* * *
MARY ANNE STACKED fifty-pound bags of feed right along with Charlie and the men. Every time she passed Hank, she tossed her head at him. He grinned and shrugged.
Midmorning a rusty three-quarter-ton truck with square bags of shavings loaded precariously on its bed pulled up outside the aisle door.
“Hey, Charlie, you got room to stack these shavings in the same place?” The middle-aged man who stuck his head out of the truck wore a straw Stetson over a face that looked as tough as if it had been professionally tanned but not stretched afterward.
“Man has more wrinkles than a Shar-Pei,” Sean whispered.
“Hush,” Charlie whispered back. Then she said in a normal voice, “Drive on down the aisle to the end as usual, Bobby.”
“We got any help? Where’s Maurice and DeMarcus?”
“On vacation. Jake and Sean here will help unload. Guys, this is Bobby Holzer. He owns the sawmill down in Slayden that bags our shavings.”
Bobby nodded and pointed to the figure beside him in the shadows. “I brung some help just in case. This here’s one of my summer helpers.” He put the truck in gear, drove down the stable aisle to the far end and parked by the storage area where the few remaining bales sat waiting for the new load to be added.
The white-blond hair of the kid who climbed from the passenger seat was partially covered by a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap. Unlike Bobby, who wore baggy bib overalls over a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the boy had on distressed jeans stretched tight over thigh muscles the size of hawsers on an aircraft carrier, while his arms and torso strained the stitching on his green polo shirt. He stood at six-six or six-seven and probably weighed well over three hundred pounds. None of it was fat. “Aidan, this is Miss Charlie Nicholson, owner and manager.” The giant nodded.
“Whoa!” Sean whispered.
Bobby smiled and winked at him. “Aidan’s starting at tackle for Mississippi State this fall. Coach sends ’em to me for the summer. Tells ’em working in the sawmill builds muscles.”
“He’s got enough already,” Sean said.
Charlie introduced Sean and Jake. Bobby shook hands. Aidan didn’t.
He looked sulky at the prospect of unloading and stacking an entire truckload of sixty-pound bales, but he hopped up on the back of the truck and worked his way to the front without comment.
“Give them a hand, please,” Charlie said to Sean and Jake. “I’m off to the tack room to teach Mickey and Mary Anne how to use the rein board.”
Jake climbed up on the tailgate and waited for the first bale.
The moment Charlie turned her back, Aidan swung it at Jake’s chest so hard he would have knocked him off the back of the truck if Sean hadn’t balanced him from the ground. His grin said he’d done it on purpose.
“Knock that off, Aidan,” Bobby said equably. “Sorry, Jake. He gets above himself sometimes. Likes to show off how strong he is.”
Aidan shrugged and lobbed the next bale high and easy. Jake fielded it and passed it down to Sean.
After that Aidan settled down, and the three men established an easy rhythm from Aidan to Jake to Sean to the shavings shed. After all the bales were off the truck, Bobby directed Aidan to finish stacking them.
As he passed Sean, Aidan asked, “Hey, man, that some kind of phony hand?”
“Nope. It’s real plastic,” Sean answered cheerfully. “A gift from the United States Army.”
By the time the stacks were complete, all three men were soaked with sweat and Aidan’s designer jeans were filthy. Bobby rose from the front step of the truck and joined them. “Hot work.”
Sean’s glance at Jake said “none of which he did.”
“Y’all got any cold sodas?” Bobby asked. “I’m flat parched.”
Aidan slouched past him toward the front of the truck. “Aw, come on, Bobby, let’s go get some lunch.”
Wiping her face with her scarf, Mary Anne came out of the tack room and strode toward them. She wore a sleeveless muscle shirt that revealed the puckered skin that ran from the side of her head to her glove. The sheen of sweat made the scars look red and raw.
She noticed Bobby and Aidan a minute before they noticed her, and wheeled back toward the tack room.
“Ooo-eee,” whispered Aidan as he watched her retreating rear in its tight jeans. “Hellooo, mama.”
