Stick in the Mud Meets Spontaneity (Meet Your Match, book 3) (24 page)

Tears stung Sam’s eyes as she watched. Hours spent making mud pies, watching horse movies, reading horse books, shopping for cowgirl hats and boots had all culminated into this one perfect moment, when an adorable little tomboy became a beautiful young woman. Her sister.

Kajsa crouched back down and slid off the horse. Whistles and whoops and hollers sounded in the darkening sky, but Kajsa seemed oblivious to it all. She was too busy hugging Maj.

More than anything, Sam wanted to talk to Colton, but he was already surrounded by a group of people—the annoying-cute girl being one of them. She took a step back to make room for the others.

A balding man Sam thought was Colton’s uncle raised his voice. “Colt, do you think you have a shot at actually winning the competition?”

“I don’t know,” said Colton in his humble way. “Kajsa and I have watched a few documentaries about other trainers and horses, and what some of those trainers can do with those animals is incredible. Standing on the back of the horse might be small change in comparison.”

“Well, here’s hoping you at least place. I’d hate to see you come home with nothing after all your hard work.”

“What do you mean nothin’?’” boomed Colton’s father. “Not only will Maj be placed in a good home, but Kajsa has proven that she’s got some serious talent. I wouldn’t call that nothin’.”

“Oh, I wasn’t saying—”

“What do you mean Maj will be placed in a good home?” interrupted Kajsa’s youthful, but strong voice. She’d climbed the fence next to Colton and perched her small body on top.

“The person who bids the highest on Maj will take her home,” said Colton. He craned his head to look at her. “But you already know that, right?” The question didn’t sound so sure—more like a plea.
Please tell me you already know that,
thought Sam.

“You’re going to sell Your Majesty?”

Oh no. She had no idea. Sam’s heart sank to her toes.

The crowd around Colton began to disperse, as though people realized an uncomfortable conversation was about to take place. But Sam stayed put, inwardly pleading with Colton to say or do something to keep Kajsa’s heart and spirit from breaking.

Colton stepped on the bottom rail of fence, eye level with Kajsa, and placed his hand on her knee. “I can’t sell a horse I don’t own, Kaj. The government owns her. I just agreed to train her with the hope that she’ll get placed in a good home.”

In all the years she’d known Kajsa, Sam could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen her cry. It didn’t happen often because she was tough—tougher than any other girl her age. But there, on that fence, surrounded by all these people, Kajsa’s beautiful blue eyes glistened with tears.

“Can we buy her?” she whispered, a final hope hanging in the air like a thin, breakable thread.
Don’t break it. Please, don’t break it
, her eyes pled.

Colton pulled her off the fence and into his arms, hugging her tight. “I wish we could, Kaj. I really do. But if Maj performs well, people are going to bid thousands of dollars for her, and we can’t afford to compete with that.”

Kajsa’s body began to shake with silent tears. After a moment, she wriggled her way out of Colton’s embrace, scrambled over the fence, and ran toward Maj in the field. Every instinct in Sam pushed her to follow, but Cassie and Noah had overheard as well, and they were already in pursuit.

Colton’s stricken gaze met Sam’s. “I thought she knew. I honestly thought she knew. But how could she when I never took the time to explain it to her?” He closed his eyes and shook his head.

Sam wanted to touch him, comfort him, tell him everything would be okay, but there was still too much distance between them for that. She said nothing.

It was Colton’s father who spoke up. “Kajsa is the toughest girl I know,” he said. “She’ll be just fine. If she’s going to be a real horse trainer some day, she needs to learn that letting horses go is part of the business.”

It sounded so harsh and cold, but Sam knew he spoke the truth. Kajsa was learning a hard lesson in the worst way possible—through firsthand experience.

“Sam.” Her mother was suddenly at her side, her hand on Sam’s elbow.

“Yeah?”

“What do you say we help clean up?”

Sam nodded. Clean up. Of course. She met Colton’s gaze one last time before walking away. The rodeo had been the calm between storms. Why couldn’t it have lasted a little longer?

Sam couldn’t sleep and had too much on her mind to even attempt it. So she took a seat in front of her computer, opened Photoshop, and scrolled through a folder of JPEG images until she found her favorite picture of Kajsa and Maj. Taken right after Kajsa’s first ride on Maj, Kajsa had wrapped the reins around the saddle horn and leaned low over Maj’s neck, giving the horse an exuberant hug. The look of joy and trust on Kajsa’s face was what Sam loved the most—that and the cool camera angle that had captured it all.

Zooming in close on the saddle horn, Sam began to work the magic of Photoshop. Minutes and hours ticked by unnoticed as Sam erased, blended, cloned, painted, and blended some more, removing all signs of the saddle from the image to make it look like Kajsa was riding bareback. She added a photo effect that roughened the edges of the picture and adjusted the colors, fading some and brightening others. When Sam finally pushed her chair back to examine the results from a distance, the picture that had been snapped with a cell phone now looked like a realistic pastel drawing of Kajsa and the wild mustang she’d come to love so much.

