The Sheriff of Heartbreak County

Chapter 14

He’d forgotten the feeling. Or had he ever known this desperate, driving need, this lust so savage it was like a wild animal clawing at his belly? The sensation of being wrenched inside-out, hollowed-out, pumped dry? And he’d forgotten, too, the relief that came afterward, relief so complete, exhaustion so overwhelming he wondered whether he would ever move again.

Wished he’d never have to move from where he was at that moment…a woman’s long sleek body beneath him, pulsing warm around him, heart tapping lightly against his chest, hands gliding over his sweat-slicked back, shallow uneven breaths stirring his hair. This woman. Mary.

Mary. The name quivered through him like a seismic shock-wave. What had he done?

He raised himself and looked down at her…mouse-brown hair spread across the flowered bedspread, porcelain skin still stained with the flush of passion and dusted across the bridge of her nose with tiny jewel-like drops of sweat. Her eyes were closed, the lashes clumped together in wet spikes, and her mouth was swollen and glazed with moisture from his kisses. He stared at her…framed her face with his hand and lightly brushed his thumb across her lips…and waited for the regrets to come. What have I done?

What had he done? Made love to a woman for the first time since his wife died, a woman in his protective custody, a woman he’d arrested, a woman accused of cold-blooded murder. Surely, there would be regrets…shouldn’t there?

But all he felt was a tremendous sense of awe, and pride, and yes…of ownership. For Mary he felt warmth and tenderness, and maybe something deeper. Yes…time to admit it was definitely something deeper. And instead of feeling scared or ashamed or guilty about that, he felt…happy.

He leaned down to kiss her and felt her lips curve under his with her smile. “I’m trying to think of something to say,” he said softly between light, brushing kisses. “Guess what I am is speechless.”

“Yeah, me too.” She nudged his lips with hers.

He felt her stir beneath him and instantly tensed. “Am I too heavy?”

Her arms tightened fiercely around him. “No-I love the way you feel…inside me. I wish-” She didn’t finish it, but he knew what she meant. He felt that way, too. “It’s been…a very long time,” she whispered brokenly.

His throat tightened. Frowning into her eyes, stroking her wounded cheek with the backs of his fingers, he asked thickly, “Did I hurt you?”

Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “No-oh, no. I’m fine-really.” Her smile was like a flash of sunlight, and he felt it warm his soul as he kissed her.

Then, with the tightness still gripping his throat, he murmured, “It’s been a long time for me, too. First time since my wife died, actually.”

“Really?” Her eyes widened with shock. “Wow-why? I mean, I know why I didn’t, but…”

“Why didn’t you?” He didn’t want to talk about the terrible grief and rage that had left him a hollowed-out shell for so long. He’d tell her someday. Not now. “Surely not…ten years?”

This time her smile was a faint flicker, without any joy. “No, not ten years. At first I wanted a relationship. I was lonely, you know?” She turned her face away from him, so he eased his weight away from her and propped his head on his hand, leaving his other arm draped across her, keeping her close while she talked. “I’d accepted this would be my life from now on, that there was no going back. And I sure didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. So I tried it, a few times. But always…at a certain point there’d be this…I’d have this need to share who I really was, even if it meant breaking security. And I knew I couldn’t do that, so…it was really hard.” Her voice broke, and she jerked back to look at him with shimmering eyes. “It was…like having to wear a mask all the time, even during the most intimate times. It felt awkward…suffocating.” She looked away again and whispered, “In the end, it was just too hard. Intimacy-real intimacy-was impossible. And without it…well, it just wasn’t enough. So…I’d break it off and move on. Eventually I stopped trying.”

There was silence, then, while Roan stared down at her face, lashes quivering on her cheek, moisture pooled in the corner of her eye. He cleared his throat and said huskily, “Well, seeing as how I already know all your secrets-” he bent down and touched his mouth to the tear puddle, dispersing the salty sweetness over his lips and her eyelid like dew “-there’s no mask necessary anymore. Not with me.”

