Coming Home to Mustang Ridge

by Jesse Hayworth

  Krista blocked the top step, tapping one silver-toed boot so it echoed on the wide boards of the porch. “We’re not cheap, but we can be bought.”

  “Three bottles of that red you like with the creepy kid on the label.” The too-solemn blond child of indeterminate gender was wearing an old-fashioned nightshirt and was probably supposed to look like a cherub, but the knowing eyes and weird smirk were more Chucky than Cupid. The wine was good, though. “And details. I promise.”

  Some details, at any rate. She hadn’t realized until yesterday, thinking it through, how weird it would be to talk about Ty with his boss-slash-friend. Krista had known Ty for years, Ashley for only a couple of weeks. The whole idea took It’s complicated to a whole new level, didn’t it? But Krista and the others were the Girl Zone, darn it, and she wasn’t going to back away from them—or anything else that was important to her—just because she had a new guy. Especially when the new guy was temporary and casual, and her friendships with Krista, Jenny, Shelby, and Danny were anything but.

  When she mounted the stairs leading up, though, Krista didn’t budge, except to hold out a hand. “I’ll take the present in for Abby. Mom made a display in the dining room. The party starts in a half hour, so you’d better plan on talking fast, and making it good.” Snagging the stuffed toy, she spun on her heel and stalked into the main house, followed by Jenny and Shelby. Who at least shot her little finger wiggles as they disappeared through the door.

  Danny stayed behind, her expression a mix of sympathy and chiding. “You could have told us, you know. We’re good at keeping the lid on things.”

  “It wasn’t you guys I was worried about.” Ashley stared through the door, feeling even more awkward than she had when she’d first arrived at the ranch, unannounced, ahead of schedule for the wedding and having just accidentally created a blowout between Danny and Sam. They had gotten past it—obviously, as they were engaged now—but she hadn’t known back then how it would play out. Just like she wasn’t sure how this was going to go. “How mad is she, really?” Either she had done more damage than she’d expected, or Krista was playing it to the hilt.

  Danny lifted a shoulder. “Hurt is more like it. She didn’t like hearing about you and Ty from Wyatt.”

  Who had probably been stomping around, bellowing like a newly branded bull. “Should I apologize?”

  “Are you sorry?”

  “That she’s hurt? Yes. That I took the time I needed to get things straight in my head?” Or as straight as she could, anyway. “No. It was what I needed to do.”

  “Then don’t apologize. She’ll get over it, because that’s what friends do. Especially if you stop hovering and come in already! Like she said, we don’t have much time.”

  Ashley hesitated at the threshold, still not entirely sure of her moves when it came to the Girl Zone. “Is there cake?”

  “It’s Mustang Ridge. There’s always cake.”

  • • •

  With Gran and Dory busy in the kitchen, Rose fussing with the party decorations in the dining room, Ed entertaining the baby in the great room, and guests and family members to-ing and fro-ing everywhere, the girls ended up crammed into Krista’s office with the door shut and two big bowls on the desk, one of cake scraps, the other of leftover buttercream.

  Jenny took charge of the wine while Shelby and Danny cleared drifts of catalogs off the two spare chairs. Krista took her usual spot behind the desk, then spun her chair so she was looking out the window toward the distant mountains.

  Ashley leaned back against the door with her hands in her pockets. “I’m sorry, you guys. Krista, you especially. This wasn’t how I wanted it to go, how I intended for you to find out. It’s just . . . well, it’s complicated. Ty and I are . . .”

  The chair spun and Krista fixed her with a gimlet stare. “You’re sleeping with him.”

  “Yes, I—”

  “Since when?”

  “Friday night. We—”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It didn’t start before then? Say, Thursday?”

  “What the— No, it was Friday. Two nights ago. After the fashion show, he came back to help me clean up. And, well . . .”

  “Touchdown!” Shelby did a boogie-woogie pirouette, then held out both hands. “Pay up, you guys!”

  “Dang it!” Looking disgusted, Krista slapped a twenty on the desk. “Fine. You win.” She wrinkled her nose at Ashley. “And for the record, I hate losing.”

  “Losing what?”

