by Lilian Darcy
“Different when it’s me. Different when my legs don’t work right. Can we talk it through?”
“Of course.” Katrina talked her through each movement, where each hand and foot went, when she would give a boost.
It felt wrong, and then as soon as she arrived in the saddle, she was at home. “Oh, Bessie, you good girl!”
The horse’s broad back was alive and warm beneath the saddle, her mane shaggy in front. Jodie reached forward and ran her fingers awkwardly through it, while the familiar horsey smell rose to her nostrils. “Are you going to lead me, Kat?”
“Yep, if you want.”
“I haven’t been led on a horse since I was seven years old!”
“Well, I could set up a show-jumping course for you, with twelve fences and five-foot-high rails, but you’ll have to give me a few minutes for that.”
“Okay, just for you, we’ll save that for the next ride,” Jodie said.
It was so weird and at the same time so good. Katrina led Bess at a walk, and the horse’s rocking rhythm was more even and steady than Jodie could yet manage on her own legs. This was one of the benefits of therapeutic riding. It gave people a sense of the natural rhythm of movement that they might never have experienced on their own.
Soon she was smiling broadly. Her family had never understood her passion for horses. Where had it come from? No one knew. No one else shared it. No cowboys or rodeo riders in the family history, that they knew of. But somehow it was just there, growing in her bones from when she was seven years old and had taken her first pony ride on the woolly back of a chubby Shetland pony.
Sitting on Bess now, she felt like herself for the first time since the slow slide out of her coma, and it was so wonderful to discover that the old Jodie still existed somewhere inside her, even if her body couldn’t show it yet.
I’m me. I’m still me.
And I’m a mother. I have a baby girl.
“Could DJ come up here with me?” She didn’t even think about it, just said it.
The baby was awake now, Jodie knew, because she could hear the start of some little fussing sounds coming from the car carrier. Dev had turned a couple of times to check on her. She was getting bored, all the way over there on the bleachers. Maybe she couldn’t see her mommy riding, from so far away, and wanted to take a closer look.
Katrina asked Bess to halt. “Could she? I think it’s up to you, Jodie. You know better than me that Bess is the safest horse in the world, and she’s not depending on your cues with the reins. You want to sit DJ up there and hold her?”
“Is it okay with you, Dev?” It felt strange to be looking down on him. He stood there, watching her intently, head a little tilted to one side, eyes narrowed. She must have shocked him with the idea of having DJ up on a horse at less than four months old, but not a bad shock, apparently. He was thinking about it, not rejecting it.
Jodie held her breath. Please agree. Please. Just say yes. Don’t question it.
If he wanted to know why it was so important, she knew couldn’t explain in words.
“She does seem to be getting a little bored over there.” He’d echoed her own thought. “You think she’s going to be a pony gal, like her mom?”
“Hope so!”
He gave a brief nod, didn’t say anything out loud, then began walking in DJ’s direction. A minute later he’d unstrapped her and brought her over. She was wriggling, sitting up in his arms. She was reaching the same kinds of milestones as Jodie herself. Growing stronger. Becoming more alert.
“How is this going to work?” Dev asked.
“Could you hand her up to me? And then keep ahold of her, just in case? I’ll sit her here at the front of the saddle so she’s leaning against my stomach. If you just put a hand on her front…”
“Should work,” he agreed.
DJ seemed to like the idea. She was waving her arms, taking happy little breaths and making sounds. Katrina stood beside Bess’s head, stroking her nose and cheek and telling her, “You’re getting another passenger, but she doesn’t weigh a whole lot. Is this a first for you? I think so.”
Dev lifted DJ up and settled her against Jodie’s front. Jodie wrapped a hand around her middle and found Dev’s hand there already, as she’d asked. Their fingers touched and laced together because there was no room for them to do anything else, and the downy back of DJ’s little head bumped gently against Jodie’s stomach.
