chest and leaned against the smooth rounded trunk of the tree, his arms wrapping around its frame from behind. He closed his eyes, listening to the moans of lovers and the moans of the tree cradling him, blending together like paints on an artist’s canvas, the blues of heartbreak and the greens of envy. A distraction, right about now, would have been nice. With his eyes open again, studying the greying of the sky through the ceiling of leaves, he heard a small sigh from below and he let his eyes travel toward the source of the sound. It was small and mouselike. And the top of its head was brown and it was tilting ever so slightly into the base of the tree, a little like a nervous maiden leaning against her lead pony her first time on a track, in a crowd, and staring down at the gaping maw of a starting gate which, in this case, seemed to take the form of the exchange between Santa Castillo-Reyes and the loser.

Brett turned around in the tree to get a better look. This wasn’t the little Hawaiian girl who had recently taken an interest in following Brett around and peeping at him from shadows and around the corners of barns and trees and trailers in a way that made his hair stand on end. This one was a pretty pale little thing, straight and white, a little like an aspen tree, but shorter. And it wasn’t Laurence Leclerc she was looking at so intently. It was the Saint.

“Bonjour, ma belle,” he piped from branches and the slight creature from below gave a little shriek that was distinctly foreign and simultaneously familiar. When she looked up into the trees, her small delicate hands clinging to the trunk of the tree, Brett saw the bright glint of near tears rimming the almond shape of her eyes. She said something akin to a swear and a warning and an apology wrapped up in a soft voice laced in an accent Brett knew all too well.

“Oh God, you really are French! I’m so sorry!”

He dropped from the tree and the girl jumped back even further, her cheeks as red as a summertime strawberry rhubarb pie. “That must have been a shock, I’m sorry, I don’t generally go around greeting people in...french.”

“Or trees?” she replied, so softly and in such unpracticed English Brett could barely make out the words.

He stopped and looked at her, and for the first time in recent memory, Brett opened his mouth and not a word came out. He had wanted to say, I know you. You’re paler than I remember and more French than I remember but I do know you, but something told him that if he did manage to confess it, the girl might start screaming and throw rocks at him, which coincidentally is just about what happened next.

A rock pinged off his left temple and landed at the girl’s feet, eliciting another squeak from her.

“Ow!” Brett growled.

“Ey! You! Fucker! You get away from my little sister!”

Brett heard the voice and saw the girl and it clicked. Another rock whizzed past them both.

“I mean it!”

Brett glanced at the pretty little girl staring up at him in a sort of captivated horror...the way he remembered Bambi looking up at the Great Prince of the Forest in that movie he watched rather religiously when he was four and never watched again after his own mother died five years later. He couldn’t help the extension of his smile when he realized what he had here. He reached out and took her trembling hand in his and shook it, being sure to rub his thumb deliberately over the back of her smooth hand. “Brett North.”

“Hey!”

“Brett!” he heard Santa’s voice over his shoulder, “Don’t you dare.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he mumbled over his shoulder. Then he looked back at the girl. “What is your name?” Her blush deepened.

“Hey!” came Laurence again, closer this time.

“Are you adopted?” Brett asked abruptly with a slight tilt of his head and watched as she reached up and gingerly touched her own cheeks with her fingertips as if marveling at the heat that radiated from them.

Laurence was on him now, grabbing him by the elbow and swinging him around. He seemed to notice his own sister’s blush as quickly as he had noticed the devilish grin on Brett’s face and he made the calculation quicker than Brett imagined he was capable of.

“What did you say to her?”

“I said hello.”

“Il me l'a dit en français!” the girl suddenly interjected, pointing a finger at him. Brett couldn’t help whispering fuck under his breath.

Laurence tightened his stranglehold on the collar of Brett’s shirt. “And what did we say in french to my sister?”

“I said bonjour!...I was being polite, which is more than I can say for you, Larry,” Brett confessed with a little sprinkle of agitation. Santa shook her head at him. Brett turned and regarded her, admitting, “Okay, okay, que je suis bête, I did sneak a little belle in there for good measure, but...” 

