by Deb Kastner
Tanner dove in front of her when she bolted, but all he managed to do was hit the ground and roll several times, raising dust in his wake.
Rebecca rushed over to him.
“Are you okay?” she asked, crouching beside the cowboy she’d once given her heart to. Whatever issues were between them, her heart had still jumped into her throat when she’d seen him fall.
He rolled to a sitting position and then crouched on his knees, taking a couple of deep breaths and coughing from the dust.
“I’m fine,” he said, scowling. “The only thing that’s hurting on me right now is my ego and my pride. I can’t believe I let that critter get away from me.”
He stood and brushed off his hat, jamming it back on his head and adjusting the brim.
“Maybe we should just choose whichever alpaca is easiest to pen,” Rebecca suggested. “Is Brownie perhaps not one of the gentler animals?”
Tanner shook his head. “Mackenzie picked Brownie. Besides—that animal owes me something now. Brownie is getting sheared today whether she wants to or not, so she better just get it through that stubborn head of hers right now. Although from what I’ve read, this is the hard part and they feel much more comfortable once we get the thick wool off them.”
“Read?” Rebecca asked, confused, but Tanner was already making his way toward the herd.
They chased the persistent alpaca around for several more unproductive minutes, whooping and hollering and laughing. Mackenzie was clapping with delight at the silly antics of her uncle Tanner and auntie ’Becca.
At one point, Rebecca’s gaze met Tanner’s and their eyes locked. He was clearly enjoying himself now and his brilliant blue eyes glittered as they met hers. He was a handsome, rugged man from the tips of his cowboy boots to the top of his dark brown cowboy hat, and her heart skipped more than one beat.
She might not remember her past with Tanner, but she could definitely see why she’d been attracted to him. The physical chemistry between them was undeniable, and for a moment, she chose to bask in the feelings rather than let them frustrate her, for one moment not caring about the rest of the story, whatever that was.
They were right here, right now, enjoying this experience between them. And this time, when they surrounded Brownie and herded her toward the opening, they managed to get her into the pen. They almost lost her at the gate, but with Peggy’s and Mackenzie’s added enthusiasm, Brownie darted through into the makeshift pen.
“Do you want to help Mackenzie put on the halter?” Tanner asked, extending the halter toward Rebecca.
She stepped forward with a self-conscious smile. Her heart was hammering, but she had this, right? She had reviewed the video on how to halter an alpaca just before they’d left this morning. She didn’t quite remember all the details and the specific order of things, but really...
How hard could it be?
She took the halter in her hands, her confidence level soaring, but when she picked up Mackenzie and they went to put the halter on Brownie, it took about two seconds for everything to go wonky. To start with, Brownie had no intention of being haltered and she wasn’t about to cooperate. She stretched her neck and wiggled her head back and forth and it was everything Rebecca and Mackenzie could do to hook the loops around her muzzle and ears.
When Rebecca had finally captured the alpaca’s head, she grinned in triumph, only to frown again a moment later.
The halter looked backward. Upside down, maybe? Inside out? Nothing fit where it was supposed to go.
It was incorrect and she knew it, to her chagrin. What she didn’t know was how to fix it. Nothing suggested itself as an answer.
Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes. She understood what Tanner meant when he’d been talking about ego and pride raring up to the exclusion of all over emotions. She felt so useless. She couldn’t even do a simple task like haltering an alpaca.
“Here, now,” Tanner said gently, noticing her anxiety. “None of that, now. It was a good try.”
She uttered something between a snort and a sniffle.
He placed his large, callused hand over hers and guided her as they turned the halter around and got everything where it needed to go to be appropriately placed on Brownie.
“There. See?” he said. “You’ve got it.”
But she didn’t have it. That was the point.
She’d watched videos a mere hour ago and any information she’d gathered was already history in her Swiss-cheese mind. An hour. She hated it when that happened, especially since she’d been making some good progress on her short-term memory.
But then there were moments like these. She didn’t know what was worse—not remembering the last few years or what she’d eaten for breakfast.
Oh, wait. She’d forgotten to eat breakfast.
Tanner leaned close to her ear. “It’s okay,” he soothed. “No big deal.”
She wanted to yell back at him that it wasn’t okay and it was definitely a big deal, but none of this was his fault and it would be wrong to take it out on him when he had done so much for her.
He was every bit as patient with her as he was with Mackenzie, taking as much time as she needed to get things right.
Unable to voice her thoughts, she nodded her gratitude.
“Okay, so, Rebecca, you’ll be catching the fleece as I shear it off Brownie here,” Tanner explained. “As I mentioned, as I shear the blanket of wool off the back, it should come off in one long, even piece. That part is worth the most, so we’ll bag it separately. I’ll do my best to shear Brownie’s legs and head, but no promises there on how it’s going to look once I’m finished.”
Rebecca had earlier pictured dashing after puffs of wool floating through the air and was glad to hear it wasn’t as fanatical as all that.
But there it was again—the hesitancy in Tanner’s voice.
