Summer at Mustang Ridge (8 page)

Shelby must’ve seen the same thing, because after she finished walking the gelding dry from his light sweat, she rode over to the judges’ stand and reined to a halt. “Lizzie, how about you come down here and meet Loco?”

After a pause, the girl put down her e-reader and drifted to the front of the judges’ box. But she stalled at the edge of the platform.

“Come on down,” Shelby urged brightly. “He’s fine. You’re fine.”

Instead, the kid sat next to the stairs, dangling her legs over the edge and looking anywhere but at her mother.

“How about if I bring him over to you?”

Whatever-faced, Lizzie kicked back against the supporting beams, both feet together, hitting with dull, echoing thuds that had Loco flicking his ears.

“Lizzie. Please stop that.” Shelby’s snap brought the gelding’s head up, but didn’t have much effect on the kid. If anything the drumming got louder. Shelby flushed a little, and Foster could see her doing a ten-count in her head. And now, like last night, he caught a flash of how hard she worked to keep herself level when it came to her child.

Before things escalated to the point of things-we’ll-regret-later, he stepped in between them. “Hey, Lizzie, I’m going to need your help this week, if you’re up for it.”

Shelby frowned. “What did you have in mind?”

“I need her to babysit you.”

The foot banging stopped.

Talking to Lizzie now, he said, “Your mom did a great job with Loco, don’t you think? So she’s going to help me out by riding him during the week while I’m out with the guests. But as good as she did today, I don’t think it’s safe for her to ride completely alone, so I’d like you to come out here with her every day and keep an eye on her for me. Can you do that?”

She didn’t nod, but he felt as if she was really looking at him for the first time, really seeing him, like when a newly gathered mustang finally made its first eye contact, starting to think that maybe humans weren’t that bad after all.

“I’m not trying to scare you,” he continued. “I trust Loco and I trust your mom. But sometimes things just happen, and it’s not anybody’s fault, but people get hurt.” She blinked, though he didn’t know if he was getting through. “That’s why I want you to keep an eye on her and Loco.” He paused. “Do you have a way to call for help if you get in trouble?”

Shelby drew breath to answer, but when he shot her a warning look, she bit her lower lip and subsided.

Pretending he was waiting for a greenie to approach him and take a carrot butt from his hand, Foster just stood there, staying chilled out, not staring at her or anything. Just hanging out, waiting.
No agenda, nothing to see here, all the time in the world
. He enjoyed the way the sun warmed his hat, smelled the char from last night’s bonfire, felt the good press of his boots in the Wyoming soil. And, when his head started getting too hot, he thought it was just about time to swap out his black felt hat for summer white. In the high country, black and white hats didn’t signify villains and good guys, but rather whether a cowboy was trying to warm his head or keep it cool.

So he let his thoughts wander underneath that too-hot hat . . . And after a few minutes, the little girl slowly reached into her pocket and pulled out a bright pink whistle.

Shelby made a noise in the back of her throat.

He kept his expression neutral. “That’s a good-looking whistle.” Not wanting to push it one step further and take ten steps back, instead—which was always the risk with this sort of thing—he looked over at Shelby. “She willing to use it?”

“Doubtful. She doesn’t like to make noise. But she’s got her phone, too. The signal is spotty in places, but I got boosters for both of us. She’s got the ranch’s main landline under emergency contacts and an SOS tone she can transmit. Krista and Gran know it means to come find her, and how to do it using her TinyGPS.” She was staring at her daughter, expression unreadable.

“It’s a start.” To Lizzie, he said, “Okay, how about this? If you think your mom needs help and you can’t get through on the phone or with the whistle, I want you to slowly climb down out of the stands—slowly, okay? You don’t want to spook Loco by moving too fast—and then, when you’re out of his sight, I want you to book it to the barn first and then up to the house. Grab some grown-ups and drag them back here. Got it?”

He waited.
No agenda. Just watching the grass grow
. He knew better than to let his mind latch on to all the stuff he needed to get done today. Animals could smell that kind of pressure, and invariably chose the worst possible moment to misbehave or hurt themselves. And kids—at least according to his sister—had the same radar. Better, even.

After a long-feeling while, Lizzie nodded.

“Cool.” Not making a big deal out of it, he glanced over at Shelby. “You ready to hop off and let Loco head back out to the corral with his friends?”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said, and if she seemed a little toned down, he figured she was tired, or wilted from working in the sun for a solid hour on the first really warm day of the summer.

Lizzie trailed them from a distance and plonked back down on the bench with her reader. Foster would’ve liked it if she had come in with them, but he didn’t push it. Pleased enough with the day’s progress, he was whistling as he came into the barn, where Shelby already had Loco on the cross ties. He came up beside her as she struggled with the cinch.

Instead of helping her—she’d learn faster figuring it out on her own—he hitched his thumbs in his pockets and said, “I thought that went well.”