With Dev’s other arm behind her on the saddle, she felt so close to him. Closer, in some ways, than she’d felt last night with his hands and mouth on her breasts. He could have pillowed his head against her thigh by moving just an inch or two. She remembered what he’d said that first evening at his place, when she’d learned the truth about DJ’s birth. We’re a family. For the first time, with Bess’s warm, living strength beneath her, and DJ and Dev both so close, she actually believed it might be true.
“She seems real excited about this,” Katrina commented.
“Is she smiling, Kat?”
“No, not smiling, but so alert. Are we standing still, or walking?”
“Walking,” Jodie answered. “Ready when you are, Kat. Dev, are you? Will you be able to keep pace in that position?”
“I’m fine. She is really happy, look at her, she’s bouncing.”
“Still not smiling? I can’t see.”
“Serious, still, but so eager. You’re not missing anything by not seeing her face. It’s her body doing the talking.”
“Oh, it is, I can feel it. Oh, DJ, you’re so happy, aren’t you?”
Not smiling, but maybe just as good.
Katrina clicked her tongue and told Bess to walk, and the wonderful rocking motion of the horse began again. Her hooves barely made a sound on the soft sawdust, and when they passed the big open doors where the sun came streaming in, her brown coat gleamed. DJ bounced and made her cooing and gurgling sounds. Dev muttered, “Just managing to keep up, here” beneath his breath, and then, a little louder, said, “She’s loving it. Isn’t she?”
All Jodie could say was, “Oh! Oh!” Her face hurt from smiling, and her vision blurred with tears.
I’m holding her and it feels right. We’re on a horse together and she loves it. She feels like my daughter. My very own daughter. For the first time. I can feel it. I can feel what Dev feels about her. If only I could see her face! That’s the only way this could be any better. I never understood. I never knew this was how it could feel.
Oh. Oh.
There were just no words.
I must not let her see how scared I am, Dev thought.
It was perfectly safe. He knew it with his head. His heart couldn’t feel it. DJ? His precious baby girl? Fifteen weeks old and on a horse, five long feet from the ground?
But he could see what it was doing for Jodie and that made the fear unimportant. It was such a beautiful sight. Jodie’s smile. DJ’s excited bouncing, her little mouth open but serious, her hands batting in the air. The horse so slow and steady and patient.
He had to walk almost leaning against the warm equine body in order to keep one hand in place against DJ’s stomach. The other hand he rested on the back of the saddle, an inch from Jodie’s rounded backside. She’d worn stretchy jodhpurs, sand-colored, because that was what she always wore for riding, and man those things looked good on a woman’s body!
His half-side-on position gave him a perfect view of the rhythmic rock of her hips in the saddle, and the only thing that stopped him looking too long and hard and thinking all sorts of forbidden thoughts about last night and those rocking hips on the warm hood of the car was the better view he got from looking higher up, where the big, teary-eyed, dazzling grin on her face just wouldn’t go away, and the slight crookedness and lack of control in her arms and shoulders didn’t seem to matter at all.
“Oh!” she kept saying. “Ohh!” And kind of laughing and crying at the same time, while DJ sat pressed up against her and all that Jodie body language of reluctance about holding and touching
her baby had miraculously gone.
He wanted to wrap his arms around her and plant exuberant smooches of congratulation all over her face. You’re amazing! He wanted to soften those same arms and give her kisses that were tender and wondering and soft on her mouth. You’re amazing.
This was what he’d been drawn to at eighteen, even though he’d never acknowledged or acted on it back then. This was what still drew him—the combination of fragility and strength, the petite body that had a warrior’s fight in it, the determination and perseverance along with a huge, dazzling, sexy smile.
If this was his old life, in New York, he knew what his next move would be. Whisk her away somewhere so that this fizzing need inside him could find a happy release. Ten days in Paris, a three-day weekend in the Bahamas. It had worked for him, in the past.
He always picked the right kind of woman, sophisticated and high maintenance and impossibly well-groomed. Always had a great time, while in the back of his mind—and the woman’s—the clock ticked and the objections mounted up.