She froze in midstride, turned and strode back toward them.
Jake heard Bobby catch his breath.
Aidan gaped and looked away. “No way. I don’t mess with ugly chicks.”
Jake saw Mary Anne stiffen and heard Sean groan.
“Jake—leave it,” Sean cautioned. “Jake!”
Jake ignored him and moved into Aidan.
A moment later, the big man lay flat on his back.
“Here now,” Bobby said. “Both of y’all take it easy.”
Aidan was big, but he was fast. He came off the ground in a lineman’s crouch, prepared to tear Jake in two.
“Back off, fool.” Sean stepped between the two men. Aidan brushed him out of the way.
Jake felt Sean’s hand on his arm and shook him off. He blocked the fist Aidan swung at his jaw, twisted, bent and thrust. A moment later Aidan was back on the ground, looking surprised.
“Stay down!” Sean snarled at him.
Aidan gasped. “What’d I do?”
“Apologize to the lady,” Jake whispered.
Aidan struggled to his feet. That a man twenty years older and a hundred pounds lighter could toss him around like a football seemed to hit him square in his manhood. “Listen, old man.” He lowered his voice. “Y’all gotta know that’s a freak.” A moment later, he was back on the ground with Bobby standing over him.
“Aidan, you idiot, stay down,” Bobby said. “You ain’t got the brains of a goose. Stop running your mouth before you get your teeth handed to you.”
“I warned you to stay down, goober,” Sean said pleasantly. “Now do what the man says and apologize to the little lady before he tears your arm off and feeds it to you.”
Jake glanced back at Mary Anne, who was glaring at Aidan. Sean grasped her hand with his right one and pulled her forward. As if his touch inflated her, she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and snapped, “Yeah, jerk. Apologize to the ugly lady.”
From the ground, Aidan had to look up at her, but he couldn’t hold her gaze. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean nothing. Bobby says I got a big mouth.”
“Ya think?” she said, and kept her hand in Sean’s.
“You can get up, now,” Jake said. “I assume you were recruited for your size and not your GPA. Come on, Sean, we have horses to groom.” He strode off toward the wash rack.
Charlie passed him at a trot. “Bobby, what’s going on?”
“Aidan here,” Sean said, “slipped and fell.” He grinned.
“Three times,” Bobby said. “A man that big, sometimes he’s real clumsy, aren’t you, Aidan.” He gave his helper a hand up, then a gentle shove toward the truck. “Here’s the bill, Charlie. Me ’n Aidan are gonna go get some lunch.”
“Good girl,” Sean said to Mary Anne under his breath. He turned to Aidan. “You have just had a narrow escape. The major can take off the top of a man’s head with the flat of his hand.”
Bobby laughed as Aidan climbed into the truck, put it in gear and waved to them through the driver’s window as they drove away.
The moment the truck cleared the stable aisle, Mary Anne caught her breath in a sob and ran past Charlie to the common room.
“Sean?” Charlie asked.
“Ask Jake.” He followed Mary Anne.
Charlie trotted after him. “Where is he?”
“Mary Anne...”
“Leave her to me,” Charlie said. “
You go find Jake.”
Sean hesitated, then nodded.
The common room was empty. Mary Anne’s bedroom door was locked again. When she pressed her ear against it, Charlie heard what sounded like sobbing. “Mary Anne? It’s Charlie. Please let me in.”
“Go ’way.”
“Not this time. I’m not Jake, but I can sit in the hall and wait as long as he did.”
She thought she might have to, but after a moment she heard the lock click. By the time she opened the door, Mary Anne lay facedown on her bed with her arms locked over her head. “I want to go back to the hospital.”
Charlie sat on the bed but didn’t touch her. “You’ll get over being afraid of the horses.”
Mary Anne rolled over and sat up. “Jake nearly got himself killed because that jock said I was ugly. I am ugly! I’m so ugly people want to vomit when they look at me.”
“That’s not true.”