The clock on her nightstand glowed with the time of five-thirteen when Sam clicked Save and shut down the computer then crawled into bed. Kajsa wouldn’t be ready to see it anytime soon, but someday, when the good memories overshadowed the loss, she would be ready. Sam would hold onto the picture until that day.

Another sleepless night and early morning ride did nothing for Colton’s state of mind. After getting bucked off Maj three consecutive times, he stripped the saddle, released her into the field, and kicked a fence post. A lot of good that did. Not only were none of his problems solved but now his foot throbbed.

His father’s proclamation that “She’ll be just fine,” was bologna. Last night, as Kajsa left with Cassie and Noah, tears still streaming down her face, she’d glared at him. “I’m never coming to the ranch again.” She’d sounded so serious, so set, that he worried she’d meant every word.

And then there was Samantha.

Boy howdy, had Colton made a mess of things.

His mother’s tired and crippled minivan puttered up the driveway, stopping in front of the house. She got out, took one look at him, and said, “I could use some help with the groceries.”

Colton nodded, glad for something to do.

His mother followed him inside. She didn’t believe in shooting the breeze. “I just got off the phone with Cassie, and Kajsa’s still pretty upset. Cassie thinks it best to let her stay away until after the competition and auction.”

Colton shook his head, hating that it had come to this. “I’ve been thinking, Mom.”

Her expression became wary. “What about?”

“What if we remortgaged part of the ranch—enough to buy back Maj?”

Her eyes softened, and she shook her head. “It’s a sweet thought, honey, it really is, but you know we can’t do that. We’re barely making ends meet as it is. And when your father and I first got married, we made a promise to each other that we would never let it come to that, no matter how tight things got. I’m sorry, but remortgaging the ranch isn’t an option.”

“What about selling of some of the land that borders Colorado Springs? Developers have been after that section of our property for years now.” Colton’s stomach clenched at the thought. All seventy-nine acres of the ranch had been in the McCoy family for over one hundred years. Letting some of it go would be like selling part of their souls. But what other options were there?

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.”

Colton rifled through the bags, pulling out boxes and cans and shoving them into the pantry. “If I’d have explained everything to Kajsa in the beginning, this wouldn’t have happened. It’s my fault she got so attached; my fault she thought the horse was ours to keep.”

His mother touched his arm. “Kajsa would have become attached regardless. You know that.”

“Which is exactly the point,” he said. “She and Maj share a special connection—a rare connection. I can’t stand by and watch it break. They need each other.”

“Need?” His mother arched an eyebrow with that look that made him feel like she could see inside his soul. “Are you sure we’re still talking about Maj and Kajsa?”

“Who else would we be talking about?”

“You and Sam.”

Colton’s body stiffened. She hadn’t meant to pour salt on an open wound; she probably thought she was offering him a Band Aid. A good talk and everything would be okay. But it wouldn’t. There was no solution that would close the gap between Colorado and New York. Words, hugs, money—they wouldn’t cut it. And Colton didn’t want to think about it anymore.

Kajsa and Maj, on the other hand, he could do something about.

“This has nothing to do with me and Samantha,” his said. “We’re talking about Kajsa and Maj and that’s it.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“If you say so.” She pulled open the fridge to put away some produce. “Tell you what. If you can think of another way to raise several thousand dollars to buy a wild mustang for an eleven-year-old girl, I will do whatever I can to help.”

When she put it that way, it sounded ridiculous and unreasonable. Maybe his father was right. Maybe this was a lesson Kajsa would need to learn sooner or later, and now was as good a time as any. But Colton couldn’t leave it alone. There were too many layers; too many people who now suffered because of his lack of communication. He’d see the pain in Kajsa’s eyes, in her parents’, and in Samantha’s. That had hurt the worst. It had been like reliving the aftermath of their earlier conversation all over again.

If there was something he could do to make this right, he was going to do it.

We need to talk.

Sam stared at the words she’d typed into the message app on her phone and frowned, then quickly deleted them.

With a sigh, she tossed the phone on her bed and collapsed beside it. Surely she could come up with something more original to send Colton than that. She was a creative person and “We need to talk” was the most overused phrase in the history of relationships. It was cliché, and she didn’t want anything about her relationship with Colton to be cliché.

But she and Colton
did
need to talk. They needed to find a way past this division between them. She couldn’t live with it for much longer.

A jingle sounded from her phone—the Colton-specific jingle she’d assigned to his name the day he’d first given her his number. She tensed, afraid she’d conjured up the sound the way a severely dehydrated man could conjure up water.

The jingle came again.

Two
texts?

And again.

Three
?

Sam grabbed her phone, her fingers shaking as she opened the messages.