Then I came to a thoroughbred, which stopped me short.
“You raise thoroughbreds, too?” I asked.
Thoroughbreds are also racers, but over longer distances. They are taller and leaner than the muscle-bound quarter horses, and also more flighty. You don’t often see them on ranches out West because they don’t have the power, skills, durability, or temperament to make themselves valuable.
Both men turned to me where I was standing in front of the stall of a pawing, snorting black horse. He bobbed his head up and down, then reared on his hind legs. Jack walked back to stand with me and Mickey disappeared through a doorway.
“That’s Hopper,” Jack said.
The horse calmed down and stuck his head out of the stall like the others, reaching toward Jack, who moved forward and placed his hands on the sides of the animal’s head and scratched in long strokes up to his ears and down to underneath his muzzle.
Puzzling. The name, the thoroughbred amongst all the quarter horses.
“He’s yours then?” I asked.
“He’s a jumper.” Jack released the animal and walked to the end of the barn. “This is Jarhead. He’s a retired racer.”
I went over to say hello to the deep red horse. His hindquarters were massive, and, as he shifted his hooves in the stall, his muscles flexed and rippled.
“Hey, Jarhead,” I said, holding my hand out for him to sniff.
Mickey returned with saddles, blankets, bridles, and brushes. “Here you go.”
Jack slapped Mickey on the back and turned to me. “You good saddling him?”
I smiled and reached for a brush.
***
“We pasture the yearlings along here.” Jack held his hand out, pointing, and swept it to his right, indicating several enclosures. Hopper pranced underneath him, moving forward in a sideways trot that was mostly in place. Jack swung around and indicated additional enclosures. “Mares and foals, newly pregnant mares, and those over there are some more retired racers.”
“This is quite an operation.”
Jack pushed Hopper into a canter, and Jarhead bounced under me, eager to catch him, but waiting, just barely, for my okay. I clucked and squeezed my heels in gently. The power as he surged forward sent adrenaline racing through my veins. Jib, my Tech barrel racer, had exploded like that at the start of a race. Well, almost. Jarhead was in a whole different class of racer. I reined him in.
“Settle down,” I said. “We’re just out for a Sunday drive, old boy.”
The horse made impatient panting noises in rhythm with his steps. We pulled alongside Jack and Hopper.
“Jarhead placed in the All American Futurity ten years ago. He lives to sprint. Don’t be afraid to remind him who’s in charge.”
At his words, I literally couldn’t catch my breath for a few seconds. Jack had me on equine royalty. The world famous All American Futurity had a purse of over two million dollars. It was the richest horse race in the world, and I sat astride a horse who had come in second.
“Holy cow.” A smile spread uncontrollably all across my face. “No worries, I’m good.”
The left side of Jack’s features crinkled and lifted.
We came to a corner in the fences. I recognized two side-by-side posts as a gate. Jack got down and handed me Hopper’s reins. He walked to the two posts and pulled them closer together, slipping a wire loop off the top of one, and then lifting that post out of a wire loop near its base. He carried the post and short section of barbed wire fence forward, and I walked Jarhead through, leading Hopper as he danced with high knees like a show horse. Jack left the gate on the ground and remounted Hopper. The horses loped along, and I drank in the arid high country. Highway 70 sloped in front of us to the right, and across it was the entrance to another ranch.
I pointed. “What’s over there?”
“Our new client.”
Well, Paul hadn’t been kidding when he said he and Jack were neighbors. Like, across the street.
We continued uphill and parallel to the road. When we got to the top of a treed rise, Jack pulled Hopper up. We let the horses walk and catch their breath.
Jack waved his hand at the crown of his head.
“What?”
“Your hair.” He poofed his palm upward from his crown. “It’s got that Something About Mary look to it.”
I reached up, and, sure enough, my bangs stood spiky and pointed north. Aqua Net and wind weren’t a great combination. I tried to smash them down and looked at Jack.
“Uh uh, not yet.”
