Mending Hope (Contemporary Western Romance) (License to Love Series:Book 2) (4 page)

She winked back and left the room.

Woody got to the house a little early to meet up with Shad.  His brother had called and asked him to meet him in the barn before dinner.  When he got there, he found Shad pacing back and forth between the stalls with constant and steady steps.  He must have been doing this for awhile now as most of the horses had come to the front of their stalls and were moving their heads back and forth to his rhythm. 

“Is everything okay?” Woody asked as he walked up to Shad.  He’d never seen his big brother in such a state of distress.

Shad stopped and turned around quickly. “Sorry, Woody, you startled me.”

“Well?”

“Well what?” Shad asked. 

“I don’t know, you’re the one who asked me to meet you here.” 

“Oh, I guess I did, didn’t I?” Shad asked rhetorically as he stared off into the air above Woody’s head.  “I just wanted to ask your opinion on something.”

“Okay, but remember if it’s about the farm or the livestock I have no intention of getting dragged back into the family business.” Woody said, making sure that he kept his distance. Over the years, Shad had tried to get him more involved in the decisions on the farm, but he remained adamant that he wanted nothing to do with this life.  He enjoyed working on vehicles and staying away from the headache (and heartache) that farm life brought with it.

“What?” Shad turned toward him, a look of confusion clouding his features. “Oh, no.  Don’t worry.  It’s not about that at all.” 

The silence stretched out for a few endless seconds more as Woody waited for Shad to say what was on his mind, but instead his brother just started pacing again.

“Well then…what is it about?” he finally asked as he positioned his body directly in front of Shad, halting his brother in his tracks.

“I went to the bank today.”

“Was there a problem?” Woody asked.  The joint accounts for all three of them had been set up for their homes and land by their father before he died.  If there was a problem in these accounts that could easily explain his brother’s weirdness.

“No problem, really. But I took something out of the safety deposit box.” Shad said as he held out a small metal box.  Woody recognized it immediately.  There were two sets of rings in the safety deposit box, their grandmothers’ wedding set and their parents’ wedding set.  The metal box was the set that had originally belonged to their grandparents.

Woody took the box from his brother and opened it.  He hadn’t seen the rings since his father had died five years ago.  By today’s standards, the rings were fairly simple.  A plain silver band for the man, but the woman’s was silver with a woven knot.  It was comprised of thin, intricate bands that overlapped and then met in the center where a small blue diamond connected everything.  

“So you’re going to ask Clara…”  Woody let his voice trail off as he stared at the ring. 

“I know we’ve only known each other for a few weeks, but I don’t want to imagine ever being without her again.”  Shad said when Woody looked up from the ring.  “I’m pretty sure that’s how you know, right?  It’s that moment when you try to look into the future and you can no longer imagine it alone. Why would time matter?  I’m still going to feel the same way about her whether it’s tomorrow or two years from now.”

There was a cloud of desperation in his eyes, and Woody realized that he did know what Shad was referring to.  The time he’d spent with Alyssa was different.  It made the days brighter and the nights tolerable.  Even though she hadn’t been alone with him or talked to him since that first night and that first kiss, he still looked forward to their time together. 

“What do you say?” Shad asked.

“Well, first off, I’m pretty sure I’m not the one you’re asking, so I don’t think it’s that important what I say.”  Woody answered, a smile spreading across his face.  “Second, I think that if she makes you happy, that’s all the information you need to make a decision.”

As he finished the last sentence, Shad scooped him up in a giant bear hug and hefted him off the ground. 

“Easy now.”  Woody laughed as Shad lowered him back down to the dirt floor.  “Don’t waste all of the good excitement on me!”

Shad laughed along with him as they walked to the house.  Woody was glad for his brother, but he knew that the real storm was going to be Melinda.  He suspected that Shad knew this too, but was choosing to ignore it.  Either way, it was going to be an interesting dinner.

*

     Alyssa had been surprised to learn that the Brandt family ate dinner together at least once a week. All three of the siblings made the time and effort to get together at the family house and have a traditional dinner.  They even had someone who came in and cooked the dinner for them on that special day so that none of them felt as if they had been put out by the dinner.  Their father had made this a tradition and, after his passing, it was something that Melinda had insisted on continuing.

The idea intrigued her because in her own family it was uncommon to even speak to each other at dinner time, let alone actually sit and eat around a table.  While she was something of an outsider to the setting, it was comforting to be a part of something larger than her usual meal in front of the television or computer. 

Shad stood up to get the dessert after dinner and as he walked away Alyssa noticed that Woody was watching him with an unusually goofy grin on his face.  When Woody looked across the table at Alyssa and gave her the same grin with a large “thumb’s up” sign she knew that something odd was going on, but she didn’t have to wait too long to find out what. 

When Shad came back he was carrying a silver tray with a small silver box centered on it.  He carried it to the table and knelt down in front of Clara.  She turned and saw him and immediately gasped. 

It’s like something out of a movie.
Alyssa thought as she immediately rubbed on her empty ring finger and thought about when Kyle had proposed to her on the beach at Galveston. 

“I know we haven’t known each other that long,” Shad started “but I can’t imagine another day, another minute or another second without you.”  He flipped open the top of the box and handed her the ring.  “Will you…”

“Yes!” Clara exclaimed, not even waiting for him to finish proposing. 

Alyssa felt a tear roll down her cheek as she gave Clara a hug.  She knew that she wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer.  When everyone else stepped forward to congratulate them, she slipped out through the kitchen.  The night air was cool against her skin and she took a deep breath that worked its way into her lungs with icy fingers.