  “The when-will-Ashley-and-Ty-do-the-deed? pool, of course.” Danny handed her twenty directly to Shelby. “I had tonight. I figured you’d wait until the dust settled from the show, maybe give Wyatt some warning. Guess I underestimated the sparks.”

  Ashley choked on a laugh. “You guys were betting on me?”

  “On the two of you, yes.” Jenny handed out the wine in paper party cups emblazoned with Disney princesses. “I think this calls for a Girl Zone toast.”

  Face burning, Ashley took hers. “You guys are— Hey, wait.” She eyed Jenny. “What was your guess?”

  “Last Tuesday.” When the others hooted, Jenny shrugged, grinning. “What can I say? Ty always struck me as the kind of guy who takes what he wants when he wants it. Given the hours he was putting in at your shop, we all figured he wanted it bad.”

  “And when Ty wants something bad . . .” Krista fanned herself. “Hoo, baby!”

  Lifting her wine—somehow making the move look elegant, even when it involved a paper princess cup—Shelby declared, “To Ashley and Ty. The four of us would just like to say . . . We told you so!”

  The others lifted their cups with a chorus of “Told ya so!”

  Ashley laughed, tossed back her wine in two long swallows, and banged the cup on Krista’s desk. “Fine. You win. He’s amazing. Barkeep? Another round, if you please!”

  Jenny tipped the bottle over her cup, but didn’t let the wine flow. “It’ll cost you.”

  Ashley pursed her lips, already feeling the glow of friendship and alcohol. “I’m not reimbursing your twenty. Not my fault you thought I was easier than I really am.” By only a few days, but still.

  “Not money. Details. Tell us everything.”

  “I don’t know.” She looked around at the expectant faces. “Don’t you think that’s a little weird? Some of you guys have known him forever.”

  “Sure, but we like you better,” Jenny said, still hovering the wine bottle over her cup.

  “We love you both,” Krista corrected. “But gossip is gossip, and what gets said in the Girl Zone stays in the Girl Zone. So start with the other night at the Rope Burn, when you said you were going to the ladies’ room but followed him out back instead.” She hooked a finger in the rim of the frosting bowl and pulled it toward herself. “Unless you don’t want any of this?”

  She did want it. She wanted the buttercream, the cake scraps, the wine. Most of all, she wanted to wrap herself in their friendship, in the feeling of belonging to them and them to her. “Okay, okay, you win. I’ll talk.” She waited while Jenny refilled her cup, then dipped a cake scrap in the icing, popped it in her mouth, and washed it down with a healthy swallow. Thus fortified, she said, “But I’m going to have to go back further than the other night at the ’Burn. Lots further.”

  “Back further . . .” Krista’s jaw dropped. “Ashley Webb!” She nearly screamed it. “Tell me that you did not hook up with my wedding singer!”

  As the others roared, Ashley hung her head in mock shame. “Sor-ry.” Then she grinned sidelong at her friends. “Except I’m not sorry, really. For any of it.” So, starting with the wedding, she told them everything.

  Most of it, anyway. She confessed to having fudged her identity when she and Ty first met, and then convincing him to pretend they were strangers. She told them about unloading lumber
with him in the rain, and about talking to him while they painted. And she told them how, after she invited him to stay the night, he had carried her upstairs. She left out the specifics on what had followed, but they seemed okay with that. Her head was doing a wine-and-sugar spin by the time she got to Petunia murdering her dishes the next morning and the look on Wyatt’s face when Ty strolled into the kitchen half naked. And by the time she finished describing how she had cooked rubber eggs while telling Wyatt to stay out of her business, the others were whooping and wiping laugh-tears from their eyes.

  “So there you have it,” she said. “Ty came back last night for French toast and stayed for nonrubbery eggs this morning. And now I’m sucking down cake with you guys.”

  “I’m so happy for you.” Danny slung an arm around her neck in a strangle-hug. “These guys have really been singing his praises, you know.”

  “It’s easy to do,” Krista said staunchly. “Trust me—there were times I used to wish there was a spark between us, because he checks all of the other boxes. He’s smart, loyal, easy to talk to, and even easier on the eyes. He can ride a horse like nobody’s business—hello, even Brutus likes him, and Brutus doesn’t like anybody. The guests love him, Abby loves him—heck, I love him.”

