It was over too soon, but everyone agreed she probably shouldn’t push too hard, too fast. She knew they were right, but...
“When can I come back?” she said later in Adrienne’s kitchen after the woman made her a cup of tea and Zach had finally gone to check on that mare. Weathered skin pleated at the corners of the woman’s deep brown eyes.
“Once a horse junkie, always a horse junkie. But if you’re really serious, you should probably think about getting your own horse. So the two of you can train together.” The other woman took a sip of her own tea. “Zach said you already bought a horse for your son.”
“I did. Although I haven’t brought him over yet. I suppose it’d crossed my mind, how great it would be to be able to ride with Landon, but...” She smiled. “Now I can. Or at least eventually.”
“He’s coming out soon, I take it?”
“Yes. End of next week, in fact.” Then she frowned. “How’d you know that...? Wait—what’s Zach said?”
A funny little smile curved the woman’s mouth. “Enough to know the boy’s sweet on you.”
“Hardly,” Mallory mumbled, even as her cheeks burned. Adrienne leaned forward.
“I’m not saying he knows that yet. Or to be honest if he’ll ever figure it out. Men can be dumb as bricks sometimes. And the way he loved his wife...” Humor sparkled in her eyes. “I used to tell Booth, he needed to take lessons.”
“So you’ve known Zach for a while?”
“All his life. Horse people from the same area are like family. Which I suppose you know all too well, growing up in a ranching community yourself.”
Mallory almost laughed. “What else did he tell you?”
“Well, let’s see...that you’re divorced and your boy lives with his daddy back in LA, that you live with your mama and a spoiled Boston terrier named Edward—”
“Edgar.”
“Edgar, right. And that you’re a film star. Although he didn’t have to tell me that part, I already knew it. What he didn’t tell me was that you’re even prettier in person than you are on-screen. But I suspect he’d decided to keep that part to himself. So I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions he didn’t want me jumping to. Only, in my experience? Men don’t generally talk that much about a gal they’re not interested in.”
A huge, fluffy gray cat jumped up onto Mallory’s lap and settled in, purring loudly enough to rattle windows. Smiling, Mallory began stroking the soft fur, then said, “So, tell me your story. What happened?”
Adrienne snorted. “That wouldn’t be you changing the subject, now, would it?”
“Absolutely. Well?”
“Car accident, twenty years ago,” the other woman said flatly. “That I wasn’t killed was a damn miracle. Like you, I was heavy into the rodeo life. Couldn’t imagine doing anything else. However in those days there weren’t as many options as there are now. Or at least, people didn’t think so. I got back up on a horse, absolutely. But I never competed again.”
“You still ride?”
“Some. But my injury...” The older woman’s mouth thinned. “I was grateful for what I had. What I could still do. What I can still do. But I finally decided maybe I needed to focus my energies elsewhere. So Booth and I set up this place.” She swept a graying strand of wavy dark hair behind her ear, revealing a small diamond stud. “We don’t only work with spinal cord injuries, but with all kinds of folks who could benefit from what the horses have to offer. Something about them...they’re just natural healers, you know?”
“I do,” Mallory said. She’d seen it before, of course, when she was younger, even if she’d temporarily forgotten—that almost magical way horses often had of making a person connect with something inside themselves they hadn’t even known was there. How almost angel-like they were, in a way—four-legged, hooved emissaries of joy. Of power. How working with them, riding them, required a combination of control and trust that inspired, instilled, confidence and freedom—
“What’re you thinking?” Adrienne asked, and Mallory released a breath.
“How funny it is, the way life works. That I’d given up—willingly—such a huge part of who I was to go in an entirely different direction. Only to be led right back to the beginning, maybe.” She met Adrienne’s astute gaze. “I guess I always thought of life as linear. Maybe not so much?”
