The Bride Wore Red Boots (19 page)

“What? No! That's not what I told you to say!” Mia's laugh escaped, strangled and shocked. But her heart thrummed with impulsive, unexpected excitement. “I'm leaving in a couple of weeks. Getting a horse is not a possibility.”

“It'll bring you back to visit. We can work on him together. And Gabe can keep an eye on him while you're gone.”

“I . . . what?” Gabe's eyes went wide as the mustang's.

“Sure!” Harper clearly found the idea suddenly irresistible. “The perfect partnership.”

“But I didn't apply,” Mia protested. “And four untitled mustangs is the limit.”

“For one person,” Harper said. “We'll be five separate owners. And we have the perfect facility. Plus we've adopted mustangs successfully in the past. There won't be a problem.”

Mia fixed her gaze on the little horse munching hay, completely unaware of the discussion it had incited. The whole idea of her taking home a horse was insane on the face of it. She couldn't come back and forth to Wyoming often enough to train a wild horse. She had work and now Rory . . .

Rory.

He worshipped his cat. What would he think of horses, animals who couldn't be less catlike if they tried? Would they excite or terrify him? She wished she could find out. For a moment more her mind drifted, knowing Rory would be midvisit with his mother. She wished, too, she could be with him to try and allay his fears.

“So?” Harper pressed.

“Seriously, what's going down here? Are we really getting a horse?” Gabe's eyes were bright, not with uncertainty, but with the hopeful delight of a kid who'd always wanted a pony for Christmas. Which he had not. Until Harper had planted the idea five minutes ago.

Mia shook her head firmly. “I don't know. This is crazy talk. Harper.”

“Crazy, and yet totally sane. I think this is the best thing you could do for yourself, Mia.”

The gray horse lifted its head as if it suddenly sensed the strange human vibes bombarding it from beyond its fence. Mia lifted her head as well and gazed back. When she met the animal's huge brown eyes, her heart turned to mush.

“What makes you think I need some ‘best thing'? I don't need more complications.”

“This isn't complicated. This is your heritage.”

The words tumbled and slammed into her brain, her heart, her soul. Her heritage? Was it? She'd grown up on a
cattle
ranch. Horses had been frivolous . . .

That thought screeched to a halt. No. Horses hadn't been frivolous anythings. They'd been challenges, companions, working partners. They'd taught her everything she'd learned about patience in adversity, about learning to think outside the norm and problem solve when you couldn't ask what the trouble was. She was a better doctor because of . . . her heritage.

“More than the cattle,” she murmured.

“For us girls, yes. Far more than the cattle.”

Mia found Gabe's eyes again and studied them. “Would you help me?”

“Doubt I could.” He grinned. “But I know I'd learn from you.”

Her shoulders sagged in acquiescence even as her heart raced. Gabe wrapped his arms around her, shoring her up, and Mia's face heated, knowing everyone watched the physical exchange. There'd be no end to Harper's teasing later, but Mia didn't let that stop her from hugging Gabe in return and burying her face in his jacket in a last bout of uncertainty.

“Please talk me out of this,” she said.

Instead, he kissed her on the top of the head. “No. I want a pony.”

“Aw, dang.” Mia freed herself from his hold, but not before catching the gleeful gleam in her sister's eyes. Mia made a face at her. “Fine. Let go talk to Claire and see how he moves.”

Brewster chose a striking dun gelding with a beautiful, floating trot.

Pat found a dark bay with four bright socks and an unusual but attractive half-white face.

Dan's skewbald pinto was on the large side for a mustang, a little over fifteen hands, a fact that pleased him no end.

And finally, Damien Finney set his heart on a fourteen-three hand grulla mare—an arresting light mouse-gray horse with a nearly black face, black dorsal stripe, and zebra striping on her legs. Claire tried vainly to talk him out of the choice—the only horse over which she'd shown any concern.

“Mares are notoriously more difficult than geldings,” she said. “And this girl is very much an alpha female—a lead mare. For someone with no horse experience, she could be more than tough; she could be dangerous.”

But Finney wasn't a man to back down. Mia led him away from the group and put on her best tough-doc face, meeting his stony implacability without fear, but also with hope that quickly faded.

“You're basing this on her looks, Damien. You know that's the worst deciding factor.”

“You don't understand,” he said. “That isn't it at all.”

“Then what is it? I might be a doctor, but I don't want to be picking your dumbass off the ground with a front loader because you made an emotional choice.”

“That's exactly what this is. It's in her eyes.”

