The Bride Wore Starlight

by Lizbeth Selvig

  “We can take my truck; it’s right out front,” Alec said.

  “I’ve got the four-wheeler.” Bjorn waved them off. “I’ll meet you at the barn.”

  “CAN YOU DO anything for the horse?” Alec asked once Joely had let him boost her into the passenger seat and Cole had climbed into the back seat.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It depends on whether there’s really a problem and if we can figure out what it is.”

  Alec had been around horses all his rodeo life, but he hadn’t grown up with them like most cowboys had. He knew a lot about equine injuries and illnesses but precious little about mares and foaling. This mare, he knew, was part of a pilot program Gabe had started for former servicemen suffering from PTSD—a mustang adoption experiment that over the past six months had proven to be incredibly successful with four injured men. The men had bonded so well with the horses that Gabe and Mia were ready to add four more candidates to the program. It made keeping this mare safe all the more important.

  “Could be a dystocia,” Cole said.

  “Where something’s out of place with the foal, right?” Alec asked. At least he knew that much.

  “Right. I helped with a few back in the day, when my dad was breeding reining horses. If all else fails we can call him. He’s got more experience than I do.”

  “That’s true. Russ is a wonderful horseman,” Joely said. “But Bjorn’s right. We don’t have much time. If Pan’s in trouble, somebody with expertise has to get here now.”

  “Yeah. Except, what I’m afraid of is that we’re the experts, Jo-Jo,” Cole said.

  Alec pulled up to the barn and threw the pickup into park. He was out and around to Joely’s door in seconds, and she didn’t argue when he reached for her sides to lift her to the ground. He held her for a few seconds while she found her balance and took her crutches from Cole.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  “Thanks. Hope we don’t need it.”

  The laboring mare lay on her side in a thickly bedded stall. She was a pretty thing—a gray that reminded Alec slightly of a diminutive Ghost Pepper. When the new humans showed up at the stall door, she rolled to her belly like a dog and gave a long, wrenching grunt of pain. She swung her head toward her flanks and tried to swish her tail, which was wrapped from the dock to past the end of the tailbone in hot pink elastic bandaging.

  “Poor baby. Hey, Pan.” Joely handed Alec her crutches and hobbled her way into the stall first. She knelt at the horse’s head and stroked her neck. “This isn’t supposed to be so hard is it? Can we see if we can find out what’s wrong, baby?”

  Once again Alec heard the sweet, healing voice she’d used on Rowan that made him believe Joely could and would fix everything. The concentration in her face was not just compelling, it lit her up with more allure than a Hollywood camera crew could have done.

  “Have you ever checked for a dystocia?” Cole asked.

  “I felt a couple only after a vet told me they were present,” Joely replied. “And then only because when I was young I got in the way of every vet appointment for the horses we ever had.”

  Cole smiled. “I remember that. Well, I can check her, but your arm is a lot smaller and might be better. There’s not a lot of room in there. Are you willing to try it?”

  “All right.”

  “There should be nitrile exam gloves by the first-aid kit in the tack room,” Bjorn said. “Want me to look?”

  She shrugged. “They won’t be the long sleeves, so it hardly matters. Let’s just do it.”

  Alec watched in fascinated amazement as Joely scooted around the mare’s legs and found a spot where the restless back legs couldn’t strike her. She lifted the wrapped tail and found the horse’s poor, distended vulva. With no hesitation she worked her hand slowly into the birth canal until it disappeared nearly to the shoulder.

  “I think you might be the bravest person I’ve ever seen,” Alec said, joking.

  “Or the dumbest,” she replied with a tight smile. “Okay, I can feel the head. Hello, baby. But . . . ” She squinted then gave a grunt as she felt around. “One foot . . . Dang. I can’t find a second. It must be bent under.”

  “Crud,” Cole said.

  The phone in Bjorn’s pocket rang and he grabbed it. “It’s Dr. Ackerman,” he said. “Hey, Doc. Joely’s checking the foal now. Yeah, our Joely! Okay, we’ll put her on.” He handed his Samsung to Alec. “You’re closer. Hold this to her ear.”