She whirled on him, her expression fierce. “Next time,
talk
to me first before you make a decision like that about my daughter.” She wasn’t loud, but her whisper packed as much of a punch as the finger she drilled into his chest.

Uh-oh. Angry mama bear alert. He backpedaled. “Wait a sec. I didn’t mean—”

“I don’t have any doubt that your intentions were good, but that’s not the point. The point is that she’s my kid. I know her—and her condition—better than you ever could.”

“But I—”

“Should’ve asked me first whether I want to ride during the week.” She took a furious breath. “Not to mention that—”

He did the only thing he could think of: he put a hand over her mouth and said firmly, “My turn.” His body was already jangling, and it just got worse when he touched her, but what mattered was that she was right. “I get it. I’m the boss of the barn, and I’m not real used to running my decisions past anyone. But I overstepped just now, and I’m sorry.”

She stepped back, away from his touch, eyes suddenly wary. But she didn’t launch any more salvos. Instead, she took a deep breath and looked down, concentrating as she swiped her hands on her jeans, completely oblivious of the smudge of dirt on her cheek.

It was an extremely cute smudge, he couldn’t help noticing.

Finally, she sighed and looked back up at him. “Okay, then. Thanks for understanding. And . . . well, maybe I’m overreacting. Probably. Sorry about that.”

“No problem. Comes with the territory, I expect.”

“You can say that again.”

“Want to make it up to me?”

Her eyes narrowed. “How so?”

“Nothing funny, so you can stop giving me that look.” It made him grin, though, and wonder whether maybe she wasn’t as immune to him as he’d been thinking. “I’m serious about wanting you to ride Loco for me during the week. He likes you, he could use the work, and it’d be something you and Lizzie could do together, especially if you ask her to watch your back. I’m not a parent, and I don’t play one on TV, but it seems to me that the sense of responsibility might do her good, help her get more involved with the horses, give her some power. You know the drill.”

She hesitated, then slowly nodded. “Yeah. Sure. That sounds good.”

“All righty, then. It’s a plan.”

He turned away as she grabbed a brush and got to work on Loco’s sweat-salted coat. But although he should’ve felt good about how they’d gotten out of that one without any bloodshed—and better yet, they were back on common ground, and had a training plan in place—he couldn’t settle. Because as he headed into the tack room, he could still feel the softness of her skin against his palm, and he knew darn well he was lying to himself, or at least trying to.

This wasn’t just about him helping Lizzie get over being afraid of the horses, not anymore. It was about the little girl’s mama, too, and the way she made him feel. And what the heck was he going to do about that?

A kiss is just a kiss, but Mint-Os fresh breath is an all-day affair.

B
y
late that night, after the new crop of guests—arriving for a three-generation family reunion, heavy on the Irish—had been welcomed, oriented, and fed, and had scattered to their cabins, Shelby was flat-out, bone-deep exhausted. So tired that, not long after Lizzie crashed for the night, she flopped down on her own bed.

Where she lay staring out the window as the stars came out.

“Go to sleep, dang it,” she muttered, and tried to follow her own orders.

A while later, a coyote—or maybe even a wolf?—howled in the distance, shivering the back of her neck. A couple of others answered, even farther away. The room cooled. Her thoughts spun, refusing to quiet, or even settle enough so she could deal with them. Not that there was anything to deal with, really. Things were fine. One day at a time. Rome wasn’t built overnight. Have a Coke and a smile.

“Okay. This isn’t working.” Shoving out of bed, she yanked on a pair of yoga pants and flip-flops, zipped a fleece over her sleep shirt, and headed for the kitchen. Five minutes later, as she pushed through the kitchen’s back door into air loaded with the yeasty scent of rising bread, she muttered, “Some nights, a girl just needs ice cream, damn it.”

“Amen, sister.”

Shelby stopped dead. “Oh!”

Krista sat at the end of the stainless steel counter with a distinctive pint in front of her. She held up her spoon. “Phish Food?”

“I thought Ben and Jerry were forbidden.” Gran had a near-pathological aversion to Deadheads and ice cream with crunchy stuff in it, which meant that the B&J boys were verboten.

“Ergo, we must destroy the evidence,” Krista said. “I could use your help.”

“Something tells me you’re doing fine on your own. I’ll just grab some cake and get scarce.”

“Don’t be dumb.” Krista kicked out a stool. “Grab a spoon, instead.”

Giving in, Shelby snagged a bowl and spoon and rummaged in one of the big commercial fridges for a half-full bowl of whipped cream left over from dessert. Behind that was a wrapped chunk of day-old devil’s food cake, which she also pulled out.

“Ooh, gimme.” Krista beckoned. “I didn’t know that was in there. See? I’m already glad you’re here. Hey, are there any cherries and hot fudge? We can make some killer brownie sundaes.”