I pressed my palm down to hold them against my head and said, “You may just have to call me Cameron the rest of the night.” Hand still holding my hair, I looked into the distance over to Johnson’s place. I saw something tall and metallic sticking up in the air against a hillside. “That’s a crane!”
“Lots of construction going on.”
“Does he live out there?”
Jack pointed further to the east. “See the roofs?”
“Yes.”
“That’s his house, and headquarters.” He turned Hopper back the way we’d come. “Sun’s almost set. Time to get back. When we have more time, remind me to show you the cemetery, and the silver mine ruins.”
He urged the thoroughbred into a full gallop, and I gave Jarhead a loud “yah” and let the racer feel the old thrill of leaving another horse behind to eat his dust.
Chapter Eight
Clods of dirt flew around me. I was standing in the middle of a rodeo ring. My scalp itched, and I reached up to scratch it under my fright wig, but I had no wig. I patted my head. Something sprouted from each side of the top. Hairy things. Wide at the base and tapering to a point. Hollow in the front. Were they ears? But I wasn’t an animal. I brought my hand down, touching my face as I went, and bumped into some kind of mask over my nose. A protrusion. Hairy again, and ending in a smooth button.
Dust settled. I saw a little girl. Dark skinned. A short pink nightgown and fuzzy pink slippers. Long black hair in a ponytail. Her back was to me, and I looked beyond her, toward the chutes. I heard the snort of a bull, an unmistakable sound, a sound of pure testosterone and bad temper. The metal railings of the chute clanged as he threw his body against them, and dust filled my nostrils along with the musky odor of the bull. Metal crashed hard—so hard I could feel the vibrations in my feet—and then the enormous bull was out. Two thousand pounds of writhing, twisting, jumping, thrashing, stomping black fur on the hoof barreled at me, one sharp horn jutting from each side of his head. The little girl turned to me and screamed, catching the bull’s attention. A cowboy still clung to the bull’s back, one arm raised per the rules, but the bull pivoted his body as he jumped, literally bending his front half in the opposite direction midair, and the cowboy flew off, landing inches from the metal rails. The bull bucked wildly toward the girl.
It was my job to get between the bull and the other people in the ring, but how could I? I’d been out of position when he entered it. My heart hammered in my chest, and I lifted my arms to wave at him, ready to lure him away from her. He swung his muzzle around, slinging snot and saliva, and his eyes locked onto mine. He thundered past the girl and straight toward me.
I gasped and sat up. Heaving breaths, I placed a hand over my chest. My heart pounded inside like Jarhead’s galloping hooves. It was just a dream, I told myself, as I sucked in air. Slowly, I became aware of my surroundings. Something smelled good. Bacon. How many years had it been since I’d had any? My hungry stomach lurched.
I flopped into the pillows and pulled the fluffy, white duvet back to my chin. Through half-closed eyes I took in the mountain springtime colors of the room and concentrated on breathing in slowly through my mouth. Bright lavender, yellow, and green accents made the room look like a field of wildflowers. Tall pine furniture brought in the high desert forest. It soothed me. And, truly, it even beat the honeymoon suite I’d shared with Rich in Belize for luxury.
Ugh, I didn’t need my ex in my mind spoilin
g this for me. It made me remember that he still hadn’t signed the divorce papers. I wanted them done before he found out about my pregnancy. I’d thought he’d have signed and returned them on the day he got them. What was he waiting for? He’d moved on to his new life already. It was time to let me move on to mine.
I tossed the covers to the foot of the bed and swung my feet over the side. My phone sat on the bedside table, and I snatched it up to see the time. I read the digital display, but in my mind I heard my father’s version: The little hand is almost to the seven and the big hand is two freckles past a hair. Collin would arrive to pick me up any minute. I scrambled to the bathroom and broke my own personal record for speed showering and throwing on makeup—without even barfing. My abdomen cramped up a few times, but I told it to cut it out, and it seemed to listen. I gave my nails a once-over. They were rounded and smooth and the clear coat of polish would have to do. Pregnancy had strengthened them. I donned a clean pair of leggings and a red and black tunic with my boots, pulled my ponytail back in place, and dashed down the log-hewn staircase, only fifteen minutes late.