  He nodded, entered the stall, and knelt behind her, placing the phone against her ear.

  “Hey, Dr. Ackerman,” she said.

  Alec lost track of the quick-flowing jargon and desperate scramble after that. With help from the vet, Joely located the foal’s misplaced leg and gave it several tugs only to lose her grip each time in the slippery environment. Eventually, she procured a soft leather strap from the tack room and, with step-by-step instructions, secured it around the baby’s hoof. In the midst of the rush, an agitated man who turned out to be Pan’s owner arrived and planted himself at the horse’s head, stroking and crooning as if he were comforting a human wife.

  “Okay,” Joely said to Cole. “I’ll pull the leg straight, but you have to make room even though Pan will be pushing against us. It won’t be easy.”

  “We don’t have any choice.” Cole took a deep breath as his hands took the place of Joely’s inside the mare’s body. With a red-faced effort he pushed the foal backward and Joely pulled on the strap. One minute later she let out a whoop.

  “Yes! I think that’s it.”

  “Yes, ma’am. There’s the leg. And, there’s the other. And there’s its nose!”

  Somehow they each got a hand on the foal and pulled together, encouraging the mare with gentle words.

  “Come on, Pan, sweetheart, give us just a little help,” Joely said a last time, and eight seconds later, the span of a perfect bronc ride, Alec thought, he added his own whoop as Pan gave birth to a wet, slippery-shiny bundle of baby horse.

  Someone handed Alec two towels. Instinctively, he handed the phone back to Bjorn and passed the towels to Joely. With vigorous strokes she and Cole rubbed down the newborn until it snorted, jerked, and tried to lift its ungainly head. They both sat back in the bloodied bedding shavings grinning like idiots. Cole raised his hand, and Joely slapped a high five on his open palm.

  “Congratulations, Mom,” he said.

  Their ages-old friendship shone through the mini-celebration, making the whole episode intimate and one Alec vaguely wished he could truly share. There was no jealousy, but he wished he were free to grab Joely the way he had when they’d been alone at her door and kiss her in his own version of congratulations. Instead, he watched the high five turn into a laughing hug.

  “Yeah, Doc, it looks like the baby is fine,” Bjorn said into the phone. “Okay, that’s great. We’ll see you when you get here.”

  A choked sob sounded from the other end of the mare, and everyone turned at the same time. Damien Finney, the mare’s owner, had tears streaming down his face. Everyone burst out laughing.

  “Finney, you big sap,” Cole said. “Wait’ll I tell Gabe his guy fell apart like Niagara Falls.”

  “Go ahead.” Finney made no attempt to control his voice. “I have a baby, and Pan’s okay. Best damn thing since I adopted her, man. Dang right I’m a mess. Hell, I don’t even know what it is.”

  Joely lifted the foal’s tail. “It’s a colt,” she said softly. “You have a boy, Damien.”

  The former veteran bawled all the harder. In response Panacea swung her head up, nudging him in the chest, and then hoisted herself to her feet.

  “She’s standing already?” Damien asked in wonder, reaching up to her muzzle.

  “These mamas are tough,” Joely said. “They have to be ready to protect their babies within minutes.”

  Damien scrambled up beside the horse, and Cole did the same, brushing at his jeans and scowling at the muck on his arms and shirt. “Nice,” he said, but he reached f
or Alec’s hand. “Thanks for your help, man.”

  “I did nothing except hold the phone.”

  “A totally indispensable job.”

  Joely shifted, too, got to her hands and knees and, with a grimace, reached up. Alec took her stained hand. She managed to get her good leg beneath herself but buckled back into the shavings when she brought up the left one. She let him reach beneath one armpit and lever her up, but then she brushed off his hold and made for the stall door. She was disheveled, covered pretty much head to toe in blood and fluids, and neither she nor Cole smelled like a spring rose.

  “You did great,” he said.

  “We did,” she agreed, but the light in her face and the celebration in her eyes from mere seconds before had vanished. “We got a little lucky being able to straighten that leg. It wasn’t as complicated as it could have been.”