Mia had to stop, taken aback. “Okay. Tell me about her eyes.”

“She looked at me and I could see—she doesn't want to be hurt. I told her I didn't want to be either. We're both scared. We'll take care of each other.”

For a moment she couldn't say a word. She fixed Finney with a look he couldn't turn from. “Are you making that up?”

“I wish. I sound like an idiot.”

She swallowed, remembering the loss of her heart to the gray gelding she'd chosen. “All right, Damien. She's yours. Come on.”

Five hours after arriving, five written checks, and five safely loaded horses later, Cole and Mia pulled their stock trailers out of the holding facility and started home. In Mia's truck, Jason and Finney sat quietly in seeming states of shock.

“You two all right back there?” Gabe asked.

Finney craned his neck to peer out the back of the extended cab and try to see into the side of the trailer. “They gonna be safe all the way home?”

Mia smiled at his worry. “They'll be fine, Damien. Three hours and then they'll have a big, open pasture to run in.”

“How'll we catch them?”

“We can partition the pasture. It was built for exactly this purpose.”

He nodded.

“Brewster, how's the leg after being on it all afternoon?” she asked.

“Haven't even thought about it,” he replied.

“Good. You guys know the next step is coming up with names, right?”

“She has a name,” Finney said.

“What!” Mia stole a surprised look back at him. “Already?”

“Pan,” he said calmly. “Short for Panacea.”

Mia's tongue caught on words of surprise. “Uhh . . . cool?”

“She's the Greek goddess of healing.”

Of course. She'd forgotten the origin of the word that today meant a cure-all. She met Gabe's eyes with true astonishment.

“What can I say?” He gave a smile and a shrug. “I told you. They're deeper than they look.”

G
ABRIEL FOLDED HIS
arms on the top rail of what Amelia called the round pen and let his eyes feast on the woman in the center who fascinated him more than any mystery he'd ever had to solve. Her shapely, jean-clad legs were as long as Brewster's, who stood beside her, but she stood out beside him like a gazelle next to a warthog.

She wore her chocolate-brown cowboy hat so naturally it was hard to imagine her as a New York woman who ever went without it. A double leather band held a simple silver concho at the front of the hat, an understated ornament for her beautiful, high-cheeked features and the flowing sable hair that hung in gentle waves past her shoulders. He itched to sift the waves through his fingers and appease his body's desire to take all of her to him in more than a kiss.

She'd bewitched him. He'd now experienced Amelia Crockett in so many fascinating guises, and he was a goner. He'd seen her fighting mad, laughed at her cool-and-funny snarkiness, and definitely felt her melt into warm sexiness over a kiss in his arms—which wasn't helping him control his baser urges now. But he'd not seen her like this until the past week—tough, firm, kind, and patient all rolled into one amazing teacher. It added a whole new dimension to his attraction.

She'd guided the men into a routine during the first few days with the horses. It was Thanksgiving week, and Pat and Dan came every day, fitting in trips to Paradise Ranch whenever their part-time jobs allowed. Brewster and Finney arrived each morning at seven and, right off the bat, experience everything from fence mending to four-wheeler repair to fixing outdoor automatic waterers.

Then, when Cole, Leif, and Bjorn had finished directing ranch work for the day, Amelia took over. They worked with the mustangs, and they started riding lessons on broke ranch horses so that when it came time to ride, they'd have a few minimal skills. Gabe freely admitted he hadn't had the smallest understanding what a gigantic undertaking this was going to be. The men would be lucky if they didn't all kill themselves.

Mia only laughed at him. “Too late for that worry now,” she'd told him. “You guys have to survive like cowboys or die trying.”

He waited in certainty for the first of the men to throw in his towel. He had no doubt at least one of them would, but three days into the project nobody seemed inclined to throw in anything yet.

“That's good, that's really good!” Amelia's sweet, calm voice carried from the middle of the ten-foot diameter, circular corral. “Now turn and let him come to you.”

Brewster had named his mustard-colored dun Ollie, after one of his friends who'd died in combat. Rather than remind him of horrors, Ollie filled Jason with what seemed to be a cleansing fire. Gabe had never known the man to joke so little yet smile so much.

Ollie lowered his head and walked from a spot next to the fence to where Jason stood, his back to the horse, in the center of the pen.

“Turn,” Amelia said. “And reward him.”

The reward was a thorough rubbing around the shoulders, neck, ears, and forehead. This was something called natural horsemanship. Amelia, and Harper, had preached the gospel of patient groundwork and gentling through earning trust and using the horse's own language to form a bond. It hadn't made a lick's worth of sense to him at first, but watching the guys learn more every day and become more comfortable around animals they'd had no previous experience with, was convincing him the slow process was worth every minute.

