Authors: Lindsay McKenna
Lia immediately zeroed in on one particular mustang—a palomino like her Goldy. Jack was actually leading him out to where she stood. Glancing to her right, where Cav stood, his hands on his hips, she whispered, “You found a palomino!”
He leaned down, placing a kiss on her hair. “Yep, I got lucky. I explained to Jack and Deb that you’d once owned a palomino and they just happened to have Sunny, here, as one of their trail horses.” He became serious and touched her ruddy cheek. “I want you to be happy, Lia.”
The gruffness in his voice, the thickening of emotions carried within it, made her heart open as nothing else ever had. The care burning in his eyes for her, the love she knew Cav had never spoken about to her, was there. She turned, throwing her arms around his shoulders, crushing him against her with the strength of her own love. “This means so much to me, Cav,” she cried, closing her eyes, she held him as his arms slid around her waist. “Thank you…thank you!”
She reached up and kissed him.
He embraced her, kissed her cheek and when she offered her mouth, he took it gently. His gift to her was a day to be with horses again. His breath was stolen by the incredible joy her kiss conveyed against his mouth. While Cav wanted time for them to simply be with one another, he knew that wasn’t today’s reality, but he felt it coming.
“Hey,” he grinned, “Let’s go for a trail ride.”
Just the clip-clop of a horse swaying rhythmically beneath Lia made her want to shout to the sky. She led on Sunny, the beautiful, gentle mustang gelding. The horse obviously knew the quiet, wide trail that wound through the hills and vales of the woodlands. Behind her, Cav was mounted on a much taller mustang called Ziggy. He was a grulla dun, a gunmetal gray color with a black mane and tail and lower legs. He even had that telltale black dorsal stripe running down the center of his back, proclaiming his Spanish heritage.
Lia knew that the Spanish had ridden their horses into America, and some of the Spanish horses, part Arabian, had escaped from where they were tied each night. It was from those escapees that mustangs had been born and ran the plains and mountains of western United States.
She knew her mustang history well because when she found out from her father that Goldy was half mustang, she’d hungrily explored their history. At one time, ten thousand years ago, a small type of horse had lived in North America, but eventually died out. When the Spanish explored the Southwest, the stallions and mares that had escaped from their owners populated the West. The horses were later caught and tamed by Native Americans.
Today, the BLM rounded up huge herds of mustangs, especially in Nevada, Wyoming and Montana, and sold them to the highest bidder. Many ended up going to factories to fill dog food cans. Other luckier ones, like the mustangs they rode, were bought and cared for. These were later sold to people who appreciated these incredible animals, whose background blended with the rich history of the West.
Most mustangs were small and Sunny was the standard fourteen hands tall. Ziggy, the grulla dun that Cav rode, was the exception, fifteen hands tall, heavily muscled and a lot more active than Sunny. Lia was glad to have quiet Sunny to ride.
According to the map she carried, there was a small stream on the other side of the wooded hill. Jack had told them there was a nice place to have a picnic near the banks of the river, where the horses could also drink. The sunlight danced between the leaves, dappling her and Sunny as the mustang gingerly moved up a slope to the top of the hill. Cav rode up to Lia with Ziggy.
“We need to ride that way,” he said, pointing in the direction of the still unseen stream. He sat in a comfortable slouch on his mustang.
Lia smiled, thinking that Cav would make a great cowboy with his rugged good looks. True, he didn’t have a real Stetson on his head, but he still had that outdoor look she loved so much. And she loved him for this thoughtfulness, leaning down and rubbing Sunny’s dampened neck. “Every minute in the saddle just makes me happier than the last minute,” she confided, giving him a tender look of thanks.
Cav’s heart expanded fiercely with love for her, seeing how much the gift of riding a horse once again, brought out in Lia. “It’s not far now,” he’d said. They had been riding a good two hours, moving deeper and deeper into the hills thick with trees. The sun was overhead and she knew it was near noontime. Cav had placed their lunch in the large saddlebags behind Ziggy’s saddle, and Lia carried the water bottles in Sunny’s leather bags.
“This is really nice,” he murmured, giving the place an appreciative look.