“Laurence, il m'a dit bonjour, il m'a surpris. Aucun truc de villain ou rien."

The new girl’s voice, suddenly hard, caused both men to turn and regard her...one in horror, the other in a measure of increased respect. Brett didn’t brother refraining from giving Laurence a well deserved smirk as the man stood there quite frozen.

Laurence’s eventual reaction was to turn to the brown girl behind him, replying with patronizing insistence, “I can't go, I'm sorry, obviously I have to make sure Therese doesn't get predated because, clearly,” he emphasized with an unpleasant motion in Brett’s general direction, “she can't see a bad sort standing right in front of her.”

The sudden clouding of the girl’s face should have been enough, but Laurence wasn’t minding it, “He’s an agitator. You don’t know better...you don’t know who...” 

‘Scuse-moi, espèce de con. J'ai vu neiger. Ça se fait quelques années que je survie sans aide de quéquette. Donc arrête de faire le bambin, vas-y péter dans le trèfle, et présente-moi ma belle soeur dès ton retour."

Brett’s first reaction to the vomit of Canadian slang was based off of what he understood initially, which is that she was telling him to stay out of her business and leave with Santa. The second reaction, however, involved Brett’s sudden mental translation of the words introduce-me-to-my-sister-when-you-get-back, which prompted both fists to clench without his permission and an ache to boil up in his chest, which Brett later realized was caused by his forgetting to breathe for several long minutes.

Laurence’s reaction was a seesawing twist of dismay and panic, but the words that had tumbled out of his sister’s mouth in a feverish moment of indignation were both intelligent and confident and, it seemed to Brett, an almost precious moment...a rarity, as though it were something her brother had to acknowledge, had to credit, enough that it gave Laurence Leclerc little other choice but to obey.

When both men finally remembered to breathe again, Laurence released him and slowly began to back away, giving him explicit instructions on all the things he was not to do until Frankie’s return and the various consequences for any infraction. Santa was still shaking her head at them both, mouthing something he translated to “be nice or else” before she too vanished into the landscape of the track, her arms woven through his, tugging him along. Alone...with her, Brett turned to contemplate the expression on Leclerc’s sister’s face as it morphed from valiant pride in her own declaration of independence to the panic involved in realizing it.

Brett North opened his mouth again and again nothing came out.

She turned to him slowly, and a smile spread across her smooth snow white face. “Well!” she began, spreading her hands and arms out in surrender.

Brett opened his mouth again and gave a little cough.

“Francois is not here.”

“You mean Pellerin?” Brett clarified.

“So it is me and you,” she admitted in a rush, trying and failing to stop the hot blush that rose in her cheeks again.

“I,” Brett replied, “uh...” He rubbed absently at his chin, and then he laughed, “What is your name again?”

She blushed up at him.

“I’m sure your brother said it back there but, you don’t know this about me, but I make a point of not listening to your brother. You know. Ever.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but he could see the panic emerging on her face again. Brett ran his hands through his loose curls and looked about him. “Okay....I’ll keep things at: ma belle,” Brett supplied helpfully, “it’s much nicer than anything he might call you himself.”

“Can you show me?” she finally managed to get out. Brett could see her struggling for the words.

Brett’s eyes widened. “Show you? What? The track? The horses?” Brett looked over his shoulder nervously. “I can’t believe Leclerc left you with me...I...”

The girl shrugged, a small little smile coming to her face, the slightest hint of wit again. “He must like you.”

Brett snorted at that, “Oh, sure, big brother and I go way back.” He pointed up at the small indentation below his left eye that was in its latter stages of healing.

“Non!” she gasped.

“I deserved it,” Brett sighed and he paused when he saw her laugh into the cup of her small little hand. “You’re laughing at us aren’t you? Laughing at the idea of two little men throwing punches at each other and rolling around in the dirt? You think my pain is hilarious don’t you?”

She laughed harder.

“Alright,” Brett received, “Give me your hand. Come on, girly, give it to me, I won’t bite you.” He placed her fingertips on the muscles under his forearm, and he twiddled his fingers so that the tendons bounced and rippled underneath her fingertips like the strings of a piano being played by her hands. “You feel that?” He watched her blush deepen. “We little guys can throw a lot into a punch. So don’t you count either of us out in a scrap.” He winked at her and she pulled her hand away, hiding it against her breast.

