Lois Greiman - [Hope Springs 02]

by Home Fires

  From her left, the farrier laughed again. Casie didn’t bother to glance at the pair framed in the doorway of the barn. She had seen enough jiggling boobs to last her a lifetime.

  Ty shuffled his booted feet and also kept his gaze front and center. “I don’t know much about horses’ hooves,” he said. “But them new shoes might just help Angel move around a little easier.”

  “Yes. She’s practically a genius.”

  He shrugged again, red spreading from his ears to his neck. “Not a genius, maybe,” he said. “But I wouldn’t a never thought of them things.”

  “Well, you—” Sophie began, but stopped herself before Casie could jump back into the mix. “All right,” she said. “I’ll leave Angel where she is if that’s what you want.”

  He nodded. They stared at each other. Casie tried to think of something to fill the awkward silence, but there was no one more awkward than she was, and her mind was half occupied by the couple near the truck anyway.

  Sophie was the one to turn away first, but Ty stopped her.

  “Soph.” His voice was low, a testament to the fact that he was almost a man. His cheeks had turned pink … proof, perhaps, that he was still a boy. “Thanks.”

  The girl’s back was very straight, her lips pursed, but her eyes seemed oddly haunted. Still, she forced a casual shrug. “She’s your horse. You can do whatever you want with her.”

  He remained silent for an uncomfortable moment, then spoke again. “I meant … thanks for trying to get Darren to come back out.”

  For a second her face softened, but she caught herself. “Well … like Mother would say, a poor attempt is almost as good as nothing at all.”

  He lowered his brows, working out the logistics for a moment. “He come out in the middle of the night the first time. Who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t pulled them shoes first thing out of the gate?”

  Sophie glanced at the old mare. For an almost infinitesimal instant, tenderness shone in her eyes. “She would have probably been fine without any intervention,” she said, but Ty shook his head.

  “You done good,” he said. “I know she ain’t much compared to …” He shrugged. “You’re probably used to riding them Grand Prix jumpers or something, but it was a nice thing you done for her.”

  For a moment her expression was guileless. Her lips parted, her cheeks pinked. She backed away. “Well …” She said the word almost as if she was flustered, almost as if she was at a loss. “I’m just going to …” She waved vaguely somewhere between the corncrib and the creek. “I’m going to help Emily with the dishes,” she said, and turning abruptly, practically stumbled over Jack before disappearing outside.

  “She’s what?” Colt asked, appearing in the doorway from the opposite direction.

  Casie took a deep breath and refrained from looking him straight in the eye. “I believe she said she was going to help Emily.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Colt scowled, staring off toward the house. “Any other signs of the apocalypse?”

  She could play this game, Casie thought, and forced a smile, happy to avoid the conversation she knew they should have. “I did see seven horsemen by the front porch this morning. And last night—”

  “She ain’t all bad,” Tyler said.

  They turned toward him in stunned unison. Was Tyler Roberts sticking up for Sophie Jaegar? Was this yet another sign of impending doom? Casie wondered. But he just shrugged.

  “I’d best be gettin’ back.” They were still staring at him. “Promised Monty I’d oil up his ropin’ saddle yet tonight.”

  They watched in tandem as he strode purposefully down the driveway toward the Red Horse Ranch.

  Colt’s eyebrows were lodged up against the weathered band of his Stetson. “What the hell was that about?”

  Casie shook her head, trying to sort it out.

  “I mean …” He exhaled. “Do you think it’s true?”

  “What?”

  She could feel him turn toward her.

  “Do you suppose Sophie isn’t Satan?”

  She glanced toward him. His expression was a ridiculous blend of awe and suspicion, but when she was just about to chuckle, she noticed the smudge of lipstick across the corner of his mouth.

  She felt her fingers curl toward her palms. “Well …” she said. “I’d better get inside.”

  “I wouldn’t risk it if I were you,” Colt said.

  She glanced at him on her way out of the stall. He shrugged. “If Sophie hasn’t hexed Emily yet, it’s probably just because they’re in the middle of an epic battle of good and evil.”