“We shouldn’t.”

“Why the heck not? It’s Saturday night.”

Unable to argue with that logic, Shelby found the cherries and sauce, along with a Ziploc bag of chopped walnuts. They spent a few minutes assembling a day’s worth of calories—maybe more—in two big bowls, and then Krista said, “Come on. I’ve got an idea.”

“Not more food.”

“Nope. Follow me.”

Krista led the way up a wide staircase and along a hallway with bedroom doors leading off on either side, to the window at the end. She ran it open, letting in the night. “I hope you’re not afraid of heights.” Not waiting for Shelby’s answer, she ducked through the window and disappeared into the darkness. A moment later, her voice floated back. “Oh, jeez. Cabin Five left their shades up. Come on, we’ll go around to the other side.”

Forewarned, Shelby kept her eyes off the glow of the cabin windows as she edged one leg and her ice cream out, and then balanced on the sill while her vision adjusted to the moonlight. “Krista?”

“Over here. You want a hand?”

“No, I’m good.” She could see her now, leaning back against a dormer halfway down the peaked ridge of the dining hall roof. Grateful that she was wearing flip-flops rather than her still-slippery boots, Shelby picked her way over and sank down beside her with a sigh. “Nice. This is nice. Good idea.” Then she dug up a bite of sloppy sundae, popped the spoon in her mouth, and nearly groaned. “Even better idea.”

“Tough day?” Krista’s voice held a thread of amusement.

“I’m not the one who was sitting in the kitchen on a midnight date with our boys B and J.”

“You would’ve been if I came down fifteen minutes later.”

“Good point.” Shelby looked up at the sky. The moon was on its downswing, the stars more prominent than before. “You were there first, though. Everything okay?”

Krista dug into her sundae. “Yeah, I was just . . . I don’t know, thinking things through.”

“Ranch things?”

“Ranch things. Family things. Guy things.”

“You’ve got a guy? Why didn’t I know that?”

“Because he’s not my guy anymore.”

“Ah. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m not.” But she dug into her bowl with a vengeance. Then she exhaled and set her spoon aside. “Okay, maybe I’m sorry, but more that I put so much of myself into something that I should’ve known wasn’t going anywhere. Things worked so well between us in college that I thought . . . I don’t know. That it would work in real life, too. Only it turned out that our ideas of ‘real life’ were too far apart.” She shook her head. “It’s so obvious now, I don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner.”

“Don’t.” Shelby wanted to reach out to her, but wasn’t sure exactly how, so she took a bite of ice cream, instead. Then, as her temples throbbed with impending brain freeze, she said, “Trust me, it’s not worth doing the hindsight-is-twenty-twenty thing. Or only a little, to try and take the lessons learned, and then move on.”

Krista shifted to look at her in the darkness. “Is that what you’ve done?”

“More or less.”

They sat in companionable silence for a moment, spooning up calories and appreciating the dark, quiet night, before Krista said, “So, tit for tat. What brings you out for therapeutic ice cream this evening?”

Shelby hesitated. “I don’t know. I’m just feeling . . . unsettled, I guess.”

Krista glanced at her. “Homesick?”

“No, it’s not that. At least I don’t think so.” Home was just . . . home. She didn’t miss it, didn’t really think about it. Which should have surprised her more than it did.

“Are you worried about Lizzie?”

“Always.” But she sighed. “It wasn’t her today, at least not directly. It was me. I got irritated with her and took it out on Foster.”

“Foster? I thought Stace was teaching you.”

“She had something to do, so he filled in.” She was guessing there, but it seemed the most likely explanation. “I guess I owe you a ‘you were right and I was wrong’ on Foster. He really is sweet, deep down inside. He sure put up with my Cranky McBitchy Pants routine like a trouper.”

“What did I tell you? He’s the best. He’s been working here six, maybe seven years now, since the first summer we went dude. I’ve never seen anyone better with the horses and cattle, and the guests love the strong, silent routine.”

It took an effort, but Shelby squelched the urge to ask anything more about him, partly because she wasn’t a big fan of gossip, and partly because she didn’t want to give Krista any ideas about her and Foster. “Anyway, he handled himself really well, even when I tried to bite his head off after the lesson.”

“How was the ride up to that point?”

“Fun. Loco is an absolute doll.”

“Duh.”

“I know, right?” Shelby could finally laugh at herself a little. “Here’s poor Foster, trying to help me out by putting all this thought into how we can get Lizzie comfortable with the horses. He lets me ride a lovely babysitter of a horse and does his best to make me look like a star in front of my kid, and how do I thank him? I snarl at him for doing exactly what we’d agreed, which was to get Lizzie involved in my riding.”

“Aw, Foster’s tough. He can take it.”