No promises. As if he didn’t know for sure how this was going to go. As if he’d never shorn an alpaca before.
“How do we get her to lie down?” Rebecca asked as Brownie protested loudly with a sound somewhere between a goose’s honk and a dog’s squeaky toy.
“I’ve got that part all set up,” Tanner assured her. With Rebecca keeping Brownie steady and speaking calmly to her, he carefully looped the alpaca’s back legs and pulled them tight using a peg he’d nailed into the ground on one side of the blue tarp. “Okay, now, to get her down gently.”
He reached for her front legs and managed to get the rope looped around them, but when he went to pull the rope tight and carefully roll Brownie to her side on the tarp, she turned her head toward him, and squealed in distress.
“She’ll feel much better once the weight of the wool is off her,” Tanner noted.
Peggy and Mackenzie settled near Brownie’s head, petting her and talking to her to keep her calm. Rebecca organized her plastic bags, preparing to separate the wool as Tanner instructed.
Tanner oiled the enormous electric shears and away he went. Despite all he’d said—and not said—to the contrary, he was good at what he did. It showed that he’d worked with animals all his life. With a firm but gentle hand, he sheared the top wool off in a single, neat blanket and then sheared down to her knees and up her neck to her face.
Rebecca was duly impressed.
They rolled her over and Tanner finished the job on Brownie’s left side, with Rebecca following just behind his shears to scoop up the soft wool and place it into plastic bags in order to keep it as clean as possible. Mackenzie very quickly got bored with the process and wandered off to play with the goats. Seeing that Tanner and Rebecca were doing fine on their own, Peggy soon followed Mackenzie.
“Okay, I think we can let Brownie up now,” Tanner said, leaning back and pressing his palms into his thighs. “It’s not perfect, but I think we got most of the wool.”
Rebecca couldn’t see that he’d made a
single mistake and she told him so. It looked great to her, a real expert shearing.
“Really?” he asked, his shoulders squaring as ruddy color reached his tanned face. He graced her with a half smile. “This was kind of fun, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “It was. Except we have another nineteen alpacas to go. I hope we can shear more than one in a day next time.”
“Practice makes perfect,” he said, releasing Brownie’s front legs. Without giving it a moment’s thought, Rebecca took the now-calm alpaca’s halter. Brownie looked much more comfortable not carrying all that extra wool on her.
“Hey, Mackenzie,” Tanner called to their niece as he released Brownie’s back legs. “Come see how Brownie’s haircut turned out.”
The sweet little girl was giggling even before she got to them. “Her neck is so skinny,” she said. “And her head is so poofy.”
Poofy was a good word for it. Rebecca had no idea how Tanner had managed that crazy hairdo, but Mackenzie started giggling harder, and before they knew it, all four of them were holding their stomachs from laughing so hard.
Tanner scooped Mackenzie into his arms and Rebecca led Brownie back to the pasture and released her halter, which wasn’t nearly as complicated as putting it on. At least she was able to do that on her own.
“We work well together,” she observed, even though in truth, Tanner had done most of the work.
Tanner’s eyes widened. Rebecca nearly clapped a hand over her mouth when she realized what she’d said. There was still so much she didn’t know—like why she hadn’t been living in Serendipity with her husband when she’d been in her accident.
And yet what she’d said was true. They did work well together.
Should she ask for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
But if she was just going to forget it again when she went to sleep that night, would it matter? More than likely, all she was going to do was bring up old hurts without a resolution and stir up Tanner’s pain.
She didn’t want to do that to Tanner. She liked the man. If she were being honest with herself, her feelings were beginning to run deeper even than merely liking him as a human being. They had a past together. They had, at one time, chosen to live out their lives together.
They were connected.
And she didn’t want to hurt him.
Chapter Six
Tanner opened the gate to the chicken coop and laughed as Mackenzie burst inside, sending hens squawking in every direction, their tail feathers ruffling in indignation. He’d been Mackenzie’s temporary guardian for going on five months now, but it never got old. His heart still warmed every single time he watched her play. She somehow drew everyone in and made them experience the same childlike joy she was feeling.
He wished he shared that capability. But if anything, he carried a rain cloud of dark and doubt over him—nothing he would want to share.
He’d sure miss her when her mama got out of jail and regained custody of the little tyke. Mackenzie belonged with her mother, of course, if Lydia could get her life together, but he worried that might not be the case.
It wasn’t that Lydia didn’t love Mackenzie. It was just that she didn’t know how to love Mackenzie. She had made a mistake large enough to land her in jail—twice now. She wouldn’t let him see her while in jail, much less Mackenzie, but she’d assured him she had changed while inside.
It was hard for Tanner to fathom not having the little girl here all the time. There would be a big gaping Mackenzie-sized hole in his heart when she was gone that even his own son would not be able to fill.
Today the preschooler was helping Uncle Tanner clean the chicken coop and gather the eggs.
Originally, Rebecca had wanted to help gather the eggs, but a quick internet search suggested chickens carried certain types of bacteria which might not be safe for the unborn baby. It seemed to him that she’d been rather less than enthusiastic about the chore to start with and appeared relieved to be able to immediately insist on putting their baby’s health first.
