“We’re talking rudimentary commands and manners. The arena is lighted. No reason you couldn’t come over and help Anne with our little imps then when it’s cooler. Anne can manage most of the command training alone, but getting the minis accustomed to wearing harness is better with two people—one in the carriage, one on the ground.”
“One to pick up the pieces,” Anne whispered. She caught Vince’s eye. She was willing to bet that they were both thinking the same thing. Why couldn’t Victoria pitch in in the evening after dinner? Edward generally handled the cooking and the cleaning up. Anne had noticed that Victoria was good at getting out of real labor and always seemed to have somewhere else to be. Even though she was paying Anne, Anne had not been hired as a stable hand, but as a trainer.
“Barbara and I have already talked about your spending some extra time over here. Your regular rate while you were helping here would go on my monthly bill. I can’t afford much of your time,” Victoria continued. “I’m only paying Calvin minimum wage and pool privileges. I have enough horses on full board to be able to afford the extra until fall. What do you have to go home to but microwave dinners and television? You’re all alone living in Barbara and Stephen’s rental house.”
“It’s comfortable, and I’m only there to sleep most of the time. Once Barbara and Stephen move to their new house, I’ll take over her apartment in her barn. It’s plenty homey.”
“I’m a much better cook than your microwave is.”
“You said Edward does the cooking.”
“So he does. You have to do a follow-up check of Molly’s hoof tomorrow, don’t you?” Victoria asked. “If you’re here, you can help Anne hitch up the carriage...”
Anne rolled her eyes at him.
He did not need to check Molly’s abscess tomorrow, but Victoria was a valued client. Of course, he would come, but not necessarily when she needed him.
“I’m on clinic duty tomorrow,” he said. “How about I give you a couple of hours after work and you feed me. No charge. In an emergency, all bets are off.”
“And I’ll throw in a swim. Deal.” Victoria stuck out her hand.
He shook it. “Okay, Anne?”
“Sure, why not. All assistance gratefully accepted, so long as we agree that when we’re training, I’m in charge.”
He came to his feet. “Right, boss.” He gave her a salute. “Only while you’re training.”
Anne lifted an eyebrow. How would he react the first time she gave him an order? This was one instance when she was the pro and he was the amateur.
“Stay for dinner tonight,” Victoria said. “We always have enough for at least a couple of guests.”
“Thanks, but no. I’m going to have an early night. Been a long day.” He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and sauntered up the hill to his van.
* * *
VINCE WALKED PAST the stallion’s paddock. The little horse gave a long, lonely call and finished it with a series of grunts that sounded more leonine than equine. He trotted over to intercept Vince by the paddock fence.
Vince stopped to give him a face rub. “You don’t take orders from females, do you little guy? Not sure I can take orders from Anne. If I disagree with her technique I know I’ll interfere. Better hope I do agree with her.”
The stallion gave an exasperated snort, whirled away, cantered to the end of the paddock closest to the mares and whuffled to them seductively. They ignored him.
“I get you, brother,” Vince said. “Females drive me nuts, too.” He glanced back at the patio where Anne lounged with her long legs stretched out in front of her. “One of them does, at any rate.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
VINCE TURNED THE air-conditioner in his van on High on the drive back home. He’d be glad when the heat wave broke, but with global warming that might not happen until October. Hard on the horses, hard on him. Extra hard on Anne. She did need help. Even so, he should never have been conned into helping her. Working with her would make his long days even longer. Tired vets made mistakes. He didn’t allow himself mistakes. He’d have to remain sharp somehow.
His primary responsibility was to Barbara and the clinic, but she’d already told him he should help with the VSEs. He’d have to maintain his emotional distance from Anne. She was becoming a distraction rather than an annoyance. She was too easy to talk to.
Why on earth had he told her all that stuff when they were having fajitas? He should learn to keep his mouth shut about his family.
They weren’t all bad. He considered his current stepmother, Mary Alice, as kind of a present-day Katherine Parr, Henry the Eighth’s last wife—the one who outlived him. Old Henry couldn’t have been easier to deal with than his father Thor Peterson. The main difference between the two was that Henry chopped a couple of his wives’ heads off. Thor divorced his.
King Henry had produced one sickly boy child who barely lived to maturity. He never thought the girls counted. Thor had produced three strapping males, then spent his time interfering in their lives and treating them like undervalued servants.
Vince turned on his radio, listened to the beginning of a news story about the latest disaster and turned it off again. After a day spent pregnancy-checking fifty cows in the oppressive heat, he relished the quiet.
At last he turned into the driveway of his cottage, across the street from Seth and Emma’s house. Inside their living room warm light glowed and spilled out onto the front porch. Through the window Vince could see that Seth, who often worked late, was home on time tonight.
Emma came in from the kitchen carrying their baby, Diana.
Vince was close to crossing the line between neighbor and peeping Tom, but he couldn’t turn away.
Diana reached out her arms to her father. He took her from Emma and cradled her against his chest. Emma sat beside him and leaned against his shoulder. Vince felt a stab of jealousy. Without a wife, he would never have a chance to hold his own child. He could hope that he’d be a better parent than his father had been, but the odds were stacked against him.