The other woman leaned back in her chair, her hands folded over the stomach. “Guess that depends on what we have to learn, whether or not we keep moving forward or circle back for a refresher course on what we might’ve missed before.” Then she released a deep belly laugh that made Mallory smile. “As good a philosophy as any, I suppose.”
Her husband and Zach reappeared a moment later. After a couple minutes’ conversation about the expectant mare—everything looked good, Zach doubted they’d need him for the foaling—Mallory and Zach were back on the road, both lost in thought as they listened to whatever country station they could pick up out this far. And why did it not surprise her that Zach Talbot would be so old-school? It was kind of comforting, in a way, reminding her of that road-trip movie she’d done a few years back, the one set in the sixties. That character, too, had not been the same person at the end of the story she’d been at the beginning, same as the woman returning to Whispering Pines was most definitely not the same one who’d left this morning.
“When I said I was scared,” she finally said, “how come you didn’t press the issue? Ask for details?”
A moment passed before he said, his gaze fixed out the windshield, “Because I figured the details didn’t matter.” His gaze barely bounced off hers. “Did they?”
“Not really, I guess.”
“Then there ya go. And anyway, this wasn’t about me. The why behind whatever that fear was...didn’t figure it was any of my business.”
“I see.”
She heard him blow out a short breath. “I’m not trying to shut you out, Mallory. Believe it or not. You wanna talk, I’ll listen. Like I said. But I figure the stuff inside a person’s head is private, you know? More than that...it’s, well, sacred, I guess you could call it. Nobody has any right to go poking around in there unless they’d been specifically invited. So my only goal was to see you happy. And I’m guessing you were.”
“Still am,” she said softly, then glanced at Zach’s profile, his expression so set—his smile so careful when his gaze shot to hers—she got the distinct feeling he wasn’t the only one who’d gone through some changes that morning. Only no way in hell was she gonna open that can of worms. Or, as he said, go poking around someplace she hadn’t been invited.
Because why ruin a perfect day?
Chapter Seven
A week later, Zach still couldn’t shake the memory of the look on Mallory’s face when she’d finally gotten on Henry, a look that shot right past joy to absolute triumph. Only thing to equal it had been Heidi’s expression, right after she’d given birth to the boys. That Zach had been in some way the cause of both had unnerved him far more than he was about to let on.
“Here you go, guys!” At Levi’s bellow, Zach looked up to see his taller, brawnier brother navigating the crowd in the bleachers, one large hand clamped around an open cardboard box piled high with hot dogs and nachos and cotton candy, the other precariously balancing another box jammed with cans of soda. The nippy fall air smelled of animal and dung, sawdust and fried food, the afternoon sun still high in a bright blue sky. Forget the thrill of competition, Zach thought, barely able to keep the boys from attacking their uncle like baby wolves. Never mind the breath-holding anticipation of how long the cowboy could stay on the bull, or whether the clowns could keep the bull distracted long enough for said cowboy to save his ass. For these two, it was all about the food.
It was always about the food.
A few feet away, Val laughed, her lap full of baby Risa, her eyes full of happy. “Good God, Zach—when was the last time you fed them?”
“An hour ago?” he said, watching the boys inhale their hot d
ogs, and the blonde laughed again. You would’ve never known the wedding was only two days out. Lord, Heidi had been an absolute basket case. Then again, they’d done the whole church-wedding-and-reception-for-a-hundred deal—mostly for Heidi’s relatives and family friends he’d never seen before. Or since. Frankly, it’d been beyond him why most of ’em had even bothered coming. And after her mother’d moved out to Phoenix after Heidi’s father died a few months after Heidi, the boys only saw her two, three times a year. So no way would he take them away from their other grandparents. Especially after the scare with his father—
“Hey,” Levi said, nudging Zach with his elbow. “Isn’t that Mallory and her mother down there?”
The handicapped-accessible area wasn’t huge—but then again, neither was the venue. They were also sitting maybe twenty feet away...which made it ridiculously easy for even Jeremy’s squeaky, high-pitched “Mallory!” to reach her ears.