Shelby thought about that V of skin at his throat beneath his snap-studded shirt, and how he wore the shirt because it would peel off easy if he got in trouble. Which got her thinking about the noise those snaps would make, the feel of them giving way beneath her fingers . . .
And he’s doing you a favor
.
Don’t complicate things any more than you already have.
“He shouldn’t have to take anything like that from me,” she insisted. “I need to do better. Lizzie needs to know she’s safe, no matter what.”

“What about you?”

“Excuse me?”

“When do you get to feel safe? Or, heck, when do you get to do something for yourself?”

Though sorely tempted to take a monumental bite of her melting sundae, Shelby sighed and let the spoon clink against the side of her bowl. “I do plenty for myself back home. Lunches out. Pedicures. The occasional chocolate binge.”

“Dates? Vacations?”

“Hello, pot? This is the kettle.”

“We’re not talking about me anymore.”

“I vote we backtrack.”

“Overruled.” Krista grinned. “Look, I know you’re here for Lizzie’s sake, and this probably wouldn’t be your first choice for an extended summer vaca.”

Shelby fidgeted with her spoon. “I like it here.”

“Glad to hear it, but that doesn’t change my point. Even though this summer is about Lizzie, it can be a little about you, too. In fact, it might be better that way. It can’t be easy for her, knowing you took the whole summer off from your job and came all the way out here just so she can be around the horses. That’s its own sort of pressure, don’t you think?”

“She doesn’t have a clue that’s what’s going on.”

“Are you sure? Kids understand more than you think sometimes.”

Shelby almost said, “Talk to me when you’re a mom,” but she held it in. “If she knows that much, then she knows there’s no pressure.”

“Sometimes there’s a difference between knowing something and believing it, deep down inside.”

Shelby frowned. “You’re assuming she knows how much of this summer is aimed at her. I never put it that way, never even hinted at it.”

“She’s a thinker.”

“She’s nine.” But how much did she really know about how her daughter’s mind worked? The last time they’d had a real, back-and-forth conversation, Lizzie was seven and Mr. Pony was brand-new. The knowledge ached like a pulled muscle.

“All I’m saying is that it can’t be easy being the focus of all this attention, even if it’s subtle.”

That resonated, and not in a good way. “So I should . . . what? Ignore her half the time?”

“Now you’re being snippy.” But Krista didn’t sound offended. “I’m just saying it might be good for her to see you doing something for yourself here, too. You know, having a little fun, getting out, enjoying yourself.”

“Riding was fun.” Surprisingly so.

“But not your choice to start with. Try again.”

“Softball with Stace?”

Krista laughed. “Not if it makes you sound like you’re suggesting a recreational root canal. Look, you don’t have to come up with anything right now. This isn’t a test and you’re not being graded. I’m just saying you should think about getting out a little, having a little fun.” She nudged her with an elbow. “Being a little naughty.”

“Watch it, or you’re going to get me in trouble with Rule Twelve.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

•   •   •

Between work, riding, a trip into town, and exploring the ranch’s activities with Lizzie, the week flew by so fast that Shelby was startled to hit the kitchen for her afternoon shift and see wings, burgers, pulled pork, and corn bread listed on the master wipe board.

There was no sign of Gran, but the familiar blue-and-white bowl sat on the steel counter, covered with its saucy red-checked towel, so she said, “Hey, Herman, what gives? I thought barbecue night was on Fridays.”

“It is,” answered a deep, booming voice.

Shelby jolted, then laughed back over her shoulder. “For a second I thought I was going over to the dark side.”

Gran stepped in from the hallway and said in her normal voice, “Talking to the sourdough, you mean?”

“I don’t mind that part. It’s him talking back that worries me.”

“Give it time. We all go a little crazy out here—it just takes different forms, depending on how you look at the world. I chat with my bread, Arthur pretends it’s still the ’seventies—minus the shag rug and all his hair—Eddie married Rose, and Krista has her rescues. Who knows how it’ll show up in you?”

“Fortunately—or unfortunately, I suppose, depending on how you look at it—Lizzie and I won’t be here long enough to contract full-blown ranch-itis.” Though she had a feeling the place would stick with them long after Labor Day. Maybe not the way she had hoped in terms of the horses—over the past week, Lizzie hadn’t done much more than sit on the bleachers with her whistle, playing on her iPad while Shelby rode—but they’d had some other fun mom-daughter adventures, storing up experiences they never could’ve gotten in the city.

“Poosh.” Gran waved that off. “Look at Eddie and Rose. Last I heard, they were taking drag racing lessons—drag racing!—at some track in Ohio. And Jenny is down in Belize, living in a tent and eating bugs or something while filming one of those reality TV shows. We’re not normal, I tell you.” She grinned evilly at Shelby. “You’re already losing track of the days. That’s the first symptom of ranch-itis, and once you start the slide, there’s no turning back.”