I stand back, watching Jacob go up to his stall and stick his hand through the bars. My heart melts and my ovaries threaten to explode as I take it all in. Jacob can come off a little gruff, and definitely rough around the edges, but he’s definitely a diamond in the rough.
Because underneath it all, he’s a man who’s kind and caring, who gives more than he gets, and who followed his passion instead of money. He’s made a successful career out of it. Though, I have no doubt Jacob will always choose the animals over making a buck.
“I can’t believe how different he looks from when I first saw him.” I come over to the stall, stopping next to Jacob. He wraps his arm around me and pulls me in, kissing the side of my head. My heart swells in my chest, and I rest my head against Jacob’s shoulder for a moment before going into Pongo’s stall. He’s not hooked up to an IV anymore, and his whole demeanor has changed.
“Not all horses have his drive,” Jacob says softly. “He responded text-book well to treatment and never gave up.”
“You’re going to make a little girl happy one day,” I tell Pongo, not risking petting him since I haven’t changed my clothes.
“Or a little boy,” Jacob quips. “I am not ashamed or embarrassed to admit I considered my pony my best friend until I was about nine.”
“Oh, why does that make me all teary-eyed?” I ask with a laugh, and Jacob slips his arm under the bottom of my shirt
“You’re an even bigger sap than I am when it comes to horses.”
“Totally.” I spin in his arms and hook my hands around his shoulders, looking into his eyes. I slowly inhale, breasts rising and falling against his chest.
“Do you want to come in and get something to eat once we get the horses settled?”
“Yeah,” I reply. “I’d like that.”
We go back outside and unload the ponies first, taking them into the large stall in the back of the barn. They all seem to visibly relax once they’re free to move about the stall together, getting drinks of water and inspecting their hay. I would have killed for a pony like that when I was a kid.
“I hope whoever adopts them keeps them together,” I say, mostly just thinking out loud.
“They’ll stay together,” Jacob replies confidently. “I have a master plan to coerce my mom into keeping them.” I laugh, but he nods. “They have a six-stall barn and nine fenced-in acres. We had horses growing up and, now that they have a grandkid, they’ve mentioned it before.”
“Right. Your nephew.” As if seeing Jacob interact with animals wasn’t enough of a turn-on, remembering how he looked with his nephew in his arms makes me get instant baby fever. “Well, he’d be a very lucky kid to grow up with these three little ponies and an uncle like you.”
Forever modest, Jacob just shrugs and takes my hand so we can unload Loki and the mare from my trailer. We get them inside, make sure they’re settled, and then walk across the gravel driveway to Jacob’s house. I knew he lived on the premises, but I never stopped to fully appreciate his house before.
It’s nice, like really nice. It’s a sprawling ranch, with what looks like a bonus room above his garage. It has the charm of a traditional craftsman style home but is too trendy to be something old and falling apart like Aunt Kim’s house. Someone built this house to look the part without the headache of actually being a historic home. There’s a large front porch with a porch swing and several rocking chairs, offering a nice view of the hilly field across the street. There’s a good half-acre or so fenced in behind the house, and I see what he meant now when he said he has more land that’s just left to nature, butting up to the woods. Somewhere, his property and mine merge, and it’s crazy to think that maybe in the winter when there are no leaves on the trees, I might be able to look through the woods and see the faint outline of his house.
“Normally, I’d have to warn you about my dogs,” he says as he fishes his keys from his pocket. “I have three at the moment.”
“That changes frequently?”
“Always. My German Shepherd was supposed to be a foster, but I’ve had her for well over a year. Right now, there’s just a couple of cats and a sixty-five-year-old parrot in the house, and Mango is not going to be happy he didn’t get his morning veggies.”
I don’t think he could be more attractive to me if he tried. He unlocks a side door, stepping into a hall that leads to a mudroom. It connects to the laundry room, and it’s all I can do not to drool over the counter space in there. I hate doing laundry, but it wouldn’t seem quite as horrible to fold towels on that counter and not have to lug baskets up and down the basement stairs like I do now. I take off my shoes and follow Jacob into the kitchen, which opens to a dining area and a living room with a wood-burning fireplace and a cathedral ceiling. I’m taken aback by everything again, not because I didn’t think Jacob could have a place this nice, but because I didn’t think he’d care.