He wouldn’t have pushed her to do something she was uncomfortable with, anyway. In the weeks since she’d been back, they’d seemed to have found a nice middle ground in what chores they shared. And Tanner was finding it harder and harder to remember that she’d left him and he’d experienced that horrible separation when she was so very present now. The expression on her face as she did ranch chores—especially anything to do with the animals—was akin to Mackenzie’s—all innocence and joy.
And there was something else that struck him as strange. She remembered her—their—baby without the least bit of prompting, although he supposed it would be hard to forget the baby even if she’d completely lost her memory again and woke up with nothing. She’d be aware of her living, moving baby bump from the very first second she awoke every morning. But she’d been extra cautious, like working out, all on her own, that she should wear gloves while doing ranch work. Her amnesia didn’t remove her intelligence—it only blocked her memories.
Turning his attention to Mackenzie, he handed her a wicker basket and grabbed a rake to pull the used straw into a pile while she gathered the eggs. While Mackenzie hadn’t been raised on a ranch until just recently, she had absolutely zero fear of animals. The very first time she’d gathered eggs, she’d reached right underneath one of the hens and had withdrawn her arm with a nice, fresh egg in her grasp. Talk about a natural-born rancher!
“Look at that,” he said, admiring her basket as she filled it with eggs. “This is almost like an Easter egg hunt, isn’t it?”
Mackenzie grinned and nodded vigorously.
“When’s Easter?” she asked, excitement brimming in her gaze.
He laughed. Now he’d gone and done it.
“We just celebrated Easter a few months ago, remember? We went to church and all the bells were ringing? And if I remember right, the Easter bunny left you a big chocolate bunny and you ate the ears off.”
Mackenzie clutched her middle and giggled so hard she nearly dropped the basket. “He couldn’t hear no more.”
“He couldn’t hear any more,” Tanner corrected gently.
She looked up and tilted her head at him, scrunching her eyebrows and pursing her lips. Clearly, she had no idea why he’d thought to correct her. Hadn’t she just said exactly the same thing?
He shrugged and grinned and she broke out in another contagious bout of giggles that had him chuckling.
Uncles. What is a little girl to do with them?
Tanner was sure that’s what Mackenzie was thinking.
“Why don’t you take those eggs in to your grandma? I’ll bet you can help her scramble some for lunch.”
Mackenzie loved to help cook almost as much as she enjoyed gathering eggs, and wasted no time heading inside to her grandmother. Thankfully, Peggy was an infinitely patient woman where three-year-old little girls and cracked eggs were concerned.
Tanner finished raking up the chicken coop and spread some fresh straw across the ground. He scooped chicken feed and spread it so the chickens could enjoy scratching for it. Then he ran the hose in and filled up the water trough underneath the henhouse for the birds to drink and wash in.
He’d done this work all his life. Cleaning the chicken coop was the first ranch chore he’d been given when, as a small boy of about six, he went looking for work so he could put food on the table when his mother spent all her money on drugs. After all these years, he could perform the task effortlessly—and more to the point, brainlessly.
His thoughts kept returning to Rebecca, and his eyes often strayed to the alpaca field, where Rebecca was sitting on the gate with a notebook and pencil. She looked deeply thoughtful and he wondered what she was writing.
As for Tanner, his emotions were all over the map. He had to remind himself Rebecca had abandoned him. She’d touched his greatest vulnerabi
lity, that of being alone. He had experienced so much pain and grief as he’d adapted to life on his own. But as he thought on it, the stinging jab to the gut he expected to feel wasn’t there—or at least it wasn’t as obvious anymore.
He figured he ought to be hurting a good deal more than he was right now. He had enough reasons to be. He reminded himself to keep his heart guarded around her, especially until she recovered her memory. No matter how well they’d been getting along recently, the return of her memory could spell instant doom for their relationship, and he’d be wise to remember that.
Not only had Rebecca taken off without a word, but she hadn’t even returned when she knew she was pregnant with his child. How irresponsible was that? He supposed she had tried to call him that one time and he’d hung up on her without allowing her to explain why she was phoning—presumably to say she was pregnant with their son.
That was on him—and he was ashamed of his actions. He should have let her talk and at least tried to listen to what she had to say. But that was one phone call. She was as much aware of his vices as he was and she of all people knew just how stubborn he could be. Was it fair that he believed she should have made more of an effort to touch base with him and share something that would change his world?
Why hadn’t she made more of an effort to reconcile with him—if not for their wedding vows, then at least for the sake of their child?
Or if not to reconcile, then at least to allow him to be the father he’d always wanted to be.
But then, their communication channels hadn’t always been the best, especially after their daughter was stillborn. They weren’t the kind of couple who pointlessly bickered back and forth. She withdrew into herself and he found his peace—or at least his space—on the range. But if her phone call had been all about the baby, then why hadn’t she returned to town and faced him down in person so they could work it out together?
