by Janet Dailey
“No problem.” Jake went out and retrieved the rest of the bags. When he came back into the kitchen, Kira had just finished stowing milk jugs in the refrigerator.
“I have to put the car in the shed,” she said. “Stick around. I need to talk to you about tomorrow.” Without waiting for a reply, she hurried outside again. That was Kira. Always focused and charging ahead, even when she was exhausted. Her constant drive tended to set his teeth on edge. But he was here to help, Jake reminded himself. He would do his best to give her what she needed.
Jake heard her vehicle start up and pull away. Having nothing left to put in the fridge, he wandered into the living room to wait. When she didn’t return after a few minutes, his restlessness drove him to explore.
A floor lamp, behind the sofa, cast a low light over the room with its well-worn leather furniture, sandstone fireplace and timbered ceiling. Leading off to Jake’s right was a shadowed hallway, lined with several doors. At the far end, a sliver of light and the muted theme of a popular telenovela flowed from the crack under a closed door. That, Jake guessed, would be the room where Consuelo was enjoying a well-earned rest.
The other doors were closed, except for one that stood a few inches ajar. Against his better judgment, he found himself walking toward it, moving lightly down the hall, until he could look into the dimly lit room.
Something tightened around his heart. Paige lay sleeping in the glow of her night-light, her eyes closed, her hair tousled on the pillow.
She was so beautiful, she almost took his breath away. But he knew he shouldn’t be here looking at her. If Paige woke up and saw him, she might be startled. And if Kira found him in the hallway, she was liable to be upset, or even angry. Nobody needed that kind of confrontation tonight.
He was turning to go when he noticed something on the nightstand. He recognized it at once. It was the framed portrait that he and Wendy had posed for on their wedding day.
Paige had been little more than a toddler when her mother died; and as her father, he’d scarcely been there at all. Any real memories of her parents would be very dim at best. But Jake could imagine how the smiling pair in the picture could become an idealized version of her father and mother. Their happy faces would greet her every morning when she woke. They would watch over her at night while she slept. They would never hurt her, never scold her, never grow old or go away.
But people in a photograph were a sad substitute for the real thing. They could never laugh with her, play with her or teach her. They could never love her.
Driven by impulse, Jake slipped through the door, took the picture and carried it back to the light in the living room. Looking at those faces was like twisting a knife in his gut, but right now, feeling the pain was better than feeling nothing at all.
The young man in the portrait looked like a stranger—the trusting eyes, the boyish grin. He was marrying the woman of his dreams, and he would do everything in his power to make their lives perfect. Even the thought of his upcoming deployment couldn’t dim that confident look. There’d been no doubt that he would serve his country with honor and come home whole, finding his wife waiting with their child in her arms.
The poor, stupid bastard.
And Wendy—Lord, but she’d looked so beautiful in her ivory gown and veil. They’d been so happy then, and so much in love. If only he could have chosen to die in her place. She could have been there for their daughter. She could’ve followed her own dreams and made a fulfilling life for herself without him.
Instead he’d survived—a useless wreck of a man who could barely make it from one day to the next; a man whose real life had ended on a dark city street, in a crumpled mass of metal.
“Give me that picture, Jake.” Kira’s soft voice startled him. He hadn’t heard her come back into the house. Gently but firmly, she took the photograph from his hand.
He’d expected her to be angry, but all she said was “Let me put this back. Paige will be upset if she wakes up and finds it gone.”
Jake watched her walk into the shadows, slim, erect and utterly self-possessed. Nothing seemed to touch her—at least not from the outside.
“Kira needs you to forgive her for what happened. Maybe if you can do that, she’ll finally be able to forgive herself.”
Dusty’s words came back to him as Kira vanished into Paige’s room and came out a moment later without the photograph. She didn’t act like a woman who needed forgiveness. For that matter, Jake wasn’t sure he was ready to forgive her. But after three years, maybe it was time he stopped walking around the tragedy and tried to learn the whole story.