  “People are right,” he said. “You’re born to work with animals.”

  She held up her hand. “We’re not going there, okay?” Her taut voice brooked no argument. “Cole and I have been around horses our whole lives. Cowboys learn stuff like this. You do what you have to do.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Alec.” She wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t even understanding—he could see it in the opaque of her eyes. They were letting no emotion in or out. “I’m going to get cleaned up. You stay here. Watch the miracle of the new baby standing and of the mare’s instinct taking over. The doctor will be here shortly, and she’ll check everyone out. Come on up after that.”

  “Let me drive you back. You can’t—”

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” She pointed a finger at him. “You keep telling me not only that I can but that I should. Stay here, Alec.”

  She swung her body furiously between her crutches as she limped as fast as the metal legs would allow out of the barn.

  Alec stared, dumbstruck at the inexplicable change in her personality. He turned slowly, and Bjorn set a hand on his shoulder.

  “There’s a lot going on in her head,” he said. “I don’t think anybody knows quite what’s going to trigger what. She’ll be okay.”

  Alec understood triggers.

  “Thanks, Bjorn.” He nodded and turned back to the stall, confused as the newborn colt in the shavings.

  Chapter Fourteen

  BLESSEDLY HOT WATER sluiced over Joely’s body, carrying away the foal’s birth muck, its smell, and a little of her physical pain. She ached after straining shoulder, back, and hip muscles in a way she hadn’t since well before the accident. The water also washed away traces, she hoped, of an embarrassing flood of tears. She couldn’t explain the overwhelming grief to herself, much less Alec—although she’d have to try after turning on him the way she had in the barn.

  She and Cole had done a wonderful thing, but it hadn’t been miraculous. The foal’s birth could have been disastrous, but Bjorn had caught the trouble in time. With the vet on the phone, and experienced horse people surrounding them, she’d simply had to do the job without panic. She’d done exactly that. Rather than turn on Alec, she should have been rejoicing in his arms.

  Instead all she’d seen in her memory’s eye, during the whole wonder of a new birth, was the loss of life that had spun her world out of its recognizable orbit. Damien had a new baby, yes, but she’d lost two—one equine and one human. The horse, her sweet and talented Penny, had been her best friend, her only constant in three years of disastrous marriage and indescribable pain. The human baby? Joely halted the memory.

  In that stall today everyone had cheered. A new, interesting, complicated man had stood beside her, pulled her up onto her ruined leg, and would have kissed her on the spot had she so much as smiled at him. He’d praised her. Told her she’d done something she was meant to do. In reality all she’d done was rip open her heart.

  Maybe four years ago, had she done things differently, she could have followed the golden, ordained path to which Alec had referred. Back then the life plan in her head had looked much different, and she hadn’t yet gone to her father and Tim—her new man at the time—excited about the plans she’d devised for her Miss Wyoming scholarship money.

  Unfortunately she had gone to them. On the very weekend Tim had come to meet her parents and, unbeknownst to her, propose, she’d laid out her future for him and for her father. She was going to vet school. Finally. Now that she was done with planning every step of her future around the next pageant, the next beauty regimen, the next push-up bra or taping session to hold her safely in a gown with a plunging neckline, she was going to pursue her dream.

  She could still see her father’s absent smile as he listened to her from behind the big desk in his study filled with pictures of his male ancestors—three generations of them—like a hall of kings in a royal palace. “Joely, honey, that’s a tough career. You shouldn’t have to worry that gorgeous head of yours over cattle and public health debates and pregnancy testing cows. You’ve got talent most girls would kill for.”

  To this day she didn’t know what he’d meant by that. That she had talent to be an actress or a school teacher or some other job “for girls”? Or had he simply implied she could trade on her looks forever?

  “I’m not going to spend my life preg testing cattle,” she’d told him. “You know I want to be an equine vet.”