He looked over his shoulder again and muttered, “What to do?”

“Je ne sais pas! Entertain me?” she blurted out.

“Sweetheart,” Brett sighed, “You really shouldn’t be asking a jockey to entertain you.” And when the color drained from her face, he grinned.

An hour later, Brett was taking her small leg in his hands and lifting it up. She slipped her delicate little foot into a stirrup and her hands, shaking, gathered up the reins. Brett leaned into her and patted her on the thigh. “Relax,” he murmured, “This is ‘Snailondesk’. He is completely useless. You know, like your brother.” Brett scrubbed at the withers of the four year old and bay gelded disappointment. “Now my brother,... note...he is of the not-useless variety,” he explained, aware that he was babbling quite happily in english again, that he had found his voice again, and that she probably was not understanding much of what he was saying again, “bought the horse because the name made him laugh. That was it. I warned him he was buying a horse that would never be an investment in anything. Not even as a lead pony seeing as Tommy doesn’t use them. But when Tommy falls for something there’s no helping it. It’s a family trait. Now Snails is just here for the occasional spin for Tommy’s kids and...pretty little French girls.” Brett winked up at her and she blushed, her look of panic spreading when he backed away from her and hopped up into the saddle of the nearly white horse beside her.

“Coup de Foudre!” he announced, saluting the animal.

The girl’s face became awash of something he didn’t understand. Puzzled, she mumbled, “Quoi?”

“Coup de Foudre,” Brett explained, patting the stallion’s neck. “Thunderbolt. Lightning. Lightning strike. It was my brother’s team’s symbol. Their logo. Their name. Tampa Bay Lightning. You know...the Lightning. Hockey. Coup de Foudre?” His raised his hands up and mimed the action of a bolt of lightning snaking from the sky and zapping her in the left shoulder. The girl shied a little from the touch of his fingertips and the bay beneath her shifted his weight a little alarmingly. Brett reached out and steadied her, “Ah ah ah, don’t squeeze his sides like that, you’re going to make him think we’re going out for a run which,” he glanced up into her worried brown eyes, “from that look I say we’re definitely not going to do. Okay...”

Brett moved the Lightning Bolt a few steps forward and Snails slimed his way a few steps behind him. He glanced over his shoulder at her and saw her smile up at him. Brett felt something in his chest unravel a little.

“That’s it, ma belle,” he whispered, “just breathe and follow the handsome man on the white horse.”

NEXT ON:

I HATE THIS ONE...stupid segment that would not die. AH well. ENJOY! Shown: "Coup de Foudre" (right) and "SnailonDesk" (left), owned by Tomas S. North of Northern Barns.

Name: Coup de Foudre
Barn Name: "Strikes"
Gender: Colt
Breed: Thoroughbred
Age: 2
Height: 16.1
Color: Grey
Genotype: ee/aa/Gg
Markings: None.
Discipline: Racing
Bloodlines: Thunder Gulch x A Touch of Romance (El Prado)
Preferred Distance: Classic
Preferred Surface:Dirt
Race Record: unraced.
Lease/Stud: too young.

Description
The Mana Farms story line frequently contains mature language, topics, and situations. The characters within are fictional beings with weaknesses and faults, and I cannot promise you that you will like them for what they believe, say and do.

New readers, it is strongly recommended you begin this series from the very first story...which can be found here: [link] Thanks!

PREVIOUSLY ON:

“¡No puedo más! Estoy harto estoy hasta aquí estoy yendo a casa detrás donde los administradores no piensan con sus cabezas en sus nalgas, vale, se acabó, ya no te aguanto más, me voy. Puta el huevón.”