As she stepped into the light again, Jake forced himself to speak. “We’ve never talked about that night, Kira—the night of the accident. If I understood what happened, maybe it would help me move past it.”
Kira glanced away, her hands arranging an afghan on the back of the couch. “There’s not much to understand,” she said. “Wendy had gone to a bachelorette party with a couple of her girlfriends. They’d picked her up at her place. Since I’d agreed to babysit, they dropped Paige off at my apartment on the way.
“Toward midnight, when she wasn’t back, I started to worry. I was just about to phone her, when she called me. She said she wanted to go home, but her friends were drunk and didn’t want to leave the party. I offered to come and get her.”
“Wendy wasn’t drunk?” Jake remembered how his wife had enjoyed getting tipsy. It had never been a problem between them. But he sensed—or perhaps only imagined—a slight hesitation before Kira shook her head.
“I didn’t ask, but she sounded sober,” Kira said. “Paige fussed when I woke her up and buckled her into her car seat, but she was fast asleep by the time I picked up her mother half an hour later.”
“How did Wendy seem? Was she all right?”
“She was fine, just tired and glad to be away from there. But . . .” Kira’s voice trailed off. She crossed the room and stood gazing out the front window.
“But?” Jake demanded, his impatience getting the better of him.
She stood silent a moment more. “It was late, and I was dead tired,” she said at last. “I wanted some coffee to perk me up for the drive home. I spotted an all-night drive-through and stopped long enough to buy a cup.” Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Just long enough.”
There was no need for Kira to finish the story. Jake could guess the rest. The brief time it had taken to pull up to the drive-through window, buy the coffee and leave had put them directly in the path of the drunk driver, who’d run the red light, slammed into Kira’s small car and killed Wendy.
A few seconds more, or a few seconds less, and nothing would have happened.
“My God,” he said, staring at her.
“Yes, now you know.” She turned away from the window. “For what it’s worth, the driver of the SUV wasn’t hurt. And because his family had political connections, he got off with a slap on the wrist. He was killed, driving drunk again, six months later. I guess you could call it karma.”
She made a shrugging motion, like someone shedding an uncomfortable coat. “But this isn’t why I asked you to stay. Since my grandfather’s in the hospital, I’m going to need your help with the students and the horses. I know you don’t owe me a thing, but I hope you’ll lend a hand, out of respect for Dusty.”
Jake was still reeling from the story she’d told him, but he feigned indifference. “As long as I’m getting paid, I’ll do whatever. But I don’t know a damn thing about horses.”
“Well, you can learn. All you need to do is stay one step ahead of the students. Let me get a few things and meet you in the kitchen for chocolate milk and donuts. We can take some notes and go over the plans for tomorrow.”
As Jake watched her stride back down the hall, he couldn’t help wondering what lay beneath that coldly efficient manner of hers. She had just told him a gut-wrenching story, one that had left him shaken to the core. Then, as if nothing had happened, she’d simply shifted gears a
nd moved on to the next order of business.
If he could see into the depths of her soul, would he find a hidden cache of warmth and vulnerability? Or would he only see more of the same, all the way to her frozen, protected heart?
* * *
Dawn’s first light crept over the Santa Catalinas, brushing the desert foothills with shades of mauve, violet and gold. Mourning doves, nesting in a mesquite thicket, woke to fill the air with their gentle calls. A jackrabbit, its huge ears as long as its body, scampered down to a streambed for a morning drink. A Gila woodpecker drummed on the ribs of a giant saguaro.
Dressed for the day, Kira walked out to the paddock. For a few moments, she stood by the fence, sipping her coffee and watching the horses. She’d told Jake to meet her out here at first light, but there was no sign of him. If he didn’t show up in the next five minutes, she would have to go and roust him out of bed. That would be awkward, to say the least.
