Chapter Seven

Seven

“You’re sure I can’t talk you into letting me help you turn out the rest?” Mel watched her geldings explore their new, lush, two acre paddock. They had inspected the rain shelter and the water trough and Roman was now making friends across the fence with two of the training horses.

She glanced over her shoulder, again wondering where the rest of Larry’s crew was this morning.

“I’m sure,” Toto’s voice was friendly, but firm. “Me and Foster, we do this every Sunday,” he said of the blue heeler, who was aptly named after the Australian beer. “I think you oughtta go on up to the house and meet Larry’s missus.”

“You think?”

“I know.”

The most unsettling thing about the monstrous change her life had taken in the past two days was that the change kept happening. Each new person brought about another chance to make a good impression – or not, in the case of Dan Rawlins – to learn something new. Every moment was different, nothing was familiar, and Mel wasn’t able to settle. Her decision to leave Carlton impacted each second, each interaction, each impression and thought in this moment. The inevitable chain reaction.

So it was with a now-familiar cocktail of trepidation and anticipation swirling in her stomach that she followed Toto’s instructions and headed off down the worn, sandy path from the barn toward the house.

Narrow tire tracks indicated that a golf cart or ATV of some kind had been on the trail and she realized why as she kept walking and walking, between two paddocks and on for what seemed like ten minutes. The house, once a white square, grew as she approached. And by the time the path ended in a parking pad and flagstones began a wending trail through a lush garden, she was thoroughly impressed.

In the side yard – where Toto had directed her – another of the artful live oaks shaded a koi pond that had been embellished with cattails. Mel recognized lamb’s ear, pink roses, and iris, and so many other blooms she couldn’t name. The colors were fantastic, the heavy green foliage falling over the edges of the flagstones. The path led up to the side door Toto had told her about where a room walled with windows projected into the yard, its red door inviting.

From this angle, she took a moment to admire the sprawling, two-story white farmhouse with its seemingly endless porch and red accents: shutters and doors. It was huge, but homey and not at all pretentious. Nothing like the Spanish mansion the Carltons had built.

Mel checked her reflection in a window, smiled at the wrought iron horse garden sculpture at the foot of the stoop, took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

“Come in!” a woman’s muffled voice floated through the door, and Mel complied, only to freeze just inside the threshold as her eyes roved over a kitchen that looked as if it had been pulled straight from the pages of Southern Living.

She was at the entrance of a sunroom with clean, pale pine floors, light pouring in like molten gold through its three walls of windows. A heavy, solid table stretched before her, a massive rectangle flanked by benches – one of those big ranch tables the hands and cowboys ate around in old westerns. Beyond, the kitchen was an open, airy tribute to white cabinetry and white, black-veined marble. A massive island ringed by barstools floated in the middle of the room and another window spilled light into the deep sink. Double ovens. Stainless appliances. An orange cat was curled up in a papasan chair in one corner of the sunroom.

It was a moment before she realized there was a woman in a small, yellow plaid arm chair in the opposite corner, her feet up on a matching ottoman, and then Mel felt like an idiot. She closed the door swiftly behind her.

“Mrs. Shaw? Toto sent me up to the house, I’m -,”

“Melanie,” the woman supplied correctly, setting her feet on the floor and standing. Her smile was warm. “I tried to get Larry to bring you in last night but he said you probably wanted to fix your hair. The poor man thinks all women are as infatuated with hair as I am.”

Mel was cautious by nature: be friendly, but don’t lay trust in anyone until they’d proven they deserved it. Larry’s wife, though, had one of those infectious personalities that made it impossible to do anything but smile. Mel liked her instantly.

“Please call me Nora,” she said, moving toward the kitchen. “Larry’s mother was Mrs. Shaw and I never wanted to be compared to that old prune. Have you had breakfast? I bet not. Let me fix you something.”

“Oh, no, ma’am, I’m fine,” Mel lied, though her stomach was gnawing at her backbone.

Nora waved away the protest. “Muffins. You like muffins? I made a ton and the boys won’t eat them. Said they don’t like cranberries. Do you like cranberries?”

She nodded and found herself taking a seat on one of the barstools, watching her hostess warm the oven and pull butter from the fridge.

Nora Shaw was a solid woman. About five-five or five-six, she was feminine, but not soft. She wore Wranglers cinched around a thick waist with a red belt, a red and white checked sleeveless western shirt, red boots. Her makeup was tasteful and flawless, sun lines visible around her eyes and mouth, a light dusting of freckles still showing beneath her foundation. Her strawberry-blonde hair was cut in a smooth, clean bob that came just below her ears. Red manicure. Big rock of an engagement ring. She was, like her home, expensive, but not intimidating. There was something a touch matronly about her that Mel found real and comforting.

