“Looks like your days of relaxation and pampering are about over,” he told the horse and smiled to himself when the animal whickered gently as if arguing with him.
“You’ve got it easy, don’t you?” he asked, comfortable with talking to the horse. It was a good time to gather his thoughts, to ease his mind. Talking to animals who couldn’t answer back was better than therapy. He should know. He’d had plenty of that when he got back from his last tour of duty.
It was the nightmares that had gotten him a one-way ticket to a shrink’s couch. Memories that he couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with when awake managed to slip into his dreams and drive him mad, as if he were still in a battle for his life. Images, sounds, smells, chased him in his dreams, hurtling him from sleep with a jolt, night after night.
But the therapist and all of her face your fear, remember and embrace what you lost, hadn’t helped a damn. How the hell could he be expected to embrace a damn thing? What was lost was gone forever. What he had left was this place. That’s what had saved him. Coming home. To the ranch that smoothed every rough edge on his soul until he was finally, he thought, nearly whole again.
And now his dreams were back to being haunted. Haunted not by the sights and sounds of war, but by a visceral need that had him wound so tight he could hardly walk without pain. There was probably something ironic in there somewhere but damned if he could see it.
The mare shifted impatiently as if telling him to get out of his own head and on to more important things. He couldn’t agree more.
“Another day or two,” he murmured as he ran his palm up and down her foreleg. “Then you’ll be good to go.”
“Is she hurt?”
Jake’s head snapped up to see Cassidy watching him from just outside the gate. Where’d a man have to go these days to get some time to himself? “What’re you doing here?”
“I’m happy to see you, too.” She smiled in spite of his less-than-warm welcome. “Your grandfather said if I came in here, you’d show me the baby horse.”
“Foal,” he corrected, then muttered more quietly, “Of course he did.” Jake wished Ben would find a new hobby.
“So, is this horse all right?”
Concentrating on the task at hand, Jake checked again for swelling and smiled to himself when he couldn’t find any. “It’s just a muscle strain,” he said, “and she’s nearly back to normal.”
Quickly, efficiently, he rewrapped the animal’s leg, gave her a pat, then stepped out of the stall, forcing Cassidy to move out of the way. Good. Distance was key. And even with that thought, he caught a whiff of her scent, instinctively dragging it deep inside him. His gaze swept her up and down. His old jacket swamped her much smaller body and fell down nearly to her knees. She had snow dusting her hair, on that silly hat and caked on an old pair of Anna’s boots, and she looked...happy. When his gaze settled on her face, he saw her cheeks were red from the cold, her gray eyes were dancing, and there was a half smile on her face. “You should go into the house. You’re probably freezing.”
“I’m cold but not frozen yet,” she said, giving him another grin.
“Yeah. I saw you out there with Jim.”
“I was helping,” she said with a shrug, then winced and rolled her shoulders.
He gave her a knowing look. “You think your muscles ache now? Wait awhile.”
“It was worth it,” she said. “It felt good to get outside in the cold air.”
“Can’t argue with that,” he said, walking past her toward the last couple of stalls. He understood the need to be outside, doing something, feeling the slap of the wind against your cheeks. He just wouldn’t have thought that she would understand it.
The gelding he looked in on next had his head hanging out the stall door in anticipation of a good rub between his eyes. So Jake obliged while Cassidy walked up behind him and said, “Look at him. It’s like he’s a puppy getting a belly rub.”
Jake had to smile. “Rocky always wants you to give him a pat or a scratch. If he could figure out how to do it, he’d be a lap-horse.”
She laughed at the idea, and the sound of that laughter reached right inside to twist and tangle him into even more knots. The woman was dangerous.
“His name’s Rocky?”
“Yeah, short for Rocking Chair.”
“What kind of name is that?” She reached out to smooth her hand down the length of Rocky’s nose and the horse moved into her, silently asking for more.