“I wouldn’t call caring for the physical well-being of a couple hundred residents the mommy track. You do realize you’re living in a medical clinic? You’ll have no work–life boundaries.”
“I hadn’t really thought of it like that.” She’d been thinking how convenient it would be.
He gave her a brief, highly charged smile and then spun away to entertain his audience, embellishing on Myrna’s content.
She wouldn’t have believed Holden would jump into the tour-guide role if she hadn’t seen it herself. What else didn’t she know about him?
* * *
“HI.” DEVIN SLIPPED into the barn where Frankie was preparing horses to ride. Given how many kids were in the tour, she’d need a lot more horses saddled.
“Which horse needs to be saddled next?”
She shook her head, slowly at first, and then vehemently. “Why would you help me?”
“Because I like you.” Because you’re ten times cooler than me and wanted to kiss me. Devin tried to smile the way Dad smiled at Dr. Carlisle sometimes—like he thought she was the best thing he’d ever seen.
“Don’t look at me like that.” She brushed past him, hurrying into a small tack room and grabbing a saddle and saddle blanket.
Despite the smile backfiring, Devin pulled a Dad move and took the load from Frankie, carrying it over to Mimi and lifting the saddle and blanket onto her broad brown back. “How do you want me to look at you?” Their gazes connected over the top of the saddle.
There were tears in her eyes. Behind her, Shortcake was tied up to a ring on the wall. He swished his tail, connecting to her shoulder. Frankie barely reacted.
“What did I say wrong?”
“You’re being nice.” She touched the short, purple hair at the back of her neck. “You’d tell me if my hair starts falling out, wouldn’t you?”
He blinked at her question because, of all the things she could have said, this didn’t make sense. “Your...hair?”
She drew her cowboy hat off slowly, revealing a head of purple hair that looked about as unhealthy as the mangy cat he and Mom adopted from a shelter one time. There were patches of skin visible between short, uneven locks.
“Do you have cancer?” Devin whispered, because it looked the same as some of the pictures he’d seen. And then he went cold because with cancer—man, that was serious—she could die.
“Cancer would be normal, wouldn’t it?” Frankie shook her head. “Over Christmas break, my parents told me they were getting a divorce.” She laughed humorlessly. “Apparently, they haven’t been in love with each other for more than a decade. And my dad is already engaged to someone else. I mean...how does that happen? One minute we’re opening Christmas presents like always and the next they’re acting like they’re strangers.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She might not have heard him. The floodgates were open, and she just kept talking. “My home life was all a lie and...” Frankie choked back something that sounded suspiciously like a sob before raising her eyes to his. “All the changes. All the drama that started coming out in the open... All of a sudden, I lost my appetite. I couldn’t concentrate. And my hair fell out.” She put her hat back on her head. “At first, doctors suspected I had cancer, just like you. My mom was convinced I was dying. And my friends... I think my appearance scared them off. Like depression is contagious or something.” She lifted her chin, a little of the obstinate Frankie returning. “I learned who my real friends were. And how harshly people can judge you based on your appearance. But still... I just couldn’t handle everything coming at me. I dropped out of school, and Mom sent me to live here.”
Mimi stomped a hoof, perhaps impatient that there was a saddle on her back but no rider.
Devin pushed her girth strap off the saddle horn toward Frankie and then bent to grab the ends and thread it through the buckle on his side.
“You must think I’m pathetic.”
He tried to laugh, tugging the girth strap tight. “I think you’re awesome. Nobody ever admits the truth. Heck, half the kids at my school pretend they’re perfect and that they’re ready for all kinds of stuff they can’t possibly be ready for.” Alcohol. Sex. College. Devin suspected he wasn’t ready for any of that, either. He frowned. He was ready for college...wasn’t he?
“You...” Frankie floundered.
Devin watched her out of the corner of his eye, noticing her mouth work as if she struggled to say the important words the same way he had last night.