She walked toward the stables, her head slightly tilted to the stars as her eyes clouded over with more tears.  They weren’t just tears of sadness anymore.  The truth was she was happy for Clara and Shad and their new life together.  They had managed to find each other in a world of chaos.

She was more upset at her inability to let go of the guilt.  There was something there with Woody, but part of her was too afraid to risk getting into an emotional relationship with anyone.  The idea of ever losing that much of her heart again terrified her.

There was a thin row of overhead lights that ran the length of the stable, and she walked over to the mare on the third side.  The nameplate on the front of the door read Harmony, and Alyssa ran her fingers through the etched wood.  From the back of the dark stall a dark chestnut horse with a white stripe that divided her face and ran straight into her pale mane emerged to greet her.  She walked over to the stable door and flared her nostrils as if to say
Hello
. When she got close enough, Harmony used her nose to nudge Alyssa’s shoulder as Alyssa reached up her hand and stroked the side of her face. 

In the past three days, Alyssa and Harmony had bonded.  She’d never been around horses before, but there was something about this calm mare’s presence that gave her comfort.  The first time she had walked around the yard and noticed the mare she had been intrigued.  The horse had immediately come over to her and bowed her head for Alyssa to rub.  Shad had remarked that it was unusual for her as she usually didn’t like to be around people much. 

Just to the side of the stall was a metal bucket that Alyssa had put there to hold sugar cubes; she now took out two, rolled them in the palm of her hand, and set them out in front of Harmony.  The horse’s smooth lips brushed against the tender flesh on her palms as soon as she held them out. 

“I thought I might find you here,” Woody’s voice startled Alyssa and caused her to jump a little.  Harmony immediately stirred in the stable and started pacing.

“Oh, I’m sorry.  I really didn’t mean to startle you.  I thought that surely you would have heard me coming,” Woody told her as he stood in the middle of the wide aisle and waited.  Originally he had been moving toward her, but when she’d jumped he had halted in his tracks. 

“No, it’s okay.  I just wasn’t paying attention,” she told him as she swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. 

“Is everything okay?” he asked. 

Alyssa then realized how it must look to him, her friend got engaged and she ran off to cry in private.  He probably thought she was lost in self-pity because she didn’t get engaged.  “I’m fine,” she told him before turning back to the horse.  It would not be good for her to see the pity in his eyes when he looked at her. 

She felt him move alongside her, and when he put his arm around her she let herself lean against him.  Not for the first time she willed herself to let go of the guilt from Kyle’s car wreck.  In her head she knew that even though he’d left that night because they were fighting it had been a distracted driver that had ultimately killed him. Still she couldn’t convince her heart that it wasn’t her fault. 

The heat from his arm moved through her, comforting her.  He stood with her in silence as she offered up another sugar cube to Harmony.  After a moment she turned away from the horse’s stall and walked down the center of the stable.  Woody fell into step beside her. 

“Look, Alyssa, I’m roaming in the dark here.”  Woody finally spat out, breaking the silence as he shuffled from foot to foot.

Alyssa stopped and looked at him.  “I don’t understand.”

He positioned himself directly in front of her and looked down into her face as he spoke.  She noticed how clouded his eyes were and thought of that night when they’d kissed and thought of how much she wanted him to just kiss her now.

“I think you do.”  He said as he picked up her left hand and ran his finger over the indention of her wedding ring. 

She lightly gasped when he did it, but she didn’t pull her hand away. 

“I see you rubbing your finger all the time.  I know that
this
is something that has not been resolved and that whoever he was, you think of him often,”  he confided, his thumb still brushing back and forth along her ring line.

For a moment there was silence as she blinked back her tears.  She tried to say something, to tell him about Kyle and the accident, but all that came out was a dry clicking sound. 

“You don’t have to tell me what happened,” Woody said in a comforting voice. “I don’t need to know how it ended, but I do need to know that it is over, that there is nothing between you two anymore.  I don’t want to tread on anyone’s toes, and I don’t want to find myself on the losing side of this battle if he comes back into the picture.”

Alyssa realized what he was trying to say and she took a deep breath.  She had assumed that Clara would have told them, and now she knew that she was going to have to explain it to him.

“Is there somewhere we can go to sit and talk?” she finally managed to ask.

Woody studied her for a second and then nodded.  “We can go to the tack room.”  He did not let go of her hand as he led her through the shadows on the far side of the aisle and through a small door on the side of the wall.  Alyssa had been in the stable multiple times, but she had never paid enough attention to the layout to notice the door.  Once they crossed the threshold and she stepped into the room she found herself lost in an absolute darkness.

“Hold on while I turn on the light,” Woody told her as he momentarily dropped her hand.  As soon as he did, she felt vulnerable, exposed to all her childhood nightmares and she wanted to take a step back out into the hall.  Just as she moved her foot back, she heard the unmistakable sound of the light being flicked on.  The overhead fluorescents made their distinctive humming sound and gradually warmed up, coming on one by one as Alyssa breathed a sigh of relief.

She looked around and saw that the walls were lined with pegs that housed different bridles, leads and other riding paraphernalia.  Around the room, posts extended from the wall about three feet, and on each of the posts sat a different saddle.  She noticed that some were very decorative while others were plain and well worn.

Woody motioned her to the back of the room where there was a long wooden bench seat built into the wall between two shelving units.  Alyssa followed him there and sat next to him, their bodies turned slightly so that they faced each other.

She cleared her throat and thought about where she would start.  Where should one go with the story of Kyle?  What did she say to someone to make them understand the guilt she carried with her?