Music it was, coming out of her mouth like that, angrily pulling at the strands of hair being blown into her face by the wind, the rantings of a beautiful...furious...latin woman. He didn’t understand a word of it, but what did it matter...the woman had just knocked Freddy Sanchez, a man with whom the woman in question had a long history, off of his horse with her glove. It didn’t matter that he didn’t understand what she was saying and it didn’t matter that her smackdown smacked of too much recent French influence and it didn’t matter that the stewards of the New York Racing Association didn’t approve of retribution via five fingered leather. When this particular petite razor-tongued brunette raged down the backside as strong as the afternoon storm swelling on the horizon behind her, it was always music.

“¿Qué diablos haces?” she addressed him, looking up, and the French Horn in her voice...elegant and rounded and...dammit...there was the French influence again...boomed upwards at him. Brett returned her gaze and realized for the first time how very mahogany red those brown eyes could get around the edge of their irises. Brett smiled down at her, bemused by this recent discovery of his, and when she took the look on his face as permission to berate all mankind further, he sighed.

“Si es que se te van los ojos detrás de cualquiera que se te ponga por delante...todos los hombres sois iguales.”

He leaned over the bough of the tree, which moaned under him like a horse shifting its weight to the other foot, and he pleaded with her through a haze of bobbing maple leaves. “Santa...please oh please tell me what Freddy Sanchez did.”

“No, but I repeat,” Santa scowled, blowing through her teeth at the strand of hair that had fallen into her eyes, “in English this time since learning a second language seems to be too dangerous for hockey players...what are you doing up in that tree?”

“Hiding from you, of course.”

She crossed her slender muscled arms over her chest.

“When two hundred rats came fleeing up the breezeways-” 

“You counted them?”

“Of course I did, what kind of man do you take me for? When they came running up from direction of the stewards office, I ran with them until I found this tree. Rats are smart, you know, so I didn’t question their judgment,” Brett explained, grinning until he felt the dimples in his cheeks emerging. His mother had once said that those two dimples could win over the Queen of Scotts. He sure as hell hoped this was true, or no amount of tree climbing would save his ass.

“Rats, huh?” Santa repeated, glaring at him from below.

Brett mimed the blowing up of an underground mine. “Thank god for the scaly-tailed little bastards.” He smiled and she shook her head at him. Brett rested his elbow over his knee and pressed on, “You changed my opinion of gloves entirely, Miss Santa Castillo-Reyes. I wasn’t disturbed by their leather before today...but poor Freddy, bet he didn’t see that one coming.”

“You did.”

“I did indeed,” Brett concurred. “When the Saint of Santa Anita starts removing her glove a little deliberately in the middle of a gallop out, I figure I should probably gallop past her a little faster than Freddy did.”

“And what,” Santa replied, “miss out on the show?”

Brett shrugged, “Better than becoming collateral damage. What did he do?”

“Do you North boys ever shut up?” she suddenly blurted out.

Three months ago maybe the rats really would have run from that, but now, three months later, Brett knew that the little crease in the corner of her right eye suggested she wasn’t nearly as annoyed with him as she once would have been. “No,” he answered with a grin, “we simply continue to talk, but in other languages, you know, the ones we hockey players aren’t supposed to possess fluency in, but turns out we do. Comprenez-vous? French, you know, for obvious reasons,” he taunted from fifteen feet up, “Capite che cosa significo? Italian...that would be due to an Italian mother who willfully chose to marry a hockey player and had a hockey playing son who played hockey in Italy...and Russian? Teammates. Lots of them over the years. bы понимаете?”

“Well, learn Spanish,” Santa growled in defeat.

“Trabajo en él,” he replied with a wink, pulling out the small pocket-sized Spanish language book and waving it to her. When she suddenly smiled, he briefly considering dropping from his tree. But then...

“Laurence!”

It may have been the clap of thunder fifty miles away that ran through him in that instant, or the sound of her voice making out the other man’s name, but Brett swayed a little in the tree as she ran underneath the latticework of branches that had just begun to rustle in the wind.

Catching himself, he turned about and watched as she threw herself into his arms. From this distance he could just barely make out Laurence Leclerc’s raised eyebrows and the sudden light that came into his face. He could hear, even, with the rising wind drowning out a few syllables here and there, the man’s inquiring exclamation at her presence and her passionate reply.

“I have been suspended!” she declared with a shrug of delight that did not properly dovetail with her statement.