“You...” Frankie blew out a breath. “You’re a nerd.”
“Yes. But that doesn’t explain...” He gestured toward the hay bale where she’d tried to kiss him. “Girls like you don’t try to kiss guys like me.” Even girls who were going through a hard time.
As if sensing the clock was ticking, Frankie went back into the tack room for another saddle and blanket, putting them on Pokey’s back. “Before all this went down, I wanted to go to college and be a mechanical engineer. But now... I dropped out of school. I’ve ruined my entire life plan. Not that my gran seems to care. But my parents... And me...” She scrubbed her cheek with the back of her hand. “Things are okay here. And I figured, why not just stick with the horses and stay here forever?”
She was a nerd? “You haven’t ruined anything.” Devin didn’t know what came over him. Maybe it was his Monroe genes. Or maybe it was seeing in real time what he’d heard about and had been cautioned against: high-performing kids crashing and burning.
He walked around Mimi to stand in front of Frankie. He straightened her cowboy hat, not that she looked at him, and then rested his hands on her shoulders. “You can go back in the fall and take some extra classes. You might have to take summer school after your senior year, but at the very least, you’ll have a great topic for your entrance-exam essay. I hear overcoming adversity gets you an automatic extra ten points.”
Frankie bit her lip. “I can’t go back there. Geez, I go to therapy every morning, and I’m still a mess. If the kids at my school found out I was seeing a doc, they’d never let me forget it.”
He squeezed her shoulders lightly. They were delicate shoulders and, for whatever reason, he felt stronger just resting his hands on them. “Where I come from, practically every kid is in therapy, starting at middle school.”
“Were you?” she asked carefully, flashing him a glance.
“Yes and no.” He tried to smile. “My mom’s a therapist.”
Frankie’s brash smile reappeared. “Is she always asking you why you said something? Or how you feel?”
Devin nodded, although his head was about all he could move right now, because he was touching a girl who’d wanted to kiss him! “Why don’t you go to a different school in the fall?”
“Because I’m dropping out and staying here?”
“Oh, no. You’re going to go back,” he said with an authoritative tone he had to have learned from Dad.
Frankie’s smile faded. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because you’re too proud to leave anything unfinished. Look at this place.” He pried a hand off her shoulder and gestured around the barn. “It’s spotless. And the tack. Spotless. And every horse—”
“I get the idea.” She blushed.
Devin’s chest swelled. He couldn’t remember any girl his age ever blushing because of him.
“Get out of here.” Frankie pushed him away. “I can do this myself, nerd.”
“Hey, I’m not one of those guys who abandons a friend just because their hair is falling out.” He was back to tapping his chest with his thumb. “Plus I know how to prepare horses to ride.”
“Really, nerd, I—”
“Quit wasting your breath. There’s a busload of people out there just waiting to sit in a saddle.”
“Okay.” She smiled at him.
And just like that—organi
cally—Devin fell in love.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“NO,” FRANKIE SAID when she saw Holden walk toward the hitching post lined with saddled horses and, more specifically, toward Shortcake.
“Yes.” Holden settled the cowboy hat more firmly on his head. He had a good feeling about this ride. “I paid for another go at Shortcake. And I plan to be dry when this one finishes. These are my good boots.”
Frankie stuck out her chin. “My gran knows better than to take your money without warning you that Shortcake is off-limits.”
Myrna was leading a few chaperones and members of the band that weren’t riding back up the hill to the tour office and presumably the café. She was out of shouting distance.
“Dad, don’t do this.” Devin led a horse out of the barn. “That horse is smarter than you are.”
“Dev.” Holden shook his head and held out a fifty-dollar bill toward Frankie. “You’re underestimating the situation. This horse wants to be respected, same as I do.”
“Did nothing from our talk last night sink in?” Dev asked in hushed tones, helping one of the band girls up in the saddle.