“Mrs…I mean, Nora,” Mel corrected herself. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you and your husband offering to help me like this. I honestly wasn’t sure what I was going to do.”

Nora plated a reheated muffin smeared with butter and set it in front of her with an amused smile that illuminated her entire face. “Oh, don’t thank us yet, sweetie. You may change your mind after I give you the grand tour.”

-O-

Every time the four-wheel-drive Gator hit a particularly large bump, Mel thought her cranberry/blueberry muffin might make a break for it. She fought down her nausea, though, because the grand tour was proving to be actually grand, and not ironically so.

Eli had exaggerated when he’d called Larry a cattle rancher. Dry Creek hosted a herd of Corriente cattle that were kept separate from the horses and had their own shelter, their own section of the property. But mostly as a hobby and partly because they were evidently a popular breed for rodeo sport. Larry kept a few Longhorns too, Nora explained, just because he was fond of them, rarely selling any for meat.

Nora drove them down the rutted truck paths that traversed the property, and the views of flat grass pasture dotted with oaks were spectacular. Most of the fencing deep in the bowels of the ranch was wire with a single board on top, but the broodmares and their foals were encircled with four-board for safety’s sake.

Mel loved the fluffy-tailed babies, the shimmering surface of the pond and the white ducks that bobbed along on the water, the way the horizon seemed to go on forever to the east. They drove past the cabins where Slim, Dan, Eli and Toto lived. She learned Toto’s real name was Thomas. And she began to realize that this ranch was busy and complicated and that though Sunday was the day of rest, Nora had a very active hand when it came to running the equine side of things.

Much to Mel’s stomach’s relief, Nora braked the Gator to a halt beside the paddock where Roman and LT grazed. Her horses seemed happy, relaxed, totally unconcerned with their owner’s tumultuous shift in direction.

“Lovely animal,” Nora said and Mel knew she was talking about Roman. She adored LT, but he didn’t draw the lion’s share of the comments.

“Thank you.”

“Nice solid bone structure. And the set of his neck,” she gave her a little lipsticked smile over her shoulder. “He comes on the bit well I’m guessing.”

“He does,” Mel couldn’t keep the surprise from her words and Nora laughed.

“Weren’t expecting that from a rancher’s wife, huh? I jumped as a girl,” her voice became wistful, “had this beautiful red bay Thoroughbred. The flat work was never my favorite, but I know a thing or two.”

Mel smiled, suddenly feeling much warmer about the prospect of working here. “I don’t jump, but -,”

“But you’re one of those ridiculously dedicated detail freaks who doesn’t mind drilling the basics,” Nora finished for her, her smile taking any sting out of the comment.

“Pretty much.”

The rancher’s wife tapped her nails on the Gator’s wheel. “You know, we could really use another hand with the training horses. Dan’s got more colts than he can keep ridden right now.”

Mel stiffened at the mention of the moody cowboy, but she nodded. “I did pony club for years, spent some time polishing green-broke three-year-olds. I was exercising Arthur Carlton’s Grand Prix prospect.”

“I don’t need a resume, dear. Let’s see what you got.”

“I thought there was no riding on Sundays.”

“I made that rule, I can bend it.”

-O-

When he’d bought his property, Larry had entertained visions of a bustling ranch full of beef cattle. But two-hundred acres was minuscule in comparison to the operations out west. And his wife loved the horses. And so had his Hayley…

As he climbed back into his truck and cranked the engine, he roughly shoved all thoughts of his daughter from his mind. He’d dwelled and stewed and been plunged in the deepest depths of depression over the past year. He hated it, but sometimes Nora was right: he had to live the day that lie before him and pray Hayley came back to them.

For all the damn good praying did.

His wife would have scowled him into an apology with a thought like that. But it was true. Faith didn’t mean much when what you believed in, what you hoped for, never came to fruition.

Scolding himself, he put the old flatbed truck in gear and headed back toward the house via the main barn.

Before he reached either, the arena came into view. It was occupied.

As he pulled the truck up along the rail, the rider in the arena wavered, his memory making her hair redder, her legs longer, her mount a buckskin reining horse she’d put in English tack for the afternoon.

But the horse was black, the girl was blonde, and she’d had decidedly more practice than his daughter. Hayley possessed the raw, natural talent, the effortless balance, but her skills hadn’t been polished. As he watched, his daughter fading back into the recesses of his consciousness, he noted the elegant way the black gelding carried himself and knew that his rider was using a set of invisible cues to drive him into the quick, powerful trot that propelled him around the arena, his head and neck gracefully arched, his hindquarters sending him forward with a lightness and energy Larry’s Quarter Horses lacked.