Brett smirked, catching the curious, confused and disapproving glances from a few nearby tracksiders, their swollen righteous headed brows furrowed in her general direction. It was one thing to tear up and down the barns while frothing at the mouth in the torrid language of El Cartel, and another thing, it seemed, to be shameless about it. Brett cupped his hand over his mouth to stifle the chuckle. After all, he and the man whose arms were now encircled around that unblushing spirit, were hopelessly in love with those sorts of spontaneous declarations. It was simply part n parcel with being in the spell of the witch and it was apparent, from the tragic view of Brett North, that Laurence Leclerc was unashamed to be in association with a newly suspended saint and even from the wide smile spread over his features, that he took his own pleasure in it. This, of course, suggested that Laurence Leclerc wasn’t completely stupid, but it didn’t make him any more deserving.

Brett pulled knees to his chest and leaned against the smooth rounded trunk of the tree, his arms wrapping around its frame from behind. He closed his eyes, listening to the moans of lovers and the moans of the tree cradling him, blending together like paints on an artist’s canvas, the blues of heartbreak and the greens of envy. A distraction, right about now, would have been nice. With his eyes open again, studying the greying of the sky through the ceiling of leaves, he heard a small sigh from below and he let his eyes travel toward the source of the sound. It was small and mouselike. And the top of its head was brown and it was tilting ever so slightly into the base of the tree, a little like a nervous maiden leaning against her lead pony her first time on a track, in a crowd, and staring down at the gaping maw of a starting gate which, in this case, seemed to take the form of the exchange between Santa Castillo-Reyes and the loser.

Brett turned around in the tree to get a better look. This wasn’t the little Hawaiian girl who had recently taken an interest in following Brett around and peeping at him from shadows and around the corners of barns and trees and trailers in a way that made his hair stand on end. This one was a pretty pale little thing, straight and white, a little like an aspen tree, but shorter. And it wasn’t Laurence Leclerc she was looking at so intently. It was the Saint.

“Bonjour, ma belle,” he piped from branches and the slight creature from below gave a little shriek that was distinctly foreign and simultaneously familiar. When she looked up into the trees, her small delicate hands clinging to the trunk of the tree, Brett saw the bright glint of near tears rimming the almond shape of her eyes. She said something akin to a swear and a warning and an apology wrapped up in a soft voice laced in an accent Brett knew all too well.

“Oh God, you really are French! I’m so sorry!”

He dropped from the tree and the girl jumped back even further, her cheeks as red as a summertime strawberry rhubarb pie. “That must have been a shock, I’m sorry, I don’t generally go around greeting people in...french.”

“Or trees?” she replied, so softly and in such unpracticed English Brett could barely make out the words.

He stopped and looked at her, and for the first time in recent memory, Brett opened his mouth and not a word came out. He had wanted to say, I know you. You’re paler than I remember and more French than I remember but I do know you, but something told him that if he did manage to confess it, the girl might start screaming and throw rocks at him, which coincidentally is just about what happened next.

A rock pinged off his left temple and landed at the girl’s feet, eliciting another squeak from her.

“Ow!” Brett growled.

“Ey! You! Fucker! You get away from my little sister!”

Brett heard the voice and saw the girl and it clicked. Another rock whizzed past them both.

“I mean it!”

Brett glanced at the pretty little girl staring up at him in a sort of captivated horror...the way he remembered Bambi looking up at the Great Prince of the Forest in that movie he watched rather religiously when he was four and never watched again after his own mother died five years later. He couldn’t help the extension of his smile when he realized what he had here. He reached out and took her trembling hand in his and shook it, being sure to rub his thumb deliberately over the back of her smooth hand. “Brett North.”

“Hey!”

“Brett!” he heard Santa’s voice over his shoulder, “Don’t you dare.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he mumbled over his shoulder. Then he looked back at the girl. “What is your name?” Her blush deepened.

“Hey!” came Laurence again, closer this time.

“Are you adopted?” Brett asked abruptly with a slight tilt of his head and watched as she reached up and gingerly touched her own cheeks with her fingertips as if marveling at the heat that radiated from them.