She turned her face to him; her eyes searched his and slowly came alive with wonder. “No…” she breathed, like someone beholding a miracle. “I guess…that’s true.”

He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her deeply, taking a long sweet time about it. Desire for her was welling up hot in him again, like steam in a geyser, and when he rolled onto his back and brought her on top of him, her body already felt familiar to him. Her soft warm body slid over his hardness like an all-over caress, as she settled herself with a pleased little wiggle and a chuckle of surprise.

“Told you it’s been a long time,” Roan growled.

The SUV sped along the two-lane paved road that wound between pastures nestled among foothills studded with junipers and carpeted with wildflowers. Along the summits, pine trees stood like dark sentinels against a pale-blue sky streaked with feathery clouds. Roan drove with the windows down, and the air was warm and smelled of grass and pine needles and grazing cattle and all sorts of new growing things. It teased Mary’s hair and stirred across her skin like a lover’s caress, reminding nerve-endings of sensations reawakened such a short time ago.

Memories of that reawakening blew through her with a blast of heat that took her breath away. She glanced over at Roan, biting her lip to hold back a smile. But he was driving, as he had been since they’d left Hartsville, with one elbow planted on the window ledge, his hand resting across the bottom part of his face, eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses and focused on something far beyond the road ahead. He’d done that on the way back from Bozeman, she remembered-it seemed an age ago now, the day she’d first known she was falling in love with the Marlboro Man-the Sheriff of Hart County, Montana.

Heartbreak County, she thought, and felt the heat inside her dissipate before a wicked little chill of fear.

“Regrets?” she asked softly.

He threw her a quick surprised glance. His eyes were shielded behind the glasses, now, but a smile deepened the little depressions in his cheeks in a way that made her heart wallow drunkenly. “Regrets? Nah…worries, maybe.” Eyes back on the road, his smile grew wry.

“Worries?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, like how I’m gonna keep my hands off you when you’re sleeping under my roof, living with me in my house, right along with my father-in-law and my child.”

Her stomach was quivering with something that felt oddly like butterflies, and she didn’t reply.

After a moment Roan threw her another glance, this one without the smile. “Truth is, Mary, I don’t know quite what I’m gonna do about you.” She couldn’t think how to answer that, so she didn’t. He faced front again and gave a gusty sigh. “I don’t know if you have any idea how you’ve complicated my life.”

“Your life!” It burst from her on a gust of incredulous laughter. “What about mine? I’ve got a hitman after me and a murder charge hanging over my head!”

“Yeah,” he growled, “and I’m the one that’s got to keep you safe and at the same time find some evidence that’ll clear you.”

Happiness burst inside her and spread through her whole being. She felt breathless with joy and hope. “You believe me? That I’m innocent?”

“Well, yeah, I thought I made that pretty clear a little while back.” He glanced at her, forehead creased in a puzzled little frown, then shifted as he faced forward again, as if the seat was getting uncomfortable for him. “Never did think you were guilty, to tell the truth.”

“Then why-” She shook her head, unable to finish it. Her lips felt numb. Her face and throat ached. She couldn’t think of that dreadful humiliating time without feeling sick.

“Why did I arrest you?” This time the look he gave her was dark with anger, though she felt fairly certain it wasn’t directed at her. “Because,” he said in a quiet and dangerous rumble, like the grinding of rock, “if I hadn’t, someone else would have.” And she watched his face-the part she could see-close up as dramatically as if a curtain had been whisked across it. After a moment he said in a voice as expressionless as his features, “I figured if I did it I’d at least have some control over how it was done. How you were treated.” He flicked her another brief glance. “Hope it wasn’t too bad for you. I tried to spare you where I could.”

There was an ache in her throat she couldn’t explain-unless it was a response to the emotions she could sense simmering beneath the surface of his icy calm…intense emotions she couldn’t begin to understand. There was hurt, there, too.