She hadn't left him out, either. Every day he forced himself through the end of his workday. If he was very lucky, she was visiting Joely, and he got to drive her back to Paradise. Otherwise, he kept a bag with jeans and outdoor clothing with him and hightailed it out to the ranch as soon as he was free for the day.

Even though he hadn't picked out a horse of his own, Mia's little gray, whom she'd named London because he looked like London fog, had already wormed his way into Gabe's heart. The gelding had a quick brain and a naturally trusting nature, and he was further along in the socialization process than the other four mustangs. Mia got Gabe to help, telling him he had to keep up the work once she went back to New York. That was the only part of the deal he hated—thinking about the day, planned for the beginning of December, she'd fly away.

He watched her and pushed the thought away. Technically, he supposed, he'd known her for two months, but the first didn't count. They'd been in their resident expert versus visiting expert power struggle. So they'd had a month together, and really just the past two weeks. In that short time, however, she'd brought something alive in him he'd thought had been dead since he'd left Iraq and lost Jibril.

He touched the left front breast of his jacket and felt the soft rustle of an envelope in the shirt pocket beneath it. It contained the letter he'd slaved over the night before. Something nobody had been able to make him face in eight years. Until Amelia.

How could he let her slip back out of his life now? She'd be home for Christmas, she'd said. But he knew that once she returned to her job and set new goals for the future, New York would work its spell on her again, and the Wyoming Wild West would be nothing more than a novelty. Exactly the same thing he'd be.

He didn't know why that should bother him. He'd told Amelia straight out and honestly that domestic bliss, with children and white picket fences, wasn't for him. And yet, the fascination for wide-open ranch land and pastures full of wild horses was spreading through him like fever. More than once the past few days, while desperately trying to think of arguments that would keep her here, he thought he'd be willing to offer marriage and horses if she'd stay.

She caught sight of him, and an unreserved smile blossomed on her lips. He made a silly face—something else from his past that was coming more naturally to him again—and she laughed. He loved making her laugh.

“Hey,” she called.

“Looking good,” he replied.

“I know—he's got Ollie coming right along, doesn't he?”

He didn't correct her misperception. He hadn't remotely been talking about Brewster or the horse.

Amelia patted Jason on the arm. “Slip Ollie's halter on him and lead him around the pen several times; then take it off and repeat the whole exercise. I'll watch from outside. You're doing a great job. He'll be ready to hop on sooner than you think.”

She headed toward Gabe, mesmerizing him with the gentle sway in her walk, so different from the veterans and patients who surrounded him most of the time. She checked over her shoulder as she reached his spot on the fence. Brewster was focused on his horse. Grinning, she turned back to Gabe and popped a quick kiss onto his mouth. The spontaneity delighted him and fueled his hopes.

“Nice,” he said.

“Yeah. Kinda nice,” she agreed.

“What's nice about it for you?” he asked.

She looked over her shoulder again and two little furrows formed between her brows. “You want to talk about that now? Here?”

He placed his hands on her forearms, clamping them to the top fence rail, and leaned forward. “It's been two weeks, and we haven't had one single argument since you arrived. I'm falling in deep like with you, which seems cosmically improbable, and yet you just gave me a kiss. The improbability is what's nice—more than nice—for me. So, yeah, I'd like to know what's nice for you.”

“That I was wrong about you.”

The words fell easily from her lips, with no hesitation, no long contemplation. He'd expected her to say something much less significant, and warmth spread through his chest. He climbed up one fence rail and reached over the top to take her in a hug. Her hat slipped back and off her head. Without a pause he delved into her exposed brunette waves, sweeping his fingers through the silk just the way he'd imagined doing moments before. When his hands cupped her ears he tugged her head forward inches to meet his kiss. He made one short, heated foray into her mouth and felt the shock and shiver to his core. When he released her and looked to the center of the arena, Jason was still concentrating on Ollie.

“We're living proof that first impressions don't always count.”

“Wrong.” She stretched up to whisper in his ear. “I never told you what my first impression was.”

“Oh?”

“I came to
think
you were an arrogant know-it-all, but my thought the very first time I saw you was that I'd pay a lot of money to find out if you could kiss to match your looks.”

“So I was nothing more than a piece of meat.” He tried to hide his grin, but right at that moment she was too cute, too funny, too amazing.