“It’s a lot like where I grew up,” she said, turning. “Well, not exactly like this,” and she gestured to the trees. “My Dad’s farm is on flat land, mostly sandy soil and there aren’t many trees. A good half of Oregon is Great Basin land, dry and desert-like.”
“That’s interesting,” Cav said. He liked the bits of information that revealed more about Lia. He had found that each weekend with her was like opening up a treasure chest—her gift of herself—to him, whether she realized it or not. And every weekend had yielded a new jewel about this woman he loved.
There was a sweetness to waiting for her to open up and trust him fully. Cav could see Lia struggling sometimes, and knew it wasn’t about him, but rather about putting her trauma behind her. He warmed with the realization that his support was helping her get there sooner. And God, how he anticipated the day when Lia could entrust her broken, scarred body to him, walk into his arms, and stand proud and naked before him.
That would be the day they’d both celebrate her last day of imprisonment. The past would no longer hold her captive.
And then?
As he followed Lia and Sunny down the other side of the hill, Cav smiled to himself. Life was never easy. Some days were better than others, and his idea to bring her out to this horse rescue facility had been one of his better ideas. He’d never seen Lia so lively, so spontaneous, and smiling so often.
He was a patient man, which was a good thing. Cav wanted to give her the world, but he knew he had to pace his desire against her inner growth. He could relate to her struggle—all he had to do was look at his own background and his emergence from his own toxic past, with the help of Chief Jacoby. And Lia. Cav never forgot that she was also healing some of his deepest, oldest wounds by simply being herself around him. She was a gift to him but didn’t realize it. Yet.
The weekends he’d spent with Jacoby’s family had taught him more than any book could have. It was then that Cav realized that having a family could bring pleasure, not always a promise of pain and suffering.
And he wanted the same for Lia and himself. He enjoyed watching her ride Sunny. Just the way her hips swayed back and forth in that saddle made him ache to take her. He himself wasn’t much of a rider, not like her, but he could appreciate her straight back and her proud shoulders drawn back in perfect riding form.
There was no question in Cav’s mind that Lia loved to ride. And he loved to see her happy.
At the small, clear stream, they dismounted. Cav allowed the horses to have their fill of water. Lia helped him to remove their bridles and hang them over the saddle horns. Each mustang had a nylon halter on, and she tied the rope to a low limb beneath a spreading elm tree. She then showed Cav how to loosen their cinches so the horses would get some relief.
He smiled and took the food out of the saddlebags. Lia was always looking for ways to improve the lives of those around her—even animals.
Spreading the green wool blanket next to the stream, shaded by the branches of the tree, Cav knelt and placed the plastic boxes on it. Lia hadn’t worn a hat today, so her hair was mussed, giving her a young college girl look. Her cheeks were pink, her gray eyes luminous with happiness as she knelt opposite him, handing him a bottle of water and keeping one for herself.
“Have you always been around horses?” he asked, opening up her plastic box holding a turkey and cheese sandwich.
Lia rested on her side, propped up on an elbow, and took the proffered sandwich from him. “Ever since I could remember, we had a horse. My dad also had a milk cow, Polka Dot. She was a black and white Holstein. I can remember him putting me on her back when I was very young, while he milked her. I think that’s what got me into horses, eventually. You can’t ride a cow,” and she smiled fondly in remembrance of those times with her dad.
“You weren’t scared of the cow?” Cav marveled, appreciating her long, slender legs. She had taken off her cowboy boots and socks, wriggling her toes.
“Never. Polka Dot loved me. I used to lie on her ridged back, my feet hanging over her tail and my arms stretched out toward her neck. She’d just let me lay like a blanket on her, thinking nothing of it. My dad always laughed and shook his head, saying Polka Dot must have been a horse in a previous lifetime to accept me on her back as a cow in this one. Cow’s do NOT want anything on their back. Besides, they have a high, hard spine and you can’t ride them at all.” She munched on the sandwich, studying him. “Where you grew up, did you have animals?”
“No, although my mother loved dogs and cats,” he recalled.
“Did you ever have any pets?”
“Well,” he said, “I had a cat, an old yellow tom that had half an ear missing. His face was all scarred up from so many catfights. He was a stray and I found him out in the alley in back of our apartment one morning.”
“How old were you?”