Mary Anne got off the bed and began to pace the small room. “Don’t lie, Charlie. I saw that kid’s face. I saw all your faces when I took off my scarf. The first time my husband—sorry, my ex-husband—saw me in the hospital without my bandages, he ran into the bathroom and threw up.”
What could Charlie say to that? “I’m sure it was just the initial shock. Soldiers know what happens in a war zone.”
Mary Anne leaned her forehead against her window. “Charlie, he’s a civilian. An accountant, would you believe. I’d already enlisted when I met him. Bad enough I was a mechanic. Bad enough I deployed six months after we got married, but with the internet we stayed connected. We were in love! We had all these plans for when my enlistment was over. Then this happened.”
“Of course, he was devastated for you,” Charlie said. “But he didn’t stop loving you.”
Mary Anne leaned a hip against the windowsill. “He really tried. He took a part-time job close to the hospital to be with me. But the first time one of the nurses tried to teach him to change my dressings, he ran. When they let me out on a twenty-four-hour pass to be with him, he couldn’t touch me. We sat up all night crying. The next week I filed for divorce. It wasn’t his fault, Charlie, and it definitely wasn’t mine.”
“So you want to go back to the hospital to start more operations right now? I thought you wanted to take a break.”
Mary Anne flopped back down on the bed. “I did. I do. But nobody looks at me twice in the hospital.”
Charlie wrapped her arm around Mary Anne. “We won’t let you quit. And when you do have more operations, we’ll learn to change your dressings and you’ll come back here to recuperate.”
“You can’t promise that!”
“The heck I can’t. Now wash your face and let’s go groom horses.”
* * *
WHILE CHARLIE TALKED to Mary Anne, Jake leaned against the trunk of the big oak at the edge of the stallion’s paddock and fought to get his breathing back to normal.
“Jake, you okay?” Sean said.
“I might have killed that kid,” Jake said. His voice shook.
“Huh. Good thing you didn’t. Would have caused Charlie no end of trouble.” Sean squatted in the grass at Jake’s feet.
Jake slid down with his back to the trunk. “You see why I don’t trust myself? A stupid kid makes a hurtful remark and I go for him.”
“Most likely he’d tear your head off,” Sean said.
“You and I are trained in hand-to-hand combat. That was like pairing a Golden Gloves semifinalist against Sugar Ray Leonard.”
“He insulted Mary Anne. I’d have done worse if you hadn’t gotten to him first. But you backed off, Jake. That was a choice. The right choice. Come on, we got horses to tend.”
“In a minute. Soon as my hands stop shaking.”
JAKE HAD FELT certain he’d tamed his rage. But he’d been wrong. Going after Aidan was crazy. But when the boy insulted Mary Anne, Jake had responded automatically. He shouldn’t have.
What if he had actually hurt Aidan? What if Aidan sued Charlie and brought the whole program down? It would have been his fault.
Another decision, another disaster.
The old tape began to play in his head. He held his head between his palms to make it stop, but that never worked.
The army had absolved him of blame. Why couldn’t he absolve himself? He hadn’t trusted the order that sent them in, but he’d led his team anyway, because you didn’t disobey a direct order. Then he drove off and lived, while they had died.
He’d been unconscious all the way to Ramstein hospital in Germany, and he’d spent two months in rehab before he could walk without a cane. Without intravenous antibiotics, superb surgery and aftercare, he’d have lost his leg above the knee. His limp was a small price to pay for a whole leg.
He’d hated the insurgents who’d suckered them, but they were soldiers, too, doing what they thought to be their duty.
The colonel who’d ordered them in, on the other hand, delivered the command from an air-conditioned office behind a concrete perimeter. The men he moved around weren’t men to him at all, but numbers on his fitness report.
Jake went over to the outdoor spigot beside the water trough at the edge of the pasture, leaned down and turned on the water. He stuck his head under it and gasped as the icy stream struck the back of his neck. Bracing one hand on the fence post, he felt his pulse slow.