He couldn’t have spent his life with a woman whose grooming rituals took up two hours of every single day. She—a series of them, over the years—couldn’t have spent hers with someone who read the international section of the newspaper every day like he was prepping for an exam and then actually wanted to talk about it. He couldn’t have seriously fallen for someone who paid that much attention to shoes and whose voice went whiny and childlike the moment she didn’t get her own way. A few weeks together, though…great.
He’d been smug about it, he now realized. He’d been far too certain and confident about his choices. The right kind of relationship, with the right kind of woman. He’d had it all sewn up, all his bases covered.
Jodie wasn’t the right kind of woman.
But she was the mother of his child.
And he’d be stepping back from the whole situation as soon as she was able to take care of DJ herself, as soon as he trusted that they had the right arrangement in place. It was the only thing that made sense. It was—even though they never said it straight out—what her family wanted.
But hell, she looked fabulous up there, grinning from ear to ear, with DJ nestled against her front. He didn’t want it to end.
His first inkling of the new arrivals was the sound of Barbara Palmer’s voice. “Oh, sweet jeepers, and she has the baby up there, too!”
Before Katrina, Jodie or Dev himself could react, Barb and Lisa came hurrying across the arena. He couldn’t see them fully, as Bess’s body masked his view, but there could be no doubt about their attitude. Katrina told Bess to halt, which she obediently did, while Jodie had stiffened in the saddle and tightened her arm around the baby.
Dev tightened his own fingers, so that their two hands were knotted tightly together. He felt Jodie squeezing, and squeezed her back. It’s okay, they seemed to be saying to each other. We’re in this together, and we’re not going to apologize for any of it. He came so close to laying his cheek against her thigh.
You’re amazing….
“It’s fine, Mom,” she said. “Katrina has the horse, Dev has DJ, nothing bad is going to happen.”
“It’s not fine! How can you be so irresponsible with your own daughter? How can you even put this as a priority, coming here, at this point in your rehab? Getting on a horse? When walking and showering and brushing your hair are still so much of a challenge? How can you?”
“I thought you had errands this morning.”
“Lisa called, and I told her you were coming here, and she wanted to take a look. I decided the errands could wait.”
“Honey,” Lisa said to her sister, “Mom’s right, don’t you think?”
She was already reaching up, standing on Bess’s other side. Dev would have had to fight her for the baby, snatch the little body from Jodie’s front with a rough movement, to keep her under his own control. He didn’t do it.
“Never mind yourself,” Lisa went on, “although that’s bad enough. But to put a fifteen-week-old preemie baby on horseback?” She had DJ safely in her arms in a couple of seconds, and began to stroke her silky little head, kiss and hug DJ against her sun-darkened collarbone. She loved her baby niece, no doubt about that. She seemed genuinely shaken by the idea that DJ had been all the way up there on scary Bess’s back.
“She liked it,” Jodie said.
“Liked it? How could you? Project that onto her? I mean, seriously!”
“We could tell. It was clear.”
“You are projecting, Jodie. I’m actually pretty angry about this! After we’ve been so careful, so worried—”
“Lisa, I promise you—”
“Honey, Lisa doesn’t mean to sound so—” Barb began, cutting in.
Lisa shook her head back and forth. “Yes. Okay. I’m sorry. Not angry. Just questioning your judgment, okay? And your priorities. Sure, I mean, I guess it sounds great.” She mimicked, “‘Wow, I was back in the saddle four weeks after I came home from the hospital. My daughter started riding when she was less than four months old.’ But it shouldn’t be about your ego, should it?”
“It’s not about my ego.” Jodie’s voice had grown strained and tense. The happy grin had gone. And the tears. She was frowning, dry-lipped. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s what I thought when you tried to give my Izzy riding lessons when she was three years old. You wanted to turn her into a superstar in a few months, winning ribbons in show-riding competitions and heaven knew what else.”
Dev felt his tension level climb as the argument grew more heated. He knew about siblings. He had an older brother in California, a criminal defense attorney, who could still push his buttons when they met up at family gatherings. Just keep DJ out of it, he wanted to say, but managed to press his mouth shut.