Holden stared down at the money. “In the unlikely event that Shortcake takes me for another swim, you’ll all have another memory to cherish.” But, boy, he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. This was his favorite pair of boots.
“Holden, quit talking as if you’re dying,” Bernadette said.
“Come on, Frankie.” Holden patted Shortcake on the neck before holding out the money once more. “You won’t have to take him for a ride later.”
“You’re a glutton for punishment, Mr. Monroe.” She plucked the fifty from his hand and untied the reins from the hitching post, handing them to him. “My money’s still on Shortcake.” She walked off to get band campers on their mounts.
“I don’t know if I should go along on this ride,” Bernadette said, a hand over her stomach.
Holden hesitated. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Will you forego a ride if I say I’m feeling a little nauseous?”
“Yes.” He led Shortcake over to Bernadette, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “What can I do?”
“Be careful.” Her gaze clouded with worry. “I remember when you went skiing on that black-diamond slope last winter.”
“That was fun.” The rush of the wind on his face. The rush of adrenaline in his blood.
Bernadette tsked. “You wiped out at the bottom.”
“And that was fabulous, too.” Taking risks made him feel alive.
Bernadette turned to Devin. “Can’t you do something?”
“Nope.” Devin shook his head. “I inherited Dad’s two left feet but Mom’s common sense. I know my own limits when it comes to physical challenges. But Dad? Not so much.”
“I am what I am.” But today, in his boots and cowboy hat, Holden felt like he could handle anything that life tossed at him. There were no elephants on his chest. His thoughts weren’t a muddled fog.
“Holden, you need to grow up.” But Bernadette got on a palomino that kept trying to eat stray blades of grass.
“Frankie, I’ll bring up the rear,” Holden told the teen.
“Nerd Boy,” Frankie said to Devin, “you ride Mimi and take the lead.”
“Nerd Boy?” Holden scowled.
“It’s okay, Dad.” Devin didn’t take offense to the nerd title the way Holden did. “Everyone line up behind me,” he said to the group of riders, as if he was Frankie’s employee.
Frankie and Bernadette lingered near the back with Holden but eventually headed off on the dusty trail.
“Come on, Shortcake. You don’t need a swim today, do you?” Holden couldn’t get Shortcake to move with any sense of urgency. But he did move. It might have helped that his boot heels were more solid than sneaker soles. Shortcake seemed to take to his leg commands more readily than he had during the first ride.
“You could always take Shortcake back to the barn,” Frankie called from the top of the trail where she and Bernadette waited for Holden. “Tie him to a hitching post, and I’ll take him out later.”
“Exercising this horse is my gift to you, Frankie,” Holden teased.
Frankie just shook her head.
A blue jay swooped in front of them, and Shortcake slowed to the pace of a wedding march.
Frankie turned her horse toward the river but hesitated. “Why don’t you give me Shortcake’s reins? I won’t let him take you swimming.”
“Don’t you worry about us,” Holden reassured her as he reached the pair. “We’re doing ten times better than we were the other day. We’re fine.”
“Holden’s fine,” Bernadette said, not without a healthy dose of sarcasm. “He’s not, but that’s what he always says.”
Holden scoffed. “I’ve got this. Don’t I, Shortcake?” He kept a tight rein on the roan so that he wouldn’t take off with the bit in his mouth. They moved slowly down the hill.
Bernadette rode across the river and waited for Holden on the other side. Frankie held her horse back at the river’s edge, positioning herself in the way of the deep end.
“I’ve got this.” Holden guided Shortcake to the shallows.
The horse’s ears swiveled, practically in full circles. His steps slowed. His muscles bunched.
“That a boy,” Frankie said soothingly, holding her gray horse to Shortcake’s pace.
Shortcake snorted and leaped up and forward like a bucking bronco, bouncing in front of Frankie’s horse and then bouncing in her path and into the deep.
Water surrounded Holden up to his armpits.
And these are my favorite boots!