Melanie took her horse down the long side of the oval arena and then turned down the middle of the enclosure. The horse traveled straight, but then his head tipped toward the near rail and his legs crossed one in front of the other, the animal traveling forward and sideways in symphony, until he reached the rail, shifted the bend of his neck the opposite direction and broke into a canter.

The black gelding moved through a series of ballet moves: pirouettes and prances and flying changes of lead and a half a dozen other movements Larry couldn’t name, but was impressed by. He knew men who would have found fault with all the prancing, but he had a wife…and a daughter…who loved the sport, and because of them, he’d been able to look past the fanciful and see the grace, the athleticism of the horses.

When Mel brought her horse to a neat halt in the middle of the arena – still sitting still as stone, without betraying any of the direction she’d given to him – applause broke out on the opposite side of the arena. Larry saw Nora, Toto and Eli with their arms looped over the fence rail. And back toward the barn, in the shadow of the building, he saw a dark shape that he knew was Dan. Watching. Not applauding.

Larry grinned to himself.

-O-

Mel tucked a stray, sweat-dampened piece of hair behind her ear and crouched to unfasten Roman’s last polo wrap, unwinding the white, fleece sports bandage from his leg, a sensation coursing through her she hadn’t felt in weeks: happiness.

She couldn’t remember a time recently when there hadn’t been narrowed, critical eyes watching her from the rail as she rode. Couldn’t remember not having a scathing remark thrown in her face about her hands turning in or Roman’s canter transition not coming quick enough. She was not used to having a smiling audience, having people follow her back to the barn and tentatively pet Roman’s velvet nose while she untacked him, hadn’t expected anyone to invite conversation that wasn’t fraught with insults and innuendo.

“I wanna teach Red to do that,” Eli said. “The sideways thing? That was awesome. Red’ll go sideways, and he’ll go forward, but not at the same time.”

Mel smiled as she straightened and stowed the polo wrap in her grooming caddy. “He can do it. If he responds to lateral cues, then it’s just a matter of combining it with a driving aid,” she said. Nora nodded in approval. Eli blinked. Mel chuckled before she could help herself. “Lower leg pressure on one side as you trot forward. Red can figure it out.”

“Oh, okay.”

It felt strange to make herself at home in a new barn, but the Shaws undoubtedly expected her to do so if she’d been invited here in the first place. She cut on the warm water at the taps in the wash stall and picked up the hose, tested the temperature.

“This is perfect timing,” Nora said, hands rested casually on her hips as Mel washed down her horse. “We’ve got more colts in than we’ve got riders and I am not gonna let anyone suggest we put the Danville boys up on training horses.” This was the second mention of the “Danville boys” and Mel was starting to form a mental picture that wasn’t too flattering. “Whatcha say, girl?” Nora’s voice was full of loud, inviting confidence. “You’re not too fancy to help us with some Quarters, are ya?”

Another, even wider smile pushed at her lips. Forty-eight hours ago, she’d been sure that she was going to limp her way home to Ohio with less credibility to her name than when she’d left. Working rodeo mounts had not been part of her plan, but considering all that had happened, it at least was a plan. And not a bad one at that.

“I’m not a bit fancy,” she said, meaning it.

Nora nodded, her grin infectious. “Then you’ll fit right in.”

Mel aimed the water at Roman’s back and pulled the nozzle’s trigger, turning her head to the side to avoid the droplets that bounced off his side, and saw Dan Rawlins coming down the barn aisle in front of them. The mood shattered.

Well, not really, because Nora and Eli continued to chat, but for her, the fleeting happiness bled out of her and was replaced by a familiar, guarded hardness inside her. She was used to being the object of scorn – you didn’t get anywhere in the dressage world without it – but something about having a stranger dislike her so intensely was bothersome.

“Danny,” Nora said, seeing him and turning. “I’m gonna have Mel work with you tomorrow.”

Mel glanced at his face, saw his jaw tick, knew he wanted to say no, but instead he frowned. “I’m fine on my own, Nora, but thanks.” Feeling like he’d been civil only because Nora was the boss’s wife, Mel watched him start to walk away.

“Daniel,” Nora halted him without raising her voice. “You might as well get that sexist bullshit outta your head.”

Busted, Mel thought with a tiny smile that disappeared when Dan’s eyes locked onto hers. They were dark from this distance, full of unveiled disgust. What’d I ever do to you? She snapped at him internally. But she said nothing, aware that water was running down her arms, that her hair was still plastered to her head thanks to her helmet, that her tank top was sticking to her sweaty skin. She cursed herself for feeling inferior to this jackass and glanced away, back to the task at hand.

She heard him, though, when he told Nora, “fine,” in a tight voice and then his boots retreated down the barn aisle.

Nora sighed in his absence. “That man,” she muttered, “is lucky I like him.”