  “And he’s musical,” Jenny put in with a nod in Ashley’s direction.

  “Not to mention,” Shelby added, “he was engaged before and it wasn’t his fault things broke up—I heard she cheated. Which means he’s up for the home-and-hearth thing, and all he needs is to find the right woman.”

  That put a thorn-sharp pang in the vicinity of Ashley’s heart. “It’s not like that.”

  “No pressure!” Krista said quickly. “If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. We just want you to be happy.” She lifted her cup. “To Ashley!”

  “Hear, hear!” the others chorused, and drained their little cups, not seeming to notice that Ashley was half a beat behind.

  As if on cue, there was a knock on the door, and Rose caroled, “You-hoo. Are you guys ready for a party?”

  “We sure are!” Krista swung open the door to her mom, who had an armful of bright-eyed baby girl. “There she is!” Krista swooped up her daughter into her arms and gave her a giggling bounce. “Yay for more cake! But presents first, right? And pictures. Lots of pictures!”

  • • •

  There wasn’t just cake at the party—there was Cake with a capital C, courtesy of Gran and Dory. Delicately piped and ringed with cutouts of galloping cartoon ponies and cows, the brightly colored two-tiered affair was topped with a fat candle in the shape of the number 1, and had Abby’s eyes getting impressively big when Gran carried it in and lit the wick.

  “Ooo!” The baby clapped her pudgy hands. Then again, she had made a pretty easy audience, having gone wide-eyed over everything from her presents to the sight of Wyatt’s scruffy gray dog, Klepto, wearing a party hat.

  Now she squealed with delight as friends and family linked hands around the big dining table and launched into “Happy birthday to you . . .”

  At the far end of the table, sandwiched between Danny and Shelby—and far from Wyatt, who had given her a gruff “Glad you could make it” when she’d come into the room and had ignored her since—Ashley sang along with gusto, figuring “Happy Birthday” was one of those songs where if enough people joined in, the bum notes canceled each other out and it sounded kind of nice. Which it did, at least to her ears, as she yodeled, “Happy birrrrth-day, dear Abby . . . Happy birthday to you!” She finished on an unlikely warbling note, then added a, “Woo-hoo! Go, Abby!”

  “Come on, sweetie,” Krista coached, puffing out her cheeks. “Blow!” Abby produced a tiny puff of air, Wyatt snuffed out the candle with his fingers, and everyone cheered.

  As Gran set about cutting the cake, the couples turned to each other for hugs, kisses, and some Remember when ours were that little? Standing alone at the edge of the crowd, Ashley suffered an uncharacteristic pang that she was the only one who wasn’t part of a family unit within the larger sprawl. Most of the time, being at Mustang Ridge made her want her space. Today, the whole friends-and-family thing was making her downright sappy.

  “Here.” Gran appeared at her elbow with two perfect slices of cake on a plate. “These are for you.”

  “I can’t possibly eat both!” She was stuffed, still a little buzzed.

  Crinkles appeared at the corners of sparkling blue eyes. “Then you should find someone to help you with them.” Two spoons appeared, wrapped in a HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRINCESS napkin. “Might I suggest looking in the barn?”

  16

  Most days after the riding was done and the guests had gone off to their cabins to get washed up for dinner or down to the lake to splash around, Ty put in a couple of more hours with the horses, checking for bumps or sore spots, going over their riggings for worn places, or doing a little extra training to bring along the newer mustangs and keep them happy working in the guest string.

  Sometimes, though, it wasn’t the horses that needed the extra training.

  “That’s right,” he said, keeping his voice even and his energy low. “You want to take nice, easy brushstrokes in the direction of the hair. See how Marshmallow is moving his mouth, kind of licking and chewing? That means he’s relaxed, but he’s still paying attention to you. Good job.”

  Okay, maybe that was pushing it, seeing how the fat gray pony was looking longingly at the pile of hay in the corner of the big box stall, over near where Geoff’s foster mom, Marybeth, was standing. Pretty and comfortable-looking, she had her hands in her pockets, and her expression was the same sort of neutral Ty tended to use the first couple of times he worked with a fresh-caught mustang. It was a mix of cautious optimism and readiness to act if things went wrong, glossed over with a whole lot of What will be, will be.