  “Well …” She pursed her lips, reminding herself of Sophie’s prissiest expression. “We can’t all be saints.”

  “What’s that?”

  She heard him latch the stall gate behind them. But she didn’t turn.

  “We don’t all have six hours to burn on a Tuesday night.”

  He was silent for a second before she felt him touch her arm.

  “Hey.”

  She kept walking.

  He tightened his fingers around her elbow and tugged her toward him. “Sam’s just a friend,” he said.

  “Really? Then cowboys must have changed a bit,” she said and carefully extracted herself from his grip.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The lip gloss,” she said. “I don’t think it’s your shade.”

  He stared at her for a second, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, glanced at the streak of red across his knuckles, and shook his head. But she was already turning away.

  “Is that what you’re mad about?” he asked, striding after her.

  “I’m not mad.” The words sounded a little like a growl. But the good news was that if she stormed along fast enough, her boobs could jiggle a little, too.

  “Really?” Colt asked. “Then this is the jovial you?”

  She swung toward him without intending to. “So what kind of favors do you trade with her exactly, Dickey?”

  He stared at her, brows raised cautiously again. “What?”

  She gritted her teeth. It wasn’t that she cared what he did in his spare time. It wasn’t as if she cared about him at all, but he didn’t have to lie to her.

  He was absolutely silent for a long moment, but finally he spoke. “It’s not like you think, Case.”

  “Really! Because I think you slept with her.” She practically spat the words at him.

  He moved his lips, raised one hand, and failed to speak.

  She gritted a smile. It felt kind of flinty on her face. “Turns out it kinda is what I thought, isn’t it?” she asked, and turned away, but he was in front of her before she reached the doorway.

  “Good God, Case, I’m a grown man. What did you think I would do? Wait in chaste hopefulness until you found it in your heart to return to the Lazy and my poor abandoned self?”

  She stared at him a second, then snorted out loud and stormed around him.

  “Okay!” He grabbed her arm as she torpedoed past. “Listen, I’m sorry. Sam’s a nice gal. She’ll give you the shirt off her back if—”

  Something escaped her throat. It might have been some kind of animalistic snarl.

  Colt stepped back a pace, then laughed nervously and continued on. “Could be that was a bad choice of words. But she really is a swell girl.”

  She felt her brows jump like trout at dawn. “Swell?”

  “Nice. Sweet. Kind. Thoughtful. You name it,” he said.

  “How about fat chested?”

  “Fat—” he began, then laughed. She swung around him, steeling herself in case he grabbed her again, but he just stepped back instead.

  “Holy crap.” He barely breathed the words. “Holy …” She heard his footfalls stop. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

  She told herself to keep walking, to march straight into the house and up the stairs. Maybe fetch Clayton’s old shotgun … maybe …

  But he spoke again. “You’r
e jealous.”

  She stopped as if she’d been shot. Her cheeks felt hot, but she swung toward him anyway. “You’re deluded,” she said.

  He stared at her a second longer, then laughed again. “It’s true. Cassandra May Carmichael is jealous.”

  “What would I be jealous of?” she asked. In the back of her mind she thought that if he said, “Her boobs,” she just hoped she had enough shotgun shells left to do the job right.

  “I don’t know,” he said instead. “She’s a great gal.”

  “Yeah? As great as Jess?”

  He winced, froze, then exhaled slowly. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

  “About the mother of your child?”

  “She—”

  “The child you abandoned?”

  “I didn’t abandon her.”

  So it was a girl, she thought, and had no idea why that made things worse. Made her want to cry. “So maybe you married Jess and just forgot to tell me that, too.”

  He glanced out the door, eyes haunted. “I wouldn’t have made her happy.”

  She drew a deep breath. “So you talked about it. You considered it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And she wanted to marry you.”

  “She thought she did.”

  She laughed, despite herself. “But you knew better.”

  “I didn’t love her,” he said, and turned back to her. “There was someone else.” His eyes were frightfully earnest, absolutely steady. “There has always been someone else.”