She opened her mouth to answer him, but the words weren’t there. What she really wanted-desperately longed to do-was reach across the console between them and take his hand…touch his arm…rub the back of his neck. But she didn’t know if she had the right to such a gestures of intimacy.

Intimacy. They’d shared a kind, certainly-the physical kind, thoughts of which made her whole body blush even now. But this was different. Emotional intimacy…intimacy of the heart and soul. The difference between sex and love. For a long time she’d thought the two were one and the same. She knew better now.

She gave her head an ambiguous shake and looked away.

Roan cursed himself in silence. Helpless fury simmered in his belly. Hope it wasn’t too bad… Yeah, right. If he’d had any hopes of kidding himself about how bad it had been for her, being arrested, processed and jailed for murder, the memory of Mary’s pinched, pale face would have set him straight.

He knew one thing: He couldn’t let her go back to jail-and it would be state prison, next time, not Hart County’s relatively friendly lockup. He couldn’t even let himself think about that.

One more thing he knew: Whether or not he’d gotten her into the mess she was in, he for damn sure was the only one who could get her out.

Simple enough, really. All he had to do was get the guy who wanted her dead, put him away and find Jason Holbrook’s killer.

As he thought that, the SUV topped the last rise before the long sweep down to the ranch. He heard Mary’s breathing catch, then a long soft sigh, and his heart lifted under his ribs at the thought that she was seeing it the way he did every day of his life, only for the very first time…foothills layered with pine and aspen rolling away to hazy purple mountains capped with snow even in the dead of summer. He never got tired of that vista. Erin had loved it, too. Was it too much to hope for, that he might find another woman who would love it as much? Who’d be as happy here as Erin had been?

The road dropped away beneath the wheels of the SUV, but the hollow sensation in Roan’s stomach was from something else entirely.

It was too much to hope for. So far out of the realm of possibility he was a fool even to think about it. Mary Owen was a woman living in exile. She’d had a life and a career she loved in the big city and would undoubtedly wish to return to it, if she could. If he made it possible. And what bitter irony, he thought, that by eliminating the threats hanging over Mary’s head and giving her back her life, he was sure to lose her.

“Are you sure this is going to be all right with, um…the rest of your family?” Mary asked as the SUV rolled past corrals, feed silos and majestic cottonwoods wearing the soft new green of spring.

The thumbprint in Roan’s cheek deepened with a smile. “You mean Boyd, I imagine-you know Susie Grace is going to be tickled, uh, pink. She’s been pesterin’ for a week to have you over for dinner.”

“All right, Boyd, then.” She drew an uneven breath; the quivering in her stomach was definitely butterflies. She’d never met Boyd Stuart, but she knew who he was. Original owner of this ranch, father of Roan’s murdered wife. And how was he going to feel about his son-in-law bringing a strange woman into his daughter’s house? His granddaughter’s? A woman accused of murder, at that?

Roan’s grin widened as he pulled the SUV to a stop in the shade of another of those giant cottonwood trees. “Ah, hell, don’t let Boyd scare you. He might be crusty on the outside, but his insides are pure puddin’.” He took the keys from the ignition and turned to look at her. “He knows all about you, by the way-thinks you’re innocent, too. Calls you ‘that little ol’ gal.’”

Mary touched the back of her hand to her lips to contain a helpless gurgle of laughter. Roan took off his sunglasses and tucked them in his shirt pocket, and the softness in his eyes, so different from their usual piercing glitter, brought an unexpected sting to hers.

He jerked his head toward his side window. “Well, here it is. It ain’t the Ritz, but for the next little while you’re gonna be calling it home.”

She ducked her head to look out the window and saw a handsome house trimmed with white siding and natural stone, with a wide and welcoming porch skirted with holly and evergreens across the front. Lilacs bloomed along the split-rail fence that separated the yard from the driveway. “It looks lovely,” she said. Then, because of something she’d heard in his voice…seen in his eyes, she looked at him and added quietly, “Actually, I’ve never been that fond of the Ritz.”

