“I can do it,” Everly blurts.

“Maybe I want to do it,” I tease and Everly gives me an overdramatic glare. I already talked to Aunt Kim about Everly working with Odin. He used to be a trail horse for a commercial company and knows the basics. He’s a sweet horse that ended up in a bad situation, but he hit the jackpot now. He’ll make a little girl very happy when he’s had a good month or two under saddle to refresh his training.

“I was just about to bring my permanent residents in,” Aunt Kim tells Everly. “I don’t suppose you’d want to lead a horse in, would you?”

Everly nods eagerly, and the three of us go into the pasture.

“Now, these guys get to stay out longer since they’re used to being on grass,” Aunt Kim explains. “Spring grass is very rich and can make the new rescues sick since they’re not used to lush pastures. Odin isn’t new anymore, but he’s on a six-hour limit for grass due to past issues.” She goes on to explain exactly why that is and Everly soaks it all in, happy to learn as much as she can about the horses.

There are four more horses in the pasture. We’re familiar with three of them, having met them before when we came to visit. Lucy and Ethel are a bonded pair of draft horses living out their golden years being spoiled rotten by Aunt Kim. Like Baldur, they were Amish buggy horses, worked to the bone and tossed aside once they couldn’t perform their job anymore.

Bailey, a pretty paint horse, is Aunt Kim’s Quarter Horse. She bought him from an auction fifteen years ago as a colt and had to bottle feed him. I spend a week of my summer helping out with him when I was a teenager. It was my last summer before Everly was born.

“Who’s that?” I ask, pointing at a pretty palomino grazing near Bailey.

“That’s Penny,” Aunt Kim says. “Her owners help out around here in exchange for free board.”

“Oh, nice.” I pull a lead rope off the fence feeling a little bad that I didn’t know that. Aunt Kim and I used to be close. It’s bad enough we haven’t been able to come up for an in-person visit, but I should have at least called or at the very least texted more.

“Heather,” Aunt Kim goes on. “She’s the owner. She has two daughters and I want to say they’re fifteen and eighteen.”

“Do the girls ride?” I ask.

“The younger one does.”

I nudge Ev. “Maybe you’ll make a friend.”

“Mom,” she grumbles and unlatches the fence. Aunt Kim brings both draft horses in at the same time. I get Penny and Everly leads Bailey. Once they’re in the barn, I go inside to unpack, leaving Everly in the barn with Aunt Kim. She already seems happier, like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders the second she stepped foot in the barn.

Horses have a way of doing that.

Riley follows me inside, and immediately goes to sniff the cat carrier. He loses interest fast, thankfully, and I take Mr. Meowster upstairs into the guest room so I can let him out. It’s obvious Aunt Kim cleaned the room before we came, as the smell of lemon scented cleaning products hangs in the air.

The quilt on the bed is new, but everything else is exactly the same as it was when I stayed here as a child. It’s almost strange how well I remember this place when we really weren’t here all that much. We’d come for a quick weekend trip and then leave. Back then, when anything seemed possible, I thought I would be in a place like this already.

I had it all planned out: I’d show horses on the weekend after finishing a busy week of work as a vet and, of course, would have a few rescue horses in my barn as well. How I’d pay for all that wasn’t even a question, and I never thought about how impossible it would be to fit working forty hours a week, showing at A-level shows, and retraining rescue horses. I was young and naive, and I suppose I still am in a sense. Not young, but definitely a little naive.

Because part of me still thinks I can do that in a sense. I’ll never be a vet, and I won’t ever have the money to show at fancy shows anymore, but maybe, just maybe, Everly and I can still live part of that dream.

A quiet life away from bullies and the busy city…the two of us in an old farmhouse like this, working together to save horses. And maybe—just maybe—I’d find a man worthy of my love, a man who doesn’t look at me and see all the baggage I can’t seem to let go of from the past. And, most importantly, a man who’s able to accept and love a teenage daughter as his own.

Tags: Emily Goodwin Boys of Silver Ridge Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net