He hadn’t realized that his father’s parenting tactics could be viewed as child abuse until his freshman psych class at college. The professor harped on the generational thing—one generation of abused children became the next generation of abusers.
His father had never raised a hand to him or his brothers. He hurt with words. Those wounds went deeper and bled longer.
In the darkness of his own front porch he fumbled with his house keys, got the door open and turned the lights on.
He’d shared dormitories and student apartments in college, and a bunkhouse in Wyoming. Here not even a cat or dog greeted him. He could feel the emptiness.
Since he didn’t plan to marry, and didn’t like the idea of sharing living arrangements with a woman to whom he was not committed, he’d probably never enjoy the kind of closeness Seth shared with Emma. No divorce meant no marriage.
Hadn’t mattered so much up to now. He thought he’d made his peace with lonely, but tonight as he’d watched Seth with Emma and their daughter, he’d realized that he would always be outside looking in on someone else’s happy family. He’d never before known a special woman to come home to with a special pair of lips to kiss and special arms to hold him. Now, for some reason he didn’t understand, it was Anne’s face he wanted to see when he walked through his door, her arms reaching out to him.
He sank onto the couch, leaned his head back against the sofa and closed his eyes. Her face was there in his mind.
He was tired, that was all. A good night’s sleep, and he’d have his perspective back. He would make a lousy husband and a worse father. If he truly cared about Anne, he couldn’t take the chance of hurting her as his father hurt the women he married.
He hauled himself up from the couch and slid a frozen dinner into the microwave. Victoria had been right about that. He would
have eaten better at her house. He opened a longneck beer—the one he allowed himself after work most nights—and turned on the TV. He needed human voices even if they were only in the background.
The microwave dinged. He burned his fingers pulling the carton out and almost dropped it on his tray. “Dumb,” he said. He wasn’t paying attention to anything, not the TV or his dinner. He pulled a chair out from the dining table, sank into it and removed the plastic cover from his dinner.
Neither the smell nor the appearance of the food appealed to him. He wasn’t certain what it was supposed to be. Limp broccoli, watery mashed potatoes and some kind of mystery meat? He shoved it away and considered getting another beer.
No way. He’d watched his father drink his meals every time he was between wives. He had no intention of going the same way. He emptied his dinner down the disposal and cranked it. Might as well go to bed and read until he fell asleep.
He did not want to dream about Anne, but he probably would. He’d been dreaming of her regularly. In his dreams she was generally annoyed with him. Just like real life.
Why had Anne’s face become so endearing? He even looked forward to their arguments. When he saw her, he came alive in a way he’d never before experienced.
He wanted to kiss those lips, hold her... He hit the wall beside the refrigerator. “Ow, that hurt, you idiot. Get over her, man.”
He had no intention of falling in love with anyone and certainly not with Anne.
* * *
DRIVING TO THE clinic the following morning, he tried to work out how he’d wound up so opposed to having a family. First, he had been raised hearing that old Southern saying that a man was not a man until his daddy told him he was. That meant all three of the Peterson boys were doomed to permanent childhood, because their father would never validate their manhood. He grappled his sons and their families as close to him as possible, not for love, but for control.
Vince’s cell phone rang. He had a hands-free attachment, but he still pulled off the road and stopped when he saw his brother Joshua’s name. He couldn’t talk to his brother with half a brain. “Hey, bro, what’s up?”
“When you comin’ home?”
“You sound frazzled, Josh.”
“I’m finishing up the quarterly taxes. The old man’s telling me I have to stop working for my best-paying client to finish his. He says as long as I’m living in his house, on his land, he gets first dibs.”
“Tell him no.”
“Then he wants to take off the entire cost of the new baler in one lump sum rather than amortizing it the way we’re supposed to. He treats me like I’m six years old and can’t add two and two. What does he think that CPA on my wall means? I can’t even get loose from here long enough to go pick up the boys in Jackson. The divorce settlement says they’re supposed to spend half the summer vacation and alternate weekends during the school year here with us, but I barely see them, Vince. I need you to come down here and knock some sense into Daddy’s head.”
“What makes you think I’d do any better than you?”
“The difference is, bro, that you would actually do it. I owe him too much. He may have built me this fancy house, but he’s the one that holds the mortgage.”
“Move out. Move to Jackson. Take a job with one of the brokerage houses.”
“I’d never get a job with one of the big companies.”
“Then open your own office.”
“I owe too much alimony and child support. He’s got me, Vince. Just like he’s got Cody. You’re the only one who ever got out and stayed out. Come home to visit at least.”
If he went home even for a short time, his father would try to reel him in like a catfish.
“You warned us, Vince. You said if we let Daddy build us houses in the compound, we’d never get away.”
“Daddy offered to build me a house, Josh, and a clinic, too. Complete with the wife of his choice.”
Joshua snickered. “He’s never forgiven you for turning him down. He probably had the names for your two-point-five children all picked out.”