Laurence was on him now, grabbing him by the elbow and swinging him around. He seemed to notice his own sister’s blush as quickly as he had noticed the devilish grin on Brett’s face and he made the calculation quicker than Brett imagined he was capable of.

“What did you say to her?”

“I said hello.”

“Il me l'a dit en français!” the girl suddenly interjected, pointing a finger at him. Brett couldn’t help whispering fuck under his breath.

Laurence tightened his stranglehold on the collar of Brett’s shirt. “And what did we say in french to my sister?”

“I said bonjour!...I was being polite, which is more than I can say for you, Larry,” Brett confessed with a little sprinkle of agitation. Santa shook her head at him. Brett turned and regarded her, admitting, “Okay, okay, que je suis bête, I did sneak a little belle in there for good measure, but...” 

“Laurence, il m'a dit bonjour, il m'a surpris. Aucun truc de villain ou rien."

The new girl’s voice, suddenly hard, caused both men to turn and regard her...one in horror, the other in a measure of increased respect. Brett didn’t brother refraining from giving Laurence a well deserved smirk as the man stood there quite frozen.

Laurence’s eventual reaction was to turn to the brown girl behind him, replying with patronizing insistence, “I can't go, I'm sorry, obviously I have to make sure Therese doesn't get predated because, clearly,” he emphasized with an unpleasant motion in Brett’s general direction, “she can't see a bad sort standing right in front of her.”

The sudden clouding of the girl’s face should have been enough, but Laurence wasn’t minding it, “He’s an agitator. You don’t know better...you don’t know who...” 

‘Scuse-moi, espèce de con. J'ai vu neiger. Ça se fait quelques années que je survie sans aide de quéquette. Donc arrête de faire le bambin, vas-y péter dans le trèfle, et présente-moi ma belle soeur dès ton retour."

Brett’s first reaction to the vomit of Canadian slang was based off of what he understood initially, which is that she was telling him to stay out of her business and leave with Santa. The second reaction, however, involved Brett’s sudden mental translation of the words introduce-me-to-my-sister-when-you-get-back, which prompted both fists to clench without his permission and an ache to boil up in his chest, which Brett later realized was caused by his forgetting to breathe for several long minutes.

Laurence’s reaction was a seesawing twist of dismay and panic, but the words that had tumbled out of his sister’s mouth in a feverish moment of indignation were both intelligent and confident and, it seemed to Brett, an almost precious moment...a rarity, as though it were something her brother had to acknowledge, had to credit, enough that it gave Laurence Leclerc little other choice but to obey.

When both men finally remembered to breathe again, Laurence released him and slowly began to back away, giving him explicit instructions on all the things he was not to do until Frankie’s return and the various consequences for any infraction. Santa was still shaking her head at them both, mouthing something he translated to “be nice or else” before she too vanished into the landscape of the track, her arms woven through his, tugging him along. Alone...with her, Brett turned to contemplate the expression on Leclerc’s sister’s face as it morphed from valiant pride in her own declaration of independence to the panic involved in realizing it.

Brett North opened his mouth again and again nothing came out.

She turned to him slowly, and a smile spread across her smooth snow white face. “Well!” she began, spreading her hands and arms out in surrender.

Brett opened his mouth again and gave a little cough.

“Francois is not here.”

“You mean Pellerin?” Brett clarified.

“So it is me and you,” she admitted in a rush, trying and failing to stop the hot blush that rose in her cheeks again.

“I,” Brett replied, “uh...” He rubbed absently at his chin, and then he laughed, “What is your name again?”

She blushed up at him.

“I’m sure your brother said it back there but, you don’t know this about me, but I make a point of not listening to your brother. You know. Ever.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but he could see the panic emerging on her face again. Brett ran his hands through his loose curls and looked about him. “Okay....I’ll keep things at: ma belle,” Brett supplied helpfully, “it’s much nicer than anything he might call you himself.”

“Can you show me?” she finally managed to get out. Brett could see her struggling for the words.

Brett’s eyes widened. “Show you? What? The track? The horses?” Brett looked over his shoulder nervously. “I can’t believe Leclerc left you with me...I...”

