by Kate Pearce
She trailed out after him, watching as he flipped the saddle on top of the blanket Roy had put on Dolittle. The horse barely bothered to open his eyes when Ry eased the bit into his mouth, buckled up the bridle, and then the cinch.
Nolly’s behavior was another matter. He danced around, tossing his head and flicking his tail like a prima donna as Ry tried to get him ready. Avery kept close to the fence while Ry said some choice words to settle Nolly down.
“Knock it off, blockhead.” He grabbed Nolly by the halter. “Chase said he’d stopped him playing tricks. I can’t say I’ve noticed any improvement.”
He managed to get the bridle on, and then gave Nolly a gentle knee in the belly as the horse did his usual thing and attempted to stop him tightening the cinch by inflating his gut.
“You okay, Avery?”
She turned away from Ry to smile at Marley, who had come up beside her. “Yeah, you?”
“Are you sure? You look a bit green.” Marley hesitated. “If you don’t want to do this—it’s not a problem.”
“I’m fine.” She nodded at Roy. “I think he’s done with Marigold. You should go and make friends.”
Avery concentrated on watching Ry, who made everything look easy around a horse. The quietness of his voice, the sure way he handled each animal and persuaded them to listen to him and behave, was soothing her fears.
He looked up and caught her staring at him. She tensed, wondering whether he’d start in on her like Marley had.
“We’re almost ready to go. Want a leg up?” He lowered his voice and pointed over at the barn wall. “I got the mounting block out for you if you need it.”
“Great, so everyone will know I’m a complete wuss.”
He frowned. “No one would think that. Are you still okay about this?”
Actually, she wanted to run away screaming, but she forced herself to nod.
He strolled over, took her hand, and kissed her on the nose. “You’ve got this.”
“I so have not.”
He leaned in and kissed her softly and thoroughly on the mouth. “Yeah, you do.”
She was still blinking up at him when he lifted her in his arms and gently set her on Dolittle’s back. It was like scaling a mountain. She grabbed the horn with both hands as a wave of nausea enveloped her.
“You’re good. Hold on, and I’ll get you settled.”
His calm voice got through to her and she managed to breathe in and out, in and out, which seemed extremely hard.
“I wish it was just you and me going.” Ry continued to talk as he adjusted her stirrups and slid her booted feet into them. “Because we could go skinny-dipping in the lake, and make love under the pines.”
“In October?” She squeaked, but, hey, she was talking.
His golden gaze heated as he caressed her jean-covered thigh with long, work-roughened fingers. “We could keep each other warm.”
“After we’d frozen to death in the creek?”
God, was she actually sitting on the back of a horse having an almost flirtatious conversation with her boyfriend? No wonder the horses loved him. He was obviously magic with humans as well.
“You gonna wear your gloves?”
She looked down at where her white-knuckled fingers were gripping the horn.
“If I want to put them on I’d have to let go.”
He curved an arm around her back. “Do them one at a time. I’ll help you.”
Finally, he handed her the reins, and she took them in one shaking fist.
“You got this, and Dolittle’s pretty much bombproof.” His approving smile made her feel like she’d won the finals in Vegas. “I’m going to check Marley’s okay, and mount up on Nolly. Roy’s coming, too. He’ll be right behind you.”
Avery let out her breath and stared out between Dolittle’s ears. He stood steady as a rock. Unlike most horses, he seemed unaware that he carried a bumbling mass of nerves on his back. The heat from his body seeped through Avery’s jeans, warming her as she automatically gathered the reins and waited for the signal to move.
She was . . . okay.
Dolittle was nothing like her barrel-racing mare. He was more like her first pony, who had needed a lot of incentives to break into a trot, let alone a lope. The sky was a clear blue, and the air so sharp it almost hurt to breathe. Her world view sitting on the back of a horse was so achingly familiar that she wanted to stay there forever. She’d almost forgotten how much of her life prior to the accident had been spent on horseback. She’d tried to forget.
“Avery?”
Ry had reached the gate into the pasture, his body swaying easily in the saddle to counteract the squirrelly hops Nolly was performing as he crab-walked sideways up to the opening.
“I’m coming.”
She clicked to Dolittle.
Nothing happened.
She squeezed with her knees, and with a grumbling snort he moved off, each step as reluctant as the last, but in the general direction she wanted him to go. Avery reminded herself about the necessity of breathing again, and settled into the saddle, too nervous about everything to notice the scenery anymore or even where they were going.
After a long while, she relaxed her death grip on the horn and flexed her left hand, shaking out the impending cramp. They were moving slowly but surely up the valley alongside the creek. If she remembered correctly, they were heading out toward the northerly part of the ranch where the old silver mine, and the ghost town of Morgansville, were situated. The air already seemed colder and thinner, and she was glad she’d worn her down jacket.
Marley shivered. “Why is it so cold and barren up here?”
Ry slowed down to ride alongside her. “A combination of being in the foothills of the Sierras, and the deforestation caused by the mining.”
“The trees still haven’t grown back?”
“Nothing to grow in. When the settlers and miners took out the huge sequoias, the topsoil blew away, leaving the dust.”