From the moment Jake had shown up here, she’d known that the details of Wendy’s death would come to light. Over and over, she’d rehearsed the story in her mind—every word true, or at least as true as it needed to be. As for the rest, what Jake didn’t know was best left unsaid.
She’d been brutally honest about the coffee stop that had put her car in the wrong place at the wrong time. For that, if Jake needed somebody to blame, she would accept the burden. It was the least she could do.
Last night, after the painful revelation, she and Jake had spent an hour in the kitchen, going over the plans for today and what he needed to know. The subject of the accident hadn’t come up again. It was as if a door had been closed. She could only hope it would never be opened again.
Except maybe by Paige, when she was old enough to ask questions.
Paige was another worry. Kira could sense that Jake and his daughter were already bonding. With Jake filling in for Dusty, the two of them would be spending more time together. Kira felt powerless to stop what was happening, but one thing was certain: if Jake broke his little girl’s heart, she would never forgive him.
She glanced at her watch. Jake’s time was up. If she had to march into his cabin and drag him out of bed by one leg, so be it.
She was turning to go, when she heard his voice.
“There you are! I was wondering when you were going to show up!” He was coming around the barn, fully dressed, pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with hay. “I was just about to give these babies their breakfast,” he said, glancing at the horses. “As long as you’re here, you can lend me a hand.”
Kira’s gaze took him in. He was wearing worn jeans, a khaki-colored tee, which outlined his muscular arms and chest, and a battered straw hat somebody had left behind in the tack room. He looked fit and relaxed—except for his eyes. They were rimmed in red and framed in shadow, a sign that he’d spent a sleepless night.
“Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to pitch in and help?” He spoke in a teasing tone.
Kira pulled on her work gloves. “Tell you what. Let’s put the hay in their stalls. Then we can bring the horses inside.”
“Have you checked on Dusty this morning?” Jake asked her as she walked beside the wheelbarrow.
“I called first thing. He had a calm night, and he’s resting. All good, I suppose. I’ll be taking a break to visit him later. For now, let’s get to work.”
Since the horses had spent yesterday and last night in the paddock, the stable was already clean. The students could shovel out the paddock, then go into the stalls to practice brushing and grooming their horses.
It was a well-designed and well-equipped stable. The open-topped box stalls were roomy enough for a horse to move around or even lie down in the straw. Each stall had a feeder, a place for a water bucket and a post on either side with a metal ring for cross-tying. In addition to the stalls, there was a tack room, a room for veterinary care and an area with a hose and a drain, where a horse could be bathed.
This morning the stable was clean and quiet. Kira found an extra pitchfork and helped Jake pile the sweet-smelling hay into the feeders. When he went back to the hay shed for more, she used the time to fill the water buckets and get eight soft nylon halters and leads out of the tack room. She tossed these over the gate of an unused stall.
Jake was back a few minutes later, wiping hay dust off his face. “Paige said that somebody found a dead rattlesnake in the hay. Is that true?”
“We’ve found more than one.” Kira forked hay into a stall and moved on. “The snakes like the hay fields because there are plenty of mice there. A few unlucky ones get picked up by the baler. But in case you’re wondering, no, we’ve never found a live one.”
Jake shuddered. “Sorry, I can’t stand snakes.”
She gave him a smile. He was standing close, reaching past her to fill a feeder with hay. His body smelled of clean sweat and the lavender soap stocked in the guest cabins. Kira had never thought of lavender as a masculine scent, but on Jake, it was. The thought flitted through her head that he could wear Chanel No. 5 and still smell like a man.
Not that she was attracted to him. He was too raw, too edgy and dangerous to be her type. The few men she’d been involved with had been cultured and highly educated. Still, she found herself inhaling Jake’s nearness, her senses swimming in his male aura.
Heavens, what was going on with her?
Kira was about to draw back when the highway crew in the valley below set off the first dynamite blast of the day. The explosion boomed, echoing like thunder off the canyon walls.