She and her mother both turned, Mallory shielding her eyes in the bright sunshine. Which had turned her hair the color of lust. Not that Zach had ever thought of lust being a color until now. Until Mallory Keyes and her damn hair.
“Up here!” Val yelled, waving madly, and half the people below them twisted around to look up. For such a tiny person, Levi’s almost-wife had lungs on her like a moose. Mallory smiled and waved back and that lust thing got a whole lot worse. At least, that’s what Zach was going with. Because that, he could deal with. That, he could handle. That, he could dismiss simply as a whackadoo reaction to loneliness and grief and an epic case of it’d-been-too-long. Rather than, say, an actual attraction to the woman whose hair had provoked the whackadoo reaction. Because...no.
“Can we go see ’em?” Jeremy asked, already halfway on the next riser, never mind the burly cowboy in his way. And of course Liam, sensing adventure, was not about to be left out.
“Me, too?”
“Yeah,” Jeremy said, licking cotton candy from his fingers and adding streaks of putrid pink to bilious yellow mustard smears all over his face. “Maybe her mother has cookies.”
Zach gawked at his oldest, wondering not for the first time how his brain worked, only to hear Levi chuckle and say, “Kid has a point. What? You never know.”
In any case, he could hardly ignore any of it. His kids, her hair, Levi’s grin. So he took two very sticky hands in his own and navigated the sea of butts and backs until he reached ground level, where Mallory hauled Liam up into her lap and her smile knocked him clear to Colorado.
“I figured y’all would be here somewhere!” she said, tugging the toddler closer and making him giggle.
“You probably should’ve hosed him down before you did that.”
“Please. For years Landon’s favorite thing to wear was mud. And everything I’ve got on is old as the hills.” Jeans. Boots. A blazer over a sweater. Nothing special. And yet... “So it’s all good. Right, bud?” she said, giving Liam another squeeze.
“Yeah,” Liam said, settling in against Mallory’s chest and making Zach’s ache.
“Excuse me,” said a beefy cowboy, glaring at Mallory in her wheelchair. Even though she wasn’t in the way at all, it was the rest of them—
“I’m so sorry,” she said, “we’re causing a real traffic jam, aren’t we? Mama, scoot down so they can sit—”
“That’s okay,” Zach said, “we only came to say hi—”
“Did you bring cookies?” Jeremy asked, wiggling his little butt onto the riser beside Dorelle. Who burst out laughing.
“Now why would I do that,” she said, “when there’s so many goodies to eat here? Which, judging from this mess—” Her brightly patterned wrap slipped off one shoulder as reached into her purse for a tissue to wipe the boy’s face. Instead, shreds of tissue clung to the cotton candy residue. Still chuckling, she tried to pluck off the tufts, tucking them into the palm of her hand. And Jeremy actually let her. “—you’ve already sampled.”
Sighing, Zach sat on the riser by Mallory, then reached for Liam. But the little boy shook his head, twisting to look up at her, his expression rapturous. “You smell good.”
“Why, thank you, sweetie,” she said, wrapping her arms more tightly around him to whisper, “So do you.”
“I do?”
“Oh, yes. Like cotton candy and hot dogs. Yum. In fact,” she teased, as she lowering her mouth to his temple, “I could just eat you up...” Then she made gobbly monster sounds that sent Liam into gales of laughter...and Zach over the edge of something he hadn’t known was there, into something that scared the hell out of him.
Even as his little boy’s infectious giggles made him laugh, too.
The wind picked up from the east, making Mallory’s hair tumble across her face as the chute opened and a small herd of cows surged into the arena.
“I take it Josh’ll be up soon?” she asked, digging into the purse tucked beside her hip for a clip of some kind. Carefully balancing Liam on her lap, she quickly twisted up the tangled mass and clamped it into place with a natural grace Zach found completely mesmerizing.
“Uh, yeah,” Zach said. “In fact...”
