by Cara Colter
What if he could show her there was nothing to be afraid of?
Given how filled she was with terror, he saw it was something of a miracle that she had packed up that baby in the middle of winter and headed into the unknown.
A miracle, or one desperate last-ditch effort to save herself, to truly live.
But if she could not tame all that fear, he saw the outcome as being predictable. Just as a horse went back into a barn that was engulfed in flames, Amy would go right back to what was familiar, no matter how uncomfortable that was. And that voice on the phone, shrill and demanding, asking him who he was without even saying hello? That would be plenty uncomfortable.
Ty had told Amy he had no religion. But the truth was, you could not live in a place like this, so close to the formidable majesty of nature, without seeing the order of things, that life unfolded with reason, that sometimes the smallest things that appeared random at first ended up being connected to a larger picture.
Was there a possibility that Amy Mitchell had arrived on his doorstep, not by accident, but for a reason?
If that was true, he had to get beyond his petty need to protect his comfortable little world. Rise above his own fears.
But then his eyes went to her lips.
Starting with that one.
What if he could give her one small gift and help her find the fearless place in her? To do that, he was going to have to require more of himself, he was going to have to be more and do better.
“Come on. Get the baby ready.”
“Maybe you should just go ahead without us. I can find things to do inside. It looks like a perfect day to bake bread.”
She really didn’t want to do this. At some level, she was figuring it out. Saying yes to him right now was going to put the way she lived her whole life at stake.
The incentive of fresh-baked bread nearly killed his new vow to be a better man.
“Are you using the promise of fresh-baked bread to distract me? Just like I used that needle to distract you? Because, really, fresh-baked bread to a bachelor is like offering water to someone lost in the desert.”
Was that his life? Was he lost in the desert? He had never thought so before. This little bit of a thing was shaking up his life way beyond what her size should warrant!
He took in her look of relief.
“So,” she said, “that’s settled. I’ll bake bread. You’ll go play with horses. We’ll both have fun, in our own ways.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I don’t know that much about baking bread, but I’m pretty sure you need two hands to do it.”
She looked, dismayed, at her wrapped hand.
“I told you we should put a sling on it as a reminder you are on the injured list. How about if you come play with me, and then I’ll come play with you?”
“You’ll help me bake bread?” Did she sound slightly skeptical?
“I’ve already demonstrated my great ability to catch on with Mr. Splotchy over there. I hope baking bread is more fun than that.”
“Well, it has to be more fun than that, but somehow I can’t see you enjoying it. It’s not very manly.”
He laughed. “It would take more than helping to bake bread to threaten my masculinity. Do we have a deal?”
“I don’t know.”
That was an improvement over an out-and-out no.
“You know,” he challenged her softly, “if you can learn to deal with a horse...”
She nodded.
“Your mother-in-law will be a piece of cake.”
She went very still. She looked like a woman standing at the edge of a cliff, looking at the water below, deciding.
She jumped.
“Okay,” she said, “I’m in.”
And then she laughed again. And so did he. And she let him put her arm in a sling, which made him have to fight with his demons all over again. One kiss, right on the tender nape of that neck, where he was knotting the sling.
An hour later, he was congratulating himself because he had managed to fight off temptation and now they were all standing safely at the round corral, in his world.
Amy was wearing a bright toque with a fuzzy pom-pom on top and one of his jackets to accommodate the sling. She had one arm in the sleeve, the other tucked safely inside the jacket. The jacket, a plaid logger’s coat came to his upper thigh when he wore it. On her it was past her knees.
It made her look adorable, small and lost, like an orphan standing on a street corner waiting for someone to take her home.
It had taken forever to get the baby into a snowsuit, but Jamey was in it now and looked like a bright blue marshmallow—felt like one, too—nestled into the curve of Ty’s arm.
“So, this is Ben,” Ty said as they all stood at the rail, looking at the horse in the round corral behind the barn.
The flakes were still dancing down around them, huge and unrelenting. Jamey kept bending over backward trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue, grumbling and yelling when they hit him in the eyes instead.
Ben was the horse Ty had ridden the day before. He was a good horse, young, part mustang, a red roan, with about the softest eyes Ty had ever seen on a horse.
“He’s a two-year-old, which is basically a baby in horse years.”
“He seems very large for a baby,” Amy said cautiously. “His size alone makes me nervous.”
“He’ll be nervous if you’re nervous. That’s the secret about horses. They are looking to you for leadership. He wants you to lead him. We should go ahead and get in there with him.”
“I don’t know. He’s so big. He could kill us.”
“It’s funny you should say that, because that’s exactly what he’s afraid of, too. Death by predator.”
He was holding the baby, so when he went through the rails, she followed. Whether she would have if he didn’t have the baby, Ty wasn’t sure.
“The road’s closed,” she reminded him in a terrified whisper. “What if something happens?”