The stairs landed between the kitchen area and the great room. Along with the bacon smells I’d noticed earlier, several voices wafted toward me from the kitchen side on my left—male and female voices, chatting and laughing. In fact, it sounded like a party.
I burst into the slate gray and blue kitchen, but nobody even looked up to greet me.
Jack stood sideways at the stainless steel range, stirring something in a skillet and talking to a man and a woman who were seated in tall, wooden stools at the bar. Jack picked something from the skillet and tossed it downward.
He said, “There you go, girl.”
Snowflake.
The vent pulled an aromatic cloud upwards, and its noise masked my arrival. The man seated on one of the stools was definitely Collin—from his dark blonde, military-style hair cut to his twinkling eyes and the permanent smirk that varied from unrestrained to its current, barely visible quotation marks on either side of his closed mouth. He turned and whispered to the woman seated next to him—a woman I didn’t recognize. Jack’s wife, maybe? She had straight brown hair, hanging shoulder length. In profile, her blue eyes looked enormous while her small nose tilted up just a smidge. She seemed tiny, but muscular, and her voice sounded rough, like a mini food processor.
I realized I was gaping, and I gave myself a mental smack. I was invited to this party, too. I walked up to Collin and said, “Hey, Stranger!”
He stood up and hugged me off my feet. “Hey, you!”
“I see you’ve already met my boss.”
“Yeah, somebody slept in, and we’ve gotten a tour of the whole 1500 acres. Haven’t seen you in over a year, but that’s fine, Em, you go ahead and get your beauty rest.”
“Hey now!” I socked him in his upper arm. Solid.
Collin didn’t even pretend my punch had hurt. “Jack made us mimosas and Irish coffees, and we’ve decided this is the best breakfast spot in Otero County, so pull up a stool. I’m buying.”
“And I’m Tamara.” The beautiful little brunette dragged my attention away from Collin and stuck out her hand.
I shook it. “Emily.”
Tamara? Not Lena, Jack’s wife? So, was Tamara here to see Jack or was she with Collin? Was I supposed to recognize her name?
Jack waved a spatula to get my attention, interrupting my musings. I lifted my eyes to him. His hair looked damp at the ends, and longish. No hat. A white tee with his jeans.
“Want to set the table for me?” he asked.
“Sure.”
I scrutinized my boss harder. Host and short-order cook. This I hadn’t expected.
“Silverware in the drawer to the right of the dishwasher. Plates above to the left, glasses above to the right, napkins in the dispenser closest to the table.”
I set to work on the silverware, counting to four each for spoons, forks, and knives.
“So, Collin, fill me in,” I said. “What’ve you been up to?”
“Just got back from St. Marcos. And Puerto Rico. And the Dominican Republic.”
“What?” I stopped halfway to the table, silverware in hand.
“Yeah, I joined on the hunt for Nick,” he said. “Long story short: Bad guys sabotaged his plane and it crashed flying out of the DR. Tamara helped us figure out where he went down, and we—Katie, Nick’s dad, and me—plucked him off a rock he’d drifted to west of Puerto Rico, then cruised back to St. Marcos on a luxury yacht where we ran into more bad guys and had a shoot-out in a south shore harbor.” He took a sip of coffee. “All’s well that ends well.”
I set the silverware on the table with a thump. “Oh my God,” I said. “I knew he was missing and that he’d made it home safely. That’s it. I had no idea of the rest. No wonder Katie hasn’t answered my email.”
I went back for the plates.
Tamara leaned over and kissed Collin long and hard on the lips. “You try to get yourself shot up wherever you go.”
I tried to keep my eyebrows from shooting up. Well, that answered the question of who Tamara had come with—and pretty much ruled out an admiring Collin rehabilitating my bruised ego.