“He won’t kick you out if you tell him no, Josh. Get Cody to go with you. He’s there, I’m not.”
“Cody’s no help. The man actually wants to live here. He loves cattle farming. As long as the operation makes money, he can ignore Daddy.”
“What does your Nell say about this?” Vince asked. “She married you knowing you have an ex-wife, two children and a family like ours...”
“We waited less than a year after the divorce. I’ll bet she wished she’d waited longer. She’s kept her job as librarian and she runs half the civic committees in the county. I tell her it’s so she can go out to meetings three or four times a week away from family dinners. Woman’s a saint, Vince. She thinks I’m a wuss. I wish I could sic her on Daddy.”
“Do it. Do it together. I’d put Nell up against the old man anytime. Get Mary Alice to help. Heck, get Cody and all the wives together. Get your ducks in a row, all of you, and take back your lives.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not here.”
“And I don’t plan to be in the near future, either.”
“How’d you get the gumption to run off and break horses that summer you graduated from Mississippi State?” Joshua asked.
“Daddy wouldn’t pay the tuition to vet school. I had enough money to pay for my first year after three months in Wyoming. I vowed never to live at home again.”
He didn’t need to marry. His brothers had already provided heirs. He wanted to stay where he was in Barbara’s clinic, become a partner and build a bachelor life a four-hour drive from his father. Truth was, he’d have preferred the other side of the world—Australia, say, or New Zealand.
Too far from the new friends he had made in Williamston. Too far from his brothers and their children.
Too far from a woman with blue-green eyes and an attitude.
* * *
BY EIGHT O’CLOCK Tuesday morning, Anne had already fitted Molly into her training reins before the sun turned the arena into a heat sink.
“Forward,” Anne said. Molly looked back over her shoulder, but didn’t budge. “Forward,” Anne repeated patiently. She flicked the reins.
Molly took one grudging step.
“Good girl. Forward.”
Victoria sat on the arena fence and watched. “She thinks you want to lead her.”
“That’s what I’m trying to get across to her. When she’s tacked up this way I’m no longer her leader. She must stay by her person’s side and stop quickly in case someone like Becca loses her balance and needs to brace herself. If she was leading a blind person, she’d be wearing one of those harnesses they use on guide dogs. Ideally, she’ll track a tiny bit ahead, but not way out in front as if she were pulling a carriage. She’s almost got it. She’s comfortable with guide reins instead of a single lead line. Come on, Molly, once around the arena, then I’ll work Grumpy until we take an iced tea break.”
“Ah, I think that’s Calvin pulling his truck into the parking lot,” Virginia said and climbed off the fence. “He’s the boy I hired to groom for you. Down here,” she called to him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The young man walking down the hill wore tight, faded jeans bunched at the ankle above dusty boots. A V-neck cotton T-shirt showed plenty of muscle on a hairless tan chest, and he wore a baseball cap instead of the usual cowboy hat.
“Good, he’s taller than Becca,” Anne whispered.
“And cute,” Victoria whispered back. “Killer smile. Beautiful eyes.”
“Hello, baby horse,” Calvin said and scratched Molly’s back. She batted her eyes at him.
Victoria introduced him to Anne and strolled off toward her house with her hand under his arm. “Paperwork,” she called to Anne.
“Right. Calvin, come back down here as soon as you can.�
�
* * *
CALVIN WAS A fast learner, but not much of a talker. Anne figured he was shy. He and Anne settled into a routine in which he groomed and tacked up the next mini in line to be trained, swapped the fresh horse for the one Anne had finished working, rinsed the dirt and sweat off that one, returned it to the pasture, then started grooming the next on the agenda. Somehow, he managed to clean stalls and sweep the aisle as well.
After seeing him off at the end of the workday, Anne sprawled on the patio with Victoria and a pitcher of iced tea. “That was a very long day. Calvin’s going to do fine,” she said. “He’s a hard worker even in the heat. Doesn’t say much, but I didn’t have to tell him anything more than once. I can probably work all the horses that need it in one day since he’ll be doing the grunt work. Should speed up the training considerably.”
“That’s a lot of work for a young man.”
“Yes, he does still have a bunch of kid in him. Not that he’d believe that.”
Now, Vince was a man. Nothing of kid in him. He might be happier if there were. He didn’t seem to have enough joy in his life to let the kid part come out.
Vince had said he would come by this evening for dinner and a swim unless he had an emergency. There was no medical reason he should check in. None of the horses had health issues now that the regular farrier had taken over hoof trimming from Vince. Anne was growing used to ending the day in his company. She missed their usual verbal skirmish.
Thinking about him raised her temperature, and it was already close to a hundred. “I could use that swim,” she said. “Be right back after I change.” Why should thinking of Vince make her blush? She could not possibly be interested in him. He was an irritant, nothing more. Irritants caused rashes on contact and were to be avoided.
She’d hoped they could at least become friends after he’d opened up to her. Actually, he’d backed off, gone quiet. Poor man. He had never known parents who loved each other and wanted what was best for their children.
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