“Something is going to happen,” he promised. “Pure magic. Stick close to me, walk as if you’re a king.”
“I’m the wrong sex to be a king,” she muttered.
He was committed to wholesome. He didn’t even want her using that word right now. “He doesn’t know that, and a princess won’t do.”
“You better know what you’re doing.”
“Oh, I do.” He took them to the center of the paddock. He ignored Ben, who had watched them enter the corral with a certain shy caution. Then the horse circled them on feet muffled by snow, and was now tiptoeing along behind them.
Ty turned. Amy, stuck to him like glue, turned with him.
“Ah! I didn’t know he was right behind us!” She went to take a step back as the horse pulled up short, but Ty had anticipated it and placed a hand in the middle of her back.
“Don’t step back from him,” he instructed softly. “Hold your ground. He is reading every single thing about you. He can probably tell your heart is beating too fast. So don’t step back. Because if you do, he’ll take that as a weakness, that you are less than him, and so he will move forward, claim your space, try to dominate you.”
She froze and stared at Ty. He saw the light of understanding go on in the amazing depths of her hazel eyes.
“Oh, my,” she whispered, “if that doesn’t sound like the story of my life!”
“That’s the thing about watching someone with a horse,” he told her quietly. “You can tell every single thing about them. How you interact with a horse is exactly how you interact with life.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Whether you know it or not,” Ty finished, “you are telling people how to treat you all the time. Come. Come closer.”
He wen
t and stood right at the horse’s neck. The baby did not have her hesitancy. He reached eagerly for the horse, buried pudgy fingers in the silken strands of Ben’s mane. He cooed his love and approval.
Ty leaned close and blew a gentle breath in the colt’s wide nostril. It blew back and he breathed in the scent.
“Try that.”
Amy hesitated, studied not the horse, but him, and decided to give him a most fragile gift. She trusted him.
She leaned forward and blew.
And then Ben blew back.
“Breathe it in,” Ty said. “Breathe it in. That breath is what you have in common, the thread that connects you both to life. Breathe him in. Can you feel what he is? His essence?”
“His breath is so sweet,” she said, awed.
She turned and looked at Ty. Her eyes were shining with that moment of discovery. He knew he had her.
“Okay, now we’re going to make the decision it’s time for him to leave, so push his shoulder now, and raise your right hand.”
The horse moved away from them and out to the perimeter of the corral.
“Keep your eye on his hip, keep your hand up, step toward him.”
Fluidly, the horse broke into a relaxed canter and circled them, throwing up great puffs of snow.
“I didn’t make him do that!” Amy said, awed.
“Prove to yourself that you did. Back up, lower your right hand and raise your left, and then move one step toward him again.”
“I don’t have a left!” she reminded him, and wagged her empty sleeve at Ty.
He moved behind her, laughing, and physically lowered her right hand. There was the sweet temptation of her neck again.
“Back up,” he instructed.
The horse planted his feet as she backed up, and then Ty picked up the empty sleeve and waved it. Ben swiveled in one graceful move at the switch of hands. He cantered the other way.
“He’s so beautiful,” Amy said. “I feel as if I’m in a movie.”
The horse was beautiful, but his beauty was eclipsed by hers. Her curls were sticking out from under that silly hat, her cheeks were flushed from cold and exhilaration, her eyes were shining. A smile, so genuine it would have outshone the sun, if there had been any sun, played across her lips.
Seeing her with the horse told Ty exactly who she was.
And he knew how right he had been to take the high road with her, to fight the temptation of placing a kiss on the soft curve of her lips or her exposed neck.
Because she was beautiful and soft and gentle to her very core.
In other words, exactly the kind of woman that a rough-and-tumble guy who had known way too many hard knocks could do a lot of damage to.
Still, enchanted with her reaction to all of this, Ty talked her through the sequence a few more times. Her face was absolutely glowing as she began to understand the horse was responding to her slightest move.
“Everyone and everything is responding to us all the time, at some level. Sometimes it’s so subtle we don’t know what we’ve told them.”
For instance, her kiss had told him she was hungry. But her eyes were saying she wasn’t ready.
“Okay, lower your hand—” he let her empty sleeve fall “—and move your eyes to his shoulder.”
The horse skidded to a halt. He turned in, his eyes riveted on her. “Step back.”
She did, and the horse came into her, dropped his head in front of her in submission that was not surrender.
“Scratch his ears. And his forehead. Say something to him.”
“Ben, I think I’m in love with you.”
Her voice was husky and sweet, and it seemed to him a man could die to hear such words coming from her.
But his next instructions, intended for the horse, were instructions he needed to heed himself.
“Now turn and walk away.”
Not that he could. Not while they were snowed in here together, but there were many ways to walk away.
And he should know because he’d done most of them at one time or another.