There was a pause while they looked into each other’s eyes, and Mary wondered whether he was any better at figuring out her feelings than she was his. Then Roan said brusquely, “Well-no sense in sitting here in the car.” He opened the door, but paused a moment before getting out to nod toward the front of the car. “Here comes the welcoming committee.”

Oh dear, Mary thought. Much as she’d have liked to accept Roan’s assessment of his father-in-law’s nature as gospel, she couldn’t see any part of the man ambling toward them down the shade-dappled lane that might be described as “puddin’.” Crusty, yes. That part she could definitely believe.

Boyd Stuart was angular and rawboned, small in stature-very likely smaller than he’d once been, thanks to decades of having his spine pounded on by a hard leather saddle. He walked with the bent-over, bandy-legged cowboy’s gait she’d grown accustomed to seeing in the years she’d been living in the Great American West. He wore the rancher’s uniform of boots, Levi’s, long-sleeved blue work shirt and a sweat-stained baseball cap with a tractor manufacturer’s logo on it. A pair of mottled gray cattle-herding dogs trotted along beside him.

“Oh, Cat’s going to love this,” Mary said as she gathered her courage, opened her door and climbed out of the car.

“What, you mean the dogs?” Roan threw her look across the roof of the SUV. “They’re used to the barn cats. They won’t bother him.”

“Tell that to Cat.” She could hear a loud growling sound emanating from the back seat as the dogs came ranging up to lick Roan’s hands. Having said their hellos, they then ambled over more slowly to check her out. She stood still, murmuring hopeful reassurances, while they sniffed her avidly-smelling the cat, no doubt. Having evidently decided she was Friend, they bumped and snuggled against her legs, begging to be petted. She bent down to oblige them with pats and coos and ear-fondles, and when she straightened up, Boyd was coming to a halt a few yards away.

The rancher took off his cap, wiped his pale forehead with his shirtsleeve and put it back on again. He flicked her a glance and a nod, then looked at Roan and gestured toward the sheriff’s department SUV. “What’s the law doin’ out here this time a’ day?” His growly voice reminded her of Roan’s, only rustier.

Roan looked over at Mary, flashed her a reassuring smile. “Got somebody here I want you to meet. Boyd…Mary Owen-or, I guess it’s Yancy, right? Anyway, Mary, this is my father-in-law, Boyd Stuart.”

Mary nodded and smiled, uncertain whether to offer her hand or not. But the rancher nudged the bill of his cap back with his thumb, swiped his gnarled hand across the front of his shirt and then held it out to her with a gruff, “I know who you are. How-do, miss.”

And that was when she saw that the hand he offered her bore the silvery discoloration of burn scars, and that above the grizzled jaws and weathered, leathery skin that covered the lower two-thirds of his face, his blue eyes were filled with a bottomless sadness. Kind eyes, she thought, that would never really smile again.

She took the scarred hand and murmured, “I’m so happy to meet you.”

“So,” Roan said, raking a hand through his hair in an uncharacteristically awkward gesture, “where’s your sidekick?”

“Little bit?” Boyd scowled and made a cranky gesture with his hand that failed to override the affection in his voice. “Ah, she’s off somewheres-barn, probably. One of the cats had a litter, and she’s bound and determined to find her nest. She’ll come a’runnin’, once she knows you’re here.”

“I can’t stay.” Roan shot Mary another look, one she couldn’t read. “I need to get back to town. A lot going on I need to tend to.”

The rancher took off his cap again…put it back on. “Yeah? How’d that go-the big parade?”

“Parade went fine,” Roan said, and his eyes were hard and flinty. “Somebody took a shot at Mary, though.”

Boyd’s head rocked back as if someone had thrown a punch at him. “You don’t say.”

“’Fraid so. That’s why I brought her out here. She’s gonna need a safe place to stay until we can get whoever’s responsible. You mind getting her settled in? Show her around? Like I said, I need to get on back.”

“Sure,” said Boyd. “No problem. Where you wanna put her?”