She laughed. “Absolutely true. Pure animal pheromones. Believe it or not, I'm usually much more restrained when it comes to kissing men, but suddenly I can't help myself. Even weirder, I kind of like you even when I'm not kissing you.”

“So, I didn't blow that
first
kiss, obviously.”

“It seems pheromones don't lie.”

“You won't believe me when I tell you what my first impression of you was.”

She checked on Jason again before turning back to Gabe. “Tell me.”

“I thought you were the smartest person I'd ever met. I liked the way your voice sounded, and I liked the way you cut to the heart of all the problems without dwelling on maudlin emotions.”

“So I
wasn't
a piece of meat? A simple object for pleasure?” She almost looked disappointed.

“You were not. Until you decided you didn't like me and I found out how beautiful you were when you were frustrated and furious. Then, all I wanted was to fluster you. I would have kissed you back then, but that would have been highly inappropriate.”

“It definitely would have been that.”

“Come to dinner with me tonight,” he said, out of the blue. “After we work with London. After the guys head home. Leave your family.”

“A date?”

They hadn't really had an official one. Everything had been wrapped up in work, or Joely, or the horses. He'd eaten here at Paradise often, but he'd never officially asked her out.

“A date,” he confirmed.

“I might like that—” A shrill melody cut her off. Her frown returned as she stepped back from the fence and dug for her phone in her pocket. “Sorry,” she said. “It's Brooke.”

A shiver of dread crawled down his spine as he waved for her to take the call. When she'd listened several moments, she put a hand to her mouth.

“Oh, Brooke, no!”

Dread landed in his gut and slowly solidified into rock hard certainty of disaster.

“Is he all right?” Amelia asked, a tear streaking her dusty cheek. “Did he get to see her before she was gone?”

Rory's mother had died. Amelia hadn't shared a lot of detail about the child, but enough that Gabe knew she took her friendship with the boy and his mother seriously. He left her momentarily, broke into a trot around the perimeter of the round pen and found the gate. As he entered the pen, Brewster watched, his hand frozen on the rope beneath Ollie's chin.

“What's wrong? He asked.

“Something in New York.”

Gabe encircled Amelia's shoulders without interrupting her call, and led her out of the pen to a long, low bench normally used as a mounting block. He urged her to sit and, with great effort, left her alone to finish the conversation. She needed to say whatever was in her heart. As much as he wanted with every fiber of his being to stay and help her fix the problem, she didn't need him there stymying her emotions. They were sometimes hard enough for her to show.

He explained the situation to Jason, who left with Ollie, promising to check in later and find out how Mia was doing. By the time she came to Gabe and slipped her arms around his neck, they were alone.

“I'm so sorry,” he said. “Really, really sorry. I know you expected her to get better.”

“Rory got to see her two days ago. She passed away early this afternoon.”

Her voice held no tears, no choked words, just a flat disbelief, as if she was trying to pull together her calm, impartial doctor's demeanor.

“That's good. You helped that happen. Now don't try so hard to keep it together.”

“Oh, I have no choice now but to do exactly that.” Despite her words, tears dripped from the side corner of each eye. Gabe brushed them away with his thumb. “Rory doesn't have anyone else to keep things together for him.”

“You'll see him when you get back. You can be strong then. He's got people to look after him right now.”

At that her voice finally broke.

“There's something you don't know. Something I . . . ” She sniffed and wiped her nose and mouth with jacket sleeves pulled over her hands. “Something I neglected to tell you.”

“Okay. Tell me now,” he said gently.

“Monique named me Rory's legal guardian. And now, they're sending Rory here to me.”

T
HE LOOK ON
his face couldn't have been more clichéd: eyes gone immediately wide, jaw slackened just enough so words couldn't be formed, head thrust forward as if he wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly. Mia would have laughed—in understanding if not humor—if she hadn't been numb and so utterly sad.

“I know,” she said, before he regained his speech. “I found out only a week or so before I left. I told them I didn't believe it. I told them I was the totally wrong person. I was, am, a friend, nothing more.”

“Apparently the mother didn't think so.”

She railed at his generic labeling of Monique, but she couldn't muster any extra emotion to call him on it. “Monique,” she said dully.

“Sorry. Of course, Monique.” Another pause. “They're sending the . . . Rory
here
?”

“He has nowhere else to go. The foster parents he'd been with have adopted a child, and they don't have room any longer. He's been at a halfway-type house for the past four days and he's begging to stay with me, I guess. He's coming on Sunday. They're not even having a funeral or service for his mom.”