The girl shrugged, a small little smile coming to her face, the slightest hint of wit again. “He must like you.”

Brett snorted at that, “Oh, sure, big brother and I go way back.” He pointed up at the small indentation below his left eye that was in its latter stages of healing.

“Non!” she gasped.

“I deserved it,” Brett sighed and he paused when he saw her laugh into the cup of her small little hand. “You’re laughing at us aren’t you? Laughing at the idea of two little men throwing punches at each other and rolling around in the dirt? You think my pain is hilarious don’t you?”

She laughed harder.

“Alright,” Brett received, “Give me your hand. Come on, girly, give it to me, I won’t bite you.” He placed her fingertips on the muscles under his forearm, and he twiddled his fingers so that the tendons bounced and rippled underneath her fingertips like the strings of a piano being played by her hands. “You feel that?” He watched her blush deepen. “We little guys can throw a lot into a punch. So don’t you count either of us out in a scrap.” He winked at her and she pulled her hand away, hiding it against her breast.

He looked over his shoulder again and muttered, “What to do?”

“Je ne sais pas! Entertain me?” she blurted out.

“Sweetheart,” Brett sighed, “You really shouldn’t be asking a jockey to entertain you.” And when the color drained from her face, he grinned.

An hour later, Brett was taking her small leg in his hands and lifting it up. She slipped her delicate little foot into a stirrup and her hands, shaking, gathered up the reins. Brett leaned into her and patted her on the thigh. “Relax,” he murmured, “This is ‘Snailondesk’. He is completely useless. You know, like your brother.” Brett scrubbed at the withers of the four year old and bay gelded disappointment. “Now my brother,... note...he is of the not-useless variety,” he explained, aware that he was babbling quite happily in english again, that he had found his voice again, and that she probably was not understanding much of what he was saying again, “bought the horse because the name made him laugh. That was it. I warned him he was buying a horse that would never be an investment in anything. Not even as a lead pony seeing as Tommy doesn’t use them. But when Tommy falls for something there’s no helping it. It’s a family trait. Now Snails is just here for the occasional spin for Tommy’s kids and...pretty little French girls.” Brett winked up at her and she blushed, her look of panic spreading when he backed away from her and hopped up into the saddle of the nearly white horse beside her.

“Coup de Foudre!” he announced, saluting the animal.

The girl’s face became awash of something he didn’t understand. Puzzled, she mumbled, “Quoi?”

“Coup de Foudre,” Brett explained, patting the stallion’s neck. “Thunderbolt. Lightning. Lightning strike. It was my brother’s team’s symbol. Their logo. Their name. Tampa Bay Lightning. You know...the Lightning. Hockey. Coup de Foudre?” His raised his hands up and mimed the action of a bolt of lightning snaking from the sky and zapping her in the left shoulder. The girl shied a little from the touch of his fingertips and the bay beneath her shifted his weight a little alarmingly. Brett reached out and steadied her, “Ah ah ah, don’t squeeze his sides like that, you’re going to make him think we’re going out for a run which,” he glanced up into her worried brown eyes, “from that look I say we’re definitely not going to do. Okay...”

Brett moved the Lightning Bolt a few steps forward and Snails slimed his way a few steps behind him. He glanced over his shoulder at her and saw her smile up at him. Brett felt something in his chest unravel a little.

“That’s it, ma belle,” he whispered, “just breathe and follow the handsome man on the white horse.”

NEXT ON:

I HATE THIS ONE...stupid segment that would not die. AH well. ENJOY! Shown: "Coup de Foudre" (right) and "SnailonDesk" (left), owned by Tomas S. North of Northern Barns.

Name: Coup de Foudre
Barn Name: "Strikes"
Gender: Colt
Breed: Thoroughbred
Age: 2
Height: 16.1
Color: Grey
Genotype: ee/aa/Gg
Markings: None.
Discipline: Racing
Bloodlines: Thunder Gulch x A Touch of Romance (El Prado)
Preferred Distance: Classic
Preferred Surface:Dirt
Race Record: unraced.
Lease/Stud: too young.