  Marybeth and her husband hadn’t had the boy long—only a couple of months—but it was clear that they cared. Which was more than a lot of kids like Geoff had going for them.

  “I want a real horse. Not a stupid pony.” Small for his nine years, reed-thin and stark-looking, with jet-black hair and skin so pale it was almost gray, even after a half day out in the backcountry sun, Geoff wore the scowl of a much bigger, older boy. Which wouldn’t have been so much of a problem if it hadn’t been paired with a whole-body jitter and a quick temper that had flared up out on the trail today.

  Ty had nipped it in the bud, but didn’t plan on subjecting Marshmallow to a repeat. “Show me that you can handle yourself with this guy over the next couple of days, and we’ll see about letting you try Duke. Right now, though, what is Marshmallow telling you?”

  A half hour before, Geoff would’ve told Ty to go do something anatomically improbable. Now, though, the kid actually took a couple of seconds of almost stillness, and looked at the pony. “His head is up and his ears are back.” The moment of clarity was followed by a sulky grumble. “I told you he doesn’t like me.”

  “He liked you just fine a minute ago. What changed?”

  “Nothing. He’s just a dumb pony.”

  “Really?”

  Silence.

  When Marybeth shifted, looking like she was going to do a Mr. Reed asked you a question, Geoffrey, Ty gave her a little headshake. As with a new mustang, there were times you just had to wait things out, give the connections a chance to form on their own.

  Horse or human, the lesson stuck better when the pupil figured it out for himself.

  After a minute, the brushstrokes that had started getting harder and faster slowed down, eased up, and the boy’s feet stopped making impatient patterns in the shavings. More, the simmering anger drained from the tense lines of his arms and shoulders, which were so thin beneath the Mustang Ridge T-shirt. Huffing out a breath, the boy said, “Maybe I was starting to get mad. It wasn’t at him, though.”

  “Horses don’t know the difference. They j
ust know that something’s upsetting the person who’s supposed to be protecting them, and they worry about what’s going to happen next. They think that maybe it’ll be something bad, something that hurts, and they won’t be able to get away. That would be pretty scary, don’t you think?”

  Marybeth drew a shallow breath. She had confided to Ty that while Child Services hadn’t given her and Lawrence much information on Geoff’s background, what little they had gotten suggested a pattern of profound neglect, maybe even abuse. From the way Geoff had flinched away the first couple of times Ty reached out to correct his position in the saddle, that seemed like more than a maybe.

  When anger stirred, though, Ty tamped it down. Wouldn’t help the pony, definitely wouldn’t help the kid.

  He figured Geoff was going to fall back on the Stupid pony should know better refrain, but the kid surprised him. He actually stopped brushing, moved to the pony’s head, and crouched down off to one side the way Ty had showed him, making himself low and soft, and staying in full view of the pony’s side-set eye. Holding out a hand, he said, “I’m sorry, Marshmallow. I wasn’t mad at you.”

  Eyes softening, the pony stretched his stubby neck and blew on the boy’s fingers. Geoff darted a look toward the adults, then reached up to ruffle the thick, silvery mane.

  If the two had been alone, the kid might’ve said more to the pony—about what it was like to have CPS take him away from his junkie parents, stick him in a new school, then foster him out and move him to yet another town. Or maybe how sometimes he didn’t even know why he was mad; the fury just took over and made him want to lash out, break something. Hurt himself. Hurt someone else.

  Ty wasn’t ready to leave him on his own yet, even with Marshmallow, so he hunkered down to the kid’s eye level and said, “I’m proud of you, Geoff. It takes guts to recognize that you’re angry, and a whole lot of toughness to rein in the mad and level yourself off.”

  The boy avoided his eyes and shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “Still. Good job.” Ty straightened, his knees giving the creak-pops that said they’d had too many rough landings over the years. “How about you say good-bye to Marshmallow and gather up the brushes for me? It’s getting on toward dinnertime.”