Mary opened her mouth, but her panic-stricken cries-Don’t go! Don’t leave me!-were all inside her head.

Roan had the back of the SUV open and was hauling out her suitcase and the cat carrier and the large shopping bag with the cat supplies in it. He set them beside the opening in the split rail fence, then looked up and said, “Put her in my room.” This time Mary managed to produce sound, but no discernible words. He opened the car door and paused, half in and half out, to give her a long, burning look. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

He slid behind the wheel and slammed the door, and the SUV roared to life. Mary and Boyd stood side by side without speaking and watched it execute a wrenching three-point turn, then accelerate down the lane, crunching gravel and spitting dust.

For a few more seconds the dust and the silence hovered in the air. Then Boyd made an abrupt beckoning gesture with one hand, picked up her suitcase with the other and said gruffly, “No sense standin’ out here in the yard. Come on in the house-I’ll show you to Roan’s room.” He started across the enclosed yard, moving surprisingly quickly in his odd crabbed gait-rather like the oldtime Western movie star, John Wayne, in a hurry.

Mary picked up the cat carrier and the shopping bag and followed. “Oh, please don’t put him out of his room,” she said, puffing a little as she hurried to catch up. “The couch-anything will be fine for me.”

Boyd glanced over at the cat carrier, apparently ignoring that remark. “What you got there?” When the carrier’s occupant responded with a furious growl, he chuckled and said, “Oh-big old fella.” Then he looked up at Mary, and there was a gleam in his sad old eyes.

“Shoot, Roan don’t hardly ever use it anyhow, the hours he keeps. Waste of a perfectly good mattress, you ask me.” He opened the front door and held it with his backside while Mary slipped past him into the house, then pulled the door shut and clumped ahead of her across an entryway of polished pine. She barely had time to notice the large open rooms with vaulted ceilings, a sense of warmth and light and natural colors, a feeling of the outdoors brought inside, before following her host down a wide carpeted hallway that ended abruptly at a plywood barricade. Halfway down the hall, Boyd turned into an open doorway. Mary followed him into a room that was much smaller and plainer than she’d expected.

Boyd set the suitcase down with a thump on a Navajo patterned rug. “There you go,” he said, then straightened, hooked a thumb in the pocket of his Levi’s and surveyed the room with narrowed eyes, scratching his stubbled chin. “You’ll most likely be wantin’ clean sheets and such. You’ll find some in that chest a’ drawers over yonder. Bathroom’s around the corner, next to the kitchen. You think of anything else you need, give me a holler.”

“I wish you’d just let me have the couch,” Mary murmured absently, trying not to look with too much curiosity…trying not to think about the fact that she was standing in Roan’s bedroom. His private space. Intimacy…

“Couch is comfortable enough,” Boyd admitted, hitching one shoulder. “Use it myself now and then, when Roan’s in town late and I need to stay here with the little bit. Most a’ the time I have my own place up the road-foreman’s cottage. Suits me fine.” He paused, then shook his head in a way that brooked no further argument. “Woman needs her privacy. You let Roan take the couch-he’s young, won’t hurt him none. And you’ve got the cat. Cats don’t like strange places. You’ll be needing to shut him up, I reckon.” There was a definite twinkle in his eye as he nodded toward the case Mary was still holding. “Tell you a trick my wife used to use, to get a cat to settle in a new place. What you do is, you put butter on his paws.”

“Really?” Mary said over Cat’s outraged yowl. “That works?”

Boyd bobbed his head. “M’wife swore it did. Said the cat’d be so busy cleanin’ the butter off his paws, he’d forget all about bein’ in a strange place.” He turned to the door with one of his abrupt hand gestures. “Well-I’ll let you get settled-” he turned back in his bent-over, arthritic way “-unless you’d like to see around the place first…”

“I’d like that,” Mary said, with silent apologies to Cat. She’d wait to let him out of the carrier until she could stay to keep an eye on him. No telling what kind of damage he might do, the mood he was in.