“Ten.” Cav picked up one of the sweet pickles from another box he’d set down between them. “I found him in a dumpster I wanted to climb into.”
She frowned. “You were dumpster diving?”
“Yeah,” Cav admitted, shrugging. “My mom’s birthday was coming up in a month and I wanted to buy her a gift. Sometimes, people threw things in dumpsters that you could pull out and go sell to a pawn shop.”
She felt the pain reflected in Cav’s eyes. “But you found that cat in there, instead?”
Chuckling, Cav said, “I don’t know who was more surprised. The lid was up on it, and I just hopped in. I almost landed on the cat and scared the living daylights out of him. But I was just as scared because he reared up on his hind legs, hissing, spitting and clawing at my legs with his front paws.”
“What did you do?” she tried to picture the confrontation between man and beast.
“I jumped out,” he said, grinning. “That was one pissed off tomcat. I’d seen an old chair in the dumpster and it had a lot of nicks, was really old looking and pretty much broken down. But I thought I might be able to get some money by selling it. Where we lived, there were a number of pawnshops. I thought if I could get the chair out of there and clean it up, maybe one of the pawn guys would buy it.”
“And you’d done this before?”
“Yes. It was a way for me to make a little money for things we needed. My father’s drug habit took all our money. There were nights when my mother had no food for the three of us, so she wouldn’t eat. She’d make me eat, instead. Said I was a growing boy and all.” He frowned. “She’d go to bed hungry at least once or twice a week and I hated it, so I was always trying to find ways to make money. My old man wanted me to start selling drugs, but I refused. I knew it wasn’t right. And hell, Lia, I didn’t want to turn out like the bastard I hated so much.”
Her heart broke listening to Cav’s story. He rarely spoke about his childhood and she was hungry to know more about him, even if it was painful for him to share.
“What about the cat?” she wondered softly.
“Oh, him. Well, he was after a rat in the bottom of the dumpster. He caught it and then jumped up and out of it, and took off down the alley. I didn’t have any food to give him, of course, so I climbed back into the dumpster, retrieved the old chair and cleaned it up. I learned from Charlie, a pawn shop owner, that it was a real antique.” He shook his head. “He gave me a hundred dollars for that piece of junk.”
“Or what you thought was junk.”
“Right. But I didn’t care. I had a hundred bucks in my hands.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I hid it in a jar in the shack behind our apartment building. That’s where the owner kept all his tools. If I’d tried to put the money in our apartment, my old man would have found it and immediately spent it on coke.”
“And did you get your mom a birthday gift.” She saw Cav’s eyes lighten, a softening in the set of his mouth.
“Well, she’d been wanting a stand mixer. She had arthritis, and it was tough for her to stir anything for a long time. So I bought her one,” he said, pride in his tone. “A bright red one. She’d always loved red.”
Lia nodded, aware of how often Cav wore his favorite red t-shirt. He was a lot like his mother, and her heart burst with feeling for him. “She must have been overjoyed.”
“She was. I got her a birthday cake and ice cream, too. Lucky for us, my old man had passed out from the drugs, so we had a really nice birthday there in the kitchen.”
Lia’s heart swelled, understanding how much Cav needed a loving family. So much had been taken from him. A huge part of her wanted to be the woman who helped him create a loving family once again. It was a dream, but she held to it, knowing that it might be possible. Cav deserved all the love she held for him. And she knew he’d be a wonderful father to any children they might be gifted with, too.
“And the cat?” Lia wondered, finishing her sandwich.
“I bought him a can of tuna fish from the change I had from that hundred dollar bill. Felt sorry for him.”
“Did you see him eat it?”
Cav wiped his hands on his jeans after eating the sandwich, closing up the plastic box. “Yes. From then on, we’d see each other in that alley from time to time. I gave him the name, ‘One Ear.’ Over time, on some days when it wasn’t safe to be in the house, I’d wander out to the alley and sit down next to the dumpster. One Ear would come out of his hiding place and jump in my lap and let me pet him. He even started singing for me, which I thought was pretty neat.”
Her heart breaking, Lia could imagine Cav as that skinny, sensitive ten-year old boy. “I wish,” she whispered softly, “I could take away all that hurt from your childhood, Cav.”