“That was ten years ago,” Jodie was saying, “and I was only just starting out instructing. Izzy didn’t like it and so we let it go.”
“After she almost fell.”
“She didn’t almost. I had the pony by the bridle and he settled down in about five seconds. I had no idea you were still upset about that, after so long. And it was never about winning ribbons.”
“I’m not still upset. I’m not.” Lisa shook her head frantically again. “Just seeing you there with DJ reminded me, makes me question what it’s really about. Photos for the Oakbank website?” She gestured behind her.
“Photos?” Jodie and Dev both looked where she was pointing, over at the bleachers nearest the office, and discovered Anna there with a camera.
Anna began to walk toward them, her movement a little graceless and awkward as if in apology for the tension she sensed in the air. “I’m sorry, did I do the wrong thing? I didn’t want to interrupt and get you to pose, but you looked so great, I just couldn’t resist grabbing the camera.”
“Great?” Barb exclaimed.
“I didn’t know Anna had the camera,” Jodie said tightly, then turned to her friend and spoke in a bright tone. “But it’s fine. Did you get some? I’d love to see them.”
“So they’re not for the website?” Lisa persisted.
Dev answered her. “Of course they’re not for the damned website! And if they were…”
Had they not seen how Jodie had looked relaxed and happy and herself for the first damned time since she’d woken up, how she’d held DJ like a mother for the first damned time since she’d learned the truth about her pregnancy? Had they not even taken a moment to notice any of that before barging in? Would it be such a terrible thing to have a picture of Jodie and her baby girl on the Oakbank website, when she loved the place so much?
“I’m tired,” Jodie suddenly announced. “My legs are starting to shake. I think I’d better call it quits for today.”
“For today?” Barb wailed.
“Yes, I want to keep doing this. Get better at it. Move on from Bess to Snowy, and see how I go.”
“You can’t mean you’re going to try to ride again the way you used to?”
&n
bsp; “You said you hadn’t sold Irish.”
“Because I knew you’d want to see him. Not ride him. You’ll never ride him, Jodie.”
There was a sharp, painful silence. Dev could have shoved his daughter’s grandmother facefirst into the sawdust floor, he was so angry with her. Nobody yet knew whether Jodie’s recovery would be complete enough to allow her to ride the way she used to. How could Barb preempt the worst-case scenario like that? How could she shatter Jodie’s hopes?
Jodie’s jaw set hard and stubborn at her mother’s words. “Then DJ will ride him instead. He’s only nine years old. She can start on him when she’s ten. She’ll be a strong rider by then, and he’ll be mellow as a lamb at nineteen.”
“This is ridiculous,” Lisa muttered.
“You got that right,” Dev said, his own jaw painfully tight.
It was ridiculous that they’d come. Insane that they were creating conflict out of something that had been so joyful until five minutes ago. Ridiculous and insane and just plain insensitive.
He managed not to say any of this out loud. But he pulled DJ out of Lisa’s arms. “I think she needs a diaper change.”
“Kat, can you get us back to the mounting block?” Jodie asked in a strained voice.
“Sure, of course. You okay to get that far?”
“I’m fine. As long as Dev has DJ.”
“I have her.” He turned his back on Lisa and Barb, not certain which of them owned the greater share of his anger. He’d thought of Lisa as an ally, until now. Out of all of the Palmer women, she was the one who was least inclined to underestimate Jodie or overprotect her, the one who might understand that Jodie’s bonding with DJ was incomplete and that they might need to try some pretty imaginative strategies to get things on track.
Like putting the two of them up on a horse.
But now he felt betrayed. She was the one who’d gotten Barb’s blood up this morning. So Lisa had “wanted to take a look”? Wanted to sabotage the whole event, more like. He didn’t doubt that her motives were good. Pristine and pure. She loved her baby sister. Maybe that long-ago episode with Izzy and the riding lessons really did still scare her, even if at heart she knew it wasn’t Jodie’s fault. The whole family loved her. But boy could love be blind sometimes!