The brass had rotated his so-called superior officer back home at Mach ten. His career was over. He’d never make brigadier. The man deserved more punishment than that, but the months of surgery and rehab had scoured Jake clean of the will for revenge. By the time the hospital declared him cured—right—he couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted for breakfast. He couldn’t choose to search and destroy an ant on the sidewalk.
He turned off the hose and shook his hair back. Grooming horses had always calmed him. He headed back into the barn and found Sean waiting for him.
Twenty minutes and two geldings later, Charlie appeared in the door to the common room. “Jake, may I speak to you a minute?”
He sighed and followed her into the room. Charlie was going to toss him out. He’d be back on the streets of Memphis before dinnertime.
The realization that he wanted to stay in the program stunned him. Then came the equally shocking revelation that the reason he wanted to stay was because of Charlie.
“Where’s Mary Anne? Is she all right?” he asked.
She nodded. “In her room cleaning up. Sit.”
He sat on the couch with his head bowed, ready for the blow.
“Sean and Mary Anne told me what happened out there. What’s your version?”
“That young man made a foul comment about Mary Anne loud enough for her to hear.”
“So you attacked him? That rhinoceros? He could have killed you.”
“I asked him to apologize. Forcefully.”
She pulled off her baseball cap and ran her hand through her short hair. He’d thought from the first that she had great hair. Shining and sleek as an otter’s pelt. At the moment, her fine gray eyes were as chilly as the Bering Sea. He’d disappointed her. He hated that.
“Charlie, I’m sorry, I got annoyed.”
She lifted her hand to shut him up.
He could tell she didn’t quite know how to react. She teetered on the edge between exasperation and what?
“Forcefully? Annoyed?” She dropped onto the sofa beside him. “Oh, Jake, heaven preserve us all if you ever get pushed past annoyed.”
She was right. He’d dropped his guard for a moment, and look what had happened.
“I would probably have driven the truck over him,” Charlie admitted.
“You’re not angry at me?”
“I’m furious at you. Officially. Unofficially, good for you.” She took his hand and pulled him
up.
He surged off the couch with more force than he’d intended and almost fell into her. His body reacted instantly.
Their eyes met and held for much too long. He felt as though he’d been hit with a Taser and electricity flowed through them both, welding them together. “Charlie...” His hand slid to the nape of her neck as she lifted her chin. Then he ran his fingers along her cheek and across her soft lips. The hunger he felt to taste them was unbearable. He bent his head...
“Mom? Get the door.”
They jumped apart like a pair of teenagers caught necking.
Charlie opened the door to the breezeway for Sarah.
“I’ve got the cold cuts and I’m about to drop the platter. Help!”
Jake swooped the plate out of Sarah’s arms and carried it to the kitchen counter.
“Thanks.” Sarah narrowed her eyes at him, then sat on the sofa and folded her arms like a teenage duenna.
“Don’t you have some other stuff to bring over for lunch?” Charlie asked.
“It won’t be ready for a couple of minutes.”
“That’ll give you just enough time to help Vittorio organize everything. Unless you’d prefer to help teach Mary Anne not to be afraid of horses.”
“I’ll go help Vittorio.”
“You are having lunch with us, aren’t you?”
“I guess.”
Charlie nodded. “Good.” She leaned down and kissed the top of Sarah’s head. The girl flinched.
Mary Anne joined the group in the stable ten minutes later. The big red mare was cross tied on the wash rack while Hank lounged against the wall and Sean hovered. Mary Anne wasn’t precisely shaking, but her arms were wrapped around her body protectively. At the door of the tack room Mickey sat in his wheelchair with a grin on his impish face.
“Her name’s Annie, like yours,” Charlie said.
Mary Anne made a sound that was half bleat, half whimper. “She’s humongous.”
Charlie fished in the pocket of her jeans, pulled out a sugar cube and handed it to Mary Anne. “Put it flat on the palm of your hand like this.” The mare reached her lips forward and scarfed up the sugar cube. The instant Mary Anne felt the horse’s touch, she snatched her hand away.
Taking the Reins Page 6