Jake’s body went rigid, his eyes narrowed to slits. Kira laid a hand on his arm. She could feel his straining muscles as he fought an inner battle against the rising shock waves. This time he would know what he was hearing, and that it wasn’t a danger. But long exposure to war had programmed his nervous system to react.
Her fingers tightened on his arm. “It’s all right, Jake,” she said. “It’s only the highway crew.”
“I . . . know.” With a long exhalation, he brought himself under control again. His body was shaking. Kira checked the impulse to wrap him in her arms and hold him like a frightened child.
“It’s bound to happen again,” she said. “They could be blasting all day. Will you be all right?”
“I’ll be fine. I’m fine now. Don’t fuss over me,” he growled. “So what do we do next, just open the gates and let the horses run in?”
“Not quite.” Kira gathered the halters and ropes. Walking outside, she selected one set and laid the rest over the paddock fence. “We’ll have to lead them in. Come on. It’s lesson time.”
* * *
Jake followed Kira into the paddock, where ten horses waited. All of them were calm. They’d probably done this drill hundreds of times. But he didn’t like horses, and he didn’t like being here, especially with a bossy female who thought she knew it all. No doubt, Kira had a good heart. But her take-charge ways were getting to him like a bur under his jeans.
“Come over here,” she said. “We’ll start with Sadie. She’s my own mare.” After separating one rope and halter, she thrust the rest of the tangled gear into Jake’s hands and strode toward a fine-boned animal that raised its head at her approach. Stepping around a pile of steaming manure, Jake followed her.
“Always the left side. Remember that, and make sure the students remember it.”
Jake watched as she slipped the nylon halter over the mare’s head, as easily as one might slip a harness onto a dog. When the halter was fastened in place, she clipped the end of the rope to a ring under the chinstrap. “See, it’s easy,” she said, handing the rope to Jake. “The important thing is to stay calm and let her know you’re in charge. Now walk close to her, on the left. Lead her out of the paddock and into the first stall—the one on the right. She’ll know where to go.”
Jake took Kira’s place to the left of the mare’s shoulder. She swung her massive head around to look at him. Her big, soft eyes held a glint of suspicion. For a nickel, he would have
walked away right then, but he had to man up and show Kira he could handle this job. Maybe then, she’d stop treating him like one of her troubled kids.
The mare snorted and shook her head. “She can tell you’re nervous,” Kira said. “Calm her down. Talk to her and stroke her above the shoulder. She likes that.”
Jake laid a cautious hand on the mare. Beneath his palm, her coat was like warm satin. He could feel the taut, quivering muscle underneath. Could she be as uncomfortable with him as he was with her?
“Easy, girl,” he murmured, running a hand along her withers. “You’re all right. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
He could feel the mare relaxing. The strange thing was, he could feel himself relaxing as well. “Easy, now.” He ran his hand down her shoulder, letting the sleek warmth and earthy, animal aroma creep into his senses. “That’s it. Good girl.” Keeping a grip on the rope below the halter, he moved forward a couple of steps. The well-trained mare stayed even with him. “Come on, Sadie, let’s go get breakfast.”
Kira opened the paddock gate and closed it behind them. They moved at a brisk pace, crossing the short distance to the open door of the stable. “Don’t let her bolt for the hay,” she coached. “Take her in easy. Then unclip the lead and let her eat. Careful now. That’s it. Stay clear of her hindquarters as you leave.”
Kira was grinning as she closed the gate of the box stall. “See? Nothing to it. Come on, let’s get the others inside.”
* * *
They finished stabling the horses in time to join the students for breakfast. Kira couldn’t help but notice the change in their behavior. Yesterday they’d been boisterous and pushy, whining and teasing each other like siblings on a long car trip. Today they were meek little lambs. Calvin even got up to pull out her chair before she sat down.
The looks they gave Jake combined fear and hero worship. Consuelo had mentioned his reading them the riot act last night. Whatever he’d said to them, it must’ve sunk in. They all seemed to be on their best behavior.