The crowd murmured as his brother entered the arena on Thor, easily the best cutter in the state. As four other riders positioned themselves to keep things in check, Josh and Thor calmly moved as one into the center of the herd, efficiently separating an all-white steer from the group. Then came the dance—the cow determined to rejoin his buddies, horse and rider equally determined that not happen, the horse’s graceful, lightning-quick zigzags frustrating the cow. Two and a half minutes later, Josh had cut his two cows without breaking a sweat and waved to his adoring crowd with a grin.
Hugging Liam closer as a cloud of peach-colored dust washed over them, Mallory chuckled. “He’s really full of himself, isn’t he?”
“From the time he could walk. Although at least he has reason.”
“Very true. I had him bring Waffles over yesterday, by the way.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she blew out, then rested her cheek on Liam’s head as she looked over, her eyes silvery-soft. “I found a ramp online that’d be perfect for me to mount him from my wheelchair, if he’ll let me. You put it together like a kid’s building set. Well, I can’t put it together, but somebody can. It’ll be here in a few days. So, see what you did?” Releasing a breath, she looked back over the arena. “Of course, now I need a second horse so Landon and I can ride together.”
Zach smiled. “He is gonna be so proud of you.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because I can tell how much he loves you. He’s a good kid.”
Softly laughing, Mallory smoothed Liam’s curls away from her mouth. “You reached this conclusion from talking to him for, what? Thirty seconds?”
“You forget I could overhear the two of you the whole rest of the time. So...am I wrong?”
“That he’s a good kid? No, but...”
“Then there ya go.”
Zach thought she blushed, but that might’ve been the wind on her cheeks. “Thanks.”
“It wasn’t a stretch, considering who his mother is.”
This time, the laugh was sharper. “And you do realize that sounded suspiciously like a line?”
“Right. Because the perfect place to, ah...” he glanced at Liam, intent on watching the next competitor “...do that is in a crowd. With my child on the woman’s lap, no less.”
Mallory slid a sly grin his way, and his stomach jerked. “Whatever works, right?”
“And would it have? Under other circumstances, I mean?”
What the hell?
He couldn’t look at her. He could, however, feel her gaze on the side of his face. Felt it just as intensely when she looked away.
“Who says it didn’t?” she said so softly he wasn’t sure he heard right. Liam wriggled off Mallory’s lap and moved closer to Dorelle, apparently figuring more interesting stuff was going on over where his brother was. Several more seconds of silence�
��between them, anyway, since the arena was like a rock concert—passed before she asked, “Were we...flirting?”
“Beats me,” Zach said. “It’s been so long I’m not sure I remember how.”
“God’s truth,” she said, sighing. Then she smiled, not looking at him. “We probably shouldn’t do that again. You know, because of those circumstances and all.”
“Right.”
“Although—speaking only for myself—it felt good.” Her gaze briefly touched his. “To flirt. To feel like...”
“I know. And yeah, it did. Except—”
“No, got it, really. But for a moment, you made me feel like a woman. Not just a woman in a wheelchair. That was nice.”
Zach’s throat got so tight he could barely swallow his spit. He remembered what she’d said about her husband, wondered about all the things she hadn’t. Whether he should or not. Besides that, though, for a moment he’d also felt like something more than...whatever he was these days. To admit that, however, would only be courting disaster. On many levels. So all he said was, “Glad to be of service, then,” and she laughed again.
God, he loved that laugh. Then she looked around, taking in the crowd. Such as it was.
“This brings back so many memories,” she said. “First rodeo my daddy took me to was about this size, when I was so little he had to put me on his shoulders so I could see. Dinky little local thing. Even smaller than this. The junior high competition I entered a few years later seemed huge by comparison. Then high school after that.”
“How’d you do?”
A moment of silence preceded, “High School National champion in barrels at sixteen.”
“Get out.”
One side of her mouth lifted. “Now you know my secret.”
“You ever go pro?”
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