Out in the hallway, she paused to look questioningly at the plywood barricade. Boyd’s hand gesture as he turned away from it was even more blunt and dismissive than usual.

“Used to be the master bedroom back there-Roan’s den…baby’s room…” His crusty voice had thickened. “Burned down a few years back. Roan never has got around to rebuilding it.”

Mary sucked in air, but he left her no time for apologies, or to dwell on the dreadful images that came swarming into her mind. Chilled, she followed Boyd through a cursory tour of the house, and was glad when they came again into the warm spring sunshine, where the scent of lilacs and boisterous greetings from the dogs helped to banish the ghost of past tragedy.

The dogs’ names, she learned, were Rocky and Bear. They were Australian shepherds, and she could tell them apart easily enough because Rocky had one blue eye. Completely accepting of her now, they trotted at her heels as often as they did Boyd’s, as they walked down the cottonwood-shaded lane between storage sheds of all shapes and sizes, corral fences and horse stables, most of them painted a dark red with white trim.

“You ride?” he asked, as they were walking through one of the stables, empty and remarkably cool and quiet for late afternoon. It smelled-not unpleasantly-of leather and straw, manure and something faintly salty Mary could only assume was horse.

“No,” she said quickly, repressing a shudder-not wanting to be impolite, “not really.”

Boyd chuckled. “Well…little bit’ll have you mounted up in no time, I expect.”

Not if I can help it, Mary thought.

Last stop on the tour was a huge old barn at the end of the lane. Again, the interior of the barn was cool and dim, shot through with fingers of sunlight from cracks in the siding and tiny dust-clouded windows high in the walls. Stacks of hay bales filled most of the space, along with a lot of tools and other mysterious objects that appeared to be very, very old. Antiques, Boyd explained proudly. Relics from the Old West he’d collected over the years.

He halted and called up toward the rafters, “Hey, little bit, come on down here, now. We got company.”

There was a pause, and then a small face framed with tousled red hair appeared at the very top of the tallest haystack. The face split into a wide, off-center grin. “Hi,” Susie Grace called down in a hoarse whisper. “I can’t come down right now. I’m holding kittens. You want to see them? They’re really cute. You can climb up here, if you want to.”

Mary opened her mouth. Looked at Boyd, who grinned and shrugged his shoulders. She drew a quivering breath, the feelings inside her as hard to pin down as the dust motes dancing in those shafts of sunlight. Then she shrugged, stepped up onto the lowest layer of bales, and began to climb, Susie Grace calling encouragement and helpful instructions in her raspy whisper. She reached the top of the stack, weak-kneed but triumphant, and turned to wave at Boyd, who touched his cap with a finger, then turned and stumped off on some chore of his own.

Susie Grace scooted back to make room for Mary on the bales, crossing her legs under her Indian-style. She was cradling two tiny black-and-white kittens against her chest. She waited until Mary had settled herself, then peeled one of the kittens off of her T-shirt and commanded, “Hold out your hands.”

Mary obeyed, holding her breath. She let it out in an awed and inarticulate whisper as the kitten’s warm squirmy weight settled into her cupped palms.

“Hold it like this,” Susie Grace said. “They like it under your neck-see?” She giggled. “It tickles.” She eyed Mary, who was laughing, too. “Didn’t you ever hold a kitten before?”

“Not this little,” Mary said shakily. The kitten’s tiny round head was bumping under her chin.

“I love kittens. They’re my favorite animal. Well…second favorite, after horses. I like all animals, actually. I’m going to be a veterinarian when I grow up.”

“Where is the mother?” Mary was busy now, trying to keep the kitten from climbing up her sweater, over her shoulder and down the other side.

“Probably hunting mice. Or gophers or something. I waited until she left before I started searching for the nest. Mother cats don’t like it when you bother their babies. Sometimes they move them, and then you have to start looking all over again.”

“You certainly know a lot about animals,” Mary said, smiling at her.