“So why haven’t you guys done something about it?”
“Because it’s part of the history of the ranch.”
“But you could plant a pine forest, or . . .”
“And swallow up the mine and the ghost town in the middle of it?” Ry shook his head. “It wouldn’t work.” His gaze scanned the barren landscape. “This is history. This shows what idiots humans are when they chase after silver and gold.”
Avery smiled at the conviction of his words. Ry loved his home and respected the past. What more could a woman want?
Oh God, was she getting all sappy about him now? Hard not to when he looked like a god on a horse, and spoke such beautiful words. And made love to her as if she was the most precious thing in his universe ...
“All right there, Avery?”
She jumped as Roy circled back toward her, and she realized she’d stopped moving.
“Sorry, I was just staring at the view.”
Roy snorted. “If you consider Ry Morgan the view, then I believe you. But he’s a good boy. You could stare at a lot worse.”
“Do you think he’ll stay here?”
“At the ranch? I think so. He seems to fit in real good.”
Ry paused to open another gate, and Marley was already riding through it. He looked back down the trail and waved them on.
“We should go.”
“Yup. Too cold to be standing around chatting.” Roy clicked to his horse and moved off, and Dolittle followed. “We just finished putting all this fencing in last week.”
“To protect the mine and ghost town from the cattle, right?”
“That and the tourists. We’ve got no actual plans of the mine workings, so if anyone falls in they’re a goner.”
“That’s good to know.” Avery smiled. “Not that I plan on exploring down there anytime soon, but if I’m working at the ranch it’s important to know why we need to keep people away.”
“You can tell them till you’re blue in the face. They still go and do stupid stuff.” Roy s
hook his head. “I’m surprised no one has been killed.” He slowly chewed his gum. “Mind you, even if they were, we might not know unless the body turned up.”
“Yeah, right.” Avery tried not to let her imagination take her too far down Roy’s horror movie path. He’d certainly succeeded in making her forget she was on the back of a horse. “Let’s hope the bodies stay where they are.”
Ry was waiting for her by the gate, his face half in shadow beneath the brim of his Stetson.
“What’s Roy blathering on about?”
“You don’t want to know.” She eased Dolittle past Nolly, who tried to nip but missed her horse’s ear by a mile. “Let’s just say you don’t want to get on the wrong side of him.”
“I already knew that. We’re not going to stop until we reach Morganville, is that okay? Marley thinks she can make it that far.”
“She looks pretty good on a horse.” Avery tried to be fair. “I don’t think she wanted to ride much because she didn’t want to have to compete with me. You know what families are like.”
“Makes sense.” He left Roy to sort out the gate, and continued on beside her.
“So why did you join the rodeo circuit?”
“Good question.” He rode on in silence for a few beats, and she wondered if that was all the reply she was going to get. “It seemed like a cool thing to do when I was eighteen, and I was good at it. But after a few years I realized I didn’t have the desire to put in all the work necessary to be great. And I hated all the moving around—the lack of permanency, and the uncertainty.”
“I wish I’d had the chance to find out if I would’ve liked that life,” she admitted. “After the accident, I couldn’t believe I wouldn’t somehow get better, be fixed, you know?” She glanced over at him. “That’s what’s supposed to happen. You get hurt, you recover, and you go back. But my hip and thigh were broken in so many places the surgeon said it was like piecing together a smashed china cup.”
“What happened?”
She rarely talked about her accident anymore, but for some reason she felt safe telling Ry. “It was raining and the ground was all churned up. We came into the first barrel too fast. Mellie lost her footing, and I ended up underneath her, facedown in the mud. She rolled over me as she got back on her feet.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Luckily I blacked out before I could decide whether drowning or suffocating was the worse way to go.” She broke off and stared ahead at the barren, scrubby track. “Sorry. I hate it when I whine. I thought I’d trained myself out of it.”
“You can whine at me anytime you like.”
The sincerity in his voice carried across the quietness and wrapped itself like a warm fist around her heart.
“Thanks, but it’s not my most attractive feature.”
“Why not?” He shrugged, the movement graceful. “It’s okay to be angry when life throws you a curveball.”
“You hate getting angry.”
“Yeah, but that’s me.”
“And if I tell you the same thing, that it’s okay? Will you believe me?”
He didn’t answer, his gaze fixed ahead on Marley, who had reined in her horse and was waiting for them by the next gate.
“Ry . . . ?”
“I hear what you’re saying, Avery.”
“But you don’t think it applies to you. It’s okay to be angry with your mom even though she wasn’t well.”
“I know. I’m working on it.”
She snorted and he flashed her a quick grin.
“I’m not convincing you?”
“That’s what I used to say to Mom when I was supposed to be doing my homework.”
“Damn, I thought I was the first one to ever use that phrase. I got it from Jenna.” His smile dimmed. “Seriously, I’m trying to get my head around it. If we find Mom, then maybe I can set my mind at rest once and for all.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Then I’ll be coming to see you, and doing a bit of whining of my own.”