  She felt herself pulled in, pulled under, but she shook her head, trying to formulate the appropriate questions.

  Suddenly, Emily’s voice rang through the barn. “Sophie! Soph! Where are you?”

  Casie gave Colt one last look and stepped into the doorway.

  “Emily …”

  The girl turned toward her with a start. “Holy shorts!” she said, staggering away. “Scare the crap out of me, why don’t you!”

  “Sorry.” She refused to glance at Colt as he appeared out of the shadows beside her.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Emily eyed him up, then shifted her curious gaze back to Casie. Her lips curved happily. “Excellent question.” Her tone was suggestive.

  “Why are you looking for Sophie?” Casie asked.

  “Oh.” Emily’s happy expression diminished rapidly. “She’s not with you, huh?”

  Premonition cranked Casie’s stomach up tight. “She said she was planning to help you with dishes.”

  “Yeah,” Emily said. “Weird, huh?”

  “So she did go inside?”

  “Ten minutes ago or so,” she said and pulled a comical face. “Have you seen any other signs of end times?”

  Casie could feel Colt’s gaze shift to her face, but ignored the ongoing joke. “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know. One minute she was in the kitchen. The next I heard an engine fire up. I didn’t think anything of it for a while. Assumed it was you, but then I noticed the news clip.”

  There was a lull in the conversation. A lull that Emily failed to fill.

  “What news clip?” Casie asked, already striding into the yard.

  Emily followed. “The TV was on in the living room. I pretty much ignored it until I heard the words abused horses.”

  Casie felt the blood drain from her face. “What about them?”

  Emily shrugged. “Apparently, there are some.”

  The three of them were standing in the yard now. But Puke was noticeably absent.

  “Was the trailer still hooked up?” Colt asked.

  “What?” Casie asked, mind numb as she turned toward him.

  “The horse trailer,” he said. “Was it still hooked up to Puke?”

  “Holy Hannah!” She breathed the words like a curse. “She took the trailer? It doesn’t even have lights.”

  “Where’d she go?” Colt asked.

  “I don’t know. I was in the bathroom. One minutes she was there, and the next she was gone. Kind of like a stomachache.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Ty scowled into the distance as he strode toward Red Horse Ranch.

  The moon, as bright and round as an October pumpkin, flirted with blue-black clouds. Thunder rumbled overhead. Fog rolled up like lacy blossoms, slowly enveloping the cattails that grew beside the Chickasaw. But Ty failed to notice the weather as he marched along. Colt sometimes gave him a ride home from the Lazy at the end of the day, but he didn’t want to make a habit of it; he owed too many people too many favors as it was, and anyway, he needed this time alone, time to walk, to think.

  Things had changed so dang much since he’d met Casie Carmichael that sometimes he still needed time to adjust, to make sense of things. He’d been beat down. Now he wasn’t. Perhaps it was as simple as that. But the whys of the situation bedeviled him. Why did she waste time on a kid like him? A kid with too few skills and too many problems. She had enough troubles of her own. Sophie Jaegar, for instance. Sophie was like a hot-blooded thoroughbred on too short a lead. Trouble on the hoof. She made his pulse race and his hands sweat. But that was just because she was so temperamental, so impossible to understand. She ran hot and cold and scary as hell. But she was also so …

  He shook his head and exhaled heavily. God knew there were far more important things to worry about than Sophie Jaegar’s inexplicable moods. Emily, for instance, who always seemed tough and steady, but was scared spitless on the inside. Or Angel, with the dark, trusting eyes and the deep-throated nicker that made him feel needed, made him feel right. But Angel would have died days ago if it wasn’t for Sophie. She’d saved the mare as surely as if she’d performed the operation herself. And why was that? Sophie Jaegar could buy and sell a thousand Angels with the kind of money her daddy had. So why had she decided to help his mare?