“You’re no slouch in that department, either.” Collin cleared his throat, pressing the side of his closed fist against his mouth. “Tamara flies Black Hawks for the good old U.S. Army. Why she agreed to marry a lowly state cop, the world will never know.”
Collin had proposed to a military pilot. It defied imagination. The fact that he was engaged was mindboggling, but to a military pilot? Times two. A stripper would have made more sense, given his past. Tamara held out her left hand, and a big, fat sparkler caught the light from the fixture above. Except the light wasn’t even on. The square diamond sparkled all on its own.
I put the plates on the table and flashed a lot of teeth as I said, “Congratulations.”
My words came out sort of squealy, and I realized I was a little jealous. I’d thought I was the only woman with class Collin had ever noticed. I looked up to find Jack’s eyes on me. Collin’s engagement was disappointing, but Jack being married, I realized, had hit me far harder. I looked away from my boss and lifted Tamara’s hand to inspect the rock. Snowflake had joined me and gazed up as if to see it, too.
“Gorgeous,” I said. “And shocking that a lunkhead like Collin could pick it out.”
“Isn’t it? And I had no idea he was going to propose, either, so I didn’t have any input. But it’s perfect. Makes up for most of his other faults.”
I looked away from Tamara and the ring, up and across the kitchen island, and found Jack’s eyes still on me, assessing me like I’d assessed the diamond.
A fifth voice, a male one, pulled me away from Jack’s gaze. “Somebody making breakfast?”
We all turned and Snowflake sprinted across the room. I saw Mickey standing in the doorway, his long hair loose, his jeans clean and pressed. He leaned down and ruffled the little dog’s fur.
“I am.” Jack said as he turned off the gas under the skillet and pulled it away from the burner. “Everyone, this is Mickey, the pride of Mescalero, New Mexico, and the Wrong Turn Ranch Manager for the last ten years. We’re both Aggies, but he got his degree from the Texas institution and played linebacker while doing it.” Mickey held up a thumb, the gesture known throughout the Southwest as “Gig ’em,” which told us that Mickey had gone to Texas A&M.
The words “Ranch Manager” sunk in. I didn’t know why I had assumed Mickey was a stable hand. Heat crept over my face. I felt petty. I’d just been caught in the act of stereotyping, even if no one knew it but me.
Mickey introduced himself to Tamara and Collin then turned to me. “Morning, Emily. How was Jarhead?”
I rallied. “Amazing. I think he wants to move to Texas with me.”
Mickey threw his head back and laughed. “Oh no. He’s the one horse here we can’t afford to let go. His stud fees keep this place running. But he loves attention and needs a lot of ex
ercise, so come back and see him anytime.”
“I will.”
Jack broke in. “Grub’s almost ready. You staying?”
“My wife made me one of those green smoothie things this morning.” Everyone else groaned, but it sounded good to me. “But if there’s enough, I can help you make sure nothing goes to waste, before we head out to church.”
“More than enough.”
“Okay, but it’s got to be our little secret.”
I grabbed one more plate and laid a setting of silverware on it before passing it to Mickey, who turned and put it on the table.
Collin stood up and stretched his arms over his head, exposing a little ab in the process. He’d bulked up some since I’d seen him a year ago. Like he’d worked out more, lifted more.
“Okay, Em,” Collin said. “I spilled, now it’s your turn. What have you been up to?”
Where to begin? I shot a quick glance at Jack, who stood frozen at the refrigerator door, his eyebrow in a high peak as he watched to see how I’d handle this one.
“Gee, let’s see,” I said. And without thinking it through, I blurted out, “Well, a lot, like at the romantic dinner I had staged to tell Rich we were having a baby, his lover, a cross-dressing man named Stormy, pulled a Glenn Close, so I moved back in with my mother in Amarillo—which Jack calls Heaven only it’s anything but—where I listen to her go on and on about the sanctity of marriage and the wonderful results of conversion therapy. So I filed for a divorce, took a job with Jack, and here I am.”
Heaven to Betsy (Emily #1) Page 10