“I don’t want to walk away,” she said, stroking Ben’s nose with soft reverence. “I want to stay like this forever.”
Yup, she was the kind of girl who could turn a man’s thoughts to forever.
“Sometimes it’s better to play hard to get. Turn and walk away,” he said more firmly.
She shot him a look, and then did as he asked.
“Don’t look back.”
“I can feel him,” she said. “Ohmygosh, he’s breathing right down my neck. Is he following me?”
“Like a dog.”
She moved a little faster. She slowed down. She turned, she doubled back on herself. The horse stayed right with her, taking her cues effortlessly, devoted to her as his new leader.
Finally, Ty allowed her to turn and pet Ben some more.
“You were right,” she breathed. “Oh, Ty, that was the most fun ever.”
“Actually, the most fun is still to come. You think you might like to ride him?”
“Oh,” she said, “I don’t know.”
“I’ll ride him, and then you can decide.”
He went into the barn and retrieved the tack. He showed her how to brush the horse, was aware of how intent her attention was on him as he saddled and bridled the young colt.
He got on in an easy swing. Now Ty was completely in his world. He felt his own energy and the energy of the colt merging. He felt the balance between them.
He didn’t so much ride the horse as dance with him. A few gentle laps around the paddock at a walk, and reversing direction, at a trot. And then, he let the rein loose, gave the slightest pressure with his knees.
The colt moved into an easy lope. He slid him to a halt with pressure and signals that no one could see, that were strictly between him and the horse. They loped the other way.
He glanced at Amy. She was awestruck.
He’d done enough for one day. But what guy didn’t love a girl looking at him like that?
He nudged Ben forward, toward the place of freedom. The horse moved out of a lope into a hard gallop. Ty leaned forward, drinking in the air and the scent of the colt. Peripherally he was aware of Amy and the baby in the center.
And it was all one.
A wonderful blur of oneness.
It was a vulnerable moment of choice. He could show her all of who he was, or he could hold back something.
But wasn’t the purpose to make her want to be who she truly was?
He dropped the loop of the reins over the saddle horn, and spread his arms wide and tilted his chin up, closing his eyes against the falling snow.
It was complete trust.
Not just in himself. Not just in the horse. Not just in her reaction to all this.
It was complete trust in life.
He lost himself in it, came back only reluctantly. He took up the reins again, and then he stopped and rode the horse into the center, where she was staring at him.
“I have never seen anything like that,” she said. “Not ever. I will never forget it as long as I live.”
It was like a promise, and he knew he had succeeded in giving her something.
He was aware he had taken a giant risk. He had shown her exactly who he was, and then he knew it had been worth it.
“I want that,” she said. “I want to go to that place, be in that place, live in that place.”
He bent down and brushed her curls from her face with a gloved fingertip. He realized the baby was probably getting very heavy for her to manage with one arm. He took the baby from her arms and set him in the saddle in front of him. They took a few turns around, and Ty thought of his father again, how some of his earliest memories were of this.
S
itting in the saddle in front of his dad, beginning to understand the language not just of horses, but of his life.
Was it the first time he had consciously realized the gift his father had given him?
What was it about her that was making him see his life in different ways?
He reminded himself of the goal. For her to see her life in a different way. He rode back to her, pulled his leg out of the far stirrup, slid out of the saddle with the baby still in his arms.
“Well, I guess if that’s what you want,” he said, “you better get on. Because you can’t start the trip without finding your ride.”
“I don’t think I could get on with two good arms,” she said doubtfully. “We should wait until I can use both arms. We should wait until it’s not snowing. We should—”
“You can always wait. You can always wait until everything is perfect and all the stars line up. But you’re going to miss a whole lot of what life is trying to give you right now.”
“What if I fall? What if I wreck my other arm. What if—”
He put his finger gently to her lips, and then he set the baby down. He picked her up, two hands around her waist, and lifted.
She was so light that he held her for a moment, like a dancer, or a pairs skater starting a lift.
And then he twisted ever so slightly and put her in the saddle.
“Pick up Jamey,” she said. She was clinging to the saddle horn with her visible hand. “He could get stepped on!”
He picked him up, but not before giving her a look that let her know it was his watch, and no babies were getting stepped on on his watch. That horse would not move a muscle without Ty’s okay, or some instruction from her.
“I don’t want you to be afraid anymore. That’s what I want you to take from this. That’s what I want you to remember forever. Now pick up the rein with your good hand. Attagirl. Just squeeze him ever so gently with your legs and then release.”
The horse walked out. And in front of his eyes, Ty watched as Amy’s fear dissolved into something else.
And this time Ty knew he was going to be the one never to forget.
“Whoa, boy,” she said a while later as he helped her down, and she watched him strip the saddle and blanket off the horse. “Baking bread is not going to be able to compete with this in the fun department.”