Susie Grace accepted the accolade with a nod. “I like animals because they don’t care what people look like. They only care about smell and if you’re nice to them or not.”

Mary watched the kitten cuddle happily against the little girl’s scarred and puckered skin and felt her heart swell with emotions she’d never felt before. Was this what it meant to love a child, she wondered? She hadn’t thought it would hurt so much. “You could have surgery,” she said huskily. “To make your scars better.”

“I know.” Susie Grace took a breath and quickly huffed it out again. “But I don’t want to. I’m afraid it will hurt. It hurt really, really bad when I got burned.”

“Well,” Mary said with care, lest her emotions leak into her voice, “maybe you’ll change your mind someday…when you grow up…have a boyfriend.”

Susie Grace shook her head. “I’m not going to have a boyfriend.”

“Why not?”

“Because…boys like pretty girls.” Susie Grace shrugged.

A wave of anger took Mary’s breath away. “You are pretty.”

Susie Grace rolled her eyes. “That’s what my dad says.”

“Well, maybe you should believe him.” Susie Grace’s reply was another shrug. “Look,” Mary said firmly, peeling the kitten off her sweater and placing it in Susie Grace’s lap, “I’m not your dad. And I used to be a model. So I think I ought to know what pretty is. And I’m telling you-you are pretty. You can believe that.”

Susie Grace didn’t say a word. Keeping her face averted, she carefully put the kittens back in their straw nest. “Let’s go see the horses,” she said, and turning onto her belly, slipped over the edge of haystack.

Mary sat where she was for a few moments, fighting back the furious tears that were burning her eyes and throat. Then, a resolute smile pasted firmly on her face, she followed the little girl down the stack.

Horses again, she thought. Wonderful.

“This one’s mine,” said Susie Grace, reaching through the corral fence to stroke the face of an animal roughly the same color as her hair and tall as a small mountain. “Her name’s Tootsie-isn’t she beautiful?”

“Mmm,” said Mary. And big. Very big.

Susie Grace giggled. “Here-give her some grain. She likes to eat out of your hand. Only you have to keep your fingers flat, or else she might bite them. Not on purpose, though. Horses can’t see what’s down there by their mouth, you know. It’s kind of hard to tell fingers from something good to eat, just with the end of your nose. You should try it sometime.” She shot Mary a look full of mischief as she held out the bucket of grain.

“Thanks-I’ll take your word for it,” Mary said dryly. She scooped a handful of grain from the bucket, closed her eyes, sent up a prayer, and thrust her hand between the boards of the fence. And gave a little gasp of surprise. It felt as if somebody was nuzzling her hand with a velvet boxing glove.

“You can pet her,” said Susie Grace. “She likes it when you scratch her under her chin-like this.”

Not wanting to disappoint the child, Mary did…then, when nothing terrible seemed about to happen, ran her hand along the hard round jaw…then daringly over the neck…then the shoulder. Shivering inside with fear and wonder and excitement. She thought again of velvet, except this was warmer and damper than velvet, and underneath the velvet was a whole lot of muscle. Mountains of muscle.

Another velvety muzzle bumped against her arm, demanding a share of the attention, and Mary said, “Oh-” and laughed as she transferred her stroking to the newcomer. This one was a lovely mottled gray, like dappled shade on snow. It had a darker gray muzzle, and the softest darkest eyes she’d ever seen. “What’s this one’s name?”

“That’s Angel.” Susie Grace’s eyes were on her scarred hands as they methodically stroked Tootsie’s neck. “She’s my mommy’s horse. Her name used to be Dancer when she was a barrel racer, but now it’s Angel, because my mom is an angel, too.” There was a pause, and then she looked up at Mary and said, “She’s real gentle. You can ride her if you want to.”

Mary’s heart dropped into her shoes.

After that, what could she do?

Which was how it happened that the next morning, a bright sunny Sunday in May, Mary found herself where she’d have been content never in her whole entire life to be-in a saddle on the back of a horse. A horse named Angel.