* * *
“WHY ARE YOU so stubborn?” Bernadette grabbed Shortcake’s reins as he came out of the water on the other side of the river, riderless. She could have predicted that outcome.
Frankie brought her horse up next to Bernadette, shaking her head. “I’ll give him this. He’s a good rider, but he’s not a bronc rider.”
They watched Holden climb onto shore. His hat was dry, but he was otherwise soaked to the skin.
“I thought I had him that time.” Holden removed his boots one at a time, dumping out river water on the rocky bank. And then he removed his socks and wrung them out. His shirt clung to every muscle on his chest, which from Bernadette’s perspective made watching him fail worth it. “A man should be able to control his horse.”
“Just like a man should be able to control their motor vehicle?” Bernadette joked, letting her gaze linger on those muscles. “Your motor home went into a ditch.”
“That was an accident,” he said easily, putting his socks back on. “And so was this.”
“Two times isn’t an accident,” Frankie said, before turning her horse around. “You should quit while you’re behind. Catch up when you can, or head on over to the barn. He hardly ever wants to swim back.” She sent her horse into a gallop to catch the trail riders Devin led.
“You should quit while you’re behind...” Bernadette repeated slowly. “Wise words from a teenager.”
“Let’s apply that statement to my two marriage proposals and see how you feel when I vow not to quit. Not you and not Shortcake.” He studied one of his boots. “Besides my pride, this is the day’s only casualty. I left my phone in the motor home. It’s a shame, though. I love these boots.”
Bernadette suspected there was a story behind those snakeskin boots, but now didn’t seem the time to probe for details. The rest of the group was leaving them behind.
Holden put his boots back on, not without a bit of a struggle. And then he scaled the embankment and took Shortcake’s reins, glancing at the river. “Esteban would be disappointed in me. He’d want me to give it another go.”
“The family-ranch foreman you mentioned? Wouldn’t he expect you to take fewer risks and better care of your
self?” Bernadette waited for Holden to mount up before turning her horse toward the trail. “As your doctor, I’d advise you to take this time to reflect upon your safety and priorities rather than any challenges or obligations you feel, past or present. And maybe take a look at that portfolio of yours and adjust for some safer bets.” Another overstep. Bernadette gnawed on her lip to stop herself. Just because she was a doctor didn’t mean she could tell Holden what to do in every aspect of his life.
“My family is my obligation.” Holden’s chin jutted in that stubborn way of his, and he gave her a once-over that seemed to say she was his obligation, too. “And my investments sometimes involve family. If you must know about my loss, I backed my sister Olivia in her quest to compete as a sailing captain in America’s Cup.”
“The sailboat race?” Living in a noncoastal state, she didn’t follow boat racing at all. A cluster of purple flowers caught her eye, and then it seemed as if they were surrounded by purple blooms. The air became more fragrant. “Did you tell me about her before? I can’t recall.” She should have had a questionnaire she administered. “I remember you talking about your brother Bo.”
“A man who’s never asked me for a dime. You met him in Second Chance.” Holden passed a hand through the air, as if waving her sidebar aside. “You know I’m not an open book. But I’ll admit that I financed Olivia’s expenses for a future share of her endorsements. Seemed a safe bet—female racing captains are few and far between. And Olivia has always loved boats and the water. She has grit and skill.” Frowning, he squeezed the hem of his shirt with one hand, sending a thin stream of water down his pants leg. “But then, during a race recently, she took a chance. Her boat capsized and sank. She’s lucky no one was hurt or drowned. And...it doesn’t look like she’ll ever race again.”
“Oh, Holden. I’m so sorry. She must feel terrible.” Bernadette felt bad, too. She’d joked about Holden losing money on pork-belly shares.
“I love my sister...but I’m not betting on people anymore.” Holden sat taller in the saddle. “I learned a valuable lesson this year. When you bet on family, you have to be willing to lose it all.” He gave Bernadette a somber look.
Caught by the Cowboy Dad Page 15