  “Well, there would be a waste of four years of vet school.” Again the words had been calm, non-confrontational, almost nonchalant and jokey. “A horse vet on a cattle ranch. What good would that do? You’d be much better off to learn the skills you’d actually need for working on a spread like Paradise and pick up the horse knowledge on the side. Besides, there’s nothing that happens to horses around here that the hands can’t deal with.”

  “Marry me,” Tim had said then, right in front of her father. “Marry me and come do the animal charity work you talked about in your Miss Wyoming platform. With your scholarship money and my connections, honey, you can make a difference.”

  One man’s criticism and another man’s convincing charm had swayed her. As she looked back now all she could feel was disgust at her lack of self-worth and her willingness to do exactly as her father had suggested—trade on her looks to get what she needed. Sadly, it had worked. She’d become a former Miss Somebody married to a well-known LA businessman and had the world at her feet.

  No wonder she couldn’t fight for herself now. She was nothing but shallow beauty. And she didn’t even have that any longer. She’d set her life on its current trajectory the moment she’d said “I do.”

  The only thing left for her to do was find a way to say she didn’t. She could shake off at least one of her mistakes.

  And not start another.

  She turned off the water and wrapped herself in one of her mother’s thick, oversized towels. She fought the urge to sneak into her old bedroom and curl up like a caterpillar in a soft, warm cocoon; she owed Alec more than the rude cold shoulder she’d given him.

  Mia’s jeans and lightweight sweater were slightly large on her. She stared at her image in the bathroom mirror, wiping away the condensation fog from her shower. Everyone told her constantly she needed to eat. Maybe they were right. She’d never not filled out a fitted top or the seat of a pair of Levi’s. But now she saw for the first time that all her title-winning curves were starting to look flattened.

  She studied the scar on her jaw as objectively as she could. It was ugly, no way around it. Winding and pink. She could work further with a plastic surgeon, and maybe sometime she would. She’d just been sick of surgeries after so many of them on her back and leg, and to get the scar even this far, that she’d put the brakes on any more dates with scalpels.

  Ten minutes and one slightly camouflaged scar later, she finally left the bathroom. Coward that she was, she hoped most people would still be away at the barn. She would take as much time to process her thoughts and plan her speech as she could get.

  He was there, and she tried to discipline her unruly heart when he rose from the c
ouch in the living room, empty except for him, his concern, and his obvious hope that she was all right.

  “Everything okay?” he asked. “You look much better.”

  “I was pretty gross.” She hesitated. “Alec, I’m sorry I acted so weird. Guess it was my turn again.”

  To her horror, the pressure of more tears rose in her throat and pushed up behind her nose and eyes. She wanted to tell him about the grief, not sweep it away under the guise of being an overemotional girl. But no way was she opening that vein in front of him.

  “And it’s my turn to tell you there’s nothing to be sorry for. You saved a horse. You need to pat yourself on the back.”

  The tears pressed harder to be let free. “I can pat myself on the back as much or as hard as any rancher can when he or she does what needs to be done.” She managed to get out the words without falling apart. “This had to be done. Luckily it worked.”

  “That’s a little jaded.”

  “It isn’t. It’s practical. That’s ranch life.”

  “I know practical when I see it. And I know innate talent when I see it. You have the talent, sweetheart, with animals and with people.”

  For a few more long seconds she held back the emotion, unable to believe there could be more tears left after her pity party in the shower. The dam ruptured in one unstoppable burst.

  “Don’t . . . ”

  She waited for him to hand her a tissue and tell her everything was all right. She waited for him to fix everything like he always wanted to do, and she welcomed the thought. For once he could have at it and stop this ridiculous reaction to what should have been a wonderful day.

  He gathered her to him and lowered them both into the soft cushions of the sofa. Without a word he held her, and she cried. She’d never cried for everything at once until today, and before this moment, she’d never let anyone see her cry for anything.

  After five minutes the tears finally ebbed, and she stopped waiting for him to tell her what to do next. Her body curled into his exactly the way she’d longed to curl up in her bed earlier. She didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to look at him. All she desired was to stay locked in his arms where she was starting to believe nothing bad could happen.