* * *
Ry loved it up by the ghost town. It really was as if time stood still there. Rather than just falling into gradual disrepair, the whole town had uprooted itself one summer and the entire population moved down the valley to what was now Morgantown. Until Chase’s fiancée, January, had come on the scene and read his great-great-grandfather’s diary, no one had known exactly why.
They were standing on what had once been Main Street, between the upright shells of the mainly wooden buildings. The horses were tied up in the parking lot behind them, right next to where the original Morgan family livery business had operated. The sky was a cloudless pale blue, and wind weaved through the deserted buildings, sending clouds of fine dust dancing and swirling like mini tornadoes.
The strangest thing was the silence, as if the town were just holding its breath, waiting for the people to reappear and start living again.
“So why did everyone leave?” Marley was already asking the inevitable question.
Ry reached for Avery’s hand and drew her against his side. “January thinks it has something to do with the mine and the stamping process. She figures the creek dried up and there wasn’t enough power to run the mill, so they moved everything down the slope and built a new mill and a new town.”
“Seems a bit extreme,” Marley commented.
“The silver was running out, and most of the original mining families were moving on or turning to other trades. That’s certainly when my family decided they’d make more money feeding and supplying the miners than risking their lives down a mine.”
“Sensible folk, those Morgans,” Avery said.
“They reopened their livery stable in Morgantown, and bought the land for the ranch.” He shivered. “I’m glad they moved downstream. This place gets cold.”
“And it’s pretty darn scary at night,” Avery added.
He looked down at her. “You came up here?”
“For goodness’ sake, Ry, everyone came up here.” Avery rolled her eyes. “Well, all the kids who lived around here did. It was something of a local tradition.”
“Even though it’s on private land?”
“That just made it more fun. Me and Tucker intended to spend the night.” She shuddered. “We didn’t stay long. It felt spooky as hell.”
“Even Chase thinks there are ghosts up here, and he’s the biggest nerd I’ve ever met.” Ry turned to his quiet companion. “What do you think, Roy?”
“Ghosts,” Roy said. “Definitely.”
“Why didn’t they break down the houses and reuse the wood?” Marley was still intent on getting answers. “Why did they just leave it all hanging?”
Ry answered her. “January thinks they left the outer shells of the buildings intact in case they had to move back up here. They had no guarantee that moving down the hill would work. I suppose after a while, when things got more stable, they just moved on and forgot about the place.”
“And the land was sold off to the Morgans and fenced in,” Roy added.
“True.” Ry grinned at Avery. “Not that anyone who grew up in Morgantown seems to have cared much about that minor detail.”
Avery turned a slow circle. “It’s eerie. I keep expecting someone to come out of one of the houses.”
“Yeah, I know.” Ry took her hand. “Our family owned the third house on the right as well as the livery stables. It still feels . . . lived in.”
“Ghosts.” Avery shuddered delicately.
“Just family to me.”
Roy stamped his feet. “It’s getting cold. We should take these ladies home. There’s a storm coming in.”
Marley raised an eyebrow. “How can you tell? Did you read the clouds or something?”
“Nope.” Roy showed her his cell. “I just checked the weather app.”
Ry hid a smile as they walked back to the parking lot. It was so quiet he could hear Avery’s breathing. She nudged his side.
“I just noticed there aren’t any birds.”
“No trees.”
“I’d forgotten that.”
He kept hold of her hand. “How are you doing?”
“With the whole horse thing?”
He nodded.
“So far so good.”
He gave her a leg up into the saddle. This time she took the reins and slid her toes in the stirrups by herself. He wrapped his fingers around her calf.
“Take it easy on the way back. No circus tricks.”
“Don’t worry. I know what I’m capable of.”
She sounded . . . confident. The last thing he wanted was to jinx anything. He’d tell her how proud of her he was when they were safely back in the barn.
He mounted Nolly, checked that Marley was good to go, and took the path that led back around the abandoned mine, and down the slope on the opposite side of the creek, which would eventually take them home. He’d had his doubts about Avery’s plan to ride again, but it seemed to be working. Nothing like a bit of sibling rivalry to get a person doing stupid shit. He could attest to that.
Checking to see that Roy was close to Avery, Ry caught up with her sister, who was obviously dying to move faster. Since she hadn’t been on a horse for a year, she might end up being glad they’d only moved at a walk.
“You doing okay?”
“I’m enjoying it.” Marley glanced across at him. Like all the Hayes family she rode well, with a natural grace that spoke of years of familiarity with horses. “Did you know that your family’s original livery stable in Morgantown is now part of our hotel?”
“Yeah? I suppose it makes sense.”
“Dad found some of the original records. The livery stable was attached to a saloon, which eventually became a hotel.”
“You should tell January. She loves all that stuff.”
“I think Dad’s scheduled to speak at the next meeting of the historical society. He’s totally thrilled.”
“Cool.”
“Avery’s doing okay, isn’t she?” Marley sighed. “I was worried about her before we set off. She looked like she was going to puke.”
“Not surprising, really.”
“I suppose you think I should be mad she’s doing okay because I don’t want her to get this job.”
“It’s not my business to comment on your relationship with your sister.”