  Against his will, he remembered the brightness of the girl’s eyes when she talked about the old gray, but he was sure it wasn’t tears. Sophie Jaegar was mean, he reminded himself. She was self-centered and vain and caustic. But sometimes, when he least expected it, he would shift his gaze just so and wonder if he saw someone else in her eyes, someone vulnerable and lost. Someone who needed a champion. Someone who could be a champion, who could fight to the death for a broken-down old plug that wasn’t worth the price of a bullet. Someone who could fight for a guy who—

  He shook his head, trying to dislodge the thoughts from his brain, but the lost little girl was stuck firm in the back of his mind.

  Was that how his father had felt at one time? Had he looked at Ty’s mother and longed to be braver or better or smarter or stronger? Had he wanted more than anything to be the kind of man that she needed? He shook the idiotic thoughts from his head. It wasn’t as if Ty felt that way. But Gil Roberts must have had some kind of reason to marry a woman who would never be happy. Ty would be smarter, though. He wasn’t going to get caught in that trap. It wasn’t as if Sophie Jaegar meant anything to him. It didn’t matter that her hair shone like a palomino’s burnished coat or that her skin was the color of clover honey, or that now and then, when he least expected it, there was a breathtaking vulnerability to her that made him want to be something he could never be. Something better and—

  A light struck him from behind. He jumped, feeling inexplicably guilty for his wandering thoughts. The pickup truck was coming up behind him. He shuffled diagonally off to the side of the road. It was darker than pine tar out here, but when he twisted toward the approaching vehicle, he recognized Puke’s single headlight without half trying. Casie’s ancient horse trailer rattled behind it, fishtailing on the gravel. Where were they off to at this hour of the—

  Angel! Panic struck him like a blow. While he’d been festering over Sophie’s mercurial moods, something had happened to Angel. Another bout of colic, probably. Or maybe the laminitis had taken a turn for the worse. They must be headed straight for the vet hospital.

  Fear knotted his muscles, freezing him in place, but at the last
moment he reached up and tried to flag them down with both hands. It wasn’t right that they’d leave without him. She was his horse. He’d go with them no matter the outcome. Maybe they thought he was too weak to do what needed doing. Maybe that’s why they’d waited until he’d left. He winced, realizing the horrible limitations of their options. Spending more money was out of the question. He knew that. He wasn’t a complete idiot. Still, he wouldn’t let Angel go through anything without him. He waved again, frantic now. But the truck didn’t slow down. Instead, it swerved around him. For a second he caught sight of wide eyes and glossy hair and then dust swirled around him in a gritty vortex.

  “Sophie?” he breathed, but she was already hidden from sight. Maybe it was the memory of those lost little girl eyes or maybe it was fear for Angel that made him act. He would never know for sure, but without thinking, without hesitation, he leaped toward the trailer. His fingers curled around the metal slats while his boots hit the rusty fender. His left foot slipped. For a second he was certain he would be thrown onto the gravel like a hapless grasshopper, but he scrambled for footing, tightened his grip, and managed to stay put.

  Half choking on the dust and hyperventilating on the adrenaline rush, he gazed into the interior of the trailer. Nothing gazed back. He shoved his face closer to the slats and peered inside more intently, but the conveyance was empty. Even in the darkness, he could see that much. Uncertainty claimed him. Where the hell was Sophie going? And why? She didn’t have no license. For a moment he considered jumping off, but she was already picking up speed and she was … Sophie. Closing his eyes against this new insanity, he flattened himself against the side of the trailer, and hung on for dear life.

  Inside the rattletrap pickup truck, Sophie Jaegar curled her fists around the steering wheel and tightened her lips. Anger roared like a gale force wind inside her head. Footage of miserable horses tied in stalls so narrow they could barely shift their weight stormed through her brain. The pictures melded painfully with old memories, memories of Ty with broken lips and eyes cast in shadows. Cruelty, blatant and devastating. She swallowed her bile and stepped on the gas. Behind her, the trailer swiveled wildly. She eased up on the accelerator but didn’t touch the brake. She wasn’t a complete idiot. She didn’t want to send the whole rig spinning into the ditch. That much she knew, but little else.